At the age of 23, Vitlik Botryn is the most senior figure in the world of digital currencies. Last week he visited Israel and told about the way he had done since he left school for the Bitcoin study - and until he invented a new coin,
Many people think that because all the digital currencies are on the rise, every new currency will rise, "said Vitlik Botrin, founder of the Ethereum network, which was in Israel on the occasion of his participation in a conference organized by the Technion. Boutrin referred mainly to the rate of issues of new digital currencies.
The etherium project initiated by Butrin and from which the coin was launched, the Ether site is now considered the most prominent in the field of blockcane and cryptographic coins, alongside Bitcoin. Since the inventor of the Bitcoin is unknown and doubt how active he is, Butreen - only 23 - is considered to be the most senior figure in these worlds today. The value of Botrin's coins is estimated at $ 100 million, depending on fluctuations.
"It's strange," says Butreen, who suddenly became a familiar personality. "The number of people who identify me is growing, I have not experienced anything threatening so far, but perhaps I should be more careful, but at the moment it is expressed in requests for Salafi, but I believe that as the field's popularity grows, it will get worse."
Everything happened quite quickly for Butreen. The Russian-Canadian programmer became interested in Bitcoin when he was in high school. In 2011 he started writing about the subject for various blogs, which led to the establishment of the magazine Bitcoin. Butreen began to study computer science and mathematics at the university, and at the same time performed several projects in the field of Bitcoin. In 2013 he decided to leave school and invest all his time in Bitcoin. "At that time there was mainly Bitcoin - there were no other ventures in Lukachin.
The research of this field also brought him to Israel. "This was one of the last destinations in the journey, and I met a number of companies that have already worked with new generations of networks in Lokachin and tried to harness this technology to various applications." According to him, one of the projects was called Colored Coins and the one who financed it was the start-up e-Toro. "In fact, Israel was in the field from the start."
However, Butrin said that despite the Israeli innovation, he noticed that all the projects are limited in their approach to a limited number of possible applications on the Blockkin network, and therefore decided to establish a new network of his own - Atrium. "My purpose at Atrium is to create a general purpose blockchain, and instead of trying to support each app separately, you can create a network that supports each application using a programming language."
"Leaders do not understand philosophy"
Like Bitcoin, the atrium is based on a block-chain system. This is a technical protocol that allows for transactions between two parties without the mediation of a third party, in a reliable and fairly secure manner. Blockkin technology was first developed as part of the invention of Bitcoin. In fact, updating all trades at any given time, as well as currency production, are based on the Blockkin network. But Butrin promises to do more than Bitcoin: Apart from the virtual currency, the code he developed provides a way to create online markets and programmable deals - so-called smart contracts.
The interview with Butreen was supposed to take place at the Bitcoin embassy, which is adjacent to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Ahuzat Bayit Street. But the embassy was full of virtual currency people, and we had to look for a quieter place. We went to the Toi Lab and the new Toi Lab technology on Montefiore Street, where Botarin and Manny Rosenfeld, chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association, met later in the week and visited Haifa, where he was invited by the Cyber Security Research Center and Prof. Eli Ben-Sasson of the Faculty of Science The computer at the Technion.
The march, which lasted five minutes, passed almost completely. The routine conversation with Butrin was businesslike, but once the interview began-and as he went over to the Blockchine subjects and the challenges of the cryptographic currencies-he began to flourish. In a strange and even admirable way, Butreen appeared for an interview without a media consultant, personal aides, or the ambassadors of the Bitcoin community in Israel.
You recently met Russian President Vladimir Putin. What did you talk about?
"The meeting was mainly symbolic, and the Russians are looking for a number of ways to use technology to streamline processes, and there is a lot of hype about government organizations. The Jerusalem Municipality and not long ago I received a prize from the Danish princess. "
Do they understand technology and philosophy as a whole?
"They understand that this is part of the digital revolution, and from what makes it all virtual, I do not know how much the leaders understand the distributed systems as philosophy."
Issuing coins only to raise money
In recent months there has been a significant increase in the value of digital currencies: Bitcoin has risen by hundreds of percent, and the atrium - in thousands of percent. If the founders of the networks and the decentralized comments dreamed mainly of revolution - today trading in these currencies is mainly due to many attempts to get rich.
