The future of Bitcoin & 9 ways to improve it

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The future of

bitcoin

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Bitcoin was invented in 2008 as a way to transfer value without “trusted” third parties

bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

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Media that predicted “The Death of Bitcoin”

Deaths by publication:

DailyPaulCNNCity A.M.ChronBroken Librarian BTC Feed Business InsiderBloombergAbout.com Acton BizNews.comArduino TronicapenwarrAOL

Financial TimesFester’s DenDavid Seaman FortuneForbesFool.com FusionGizmodo Australia IEX International Business Times Javamazon Moneygeek

MyBroadBandMother Jones News.com.au NewStatesman NY Mag OUI Share

The New York TimesThe KernelThe Calculating InvestorStreet InsiderSputnik NewsPYMNTS.com Reuters Robert Nielsen Salon Seeking Alpha

The Underground EconomistThe Telegraph The Washington Post The Weekly StandardUSA Today Valley News VICE News Wired YahooWall Street Daily

bitcoinobituaries.com

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Bitcoin has been running non-stop for 7+ years

160M 434K $150M $105B

Transactions Blocks in the blockchain

in transactions per day currently

Transferred over the blockchain

466M 16M 10B 100K

bitcoins transferred over the blockchain

Amount of Bitcoins that

currently exist

Value of all bitcoins

companies that (indirectly)

accept bitcoins

"Don't forget that the millions of people all over the world who are now part of the Bitcoin network were once very strong skeptics. This includes people with decades of experience in network security and cryptography." ~Andreas Antonopoulos

If Bitcoin is so great, why isn’t everyone using it?

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‣ Bitcoin is only 7 years old, it still needs a lot of development.

‣ We have never tried THIS before and it is about MONEY, not info.

‣ It’s like the Internet in the 90s:

‣ People don't get it. ‣ It looks ugly. ‣ We have few use cases. ‣ People don’t see how it will

change the world. ‣ Those who are disrupted by it

will do everything to stop it. ‣ Mainstream 10 years later ‣ Mass adoption 20 years later

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Today there are Millions, but not Billions of people using Bitcoin

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One of the main hurdles for mass adoption: Scalability of the network

*As a trade-off to be decentralized

3-7 transactions per second*

185+ transactions per second

Up to 24k transactions per second

So far this hasn't been a problem, but the blocks of transactions that get added to the Blockchain every 10 minutes are getting full

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So far this hasn't been a problem, but the blocks of transactions that get added to the Blockchain every 10 minutes are getting full

There is less space to add new users that can use Bitcoin for tiny transaction fees. (Now around $0.12 per transaction)

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IDEA: Why not make the blocks bigger?

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You can try to keep expanding forever, but at some point you hit physical network limits

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It may be better to get people to carpool, Build NEW layers or transport methods

You can try to keep expanding forever, but at some point you hit physical network limits

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10

100

1000

10000

7

185

24000

How can we still get Bitcoin to these levels to be usable by every human or program globally?

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To solve these and other complexities to make Bitcoin more successful, developers from all

over the world come together every year.

Scaling bitcoin #3 took place on 8-9 October 2016 in Milan, Italy

Scaling bitcoin #3 took place on 8-9 October 2016 in Milan, Italy

A private event for the technical community, though everything was livestreamed

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For most people it’s really hard to understand all THE technical talk that happens there.

SegWit

ECDSA

MAST

Coinjoin

TumblebitMimble Wimble

HLTC

Schnorr signatures

Lightning

Covenants

Jute braiding

Flare routing

UTXO

zkSNARKs

OWAS

SPV wallets Merkle trees

Hashing

RSA

ZKCP

Onion routing

MAC

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So I thought I’d help out by going through the transcripts on scalingbitcoin.org

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Based on the talks, I think the developers are trying to improve Bitcoin in 9 ways

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9 WAYS to IMPROVE

bitcoin

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Make transactions take up less space in blocks1

SegWit

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2 Move less important transactions off the main blockchain in a secure way

Lightning NetworkSidechains

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3 Speed up transactions

10

100

1000

10000

7

185

24000

Lightning Network

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4 Increase privacy so the user decides who sees their data

TumbleBit MimbleWimbleMAST

ZKCPOWAS

CoinJoin

Onion RoutingFlare Routing

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5 Make the developer ecosystem grow

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6 Enter new markets

Finance

Internet of Things?

Energy?

Supply chain?

Identity?Intellectual property?

Legal?

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7 Make it easier/rewarding to run a copy of the blockchain so the network remains decentralized

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8 Make it easier for small miners to compete so we have more decentralization

VS

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9 Make it easier and safer to store bitcoins on any device

Covenants

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9 ways to Improve Bitcoin1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Make transactions take up less space on the blockchain

Move less important transactions off the main blockchain

Speed up transactions

Increase privacy and put it in the hands of the user

Make it easier for the developer ecosystem to grow

Enter new markets

Make it easier to run a copy of the blockchain

Make it easier for small miners to compete

Make it easier and safer to store bitcoins

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1

23

4

56

7

8 9

There are discussions about if/in which order these should be implemented

While the road WILL BE BUMPY, the future looks bright!

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samwouters.com

Speaker on Bitcoin & Blockchain

Digital Transformation Consultant at Duval Union Consulting

WWW

sam.wouters@duvalunion.com

Sam Wouters

@sdwouters

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