One of the most discussed panels at CoinGeek New York features blockchain pioneers Scott Stornetta, Stuart Haber, and Ian Grigg, who joined Dr. Craig Wright for a discussion on “Blockchain: The Future of Technology Building on Achievements of the Past.”
Stornetta spoke with CoinGeek Backstage on the sidelines of the event, where he told Patrick Thompson that what brought him into this space was when he felt “very deeply concerned” about how to create immutable digital records. He wondered how people would be able to trust each other in the absence of immutable digital records.
However, Stornetta said he didn’t foresee the explosion of creativity that is taking place today. “Other people took a little piece of what we have done and what others have done and built these enormous things. That is a good value creation on top of it.”
Stornetta and Haber’s work was cited as a reference in the 2008 Bitcoin white paper three times. When asked whether he was surprised to see his papers cited decades after they were written, Stornetta answered: “I hope people don’t take it the wrong way, but my ego was actually big enough knowing it would take off.” Referring to the phrase, “people’s 15 minutes of fame,” he explained that there was quite a blip of publicity and activity then, but it didn’t gain monetary traction.
“Partly because I don’t know how to run an actual commercial operation. Therefore, I must give credit to the genius of minds who followed us and saw different ways that they could use this basic building block to build other interesting things. We passed on the baton to modern pioneers, and I am now a part of venture capital firms that invest in these genius companies,” Stornetta shared.
What does he imagine this technology to be five years from now? Stornetta is of the opinion that there is no stopping it. “It will rewrite how we structure the world. You know something is really successful when it’s so taken for granted and it becomes a part of the infrastructure, and no one really knows anything about it. Internet, for instance, no one talks about the TCP IP protocol even though it underlies the whole of internet. Similarly, the blockchain technology’s future is going to be very big.”
Stornetta ended the interview with a statement that it is a “peer-to-peer world” and encouraged everyone to come forward to make their contribution to build a good future.
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