Topic: [2016-01-03] How ’70s Cryptography Could Improve Bitcoin in 2016 and Beyond (Read 336 times)

As long as a system requires technical expertise for operation, it will be relegated to use by a small group of technologists.

If every person who walked onto an elevator was presented with a keyboard and DOS-style command line terminal, most of us would be looking for the stairs. The nerds among us may eagerly seek out the proverbial programmable elevators, but the average person just wants to push a button to get from one floor to the next, not master gravity-defying vehicles.

Bitcoin addresses have long been a point of confusion for new users introduced to the technology. It's difficult explaining a bitcoin address through analogy, because none of the comparisons quite match. They're kind of like email addresses – free to create and unlimited in number – but they're randomly assigned, and difficult to memorize, more like a phone number. But bitcoin addresses are not always bidirectional like a phone number.

Suppose you receive money from a friend, and later you want to send some money back to him. The address you received funds from initially may belong to your friend or just the bitcoin service he uses. Funds sent to the address may arrive to your friend – assuming he has backed up his wallet – or they may just line the bitcoin service’s pockets, never to be refunded.

Read more : http://www.coindesk.com/how-70s-cryptographers-will-bring-bitcoin-mainstream/