Craig Wright, the man claiming to be the inventor of bitcoin. Photograph: Mark Harrison/Handout/PA The bitcoin world this week learned its absentee father might be Craig Wright , an Australian entrepreneur with nice suits and well-combed hair who claims he invented the digital currency.
Wright’s appearance complicates an already vicious custody battle. His claimed brainchild bitcoin – long billed as the future ofdemocratized, digital money – is at the center of an ideological conflict over how to develop the technologies behind the system.
Bitcoin is a paperless, bank-less, state-less currency that allows people to pay directly for goods and services. The coins themselves are made by computers solving a set of complex math problems, and people who use their computers to make coins and record transactions are called miners.
The value of a bitcoin has fluctuated wildly since 2009 but now hovers between $400 and $450. To spend it, users buy bitcoin and transact using a third-party app such as Coinbase. Rather than a central authority validating transactions, all transfers are recorded on a public ledger. It can be used to pay for coffee, dinner or software from online stores as well as some real-world shops.
Fans of bitcoin say the system, which tends to be a pet project of encryption wonks, could eventually rival Visa. Yet transactions are already taking longer to clear – sometimes more than 40 minutes, which is a long time if you’re in a grocery store waiting for your payment to process. And without agreement on how to resolve the problems, it might soon become hard for anyone to use the service. So what’s causing the problem?
Nerds are calling each other “nerds” behind each others’ backs. It’s a “big communications breakdown”, according to Eric Lombrozo, chief technology officer of the bitcoin transaction firm Ciphrex. On the other […]
