In this talk, Andreas looks at scaling as an ongoing process. Using the example of the Internet which has "failed to scale, gracefully for 25 years", Andreas discusses the scaling debate and looks at how bitcoin will scale over the next several years. Can patent law slow down Bitcoin? Patent law can slow down Bitcoin companies but not slow down Bitcoin. Why enforcing patent law becomes difficult with a global decentralised pseudo-anonymous network. Trademarking 'The Internet of Money.'
Transcript
[AUDIENCE] Hello, I am from Cryptosteel. [ANDREAS] I have one, it is amazing. Thank you. [AUDIENCE] Can patent law slow down Bitcoin?
[ANDREAS] Patent law can slow down Bitcoin companies, but it cannot slow down Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a company. Who will you sue if Bitcoin software implements something... that someone claims as a patent?
The people running the code? The people who created the code? The person who made the first commit of that specific feature or subsequently patched it? Or the person who rewrote it completely?
Who will you sue under patent law? You can't. You can sue companies. Patents will be a very big problem for Bitcoin startups.
Trademarks are already a problem for them, as you may have noticed in my little fight online... with a company that trademarked the phrase "the internet of money," which they did not even invent. [Patents and trademarks] will be problems for Bitcoin companies. We must reinvent what it means to be a company, an ad-hoc association of human beings operating...
virtually across the world in a decentralized manner. [Maybe as] a blockchain with voting and dividend rights in an association. That is theoretically still a company, but it also doesn't look anything like a company. If all the members are anonymous, you may have a bit of a problem enforcing your patent law.
Things will become interesting, we will see. As always, the law lags behind by a decade... from the application of technology. They are now writing laws to regulate Bitcoin as it was in 2009.
Do you think they have any idea what... locktime payment channels, Segregated Witness, and confidential transactions will do to their silly little laws? Bitcoin is moving on. By the time they catch up with this, we will be ten years ahead.
We have been playing these games with them on the internet for twenty-five years. I think we are winning.