Crypto talk at 28C3: Bitcoin

Two Bitcoin related talks will be presented tomorrow. Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, and of course uses various cryptographic schemes as building blocks. Because Bitcoins can be exchanged with real money, Bitcoin is more than just an academic playground and real cash could be lost, if an attack on Bitcoin would be found.

The first talk Bitcoin – An Analysis will be presented by Kay Hamacher and Stefan Katzenbeisser. From the abstract:

In this presentation, we show results on network analysis of the money flow, the behavior of individuals, and the overall scalability of P2P-currencies. At the same time we will discuss advanced “financial instruments” that one might find in the transactions.

So I assume that this will be an in-depth analysis of the current state of the Bitcoin network. The second talk Electronic money: The road to Bitcoin and a glimpse forward – How the e-money systems can be made better given by peio will cover the general topic of digital money and what lead to the development of Bitcoin. It will even look beyond Bitcoin and what can be improved in the future. From the abstract:

The proposed talk provides a definition of the problem of creating e-money and after a review of the state of the art points out possible solutions and proposes questions for discussion for the properties of electronic money system.

For me, both talks are interesting. Besides the cryptographic challenges in this research area, this topic also has an heavy political impact. What would you do, if you could exchange money over the internet, untraceable and anonymously?

See the talks, Day 3, 14:00 Saal 1, and Day 3, 17:15, Saal 3.