ABSTRACT

Virtual or digital currencies, with Bitcoin chief amongst them, have been gaining momentum and investment over the last couple of years. Offering an almost costless means of making payments around the globe, virtual currencies have the potential to bring significant disruption to the banking industry. This potential is not lost on either Bitcoin startups or banks themselves. But how does Bitcoin actually work? A peer-to-peer network maintains the “blockchain”, an innovative cryptographic protocol which securely mediates payments between parties without mutual trust. This session will step through the structure of the blockchain, showing how it solves the “double spend” problem and allows decentralised processing of financial transactions. Whether Bitcoin will become the currency of the internet or it’s a bubble that is doomed to burst sooner or later, the blockchain itself will change the face of transactional banking and perhaps other industries along the way.

Sponsored by Westpac

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