Contact information
Name:
Timothy Laquintano
Phone:
5236
Email:
laquintt@lafayette.edu
Link for More Information:
Categories:
When:
Friday, October 5, 2018 - 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Where:
Kirby Hall of Civil Rights 104
Presenter:
Finn Brunton, New York University
Price:
Free
Bitcoin may seem to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere in 2009. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s, as technological utopians and political radicals tried to create new currencies to bring about their visions of the future -- whether saving privacy, destroying governments, preparing for apocalypse, or attaining immortality. This talk will take us from autonomous zones in international waters and illegal mints to the secrets of securing dollars and communications, and explore questions and challenges like: How do we learn to trust and transact different kinds of money? What makes digital objects valuable? What would it take to make a digital equivalent to cash, something that could be exchanged but not copied, created but not forged, which reveals nothing about its users?
Sponsored by:
English, Government and Law, Computer Science