[HOST 1] There has been a lot of talk
about bitcoin mining as a way to get rich. [ANDREAS] Bitcoin mining is probably the worst way
to try to get rich and will end poorly for most people. Bitcoin mining is an industrial infrastructure component. Let me ask a quick question from
the audience, if you don't mind. How many people here know how BGP routing works?
[Laughter] And this is an Internet conference. How many of you use the Internet?
Never mind… [Laughter] You don't need to know how BGP routing works.
I know how BGP routing works, but usually I'm surrounded by no one else
who does, and yet everybody uses it.
You don't need to know how Bitcoin mining works,
or why [it works], in order to use Bitcoin. Mining is the industrial infrastructure
that secures the network… and allows us to operate without intermediaries. The miners are not intermediaries either. Anyone can join that network, participate at any time
and leave at any time. They're completely anonymous. We don't actually know [who or] where they are. [HOST 1] Media in Sweden are describing
mining as something dark. [ANDREAS] Yes. [HOST 2] It certainly sounds dark. I know miners
and they are….[digging gesture] "mining" coal. [HOST 1] It sounds like a lot of hard work. [ANDREAS] Bitcoin mining is special-purpose,
high-performance computing that happens… with application-specific integrated
circuits (ASICs), which are silicon chips. [But] if you print that in a newspaper,
nobody will buy that newspaper again. [Laughter] That is why media don't describe it like that.
It's much [easier] to [write] about the "dark web." [Laughter] That sells newspapers,
so we're seeing this [with mining]. I don't know how many of you were
around in the early days of the internet, but this is exactly what happened then.
At the time, the internet was
only for geeks and academics. An obscure, weird technology nobody would ever use.
[Except], of course, as a plaything for criminals. Especially fraudsters. A lot of people were terrified
to do online commerce, to buy things online. They said, "This will never work because people won't
do it." Again, we're seeing a bit of that [mentality]. People are afraid of change. We're still in the very early
days, [the stage] where the internet was in '93 or '94. [HOST 1] So, [where it was with]
gaming, porn, and rock & roll. [ANDREAS] Actually, '93 and '94 was the first time
we had DNS. It was mostly FTP, Archie, and Usenet. Newsgroups in text. No porn, we couldn't
really download that stuff. [Laughter] [HOST 1] Oh, you don't know what ASCII artists can do…
[Laughter] [HOST 2] Alright, thank you very much for a
very interesting talk.
[ANDREAS] Thank you!.
