Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It With Fire

Date/Time
Friday
20 Apr 2018
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

Location
South Hall, Room 210

Event Type
Non-CSTMS Event

Nicholas Weaver
Professor, EECS and Researcher, International Computer Science Institute

The entire cryptocurrency and blockchain ecology is rife with frauds, criminalities, and tulip-mania style hype and needs to be properly disposed of into the ashes of history. A “blockchain” is just a horribly inefficient append-only file which costs a literal fortune to secure without actually providing meaningful distributed trust, while cryptocurrencies are provably inferior than actual currencies for legal real world transactions. This talk begins with a summary of why just about the entire space is effectively useless at best and downright malevolent at worst.

This event is sponsored by: School of Information