[Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?

[Tom Mitchell]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 10:10 AM, ianG <iang at iang.org> wrote:

> Having been in the biz for a while, I feel your pain.  It is
> counter-intuitive.  I've always thought that the job of financial
> cryptographers was to steer clear of carnival tricks.
>
> Why did it work?  How did it work?  (Take it from me -- it succeeded,
> and it is probably unstoppable at this stage.)
>


The single most interesting thing that Bitcoin has
demonstrated is the ability of modern systems to
make very inexpensive transactions.

Credit cards bankers and others grab some 1-2%
of the action as it passes and it is clear that this
is an astoundingly profitable bit of action.

Now that we may know of a more reliable way
to securely and reliably transact businesses
(and faster too) there will be a hidden business
that takes advantage of this.  Hidden at first
and then as their fraud losses are reduced to
near zero others will see the bottom line move
and financial institutions will see a different class
of pressures.



-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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