I am a researcher and I publish papers...for the record. I am not proud of every paper that I publish. For those uninitiated with the research industry, take conferences (in general, not referring to this particular one), etc. with a pinch of salt. In some ways, conferences are the main mechanism for the organizing body to make money/achieve sustenance, committee members to embellish their resumes, researchers to add to their publication list while milking taxing-payers/profits (depending on her affiliation) to go on 'vacation' to present.

Based on this, it looks like the conference organizer is quite the sleezeball: http://buttcoin.org/has-bruce-wagner-pulled-off-the-financia...

This is what has always confused me about Bitcoin.

How is it not a great scam?

The way I see it, the creators of Bitcoin have the lion's share of the coins. Since they're hard to mine, it's not like supply is increasing at a rate where it can offset that big initial pooling.

As a matter of fact, some of the big crashes I've seen are from mass cash-ins from people with exactly these large pools.

So, if Bitcoin actually becomes ubiquitous, as are the creator's goals, do the creators come out millionaires?

> How is it not a great scam?

How is it a great scam? Who is scammed here? No false information is provided, the protocol and program source code is all open source for you to examine.

Of course some bitcoin users can tell you that "I believe bitcoin value will rise tenfold in the next year", but that is not scamming. It is the same as I would say that "I believe nokia share will rise tenfold in the next month". If you believe me and buy Nokia shares, you are just stupid, not scammed :)

Or as some would tell you:

Bitcoins are backed by gold. Comedy gold.

I don't think this is really all that much of a bad thing. It's not like they're providing a dis-service to society.

Shouldn't the creators of the first successful decentralized currency get at least some compensation?

>So, if Bitcoin actually becomes ubiquitous, as are the creator's goals, do the creators come out millionaires?

Billionaires, actually. It is one of my biggest problems with BTC.

> Since they're hard to mine, it's not like supply is increasing at a rate where it can offset that big initial pooling.

The supply increases at a constant rate of 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes, regardless of the difficulty.

Actually, probably first article I seen which describes correctly what bitcoin is (distributed ledger to which all parties have read access and parties having correct private keys have write access to corresponding parts of the ledger).

Special keynote lecture by Bill Cosby?

It's an in joke. http://buttcoin.org/bitcointalk-forums-hacked-bill-cosby-pim...

Bitcoin's an interesting experiment but it's ultimately doomed because of the increasing "cost" (in terms of CPU cycles) of generating new bitcoins. http://goo.gl/I34VL

That's actually not specifically the problem with crytocurrencies. The CPU cost is dynamic in bitcoin, and has changed in the past to reflect more or less people mining new bitcoins.

The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions. In a model where every participant has to be aware of every transaction, it is extremely difficult to imagine it (quickly) handling millions of transactions a day.

> The real problem with crytocurrencies is scaling transactions.

Bitcoin economy should grow pretty big before scaling really becomes a problem. I think it won't be a problem for at least 1-2 years, unless things really explode. That would mean new world order :D

Some of the scalability issues are addressed here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

I'd wager it's more the fact that its worth is effectively entirely based on its reputation.

That is how all currency valuation is based.

Which is why currencies are customarily tied to entities that can do things like fight wars and build roads and enforce taxation, and not pseudonymous cryptography researchers on the internet.

It is possible to base the currency in commodity. Not the gold standard, but, say, 1 coin is worth the average of a predetermined amount of the top 20 or 30 traded commodities in the market. Banks guarantee to exchange your coins for commodities at any time - bank chooses the exact commodity, but the amount is determined by the value of your coins. It would cost you more money than now to hold an account with the bank, as the bank needs to be able to guarantee to exchange coins for commodities at any time, and thus must store or otherwise arrange access to those commodities. This means you will be paid less interest. On the flip side, the value of your coins is always guaranteed and not based on reputation. That latter property may make it suitable for decentralisation in a way that a fiat currency is not.

And the banks are insured by the FDIC and rely on the stability of the US bond market. It's a viscous cycle. Lol. It doesn't mean that the bitcoin can't be viable. I just don't think it can be as grandiose a currency as some people are envisioning

> It is possible to base the currency in commodity.

Try explaining that to the man on the street.