More than thirty years ago a researcher named David Chaum presented his vision for a cryptographic financial system. In the past ten years this vision has been realized. Yet despite a vast amount of popular excitement, it remains to be seen whether the development of cryptocurrencies (and their associated consensus technologies) will have a lasting positive impact—both on society and on our research community. In this talk I will examine that question. Specifically, I will review several important contributions that research cryptography has made to this field; survey the most promising deployed (or developing) technologies; and discuss the many challenges ahead.
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