Andreas Antonopoulos, the well-known Bitcoin evangelist and speaker, was present via Skype at last night’s Bitcoin meetup in Toronto.
During the talk, which lasted for more than an hour, he spoke on a wide range of subjects, including his recent appearance at the Canadian Senate,
Canadian Senate
Andreas Antonopoulos recently appeared before the Canadian senate to testify on behalf of Bitcoin. He gave some insight into what brought him there in the first place.
…I started a roboforum system where I can be invited to conferences, and one day out of the blue I got an email from the clerk of the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade, and Commerce Canada. She said that they had heard my name, some other witnesses had mentioned my name, and they would like to invite me to come and testify in front of the senate committee.
He also joked about the committee’s name. “By the way, if you haven’t noticed, the acronym for the senate Banking & Trade Commerce is BTC. It was meant to be.”
He praised the Canadian senate’s openness toward Bitcoin.
I went to look at the previous committee hearings, and I saw that they had a rather open minded approach to this and were not scapegoating the Bitcoin community.
When asked by Anthony Di Iorio, the event’s organizer, whether or not he prepared prior to the meeting, he gave a simple answer. “The past two years of doing meetups, and Q&A from audiences of every walk of life, has been one continuous preparation for that. None of the questions were really surprising, and none of them were questions I’d never heard before.”
As far as the significance of the proceedings, he didn’t necessarily see it as as a watershed moment either way. “Bitcoin will progress as a technology according to the desires, actions, and will of its users, not a government committee…It won’t be the regulators that decide where Bitcoin goes”
Bitcoin Security
In the wake of the dubious events occurring this year around companies such as Neo & Bee, Mt. Gox, Moolah, MintPal, Bitcoin Trader, BitXoin, and many others, questions about security and safety naturally came up.
When asked about proof of reserve, Andreas acknowledged it as better than nothing, but considers it a band aid solution, saying “it doesn’t address the larger problem which is the centralization of control of private keys. Proof of reserves only proves that they have the money, but if they have control over that money it creates opportunities for fraud and embezzlement as well as risk of theft and loss. Centralization is the problem, and decentralization is the solution.”
He was very clear on the fact that he believes everyone should be in control of their private keys at all times.
Your keys, your Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin
The Future Of Bitcoin
Andreas gave a shout out to C4, the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, which offers professional certification of Bitcoin professionals. He acknowledged their importance, believing they will play a key role in the future of Bitcoin.
He also mentioned the significance of Bitcoin to the financial sector, and one of the reasons why we’re seeing such a rush of innovation in the Bitcoin world.
There’s a reason why no one – except PayPal – started any financial innovation in their garage…If you wanted to bring financial innovation, you had to go to the incumbent [the banks] and their answer was simple: no, we’re not going to let you disrupt our nice little racket…The last major innovation in banking was credit cards, and those are now 50 years old…What we’re seeing now is 50 years of pent up need for innovation crashing like a wave into the Bitcoin space. I don’t think we’ve even seen the beginning of it yet.
One of the things he cautioned the Bitcoin community against was what he called “premature optimization” of Bitcoin, and calls for “dealing with Bitcoin’s problems today, not the problems Bitcoin may have in the future.”
He insisted that “there is no problem with mining centralization“, and believes there are much bigger problems with Bitcoin, like wallet security and adoption.
He has a positive view on the future of decentralization, casting it in the light of the natural way for humans to move. “There’s a reason why Android has 84% of the market. There’s a reason why decentralized systems beat the…finely manicured walled garden of centralization.”
And as for Bitcoin? “I think the probability of Bitcoin being here a decade from now is greater than 95%.”
For his thoughts on these several other topics, including his book Mastering Bitcoin, Bitcoin in Malawi, how Apple Pay may affect Bitcoin, and what he thinks “Orwell warned us against”, watch the full video below.
Andreas Antonopoulos: "Centralization Is The Problem, Decentralization Is The Answer"
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