Kopi Time E089 - Stuart Haber, Co-Inventor of Blockchain, on its Genesis and Current State

This podcast was recorded in early November, on the sidelines of the Singapore Fintech Festival 2022. It was fitting in the spirit of the event to have Stuart Haber join Kopi Time. Dr Haber, along with Scott Stornetta, co-invented the blockchain technique in 1990, which was later adopted by Satoshi Nakamoto as the basic mechanism for data integrity in Bitcoin. We begin the conversation travelling back over three decades, to understand the problem and motivation that drove Haber and Stornetta toward the blockchain. It is clear even as young coders and crypographers, their ambition was high and their goal was to have transformative and lasting impact on the way civilisation’s records are stored. We then talk about the seminal moment in 2008, when the Satoshi white paper came out, and Dr Haber’s take on it then (and now). We tackle the questions of a crypto bubble, Bitcoin’s adverse environmental impact (and possible solutions around it), proliferation of tech solutions looking for a problem, and the applications that appeal to him. Dr. Haber talks about his current research, and takes on my question on the potential impact of quantum computing on cryptograhy-based record authentication. A brilliant mind with outstanding insights.

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