Day two, morning session

The second day begins early (9:30am!) with Bitcoins & browsers: Tales of a difficult marriage. Amir gives a brief reintro, then first speaker Stefan (Java expert) comes to the fore to discuss the compatibility issues between Bitcoin and web browsers/Javascript. It's difficult to run an entire Bitcoin client through Javascript. Updated code is permitting decryption algorithms to run up to sixteen times faster on average, making life easier and smoother for regular payers, including those using mobile devices.

Now Pieter Wuille talks about the complexity of the Bitcoin blockchain and the importance of full nodes to the network. Bandwidth usage is relatively limited. A challenge for Bitcoin is to move away from the idea that the block chain is accessible. It's not practical to rescan the entire blockchain just to verify one new transaction, for example. A drawback of the peer-to-peer system is that the end user is responsible for verifying (and reverifying) that any transaction is universally accepted by the Bitcoin network where all (s)he really cares about is whether the money is accepted and received by the receiver or merchant. Wuille proposes a kind of web intermediary to smooth this process but ostensibly this appears clumsy at present. Is this idea just a glorified online wallet?

The next lecture is the important-sounding State of the Coin 2012 by Jeff Garzik. He says Bitcoin is the most challenging technical project he's run into in his entire lifetime and there's no room for mistakes. If you try to upgrade the Bitcoin network and have a serious problem, then everyone could lose their money!

The basic “Satoshi” Bitcoin client is constantly being reviewed and reprogrammed. Garzik summarizes some of the techincal reference client changes in the later versions. He condemns the Wired magazine article The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin (November 2011).

Garzik then gives a brief reminder of good basic security practices when using Bitcoin. Many victims of fraud have failed to follow them so there's no harm in making such reminders.

Next up, Marek Palatinus is talking about the future of pooled mining. One issue highlighted is the susceptibility of mining pools to DDoS attacks. So far so good, but now he's starting to get a little more technical. He is, after all, talking from the perspective of managing an entire mining pool, not just being a single mining node as part of a pool!

There'll be some potentially interesting economics-leaning lectures coming up in the afternoon, including Max Keiser from the RT TV show Keiser Report (a show cohosted by Stacy Herbert).

Day One, morning session

On this heady morning we begin gently in the cheekily named Satoshi conference room (in honour of Bitcoin's still-unidentified creator) at the Royal National Hotel, with a little lecture from Eli Sklar about the possible future of a moneyless society with almost limitless basic resources. Hopefully this isn't going to end up in ideas extracted from The Communist Manifesto, but I don't think so. He discusses economic changes over time and the shift away from traditional labor toward an information economy, borderless both physically and financially. He sees Bitcoin as a key cog in this, of course, because it eliminates financial borders.

On the overhead projector comes a mini history lesson depicting the advancement of our economy from an agrarian, intensive-manual-labor-based society 200+ years ago, through mechanization and industrialization in the late 19^th century, through modern infotech and agribusiness nowadays. The headline is “Increased Productivity”. The production of food has risen almost 250% in less than sixty years. “Not only do we produce a lot more with the same amount of work as we needed to do sixty years ago, but we produce more than we actually need.” - Eli Sklar.

In the absence of monetary incentives (because, presumably, the cost of living is so low), Sklar says we can extract value from social interactions and convert gaming activities into productivity. But the moneyless society will be an evolution rather than an overnight revolution. This is for me still an idealistic vision but in principle we should have the tools to move in this general direction; we just have to believe in the future and shape it accordingly?

Next it's Caleb James DeLisle, on for a discussion about “the sociopolitical effects of network protocols”, i.e. the Internet, security issues, service providers, intellectual property philosophies, and so on. Now he fires up the Internet on his Linux-equipped (kudos) laptop and gives a brief demonstration of IPv6. I guess this truly is the future: eat your heart out, Marty McFly! :)

Then we are blessed with Mike Hearn for a lecture specifically recommended by the organizer (it's thus one of “Amir's Picks”). Mike is discussing practical applications and improvements of Bitcoin to improve the efficiency and security of transactions, ideas he says are implementable now by sufficiently determined and capable programmers, not hypothetically n years ahead. A lot of this focuses on escrow and trust between parties, which is critical because regular two-party bitcoin transactions are cash-like and irreversible.

A particularly interesting idea is “smart property”, in which physical items can be computer-linked to Bitcoin thus permitting loans and some level of electronic recourse by the lessor in the event of default. Also, there's the idea of creating a Bitcoin bond market. It sounds all eminently doable... eventually.

Now, people are asking questions to the speakers and soon it's time for lunch and hopefully some coffee. The afternoon lecture No Privacy – No Freedom by Icelandic MP (?) Birgitta Jónsdóttir sounds slightly mouthwatering.