Bitcoin: A Decentralised Digital Currency

By JOSEPH BOWLES, March 23rd 2018.

Joe joined Toni Acín’s Quantum Information Theory group at ICFO for a Post Doc in 2016 after completing a PhD in Geneva. Although not directly related to his research topics Joe has been interested and followed the development of this new idea to create a decentralised currency. He described in clear terms how the open source software named Bitcoin was released aimed at establishing a decentralised digital currency whose security is based on tools from the field of classical cryptography. In this talk, he explained the functioning of the bitcoin protocol. In particular, looking at what a decentralised digital currency is, the problems one encounters when trying to create a such a currency, and how the central breakthrough of the bitcoin protocol, the bitcoin “blockchain”, allows one to overcome these problems. Although this seems to be a very complicated and technical topic Joe broke it down in such a way as to make it accessible and understandable to those with no previous knowledge of cryptography.

The idea of our seminars is that they are on topics of personal interest not necessarily on research areas but also interesting to the general population of ICFO. Joe provided a clear overview of a much discussed topic and it was followed by a discussion session and Social Friday in the ICFO Picnic area.

Hope you can join us for the next edition or indeed if you have suggestions of interesting topics or speakers please contact us ( icons@icfo.eu ). We are always interested in planning new seminars!