The Bitcoin Masterclasses in London highlights: Identity and privacy

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January 25 and 26 marked the first of Dr. Craig Wright’s monthly The Bitcoin Masterclasses series, an event that took place at Hallam Conference Center in London, attracting 50 participants in person and nearly 300 via the livestream.

The Bitcoin Masterclasses series aims to educate people on how Bitcoin truly works and what it can do for the world. 

The theme of Masterclass #1 was identity and privacy, and throughout the two-day program, Dr. Wright led eight separate sessions broken up by networking and lunch breaks. In a true workshop style, Dr. Wright presented material, encouraged audience participation, and doled out relevant exercises to be completed in a group work fashion.

The eight-session topics were confidentiality, privacy, anonymity, party-to-party, a day one review, private identity, identity proofs, and topic reviews.

How privacy differs from anonymity was a major theme throughout the two days and is often a point of confusion for people, primarily when they are referring to Bitcoin and how it works. 

“You cannot have identity without an identity. I know it sounds silly, but guess what? There’s no such thing as an anonymous signature. Never has been, never can be,” Dr. Wright explained during the first session on day one. 

“And if we want to have open debate, and we want to have a free society, we need to be able to openly communicate. And that links back to identity,” he said. 

“Private isn’t anonymous. Anonymous is when we remove identity. And for the majority of things that we’re talking about, we’re going to be looking at how do we actually link information, track people, and keep them safe. And that’s part of what we’re doing,” Dr. Wright clarified for the audience. 

“Anonymity doesn’t give you the right to go out there and troll people, and it doesn’t give you open, transparent free speech. Anonymity takes away free speech. So if we want privacy, we need people to be accountable for their actions,” he added. 

Dr. Wright was indeed in his element throughout the workshop, and his unparalleled knowledge surrounding the topics covered and Bitcoin, in general, was obvious to anyone who tuned in. The audience found his enthusiasm for education nothing short of contagious.

“I got into Bitcoin when it split back in 2017, fell down the rabbit hole learning about triple entry accounting and that kind of thing. Recently saw this [Masterclasses] on Twitter, I’m already around the corner and I thought it would be a good chance to deepen my knowledge of Bitcoin,” Accountant James Duggan said.

Music Producer and DJ Rui Da Silva also attended and shared his thoughts on Bitcoin with CoinGeek.

“I’ve been following Dr. Wright for some time, and I find his technology very interesting, even for my industry. The problem that exists at the moment is lack of transparency and speed of payments,” he pointed out.

The Bitcoin Masterclasses series is perfect for curious professionals from all different sectors, just like Duggan and Da Silva, as well as University students, especially seeing as it’s free to attend.

“The Bitcoin Masterclass has been really fun, really interesting. The major thing that I got out of it was the fact that I met loads of new people and learned from the creator of Bitcoin about the technicalities of his vision which can aid the ecosystem and the community in terms of building new things,” shared student Christian Darnton. 

“It’s very clear to me that Craig is the inventor of Bitcoin,” he added.

Attendee Julio Alejandro, CEO of JADA Consulting, was pleasantly surprised with Dr. Wright’s style as an educator. 

“It’s really fun to be in here. Many might have thought this would be extremely academic and pedantic, and he’s sitting on the biggest chair and very arrogant. But he interacts, he stops with us,” he said. 

Richard Waddy, BSV blockchain enthusiast, has been following Bitcoin since 2013. His passion for Bitcoin has only grown stronger as he slowly understands the technology better, the exact reason why Dr. Wright is so motivated to conduct Masterclasses of this nature. 

“I really believe that if Bitcoin as BSV survives and then thrives, I just think of all the virtual circles that have come from it. I often say I think it would end poverty and war,” he added.

After absorbing Dr. Wright’s presentations during the masterclass, it’s clear Bitcoin has the potential to change so many things in our world for the better, but we do have to be patient.

“‘Move fast and break things’—the stupidest comment by some young dropout of Harvard ever made in Computer Science History—is dumb!” said Dr. Wright during the second session on day two.

“When you want to do this, we need to design it properly. That’s why it’s hard; that’s why it takes so long. Not ‘Oh, we’ve got another DAO.’ If we want this to be here in a hundred year time, then we are not breaking things. We are going to build it right,” he said. 

As so eloquently covered during the first session on day one, an audience member proposed to Dr. Wright, “So, just to summarize the points, you’re focused on making Bitcoin 10x better than everything else?”

Dr. Wright responded, “No, I’m focusing on making it a million times better.” 

And there you have it. To experience some of the magic taking place at these Masterclasses, don’t miss the next one in Ljubljana, Slovenia February 22 and 23, either in person or online. I will be there in person on behalf of CoinGeek, simply register your attendance with nChain, and I look forward to seeing you there!

Watch: The Blockchain Masterclass with Craig Wright – Confidentiality, Privacy, Anonymity, Party to Party