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Bitcoin adoption - Andreas M. Antonopoulos a lecture/ dialog

Can a blockchain exist without miners, proof-of-work, or blocks? What are the implications for security, trustlessness, and decentralisation? Not all distributed ledgers are blockchains. What is the influence of alternative energy generation on mining in proof-of-work cryptocurrencies? Should we use alternative algorithms that generate "useful work" in addition to mining cryptocurrencies? The hard promises that Bitcoin provides are valuable and useful in themselves. What is the difference between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake?

How are assets exchanged between blockchains? What is the script functionality required for smart contracts? Multi-signature schemes are basic smart contracts. What do you mean by "smart contract" regarding Lightning? Is the Lightning Network a sidechain? Are sidechains second layers? Will they be centralised?

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is global and lives on the blockchain, so can local judicial systems interact with DeFi? In what situations might a judicial system play a role in DeFi? When can a global, decentralized system interact with local law? And what kind of legal framework might make sense for interacting with global, open systems?

What are the safest practices for accepting bitcoin at my business? Why is it important to maintain custody and use open-source solutions? Is it possible to accept donations via Lightning? What are invoiceless payments? How could an auditor explore records of Lightning network payments, such as for tax purposes? Capital gains reporting is difficult.

What are the incentives for founders of protocols and first-mover advantage? Why is the user experience design of ATMs important? What are Bitcoin's biggest obstacles to success? Why is predicting adoption trends hard?

What are the risks and benefits of paper wallets? How do you spend from them? Why are they hard to create and use securely? Why is a hardware wallet preferable? These questions are from the MOOC 9.4 session which took place on March 9th, 2018. Andreas is a teaching fellow with the University of Nicosia. The first course in their Master of Science in Digital Currency degree, DFIN-511: Introduction to Digital Currencies, is offered for free as an open enrollment MOOC course to anyone interested in learning about the fundamental principles.

How do bitcoin ATMs work? How easy is it to spend bitcoin? Some will allow you to transfer both ones, but ATMs in most countries are often one-way "vending machines." Circulating bitcoin helps grow the economy. I get paid in bitcoin and I pay others in bitcoin. There are many things you can buy with bitcoin, including flights, hotels, and products on Amazon. Bitcoin is first and foremost the currency of the internet.

Why use a crypto payment processor? Payment processors such as BTCPay Server do quite a lot of things for you, but do you need it if you're only doing a few bitcoin transactions a year? What might be a simpler setup? And how would you manage things like exchange rates and order tracking?

How do mixing services work? What are CoinJoin transactions? How much could they improve privacy or anonymity in Bitcoin?

What is a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet? How are paper wallets different from hardware wallets? Which of the Bitcoin wallets and / or clients (mobile, desktop, hardware) is best for storing coins? Are hardware wallets with Bluetooth secure? Regarding desktop wallets, what happens if your hard drive fails? Should you use different tools for storage of keys versus spending? Should you encrypt a text file for cold storage of keys?

David asks, "What Lightning Network features being developed today do you think are most exciting? Watch this video to learn more about watchtowers, trampoline routing, turbo channels, hodl invoices, submarine payments or submarine swaps, and more.

This is the second part of a talk which took place on February 22nd 2017 at the Bloktex Event, hosted at Technology Park in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: https://antonopoulos.com/event/kualal...​

What are your thoughts on initial coin offerings (ICOs)? Are there any you are interested in? In the future, the possibility of funding new initiatives and creating ventures on a global basis without the traditional limitations, is going to open up new opportunities for companies. However, investors will first have to swim in waters infested with unscrupulous people and their Ponzi scheme shitcoins. The primary purpose of an ICO should be to fund a worthwhile product or project that is already achieving success, not to "generate value" or "take growth to the next level." I'm sure there are some that are very interesting, but at least 95% of the ICOs out there have none / very few of the basic fundamentals. Does that mean we should have a regulatory agency decide which ones are good or bad? No. It will require more maturity among investors in identifying Ponzis. The best way to learn which ICOs are worth it is to lose money. Waiting for the wash-out. When these people promise great riches, they usually mean for themselves. If you have a viable product... build it first and they will come! I do not treat these technologies as investments but learning opportunities.

