Harry Potter's nemesis Voldemort could be taking Bitcoin to the next level
Just as most hackers have their own unique nicknames to shroud themselves with the necessary anonymity to evade government scrutiny, so too do many coders take on a pseudonym that represents their vision of what they represent in the work they do.
One such individual is a coder who goes by the name of ' Tom Elvis Jedusor', which just happens to be the French version of Harry Potter's 'Tom Riddle', or as he is better known in the storyline, Voldemort. And while Voldemort was the evil nemesis of Harry Potter in the fictional series, this real life Voldemort may someone who could take Bitcoin to the next level of evolution in the world of crypto-currencies.
In a paper authored by ‘Tom Elvis Jedusor’ (Voldemort's name in the French versions of the book), the Harry Potter references in the don’t stop there. The proposal itself, posted to chat channels earlier this August, is named ‘Mimblewimble’ after a tongue-tying curse meant to render an opponent silent.
‘Voldemort’s’ paper has real-world implications, outlining how cryptographic privacy and signature techniques could be combined to enable new benefits. In fact after cursory views of the coder’s ideas, the need that bitcoin developers have been more broadly searching for, such as long-term scalability and anonymity solutions, are for the first time being seriously addressed and could advance discussions of how these challenges can be solved.
Bitcoin Core contributor Bryan Bishop to CoinDesk: “[We’re] talking very seriously about Voldemort as a serious cryptographer that submitted an obviously insightful development.”
The primary issues that Bitcoin has had to deal with in its growth are not necessarily tied to government opposition, but rather the myriad of third party operations such as Bitcoin Exchanges which have made the crypto-currency vulnerable when users move and store their Bitcoins outside the protections of their individual wallets.
In addition, the marketing of Bitcoin to retailers has also been a barrier to acceptability and further expansion, as the whole purpose behind money is to act as a medium of exchange for goods and services. Thus if there are few of these accepting the digital currency in regular commerce, the result is that Bitcoin becomes little more than a novelty passed back and forth among outlying anarcho-capitalists.
Bitcoin has survived in its seven to eight year infancy because the world has woken up to the need for an alternative form of money that resides outside the control of governments and central banks. And despite a number of roadblocks, both with sovereign legal systems and failures in a few Bitcoin Exchange mechanisms, the world is ready for a de-centralized monetary system, and the only thing that remains is if Bitcoin programmers are capable of taking it to the next level.