Topic: [2016-01-26]Rutgers bitcoin study reveals false beliefs on ease of use and priv (Read 320 times)

Rutgers bitcoin study reveals false beliefs on ease of use and privacy

People who have used Bitcoin, and those who don't have any experience with it, have something in common: Both groups share misconceptions about how the controversial digital currency actually works.

People who have never used Bitcoin -- an internet-based form of money -- don't think they ever could. Even Bitcoin users are not well-versed in how it works and overestimate, for example, the privacy of transactions, according to a study by Janne Lindqvist, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and member of Rutgers' WINLAB (Wireless Information Network Laboratory), and two graduate students, Xianyi Gao and Gradeigh D. Clark. Still, study participants overall viewed Bitcoin as an ideal payment system.

The peer-reviewed study -- the first-of-its-kind - will be formally published in May at the annual Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, more commonly known as CHI 2016, in San Jose, California. CHI is the premier international conference on human-computer interaction.

Bitcoin is a new type of money that relies on a decentralized peer-to-peer network with a public ledger that tracks transactions. Two people can make transactions, with degrees of anonymity, across continents, at any denomination, and without any transaction fees going to a third party, according to the Rutgers study. The study's results illustrate Bitcoin's tradeoffs, uses and barriers to entry. According to coinmarketcap.com, the Bitcoin market totaled about $6 billion as of Jan. 22, 2016.

On Jan. 14, 2016 Mike Hearn, a high-profile Bitcoin developer who worked on it for more than five years, declared that Bitcoin had failed because it was controlled by a handful of people and was "on the brink of technical collapse." In an internet post headlined "The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment," Hearn wrote that he will no longer participate in its development and had sold all of his Bitcoin "coins."


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/ru-rbs012616.php