Oscar Darmawan sits alone at Luciole Bistro at Central Park in West Jakarta. When I enter, he stands and shakes my hand warmly and talks a little about his past. He’s soft-spoken and young-looking. His appearance reminds me of the shy kid in science class who has all the answers in his head and will share them if only you ask nicely. As we start our conversation, he politely orders spaghetti carbonara, and tries to get a sense of how much I know. He then pulls out a laptop and shows me how to buy a brick of heroin online. A few mouse clicks later, we’re browsing for illegal arms on the dark web.
He doesn’t look like a dangerous man, but he is the smartest guy in the room. Darmawan is the CEO of Bitcoin Indonesia, an exchange where folks can buy and sell the controversial cryptocurrency known as bitcoin, a form of digital money that’s more secure than any bank in the world, all but impervious to regulation, flawless and complete in its ledger, 100 percent public, and virtually untraceable for those who use it. Darmawan graduated with an IT degree from Monash University in 2006, then went to help carry out cyber security projects for private companies, militaries, and government organizations in Indonesia and Singapore. He’s not allowed to share the details.
If you don’t know what bitcoin is, don’t worry. Chances are you’re a normal person who’s just never considered alternatives to money as we know it. Inherently, bitcoin is neither a malicious nor a benevolent thing. It’s just another currency. Just like any other form of money, bitcoin’s value and strength against other currencies fluctuates by the minute. At the moment, one bitcoin is valued at US$256, as per data from CoinDesk’s real-time charts. The real miracle, however, isn’t that the nerds have come out with a new form of currency, it’s that enough people in the world have decided bitcoin possesses intrinsic value. It’s exactly this consensus which makes it real today; a self-fulfilling prophecy.
https://www.techinasia.com/southeas...t-asia-blockchain-technology-bitcoin-insights
He doesn’t look like a dangerous man, but he is the smartest guy in the room. Darmawan is the CEO of Bitcoin Indonesia, an exchange where folks can buy and sell the controversial cryptocurrency known as bitcoin, a form of digital money that’s more secure than any bank in the world, all but impervious to regulation, flawless and complete in its ledger, 100 percent public, and virtually untraceable for those who use it. Darmawan graduated with an IT degree from Monash University in 2006, then went to help carry out cyber security projects for private companies, militaries, and government organizations in Indonesia and Singapore. He’s not allowed to share the details.
If you don’t know what bitcoin is, don’t worry. Chances are you’re a normal person who’s just never considered alternatives to money as we know it. Inherently, bitcoin is neither a malicious nor a benevolent thing. It’s just another currency. Just like any other form of money, bitcoin’s value and strength against other currencies fluctuates by the minute. At the moment, one bitcoin is valued at US$256, as per data from CoinDesk’s real-time charts. The real miracle, however, isn’t that the nerds have come out with a new form of currency, it’s that enough people in the world have decided bitcoin possesses intrinsic value. It’s exactly this consensus which makes it real today; a self-fulfilling prophecy.
https://www.techinasia.com/southeas...t-asia-blockchain-technology-bitcoin-insights