Wednesday, April 25, 2018

MIT Comes Up With Three Ways To Destroy Bitcoin



Molly Jane Zuckerman reports:
The MIT Technology Review has published an article today, April 24, called “Let’s Destroy Bitcoin,” detailing three ways that the cryptocurrency could be “brought down.”

The first option, according to the article, is a government takeover of Bitcoin with the creation of a Federal Reserve-backed coin (Fedcoin)...

Option two is a Facebook stealth takeover of Bitcoin, which involves the social media site creating a BTC wallet for all of its users, rewarding them in the cryptocurrency for interacting with ads, and giving them an ad-free experience if they let Facebook mine on their computer’s unused power (as Salon offered earlier this year):

“If Facebook could persuade a large enough fraction of Bitcoin users and miners to run its own proprietary version of the Bitcoin software, the company would thereafter control the rules. It could then refashion Bitcoin as a corporate version of the Fedcoin described above."...

The third way of making Bitcoin “irrelevant” is the creation of multiple new cryptocurrencies for every situation:

“You’re in the checkout line at the grocery store. Inside your phone’s digital wallet you find not only Fedcoin and FacebookCoin but also AppleCash, ToyotaCash, and a coin specific to the store you’re standing in. There’s also a coin redeemable for babysitting services, and another that gets you rides on your local subway system.”

This option, according to MIT Technology Review, is “already happening,” as companies are creating their own coins or tokens to be used just for their services, like Kodak’s ICO to form a currency used to license photographs.

Read the full story here.

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