Bitcoin and blockchain is effectively a system designed to ensure that all of the problems around sending and receiving money go away. It’s not about anarchy, being anti-bank or anti-government, says Dr Craig S. Wright (Founder and Chief Scientist at nChain).
He added that the blockchain is transparent and completely auditable, and Bitcoin was the first digital asset to offer traceability. This enables privacy but the blockchain is not encrypted and is fully suitable for anyone on earth, said Wright.
This was the main point of discussion at a recent panel held at the Global Forum on Technology, Sustainability and Humanity held in Muscat, Oman in October 2022.
Bitcoin is a tool for honest governments and the everyman
Wright noted that the blockchain is ultimately a tool to expose corruption – and should scare any bad factors or governments from acting unlawfully as their actions can be traced. He added that it is impossible to ever delete the blocks and relies on human intelligence instead of intelligence networks.
‘Any honest government is going to love this. Imagine banking that is instant rather than settling over days. This is what we have been working on. Imagine now someone working in the Middle East and Ghana who leaves for America or the United Kingdom. They can now construct something and earn money where they live.
‘The reason for this is that with micropayments you no longer need an ad-based Internet. It is not Facebook and Google. It is not the sale of advertisements that is going to consolidate everything into a group of companies in Silicon Valley. Instead, it’s the old-fashioned way of doing business where you care about profit.’
Radically rethinking the Internet with Bitcoin
This technology is also set to radically change other industries, said Wright. He pointed to the IT industry where hackers often erase their logs once breaking into a system. He noted that blockchain can pick up these changes and alert companies within minutes.
This can further be integrated with IPv6, which means radically rethinking how everything is done on the Internet, said Wright. IPv6 is an Internet Protocol version that defines 128-bit IP addresses and can account for an almost limitless number of unique devices, making them directly addressable over the Internet.
Support for IPv6 is growing around the world as major governments and Internet companies switch to this more future-proof standard. As IPv6 adoption continues to grow, the full potential of the original Bitcoin protocol to act as an end-to-end model of data and payment communication is also unlocked.
‘Right now we stick everything behind a firewall and trust and hope it will be right. The problem is that it doesn’t work.’ He cited the compromising of Google certificates which saw millions of people being compromised over multiple years without anyone being aware.
‘Your computer could trust updates from North Korea or other bad actors because they were digitally signed. If that had been alerted instantly so that any changes to the certificate were put out, it would have been done in seconds. And instead of millions of people being compromised, it all would have stopped.’
What does radical transparency really mean?
Wright said that governments, enterprises and users need to really think about what transparency means to them and the people they serve.
‘If you are a bank, do you want to be the bank that people trust or do you want to be the bank that deals with people on international terrorist lists? Do you want to be the government that everyone in the country wants to lead them? Or do you want to keep them in the dark?
‘This is what I want people to start thinking about with blockchain. It’s not anti-government or anti-bank, it’s radical transparency. And I want you to start thinking about how that can radically improve how things are done everywhere.’
