So our topic is "Bitcoin: Perils of an Unregulated Global P2P Currency". Before I start, just a quick introduction: I'm not going to talk much about the technical aspects of Bitcoin, this is more of a holistic perspective, but there will be a discussion of some relevant technical concerns. So if anyone has any questions about how Bitcoin works in the course of this talk you can just ask me, that's not a problem. Bitcoin was first launched in 2009, so we're in its sixth year, and there have been a lot of positive steps so far. The value of Bitcoin has gone up and down quite a bit, but it's still considerably up compared to where it was six years ago, and market cap is about $3.6 billion, and it is gaining traction with vendors, and so far the kind of legislation that we're seeing is relatively positive; people aren't outright condemning Bitcoin. There are some bills in America in the works, which are actually supportive of Bitcoin. So there's a lot of positives, and there are also negatives. If any of you checked the news in the last two days, Silk Road is back in the news, every two or three weeks there's some Bitcoin scandal or the other happening, some exchange crashes, or someone runs off with someone's coins. So you have the positives and you have the negatives, and we're going to talk a lot more about that, but first I'll sort of lay out the focus of what we're saying.
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