I have just read a great book which I believe the Python would love. I should say, just listened to a great book because I have the audiobook version.
The book is "Bitcoin, the Future of Money" by Dominic Frisby. In the audio version, Frisby reads his own work and he has a most lively and engaging style.
Before this book I had a very erroneous view of Bitcoin, thinking it was just some insecure internet scam. But Bitcoin is so much more than this, and is a great adventure story for pseudo-anarchists (like me) and open source programmers (like Python).
Bitcoin was created by a mathematical genius, and grew out of the cypher punk movement. The creator "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonymn, and his/her identity is one of the great mysteries of computer programing. The creator has exhibited various brilliance in programming, history, economics and politics. Frisby's book has a fantastic section where he undertakes detailed detective work to identify the person behind "Satoshi Nakamoto". He mounts a convincing case, and I won't spoil the ending.
As somebody who has long been opposed to the creation of fiat currency by central banks, and the use of inflation and reckless money printing to erode the wealth of the average punter in favour of the super rich, Bitcoin has a lot to admire. It is completely decentralised and beyond the control of any particular government. It is anti-inflationary, and there is a finite amount of currency of 21 million bitcoins which will be reached in 2024. The currency is based on cryptography and supports privacy. This makes it attractive for criminal enterprises, but there will always be crime and the vast majority of law abiding citizens are entitled to privacy.
The decentralisation of Bitcoin and the ease and speed of use makes it accessable to anybody with a computer, and (I really love this bit) there is no need for banks. On this point alone I give it a big thumbs up. Bitcoin is P2P currency (Python knows what this is) and a community driven open source project.
New bitcoins are created using a complicated formula that involves computers "mining" coins by solving and publishing complicated mathematical problems, which processing power also supports the decentralised operation of Bitcoin around the world. The only way to acquire Bitcoin is to be given it, to buy the digital currency on the open market (there are many exchanges around the world) at market price (currently 1 Bitcoin = US $374.00) or to use a program to "mine" the coin. Apparently the computing power required now to solve the mathematical problems is so great that it is beyond the capacity of most home computers to meaningfully mine for Bitcoin. There are cloud mining platforms where you can invest in an amount of computer power and then receive little bits of Bitcoin each day.
The core of the Bitcoin software was coded in C++. There is a chapter in Frisby's book about why the ancient C++ code is superior to other codes such as Python, and how this code enabled complete control and a high level of security. I found this interesting, so the Python would presumably find it above awesome. Some of the greatest hackers in the world have had a go at Bitcoin, and failed. The core software is incredibly strong, even if there have been a number of scandals involving poorly managed exchanges and people losing bitcoins because their individual computers have been hacked and their passwords stolen.
For the paranoid it is possible to have "cold" storage of your bitcoins, off-line, so they cannot be hacked. There is a device called the Pi Wallet, which is a tiny computer running linux Pi, a secure offline Bitcoin wallet which uses a (removable) SDHC card as the hard drive. This reminds me of the little Beagle computer that I loved so much at the OSDC in Auckland.
The big question is what does the future hold for Bitcoin. There are now numerous digital currencies, although Bitcoin has the momentum and a market capitalisation that is currently over $5 billion. If the use of Bitcoin grows it will have a great future, and the price of Bitcoins will rise dramatically. If use decreases, it will end badly. So far, Bitcoin has survived an awful lot and I think the future looks ok.
I am thinking that the next open source conference that the Python and I attend, should be about Bitcoin. There is a Bitcoin conference in Singapore on 29-30 January, and plenty in the United States over the course of 2015 ...
It is an intriguing topic, although I do not have a lot of interest in currencies. What I particularly enjoy is that the theory is based on prime numbers, that when I was at university were interesting, but of little practical use. They are now driving the billion dollar encryption business and are a key driver for the development of Quantum computers.
Posted by: PythonMagus | Sunday, 07 December 2014 at 06:21 PM