The early traders of bitcoin, (the original cryptocurrency), were mesmerised by the spell to get rich quickly. But the majority made full use of the anonymity that this trading afforded, and hundreds of millions were spent in buying drugs, demanding ransoms and stealing after hacking faulty codes. Inspite of this, believers and devotees still thought that cryptoassets could be valued at trillions. However, in 2020 the bitcoin prices collapsed as coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc in the financial markets. In March last year, the crypto mood turned more positive when massive investments into bitcoin were made by billionaire hedge managers and institutional investors. We are now seeing the rise of an ecosystem known as decentralised finance (DeFi). Ethereum is a blockchain network application on which most DeFi applications are built. This application is growing fast and its prime targets are conventional banks as it can work without having to maintain the huge infrastructure, maintaining trusts, clearinghouses, compliance to capital rules and courts. The ride still remains bumpy and volatile, but the overall direction has been up –“from around $0.08 in 2010, bitcoin hit a high of just below $67,000 in October this year.” (FT)No one know where this revolution will end, but it looks that there will be a transformation in how money works and so in the entire digital world.

Supercomputing Frontiers Europe will take place from 11 to 15 July. The conference is organised by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM), University of Warsaw. The event aims to enable the widest participation of HPC enthusiasts from all around the world, to learn, share and advance. Save the dates!