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SUMMARY:Bitcoin contracts --- digital economy without lawyers?
DTSTART:20140619T140000
DTSTAMP:20260930T213410Z
UID:7ef9ca552ca3a1b41fd514d875a5d1ae6e3b86fe887faf04cf5f450d
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Stefan DZIEMBOWSKI\, University of Warsaw\nBitCoin is a digita
 l currency system introduced in 2008 by an anonymous developer using a pse
 udonym "Satoshi Nakamoto".  Despite of its mysterious origins\, Bitcoin b
 ecame the first cryptographic currency that got widely adopted --- as of M
 ay 2014 the Bitcoin capitalization is over 5 bln euro.  Bitcoin owes its 
 popularity mostly to the fact that it has no central authority\, the trans
 action fees are very low\, and the amount of coins in the circulation is r
 estricted\, which in particular means that nobody can "print" money to gen
 erate inflation. The financial transactions between the participants are p
 ublished on a public ledger maintained jointly by the users of the system.
  \nOne of the very interesting\, but slightly less known\, features of th
 e Bitcoin is the fact that it allows for more complicated "transactions" t
 han the simple money transfers between the participants: very informally\,
  in Bitcoin it is possible to "deposit" some amount of money in such a way
  that it can be claimed only under certain conditions.  These conditions
   are written in the form of the "Bitcoin scripts" and in particular may 
 involve some timing constrains.  This property allows to create the so-ca
 lled "contracts"\, where a number of mutually-distrusting parties engage i
 n a Bitcoin-based protocol to jointly perform some task. The  security of
  the protocol is guaranteed purely by the properties of the Bitcoin\, and 
 no additional trust assumptions are needed.  This Bitcoin feature can hav
 e several applications in the digital economy\, like creating the assuranc
 e contracts\, the escrow and dispute mediation\, the rapid micropayments\,
  the multiparty lotteries.\nIn this talk I will give a short introduction 
 to this area\, present some recent results\, and highlight the future rese
 arch directions.
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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