

The World's First Bitcoin Conference - rl1987
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-worlds-first-bitcoin-conference/0

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nethsix
I am a researcher and I publish papers...for the record. I am not proud of
every paper that I publish. For those uninitiated with the research industry,
take conferences (in general, not referring to this particular one), etc. with
a pinch of salt. In some ways, conferences are the main mechanism for the
organizing body to make money/achieve sustenance, committee members to
embellish their resumes, researchers to add to their publication list while
milking taxing-payers/profits (depending on her affiliation) to go on
'vacation' to present.

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philipn
Based on this, it looks like the conference organizer is quite the sleezeball:
[http://buttcoin.org/has-bruce-wagner-pulled-off-the-
financia...](http://buttcoin.org/has-bruce-wagner-pulled-off-the-financial-
biggest-scam-on-the-bitcoin-community)

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avree
This is what has always confused me about Bitcoin.

How is it not a great scam?

The way I see it, the creators of Bitcoin have the lion's share of the coins.
Since they're hard to mine, it's not like supply is increasing at a rate where
it can offset that big initial pooling.

As a matter of fact, some of the big crashes I've seen are from mass cash-ins
from people with exactly these large pools.

So, if Bitcoin actually becomes ubiquitous, as are the creator's goals, do the
creators come out millionaires?

~~~
jerguismi
> How is it not a great scam?

How is it a great scam? Who is scammed here? No false information is provided,
the protocol and program source code is all open source for you to examine.

Of course some bitcoin users can tell you that "I believe bitcoin value will
rise tenfold in the next year", but that is not scamming. It is the same as I
would say that "I believe nokia share will rise tenfold in the next month". If
you believe me and buy Nokia shares, you are just stupid, not scammed :)

~~~
yvdriess
Or as some would tell you:

Bitcoins are backed by gold. Comedy gold.

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hippich
Actually, probably first article I seen which describes correctly what bitcoin
is (distributed ledger to which all parties have read access and parties
having correct private keys have write access to corresponding parts of the
ledger).

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yvdriess
Special keynote lecture by Bill Cosby?

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ianpurton
It's an in joke. [http://buttcoin.org/bitcointalk-forums-hacked-bill-cosby-
pim...](http://buttcoin.org/bitcointalk-forums-hacked-bill-cosby-pimping-new-
cosbycoins%E2%84%A2-to-all-the-members-breaking)

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jackgavigan
Bitcoin's an interesting experiment but it's ultimately doomed because of the
increasing "cost" (in terms of CPU cycles) of generating new bitcoins.
<http://goo.gl/I34VL>

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dissident
That's actually not specifically the problem with crytocurrencies. The CPU
cost is dynamic in bitcoin, and has changed in the past to reflect more or
less people mining new bitcoins.

The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions. In a model
where every participant has to be aware of every transaction, it is extremely
difficult to imagine it (quickly) handling millions of transactions a day.

~~~
jerguismi
> The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions.

Bitcoin economy should grow pretty big before scaling really becomes a
problem. I think it won't be a problem for at least 1-2 years, unless things
really explode. That would mean new world order :D

Some of the scalability issues are addressed here:
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability>

