In the latest episode of “fireside chat” with Paul Buitink, which was co-hosted by Tim Pastoor, co-founder of Identifi, and Jop Hartog, co-founder of www.blocktrail.com, Charles Hoskinson, founder of The Bitcoin Project, and former Ethereum CEO, discussed at length about Bitcoin and how to decentralize everything, among other topics.
Charles dubbed the recent trend of bankers and ex-bankers, some even from JP Morgan, entering the Bitcoin space as positive. He also said that the reason for their transition could be that they want to be the first in line when the Bitcoin startups are being acquired for several millions or billions of dollars years down the line.
Asked about the Bitcoin community in Japan, where he speaks at meet-ups, Charles says that the mainstream media in Japan is still recovering from Mt. Gox. However, he sees great opportunities in Japan and suggests that, “any company wanting to go there will make some great inroads.” Charles also pointed out that Philippines is the best remittance market.
The mathematician is now working on a new Ripple-based project involving oracle and smart contracts, which will be focused on Japan, Korea, and China, with extensions in Indonesia and Philippines.
He shared his concerns with regard to the consensus algorithm in Bitcoin. He said that assuming the price of Bitcoin is $10,000, and knowing that 25 bitcoins are awarded for each mined block, which happens every 10 minutes at the current network complexity, the successful miner is richer by $250,000. That is too much value in a very short time, and hence, competition is pushing engineers and companies to absorb this value. So, at a later stage, only a few miners will control more than 51% of the hash power, resulting in a federation which lacks transparency.
Among other issues Charles expressed concerns on included the side chain expansion model and lack of incentives for data relay, calling the free data relays as economically unfavorable.