I've asked Vint Cerf (the 'father of TCP/IP') about his thoughts on Bitcoin

[nippou]

Hey,

Last week Vint Cerf visited Warsaw, Poland to give a lecture at the University of Warsaw. During the Q&A session, I asked him a question about Bitcoin.

I have a ton of respect for him and hoped to hear his thoughts on the Bitcoin technology itself rather than the volatility aspects. But it was a quick Q&A so I couldn't really ask a follow-up question. Plus he was speaking on behalf of Google and that made his answer even more vague and focused on use of cryptography in Google's products.

Anyway I think, it might be interesting to some of you.

Below is the rough transcript of his answer and the audio recording from the conference:

"Q: I wanted to ask you what do you think about the open source, decentralised, value-transfer protocols like Bitcoin and the others. It's been a big thing recently, and as you're the father TCP/IP,  I would like to ask you what you think about the "TCP / IP for the financial system" as Bitcoin is sometimes called.

Vint Cerf: Ok so you asked a lot of questions so I’m gonna put them all together. First of all, I am very uncomfortable with the Bitcoin idea. And the reason I'm so uncomfortable with it is that bitcoins don't have fixed value, they vary dramatically. And If I wanted the financial system either to pay for things or to receive payment, you never know what the value is and what you’ve got because tomorrow morning it may change by going up or going down, so I don’t find that to be a very persuasive way of doing commerce, I would like to have more certainty in the value of the thing.

But with regard to TCP/IP in the financial system there is more to financial _[can't hear] _than just those protocols. And the fact that you need to add to them a variety of cryptographic methods and strong authentication  techniques in order to make sure that the banking transactions  are properly protected. If you look at the SWIFT network for example you would find heavy utilisation of cryptography.

At Google we strongly believe that people should have what's called _2 factor_ authentication. This means that when you’re logging in and using a user name and password the system still wont accept your log in unless you also produce a cryptographically generated passwords which we would call a one-time passwords because you only use it once and it cannot be reused again, the system won’t accept it. You would have to have a little chip that you plug into the usb port or, if you have a program running in your mobile that could generate these cryptographic one-time passwords. So between the use of cryptography for confidentiality and the use of cryptography with strong authentication, we think those ingredients can put together an extremely strongly protected the system for government financial transactions and all kind of personal interaction as well…"

The audio recording is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/513810/Vint%20Cerf%20bitcoin.wav

[realcoin]

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I've asked Vint Cerf (the 'father of TCP/IP') about his thoughts on Bitcoin
16 December 2013, 17:15:21
   
Reply with quote  #1
Hey,

Last week Vint Cerf visited Warsaw, Poland to give a lecture at the University of Warsaw. During the Q&A session, I asked him a question about Bitcoin.

I have a ton of respect for him and hoped to hear his thoughts on the Bitcoin technology itself rather than the volatility aspects. But it was a quick Q&A so I couldn't really ask a follow-up question. Plus he was speaking on behalf of Google and that made his answer even more vague and focused on use of cryptography in Google's products.

Anyway I think, it might be interesting to some of you.

Below is the rough transcript of his answer and the audio recording from the conference:...

You done very well. Sadly Vint Cerf didnt got the clou of your question. His answer sounds meagre. Maybe it needs the words smart properties/contracts, Nick Szabo, protocol layers etc... ( I am not network specialist!)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

[Sheldor333]

It's just that SWIFT is rigged by the NSA as we have found out. Then again who can say with absolute certainty that BTC isn't rigged in some way.

[freethink2013]

"at google we..." = compromised. Hope he got well paid.

[infinitybo]

Sure it's interesting to read a different opinion anyways well done @Nippou

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

[realcoin]

Ok, it seems some don't get the "idea" too.

IP isn't "Intellectual property"! 
Its  Internet Protocol (IP), and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)...

The Internet protocol suite is the networking model and a set of communications protocols used for the Internet and similar networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP, because its most important protocols, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), were the first networking protocols defined in this standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP

As I understand, the "intention" of the question was: "Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money?". http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1dd3uv/ but most of the reddit user dont geht it too! 

So, its NOT about "Intellectual property", or Bitcoin volatility etc...!

Its about the fundamentals whereon in the future a lot of financial services will build, stand on. Like all what we have on different web services from email to wiki, google, facebook and so on, while saying "internet". Its all build upon  'TCP/IP'.

And in the future all lot could e build on the Bitcoin technology. But if you dont read the necessary sources you will not get this idea anyway.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Development & Technical Discussion... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=374912.0