BitBeat: Bitcoiners Decamp to Bretton Woods, Assess the Future of Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s growth may indeed be happening at a faster pace than the growth of the Internet back in the 1990s, which has insiders all abuzz, but the cryptocurrency is still to most people an incoate, confusing concept, assuming they don’t just dismiss it outright. To address that, a small group of insiders gathered in the New Hampshire hills in July with the goal of producing a comprehensive assessment of where bitcoin is, where it may go, and what might prevent it from getting there.
Consumers Research is a Washington, D.C.-based trade group whose leaders — Executive Director Joe Colangelo and Director of Operations Kyle Burgess — have taken a keen interest in bitcoin. They organized the three-day trip to Bretton Woods, sight of the famous conference after World War II ended, with the idea of getting away from the drumbeat of the world, to a quiet place where they could concentrate.
Now’s a good time to assess bitcoin. The price of the cryptocurrency has been more stable this year than at any point in its short history. Since the NYSE and others financial players invested in Coinbase in January, there’s been a marked change in tone on Wall Street toward the technology. At the same time, while the trading market for bitcoin continues to expand, public adoption has slowed down. Bitcoin’s had a hard time lodging itself in the public mind past the techies and libertarians who were initially and naturally drawn to it.
For all the talk about bitcoin, the media coverage, the books, documentaries, and myriad conferences around the globe, digital currencies and the technology underlying them remain more potential than payoff. Where does bitcoin’s real future lie? That’s the question the group sought to answer.
The group of 20 included Victoria van Eyk, ChangeTip’s vice president of community development, Jinyoung Lee Englund from the Digital Currency Council, and Michael Casey, our former partner here at the Journal and now senior adviser, Digital Currency Initiative at MIT Media Lab. They spent three days working in rotating groups on the paper, a rough draft of which clocks in at about 15,000 words.
The goal is to produce a document that explains what bitcoin is, what parts of the economy it could potentially change, and what the roadblocks to that change could be. The idea moreover was to write a paper that would be broad enough to appeal to both policy makers and regulators, the business community, the bitcoin community, and even the general public. “Goals exist both on a large, strategic scale such as human empowerment, and also on a more tactical scale, such as specific use cases,” read the draft version of the paper.
“People brought their best selves to it,” Mr. Colangelo said. The next steps are to get it back to the group for revisions within the next few weeks, and then even open it up to public forums like Reddit and GitHub for commentary. The goal is to produce a “living, breathing document,” he said.
We’ll be interested in seeing where the paper goes, and not just because our old friend is involved in it. One of bitcoin’s biggest challenges, really, has been simply explaining why it’s a valuable concept. If this group can manage that, the three days would have been worth it. (Paul Vigna)
UPDATE: Victoria van Eyk is ChangeTip’s vice president of community development; an earlier version of this post said she was the startup’s founder. Also Coinbase’s John Collins, who was expected to be at the retreat, did not ultimately attend.
Via: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/07/30/bitbeat-bitcoiners-decamp-to-bretton-woods/
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