Bitcoin scaling, on-chain vs. off-chain. Trustless second layer technologies. Lightning Network. Requiring a super-majority to make changes to the protocol, while others make trade-offs toward centralisation. Store-of-value. Different leagues of scaling and governance.

In this first edition of a new segment we're calling, Down the Rabbit Hole, Andreas dives into a question that has been on his mind. In this video Andreas explores the question, will the recent drop in oil prices have a material impact of Bitcoin mining?

The Lightning Network as Bitcoin's proof-of-stake. It represents an opportunity for users who want to run full nodes. It requires the committed expenditure of resources and right now not enough people are willing to do that without getting paid. More people would do it if they could participate in Lightning and earn fees. 'You would think that a group of miners that run fully validating nodes would want to become hubs. But it requires more maintenance, administration, and upgrades than they're used to. There is a culture divide between software and hardware.

Keywords/phrases: Quantum cryptography, quantum cryptoanalysis, quantum computing. Bitcoin uses SHA-256. In cryptography there is a 20-30 year lifecycle for an algorithm before it gets exceeded by new technologies and developments in mathematics. Both the signing and hashing algorithms can be upgraded in Bitcoin if there is a need to do that. Quantum cryptography represents a threat only if unevenly distributed in commercial sectors. If it is available to only one actor, and not all actors, they are unlikely to use it against Bitcoin; instead they're going to keep it secret and use it when they're threatened by ex. cryptographically secure nuclear weapons. Intelligence agencies who have that kind of significant computing advantage don't use it until there is a dire emergency, because once you use it everyone will know you have it. After that all the algorithms get changed, so you better make it good. If it is widely available, all the miners update to quantum computers and we're going to be looking at several orders of magnitude in improvement, because running one is neither free nor easy. We don't know what the economics will be yet, but we will solve problems when it's necessary.

How will Bitcoin's infrastructure scale to an everyday currency? When will a business model of small retail transactions make economic sense for cryptocurrencies? What stage of grief are the banks at now?

In this Q&A from the Sao Paulo Bitcoin Summit, Andreas discusses Ethereum and how it compares to Bitcoin. Dismissing the idea that ETH competes with Bitcoin, instead Andreas sees them as choosing different niches and working best together.

Andreas' first ever public talk about bitcoin, delivered in his widely recognized and unique style: with no slides and lots of passion. Only in this video, you can see him speaking to an almost empty room. As a last-minute addition to the conference (after Andreas begged!), he was assigned a slot at the same time as the most popular keynote. Only about 10 people watched this talk live.

What functions of money does the current stage of bitcoin fulfill? What is the current popular use case? Why will unit of account be the last function we achieve? Which use cases will accelerate bitcoin adoption in western countries (ex. Germany)? Why should we not be so hard on speculation and hedging against devaluation? What is the appeal of sound money? Will bitcoin become a world reserve currency? Why is gold not a good medium of exchange? How do we incentivise spending of bitcoin, when the current trend is to hold? Why is HODLing simultaneously hard? Why do mainstream economists call it "hoarding" instead of "saving"?

What are the economics of mining pools? How much profit do they make? Is it possible that certain wallets are collaborating with mining pools to propagate there first?

How secure are mobile wallets compared to desktops or hardware wallets? How easy is it for each type of device to be compromised? Does a factory reset or re-installed operating system help? How hard is it to properly set up a factory-reset or airgapped laptops? Can malware be transmitted via USB? What is the Glacier Protocol?

What is the significance of key metrics like price in the course material? Are price and hashpower correlated? Bitcoin's hashrate seemed to drop by +30% recently. Why? Is the exchange rate between fiat and bitcoin always determined by supply and demand?