As part of our SI Evening Talks series, we invited Michael Gauckler to share his knowledge on Bitcoin and the development of cryptocurrency with us in an online event titled „Bitcoin – The Perfect Currency?“ Michael was the Chief Product Officer at Bitcoin Suisse and is now a Bitcoin educator.
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency developed based on the Bitcoin white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. It offers an opportunity to remove control of money from state control and place it into everyone’s hand and to allow a transparent and open access to our economic system. To do so, it uses a peer-to-peer network and blockchain technology to enable secure and transparent transactions between users.
Michael structured his talk along three perspectives: Technology, economics and society and this text will use the same structure by first exploring the technological side of Bitcoin, followed by the economical and the societal.
As already mentioned, Bitcoin uses blockchain and peer-to-peer network technology as its basis. Michael highlighted three technical requirements within this system. The first one is a trustless ledger which allows everyone to track all transactions without having to turn to an administrative point and which avoids single points of failure by spreading out the information. All transactions are organized in blocks which are distributed to all participants in the system. This creates a unidirectionally linked list and through both time and the energy disposal of miners, it grows large enough to become virtually untamperable by dishonest participants.
The second technical requirement is an open and permissionless system that allows anyone to participate. Through public cryptography, everyone can create an account as the number of possible accounts is large enough to to make address collision very unlikely. Through Bitcoin’s open-source code, it is both accessible and evolving.
The final technical requirement is a finite amount of digital money. Through the constant validation, all transactions can be checked by all participants and the participants who add to the chain, the miners, are incentivized to keep the ledger consistent through a transaction fee they receive for adding to the correct – the longest – chain. This way, invalid transactions such as over or double spending, are caught and removed from the chain. To contest the other miners in creating the longest chain based on invalid transactions, an untrustworthy participant would need a logistically impossible amount of computer power.
Along the same three requirements, Michael also explored the economic advantages of Bitcoin. The trustless ledger incentivizes participants to be honest as all of their transactions are on display and would erase trust in them. The open and permissionless system with its low system requirement allows for a democratic access and invites as many participants as possible. Finally, the finite amount of digital money inherent in the system creates a stable environment with its public requirements and fees that makes it irrational to interfere with. Instead, participants are incentivised to maintain the existing rules instead of changing them.
The final perspective Michael presented was a societal one. Bitcoin contests with our current financial system which is built on debt and an elastic supply of money which is managed through central banks and governments. This makes is susceptible to abuse and manipulation. In contrast, Bitcoin has a fixed number of currency units and no central oversight. This makes it a more open financial system which cannot be manipulated. The value of Bitcoin is steadily on the rise and it may offer a new financial order. However, this is still up in the air as the adoption of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular has not increased enough to replace current normative financial systems. However, Bitcoin offers us new possibilities how we can structure trade in our society and these possibilities deserve to be explored. While not without its own challenges – namely large energy consumption, potentially illicit activities and the challenges of applying existing regulations to this relatively new technology – Bitcoin draws on the imagination of its participants.
Michael urged everyone to learn more about Bitcoin and to get involved. Only by using this new system can we test its limitations. As a very current topic, SI will also not lose sight and continue to further learn and discuss the opportunities of Bitcoin.
Christian Schwab holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Bern. He is a member of the SI office, taking care of marketing and social media support.