Using metaphors for cryptocurrencies helps people feel more familiar with the technology. But there’s a downside – we expect it to work just like regular money.
Alexander Vinnik (right), suspected of running a money laundering operation using bitcoin, denies all charges against him.
EPA-EFE/ANA-MPA
The astronomic rise of the price of bitcoin over the past 12 months raises fears that the cryptocurrency is set to crash which could see many people lose money.
Governments face disruption by the private sector and social unrest unless they embrace new technology. Here, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau meets a robot in Edmonton last May as others look on.
( THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson)
You may have imagined the blockchain would lead to a world without governments or institutions veryifying transactions, research shows that it probably won’t.
Blockchain technology, in which real-world assets are symbolically represented by digital objects, harks back to medieval times when helmets, swords, and other items represented land and other valuables.
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Blockchain is a hot, innovative technology
— with roots in medieval treasuries.
When using a cryptocurrency, you interact with a system like the blockchain, an online ledger that records transactions, directly. Bitcoin, is an examples of this.
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A digital Australian dollar could remove the role of middlemen and creates a cheaper electronic currency system, while at the same time enabling the government to fully regulate the system.
A worker handles meat at the Doly-Com abattoir in Romania in 2013 when Europe was facing a scandal over incorrectly declared horsemeat. The problem of food fraud and its health and economic implications affect a broad range of foods around the world, but technology could soon end the problem.
(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Food fraud is a common problem that technologies such as blockchain and DNA fingerprinting can help to solve.
One of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges recently stopped trading after regulators ordered all digital currency exchanges to close — demonstrating traditional institutions’ nervousness about distributed trust technologies. In this 2013 photo, a staff member at Bitcoin mining company Landminers in southwestern China checks a computer used for that purpose.
(Chinatopix via AP)
The development of distributed trust technologies is making traditional institutions like banks, corporations and governments nervous. Those who have power like to hold onto it. What’s next?
Can criminals use cryptocurrency to hide their identities and activities?
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As cryptocurrency systems improve, they will better protect criminals’ identities and even allow people to offer anonymous rewards for crimes they want committed.
All Australians involved in property transactions will likely be dealing with privatised land title offices in future.
AAP/Paul Miller
Despite its name, cryptocurrency isn’t just money. It could also be debt or equity and so it should be regulated and taxed in the same way as other finance.
An illustration photo of Bitcoin (virtual currency) coins
Reuters
Associate Director, Initiative For Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3); Assistant Prof. of Electrical Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Professor of Computer Science, Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Cornell Tech, and Co-Director, Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), Cornell University