Gavin Andresen, chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and longtime Bitcoin Core developer, took to Reddit yesterday afternoon for an AMA interview.
In the interview, he revealed some details on his involvement with Bitcoin, and his experiences.
Technical Aspects of Bitcoin
As a longtime leader of the Bitcoin Core development team, Andresen was naturally the centre of many questions on the subject.
One user suggested the idea of having regularly scheduled hardforks to Bitcoin, in order to take care of the items on Bitcoin’s hardfork wishlist, which often stack up for some time before being taken care of. Gavin liked the idea, though he confessed he “might be the only one, though…”
When asked what he was most excited about in Bitcoin’s development, he said “all of the non-currency uses of the blockchain’s ledger-ordering ability. I have no idea which ones will turn out to be successful, but I’m glad all of that experimenting is happening.”
As for his concerns? Scalability. “My concern is that a solution won’t get consensus before we bump into the 1MB block size. That won’t be a disaster, but I think it could hurt Bitcoin’s reputation as a low-transaction-fee way to transfer value around the world.”
Other Cryptocurrency Developments
Andresen called the idea of Overstock’s Medici project “really really interesting”, though whether or not it will be able to challenge Wall Street “depends on how the SEC (or similar regulatory agencies overseas) reacts.”
He also gave a shout out to Amir Taaki’s Dark Wallet, naming it specifically when mentioning “lots of other great wallet options” than Bitcoin-Qt. He expressed his excitement with Mycelium’s hardware wallets, and with “watching the spread of Bitcoin ATMs, because getting BTC is still a bottleneck for ordinary people”
Satoshi
Of course, since Andresen was one of the few people who had contact with Bitcoin’s enigmatic founder Satoshi Nakamoto, several questions revolved around him.
When asked if he thinks Satoshi will ever make contact with the general public again, he replied simply “I don’t know if Satoshi will ever reappear.”
The Future Of Bitcoin
What does Bitcoin need in order to move forward? According to Andresen, it’s “regulatory clarity, ease of use, and no-single-point-of-failure security.” He’s optimistic, explaining that “I think we’re very close on all of those things.”
He’s always believed that Bitcoin is an “experiment”, and to that effect Bitcoin 1.0 has never been released (the current version being Bitcoin Core 0.9.2). He believes it will reach version 1.0 “when it feels like it is stable and won’t need to change (besides minor bug fixes) for two or three years.”
As for advice on how to get involved in the Bitcoin world? “I guess my advice would be to act like an entrepreneur — try lots of things, expect most of them to fail, but keep your eyes open for opportunities.”
Gavin Andresen : Bitcoin Needs "Regulatory Clarity"
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