Cornell's IC3

The current issue of Cornell Alumni Magazine (CAM; September/October 2016) has a relevant article, Beyond Bitcoin subtitled, 'The CU-based Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts ponders the future of financial tech'. It starts,

In April, an experimental crowdfunding project started accepting online investments. This system, called the DAO (for Decentralized Autonomous Organization), was like a cross between Kickstarter and a venture capital fund, but with a twist: interested parties had to convert their money into a new type of digital currency before they could invest. Participants could then vote "yes" or "no" on submitted proposals, deciding as a group what to invest in. When a project got enough "yes" votes, computer code would automatically disperse the funds.

The story had already popped up a few times in this blog, for example Bitcoin in the News : 2016-07, but I had never taken the time to understand it properly. The article continued,

By the end of May, the DAO had amassed the equivalent of $150 million. But a few weeks later, an anonymous hacker identified a flaw in the voting system and siphoned off more than a third of the funds. "You can think of this as a bank robbery of sorts," says Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell, "except one much bigger than any before it."

That Cornell connection goes deeper than that.

Sirer's work on the DAO -- studying a new type of financial technology and advising the industry on how it can be implemented and improved -- epitomizes the work that he and his colleagues do at the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3). Founded in January, it's led by Sirer and two other co-directors -- Elaine Shi, an associate professor of computer science on the Hill, and Ari Juels, a professor at Cornell Tech -- and includes collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, and two other institutions. They comprise what Sirer calls a "dream team" of about fifty people who are looking for ways to make next-generation financial technology systems more secure, scalable, confidential, and safe, while also developing new technology-based financial products with industry partners.

For more about IC3, see Initc3.org, 'IC3: Advancing the science and applications of blockchains'. This is the second time I've used CAM as a source on a blog post. The first was 'Not a Sane Bone in His Body' (November 2012), about Bobby Fischer.

Bitcoin in X Words (or Less)

I've sometimes wondered how I would explain bitcoin to someone who knew nothing about it. While I was working on the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : Sources, I kept looking for a good introductory article on the subject. The best one I found (there are others) was the following:-

Bitcoin: What It Is And How It Works (popsci.com)

That's too much explanation and too much extraneous detail. Here are the most important sentences with some editing suggestions:-

[Bitcoin is; S/P] the digital equivalent of cash online, a system that lets participants [to] send value to anyone else with a Bitcoin address the same way they [like you] might send an email (A).

Every ten [few] minutes, new Bitcoin enter [S/P] the system. "Miners" [use] donate spare or dedicated processing power to help validate transactions around the globe. Bitcoin come [S/P] as rewards [is a reward] for that work (B).

If you want to [To] own Bitcoin, you [first] have to first get a Bitcoin address [wallet], then you have to either get someone who owns Bitcoin to give you some [bitcoin from someone else] or buy it from an exchange (C).

When you own Bitcoin, you’re assigned a value [quantity] and a cryptographic key. With the key, you’re the only person able to transfer that value [quantity] to someone else.

First some notes:-
(A) Doesn't differentiate from interbank transfers or Paypal.
(B) Rearrange.
(C) Or mine it! (but good luck with that)

Then some conventions for the word 'bitcoin':-
- Singular or plural? [S/P] -> I prefer singular, 'bitcoins' as plural
- Capitalized or not? -> No.

Putting that together gives:-

Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of cash, a system to send value like you might send an email. When you own bitcoin, you’re assigned a quantity and a cryptographic key. With the key, you’re the only person able to transfer that quantity to someone else. To own bitcoin, you first have to get a bitcoin wallet, then you have to either get bitcoin from someone else or buy it from an exchange. Every few minutes new bitcoin enters the system as 'miners' use processing power to validate transactions. Bitcoin is a reward for that work.

Maybe I should have started with a dictionary definition. And what about 'blockchain'?

Bitcoin in the News : Sources

While working on the previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-09 More++, I created the following table. It might be useful for future posts.

General news sources often appearing in bitcoin news feeds:- [excluding bitcoin specific sources; ranked in descending order]

finance.yahoo.com	~ 62.500 results :	site:finance.yahoo.com bitcoin
nytimes.com (A)	~ 41.000 results :	site:nytimes.com bitcoin
ft.com	~ 38.900 results :	site:ft.com bitcoin
techcrunch.com	~ 30.300 results :	site:techcrunch.com bitcoin
nasdaq.com	~ 26.700 results :	site:nasdaq.com bitcoin
reuters.com	~ 18.100 results :	site:reuters.com bitcoin
wsj.com	~ 17.100 results :	site:wsj.com bitcoin
pymnts.com (B)	~ 15.200 results :	site:pymnts.com bitcoin
cnn.com	~ 12.100 results :	site:cnn.com bitcoin
businessinsider.com	~ 11.100 results :	site:businessinsider.com bitcoin
fortune.com	~ 10.500 results :	site:fortune.com bitcoin
theregister.co.uk	~ 8.830 results :	site:theregister.co.uk bitcoin
bloomberg.com	~ 7.160 results :	site:bloomberg.com bitcoin
forbes.com	~ 4.150 results :	site:forbes.com bitcoin
theguardian.com	~ 3.660 results :	site:theguardian.com bitcoin
arstechnica.com	~ 3.180 results :	site:arstechnica.com bitcoin
cnbc.com	~ 2.780 results :	site:cnbc.com bitcoin
bbc.com	~ 1.880 results :	site:bbc.com bitcoin
huffingtonpost.com	~ 1.800 results :	site:huffingtonpost.com bitcoin
wired.com	~ 1.740 results :	site:wired.com bitcoin
ibtimes.com	~ 1.630 results :	site:ibtimes.com bitcoin
popsci.com (C)	~ 1.160 results :	site:popsci.com bitcoin
techrepublic.com	~ 897 results :	site:techrepublic.com bitcoin