One of the latest phenomena that technologically rides on the etheric network is the initial coin offering (ICO). Entrepreneurs argue that the ICO is an easy way to raise large amounts of money in an unfamiliar way in the traditional recruiting worlds, and often the companies that recruit are very young companies. Some believe that many investors participate in these issues not because of the technology offered in them, but in the hope of getting rich.
"I think there is complexity in technology, and sometimes there are conflicts," says Butreen. "Even before Bitcoin, there were attempts to make social changes or to decentralize the power of the Internet, but they were not adopted by the public." Blocheen is a decentralizing project, and for some reason he caught it and everyone is very excited. Something speculative that can make people get rich, sometimes there is a conflict between people who want to change the world, and people who see this technology as an investment tool. "
You had a vision for smart contracts and a decentralized global computer - but now many want to issue a coin to raise money. How do you feel about it?
"It's a mistake to downplay the value of IPOs or to say that they are bad, and IPOs are interesting because they allow monetization of open source projects, which does not happen very much, and I created the site's own currency through ICO in July 2014. What you see recently is that people are taking the idea This is farther away, and there are projects that take out currency - not because it makes sense to spend a coin, but because there is basically a product that can be sold and raised money, and without a currency there is no business model.
Projects raise hundreds of millions of dollars in ICO, while raising $ 10 million from a venture capital fund.
"Many of the projects raise more money than they could raise in the regular market, and sometimes there is no correlation between the necessity and usability of the project and its ability to raise money In addition, this market is still young and still do not know how to distinguish between long-term projects and those that are not, which is growing at a rate that is difficult to control, for example I do not participate in most issues because I think they are based on valuations that are too high. "
Can the multiplicity of issues cause damage to one or another of the shares?
"Yes, if many IPOs fail, it's a risk, we should avoid over-publishing these projects, because there is no real way to judge new projects (which are recruited through ICO), the way to measure them is usually through the resume of the people who are responsible for them. In the long run, the market has to find a way to judge which project is logical and what it is worth, and at the moment, it is not clear how things will look in a year or two. Will fall and people will lose money. "
Vision: More power to the citizen
The atrium, the decentralized economy at its base, and the blocin in its infrastructure are far greater than the currency trade and the enrichment around it. According to him, Putin's vision is to reach widespread use by the population, in a way that will affect the small citizen. On the other hand, there are complaints about the embrace that this technology sometimes receives from criminals.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a tool to identify sex trafficking in a way that could make it easier for authorities to prosecute traffickers, but a document published by the Australian government says Bitcoin contributes to the spread of organized crime.
Many new criminals use the Internet or Facebook, so you have to believe that this technology will do better than evil, for me, cryptography is meant to empower the person or the small business. It was possible only for large organizations or governments - whether to issue currency or to pass contracts and follow them - sometimes this small person could be a criminal - but the goal is to democratize the economy, and that's a good thing.
To bring about widespread adoption of technology, need to solve some technical problems. The main issue is growth, along with security and privacy. Bitcoin can perform three transactions per second, Atrium can execute six. To reach total adoption we need to reach 6,000 deals per second. Regarding the block as a technological infrastructure, I think it can be used as the first layer of many applications in a way that will make them more transparent and efficient. If you only look at the ability to transfer money, people are already able to execute an international transaction on the block, at the speed of sending an email. "
In June 2016, Butrin stopped trading the site's currency after hacking into the etherium network and stealing tens of millions of dollars worth of DAO (acronym: Distributed Autonomous Project) based on the infrastructure of Atrium and set up by Botarin's organization.
The organization decided to rewrite the account code and restore it to the moment before it was hacked. The move sounded positive - since the stolen money was returned - but it posed a fundamental question about the basic idea for which it was founded: a network that is not controlled by one organization or another.
"If it is easy to make such decisions, the system will lose the point," Butrin said. "I think there needs to be a line, but it's hard to know exactly where to stretch it." In an extreme case where any account might break out, I estimate that everyone will support our ability to carry out money security operations on occasion. Five dollars, I think every case is unique, but what I know is that as the community grows and the system develops, it is harder to make such moves. "
In many countries, the authorities are still considering ways to deal with the new phenomenon, which includes new mechanisms of money transfer and recently - due to the increase in issues and their value - also creates a tax problem. The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a vague warning when it announced its intention to subject digital currencies to regulation, and last week China, the toughest in its industry, banned currency issues in the country and closed the digital currency exchange.
"Governments can not ignore what is happening - but they can not stop it," says Butreen. "So far, many governments have been restrained in their response