Hal said, you know, if you need some help, I'll help you. And so how did he actually get access to their listserv? And then so many people had worked on digital currency before the listserv pretty much just blew him off - except for one gentleman named Hal Finney. One is that no one had ever heard of this person before. Now, there were a couple of curious things about this paper or about the person. Now the trusted third-party issue is important because when you and I engage in an electronic transaction there's a bank between us that verifies that, yep, Mark really does have that money. Well, on Halloween, October 31, 2008, on their listserv shows up an email that says basically this: I have been working on a new electronic cash system that is fully peer-to-peer with no trusted third party. And it's what's called the double-spend problem, which is, if I'm going to tell you that I have this digital money and I'm going to buy something from you, how do you know I really have it? I might be giving it to somebody else at the same time. But they'd never quite been able to solve one particular problem. And they had worked on cryptography - how do you hide your digital information so nobody can read it - and they had also tried to figure out a type of digital currency that would be something that could keep them independent from the banking system.

So they were very worried at this moment. So the financial crisis played right into their suspicions.

And then also about just how big and controlling the financial institutions were around the world. One is they worried about the government getting into their privacy, getting all their information about them. It’s basically a group of people that met in somebody's basement in Oakland, California, and they had two basic worries. As you might recall, the country was going through a financial crisis and that attracted the attention of a group of people called Cypherpunks. Can you give us a little history and a basic explanation of what it is? Nicci Brown: So, cryptocurrency has been around a lot longer than many people may realize. Mark is the director and Gerald Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center and director of the Digital Markets Initiative at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. Our guest today is Mark Jamison and he knows a thing or two about cryptocurrency. However, it is the topic of conversation in the financial and political worlds, drawing both enthusiastic and cautious investors and the scrutiny of regulators. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is trying to figure out what it is and what it means for most of us. I'm your host, Nicci Brown.Ĭryptocurrency. Nicci Brown: Welcome to From Florida, where you'll learn how minds are connecting, great ideas are colliding and groundbreaking innovation is becoming a reality because of the University of Florida.

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