Hack the World: Bitcoin Comes to Fredericton
FREDERICTON – In the ever-morphing space of open source software, a completely digital way to conduct business and exchange funds has emerged.
Bitcoin is the currency of the internet. According to bitcoin.org, it uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks. The managing of transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network.
Bitcoin was created by a community of innovators eager to take control of the way their money is managed by cutting out the middle man. This far-reaching, worldwide movement captured the interest of Jason Merritt, who hopes to spread knowledge and awareness about Bitcoin and its benefits in New Brunswick.
On Saturday, Fredericton Makerspace, a collaborative workspace offering tools and a setting to share skills and knowledge, hosted a talk by Merritt to help spread awareness of Bitcoin.
This talk was the first of its kind at Makerspace but Merritt was pleased with the turnout and says the event was the formative meeting of the Fredericton Bitcoin Society. He hopes the community will continue to grow and help people further understand the technology.
Merritt works in geomatics and has been studying Bitcoin technology for the past three years. He explains that his interest stemmed from his broader interest in the impact of technology on society. He initially felt skeptical about the Bitcoin project but soon became fascinated with the idea.
Merritt describes Bitcoin as being incredibly complex but hopes that with time, and efforts such as his to make more people aware of its benefits, Bitcoin usage will become widespread and will simplify and allow for more control and security in financial transactions.
“In a place like Canada, we’ve had money systems that worked really well for so long that we all stopped thinking about what is was,” Merritt explains. “There’s been very little deep thinking about what money actually is and what the Bitcoin movement has done is thought very deeply about what money is.”
Bitcoin funds are separate from all other currencies and not associated with any particular country. Merritt explains that the worldwide nature of Bitcoin makes conducting business internationally straightforward and easier to control.
“For business people everywhere, this is really something to start to understand and to keep an eye on and be thinking about how they might be able to use this system to help themselves,” Merritt says. “I really believe that it’s going to generate enormous wealth in the coming decades.”
While Bitcoin presents opportunities to revolutionize the way business is done, it also creates major risks. Because the currency is independent from financial institutions, there are virtually no methods of recovering lost Bitcoins. This makes Bitcoin owners vulnerable both to losing them accidentally and having them stolen. Bitcoin users take on the responsibility of keeping track and safeguarding their funds themselves.
Merritt explains that many of the risks associated with Bitcoin use can be mitigated through further understanding of how the technology works.
“Once you understand what to do, you can conduct transactions with really profound security,” he says. “Bitcoin is a profoundly revolutionary technology. It gives us powers that never existed in any form before bitcoin came along.”
Merritt describes the Bitcoin network and Fredericton Makerspace as stemming from the same technological movement that brought about the first home computers. He describes the movement as one that allows consumers to take ownership of everything they use and to alter and improve things as they see fit.
“The maker movement is saying: we’re going to hack the world. We’re going to change everything to make it be what we need it to be,” he says.
Merritt believes that New Brunswick in particular can take advantage of the Bitcoin opportunity and change the direction of the economy. He is pushing this by spreading knowledge about what Bitcoin offers and encouraging deep thinkers and policy makers to begin innovating around the technology.
“(Bitcoin) takes the barriers down,” Merritt explains. “It creates incredible liquidity and it opens up what I would describe as an entire other dimension of economic development potential. A true technological economy is blossoming in the bitcoin network.”