MSSE Seminar: Cryptocurrency Craziness: Gamblers' paradise? Or decentralized currencies that governments and banks can't get their fingers on?

Alan Jeevanathan will be giving a talk titled "Cryptocurrency Craziness: Gamblers' paradise? Or decentralized currencies that governments and banks can't get their fingers on?"

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have emerged as important financial software systems. Bitcoin and Ethereum have matured from being associated with extremists and techies to being considered by governments as a technology to implement digital money. El Salvador recently announced Bitcoin as a form of accepted currency and already have a month a 3rd of the population is actively spending this digital money. This is both nothing like how we conventionally spend our dollars. But with all the volatility and uncertainty as well as a lack of a central authority, where exactly are we headed? Through my own experiences of investing, buying/selling crypto, being involved in a startup as well setting up a bunch of servers mining different cryptocurrencies I will share what I know, what I've learned and where I think we're going. If you've totally unfamiliar with crypto, this will be a good seminar to help you understand if you want to dip a toe in.

Biography

I've been a techie ever since my dad stuck a Commodore Vic-20 in front of me on my 5th birthday. As a software engineer, I've been particularly passionate about the software development process and how it's evolved over the past 20 years.

I've taken this love of learning and been on a journey working in different industries from medical device to retail to legal to big data to trucking to insurance, looking for new and interesting problems to tackle and using what I've learned in some areas and applying them to others.