Hacking the Global Economy with GPUs or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bitcoin

Presented at DEF CON 19 (2011), Aug. 7, 2011, 2 p.m. (20 minutes).

In the post 9/11 era when it's nearly impossible to buy a pack of gum without alerting the big three credit bureaus, you may think that anonymity is long gone from the economy. That's where bitcoin comes in. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer currency based solely on computing power. It is (mostly) untraceable and highly anonymous, not backed by any banks or companies, and in the words of Jason Calacanis "the most dangerous project we've ever seen". In my talk I'll explain what bitcoin is and isn't, and why this 70+ PetaFLOP network has caught the attention of everyone from The Washington Post and MSNBC to Wikileaks and the EFF.

Presenters:

• Skunkworks
  Skunkworks is an undergraduate studying electrical engineering. He's an active phone phreak and experiments with high voltage and hardware hacking in his spare time.

Links:

• https://defcon.org/html/defcon-19/dc-19-speakers.html#Skunkworks
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj2blBX2iBw

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