Notes:
(A) e.g. Nathaniel Popper
(B) 'PYMNTS.com is reinventing the way in which companies share relevant information about the initiatives that shape the future of payments and commerce...'
(C) Popular Science

theregister.co.uk [.co.uk] -vs.- theguardian.com [.com]

Bitcoin in the News : 2016-09 More++

In my previous post, Bitcoin in the News : 2016-09, although I could find only one real news story, there were other journalistic pieces worthy of attention. The best of the bunch was a tutorial:-

• The Long History and Disputed Desirability of Alternative Bitcoin Implementations (nasdaq.com)

After stating the problem...

The "Reference Implementation" • The question whether alternative software implementations for Bitcoin are desirable has been discussed for years. These implementations, or clients, are essentially computer programs that connect to, and therefore become part of, the network. The debates surrounding their role date from the early days of Bitcoin's history, back when the community mostly consisted of tinkering techies.

The first Bitcoin implementation was of course Satoshi Nakamoto's version of Bitcoin, written in the coding language C++. This client later become known as Bitcoin-Qt, and now Bitcoin Core ; it is sometimes also referred to as Bitcoin's "reference client" or the "Satoshi client." For a while, this was the only Bitcoin implementation - although over time Satoshi released updates; i.e., slightly different versions of the same client.

...it moved through a logical point/counterpoint exposition that might be a model for any discussion of strategies for clients in distributed computing: 'The First Alternatives • Criticism • Counter-criticism • Ethereum • Future Strategies'.

Another story caught my attention because it raised an issue that I wasn't aware of: 'crowdfunding platforms do not take kindly to bitcoin'. Why should this be?

• GoFundMe Crowdfunding Campaign Removed Due To Bitcoin Address Listing (newsbtc.com)

The article didn't provide an answer and I had to do a little research to discover What are the obstacles for the widespread adoption of Bitcoin in crowdfunding and micro-financing? (quora.com). Of the many reasons that were proposed, most of which work against adoption of bitcoin for any purpose, the 'volatility of bitcoin' seemed to be the most important for crowdfunding. Going back to an insight I had a year ago, It's for Speculating, Not Buying Stuff (October 2015), crowdfunding is already speculative enough without adding currency risk.

In contrast to the crowdfunding chimera, another pair of stories focused on an aspect of bitcoin that is often touted as a key application: remittance markets. This might be a suitable subject for a followup post.

• There's a $500 billion remittance market, and Bitcoin startups want in on it (qz.com [Quartz])
• How Bitcoin Startups Are Disrupting the Remittance Market (tech.co)

Another story caught my eye because it used the phrase 'Yet Another', implying a tired subject. When I looked for previous instances, I kept coming back to the Santander report. Mark this as another candidate for a followup post.

• Yet Another Bitcoin Impact Assessment Report by Santander (newsbtc.com)

Ditto for the final story.

• Bitcoin and the Brave Future of Browsers (coindesk.com)

It helps to know that 'Brave' is the name of a browser. Why is this concept important?

To start, a monthly payment content budget is configured and funded by the user, and as the user surfs across the Internet, visiting various sites, those sites are tracked on a “time spent” basis. [...] Quick back-of-the-napkin math would indicate that if 750,000 users visited CoinDesk using a Brave browser with a $5.00 monthly budget, and 6% of their browsing time was spent, on average, across all users, CoinDesk’s escrow account would be holding $213,750 at the end of the month. All of this without a single ad, without employing a single ad salesperson, sales infrastructure, any of that overhead.

The math would have been easier assuming 1,000,000 users, but it's all pie-in-the-sky anyway; a handful of comments explain why. The last paragraph of that article is also worth a further look (think 'organizational structures'):-

Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Brave.

Note to myself: If you do follow up any of these ideas, don't forget to check the forums.

Bitcoin in the News : 2016-09

September was a quiet month for bitcoin, both on this blog and in general. After posting Bitcoin in the News : 2016-08, I managed only to highlight a New Online Bitcoin Course followed by two posts on the old course.

As for general news, at least half of the stories served by Google alerts had to do with bitcoin price action -- which was a yawner as far as I could tell -- and the other half were lists like The 5 Greatest Moments in Bitcoin History (cointelegraph.com). No.1 was 'The Dawn of The Bitcoin Era (31 October 2008 - 12 February 2009)' -- who could have guessed that would be first? -- and you can read the article for the nos. 2 through 5.

As for 'news' -- with emphasis on the 'new' portion of the word -- the newsiest story was probably about bitcoin on the small screen: How Sony's New Show 'Startup' Gets Bitcoin Right (fortune.com):-

It was only a matter of time until someone made a TV show featuring bitcoin. Well, that show is here in the form of a 10-episode series called Startup, and, frankly, it does a good job of depicting the weird world of crypto-currency.

That story -- one of several about the show -- was complete with an embedded video and links to reviews. And that -- he said parenthetically -- was that!