http://fc14.ifca.ai/bitcoin/cfp.html"The recent success of Bitcoin, a decentralized cryptographic currency, has raised new research questions on the opportunities and risks of virtual currencies. A handful of research papers have appeared in multiple disciplines, spanning a range of outlets, including top security conferences, legal journals, and reports of international financial organizations. This workshop aims to bring together interested scholars who study virtual currencies, Bitcoin in particular, and their supporting ecosystems from a technical or socio-economic perspective."
This is the first serious academic venue for Bitcoin research, aimed at a computer science / cryptography crowd (I suppose the first "less serious" one was
last year, just my opinion though). The program committee (hasn't been publicly posted yet) will include many respected researchers in the mainstream crypto community. It's hosted as part of Financial Crypto, which is in it's 15th year and was an important part of the first digital currency / cypherpunks movement in the 90s.
Hopefully this will be a big success and pave the way for more and more computer science researchers to take Bitcoin seriously and make substantial technical contributions so we can have the awesome fully-featured and secure cryptocurrency system we deserve!
If you're in to writing papers, please feel encouraged to submit something.
