Bitcoin Q&A: Scaling Complex Systems
Channel: aantonop
Date: 2018-01-19

How do the unbanked get cryptocurrencies? How will Bitcoin scale at all layers to become reliable and useful as a retail currency? It's currently the most useful for store-of-value (SoV), import/ export businesses, remittances and cross-border transactions. The SegWit soft fork was not only a block size increase and transaction malleability fix, but it also enabled second-layer solutions. Building a system that is easy to use, yet incredibly complex in the background, necessitates that we don't settle for simple answers. You don't need to understand how BGP works in order to use the internet. If you had told a person in the early 1900s that we would electrify the world, or re-pave roads to be suited for cars in a few decades, or have a real-time video conference over Skype with someone on the other side of the world, they would have written a PhD on why that was impossible. Stop only thinking about bigger 'pipes' and start making the data smaller. The scaling solutions that are being considered and developed right now will enable thousands and then millions of transactions per second in the next few years.

Chapters
0:00 How do you see unbanked people acquiring cryptocurrencies when they don't have access to classical financial instruments?
1:22 We first need to make it better, bigger, and faster
1:52 We will scale and it will be unimaginably complex
4:54 I don't need to understand it in order for it to work
5:23 The way we include poor people is through a relentless process of optimization and scaling that takes decades

This talk took place at the Riga Art Space for the Baltic Honeybadger conference on November 25th 2017 in Riga, Latvia: https://antonopoulos.com/event/baltic-honeybadger-2017/

Watch the rest of the talk here: https://youtu.be/n4F-h4xuXMk

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Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Money-collection-Andreas-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

[NEW] THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v2: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money-Andreas-M-Antonopoulos/dp/194791006X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042

[NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388

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Music: "Unbounded" by Orfan (https://www.facebook.com/Orfan/)
Outro Graphics: Phneep (http://www.phneep.com/)
Outro Art: Rock Barcellos (http://www.rockincomics.com.br/)
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