Ayush Jain

Period 6- Intern/Mentor
October 25, 2016
Bitcoin/PKI Interview
Interviewer: Ayush Jain
Interviewee: Bruce Cottle
Ayush: Okay, so question 1: How is PKI protocol used internally on the Johns Hopkins APL
campus?
Mr. Cottle: Sowe use it for our remote VPNingat home, working from home. And, we use it
for encrypted email for examplewe use PKIwe use it for encrypted wifi.
And Im trying to thinkI dont really have an APL phone/business phone.
Ayush: Mhm
Mr. Cottle: But I know wed probably use it um.. wed use it for just like we use laptops at home.
Like VPNs, uh Virtual Private Networks like IPSEC tunnels or SSL tunnels.
Ayush: Andis PKI applied in digital cryptocurreny and blockchains such as bitcoin and
zerocoin?
Mr. Cottle: The..the um.. the message digestthe hashing functions are. So functionally theyre
similar. But, I dont know enough about the actual bitcoin algorithm to know. But its gonna be a
similar thing because you have to solve them by brute force.
Ayush: And probably some key exchange method is used like Diffie-Hellman or something?
Mr. Cottle: Hmmm.. Yeah thats interesting. Im trying to think when you make a transaction, are
there anyyeah theres gotta be something because you have tohave to do the transfer from
one account to another account basically.
Ayush: Would it be
Mr. Cottle: So how would I securely tell youyeah thats interesting I think I know how its
done. I think if youd use some sort of tunnel you assume some sort of privacy--which would be
a bad design. Or you do amy guess is yes youd do some sort of secure channel built up for the
transaction to take place at. But Im not completely sure.
Ayush: OkWould proof of work be a way to figure that out?
Mr Cottle: Thats it thats a proof of workwell the proof of workit proves that the transaction
is valid. Right?
Ayush: Yes

Mr Cottle: Youre stating that you got this one way function and these inputs..oh and I guess you
hav to come back with one of the inputs to figure out the output. And there cant be collisions, so
you can even get one thats valid which is wrong.
Ayush: But, arent the hash functions like or arent the algorithms made to have less collisions,
or arent they made to not have collisions at all?
Mr. Cottle: If you start out with more bits than you end up with, then youre going to have a
collision.
Ayush: Oh yeah.
My. Cottle: Its a factor, right?
Ayush: Yes. So is tht why theyre expanding hash functions like message digest to likesha256
to sha38..what 9?
Mr. Cottle: 384 yes. Umm I think they want that just for the proof of work. To make the proof
of work that much harder. But I think it doesit will give you a lower collision ratio. The ratio
of collisions depending on umthe general..the size of the data that youre hashing down.
Ayush: Ok And mining probably works the same wayfor bitcoin, it would bewould you
know how that work for proof of work?
Mr. Cottle: Thats all I know is...the proof of work. There areum let me think of the other
yeah no those are all different issues about proof of work. Thats all I know about the mining. I
do not know for example how fast these transactions take place in the real world. I do not know
the feedback loop thats used to make the proof of work harder so that it can happen at a certain
rate. Itsits gotta be rate adaptive. Because if people transact too quickly
Ayush: Oh then there wouldnt be time to mine and secure the blockchain. So wouldnt that just
be scalability?
Mr. Cottle: Well, yeah there is scalability but if theyre doing the proof of work andand its now
too easy. Youre basically advantage people like stock markethow close they are to the market.
I havent thought through all the problems that you can get from it being too easy, but you
basically want to make it harder but you dont want to make it too hard cus then. Well if it
takes days to get it solved
Ayush: Then transactions wouldnt happen fast enough.
Mr. Cottle: Right! So there is a window. So this is an engineering optimization thing. There is a
window where we want to keep you in. And weve got mechanisms to speed up and slow down
encryptionwhatever the mining is based on whats going on.
Ayush: And also from an economic stand point, that would be um.. so for bitcoin youd have to
rely on the miners trusting in the system, for that to work, and youd have to rely on... what do
you call it the brute for attacks not taking too long. Is that what youre saying?

Mr. Cottle: Yeah, so by the system you mean, to get paid because theyre going to get paid for
mining in bitcoins. So they have to buy in to the whole concept of bitcoin to do this, the value of
which may fluctuate wildly, and you can say that about any currency thats tied to say a gold
standard or something. Um.. so they gotta buy into that, they gotta buy into the integrity of the
whole algorithm and the whole process, right? Cause it goes poof and theyve invested all this
money in mining andnow thats not going anywhere umm.. what was the other thing you said?
Ayush: You have to make sure that the transactions happen like on time. Or the blocks that
theyre made to add to the block chain are formed on time. So what factors do you have to ensure
to make that work?
Mr. Cottle: You mean ifuh lemme think about this. Yeah so I dont know, when somebody
mines it, if it figures out what theyre just validating it right or is it some sort of seal that goes
on too? Is there another chain? Or does that add to the chain or each seal is a separate layer.
Ayush: Its they valid it and then they seal it and add it to the blockchain.
Mr. Cottle: Yes they do.
Ayush: And then they add that to the chain.
Mr. Cottle: Haha, I didnt know that, and thats something I want to learn But we really want to
learn all the waysall the different ways it can be used right. And what are the constraints. I
look at it first from a system to system standpoint, so if you have a digital wallet in place of cash
in your pocket, how could you use it? What would it be good for? You knowcould you use it
quickly enough? Or would itIf it takes five minutes for you to run into a seven-eleven would
you do it? I meanwould you make a transaction? I dont know. Um.. What informationthe
thing that Oh I havent given this to you yet but theres a mathematician who teaches at Johns
Hopkins University. Oh yeah I sent you the paper
Ayush: Yeah, zerocoin.
Mr. Cottle: Yeah that guys last name is Green. He is worried about the anonymity, but one of the
things we care about here isanonymity is not good in economics... A lot of people will tell you
anonymity Is really not good in an economic environment. Shell companies are not good.
Ayush: Wait, why is anonymity bad since it protects the user?
Mr Cottle: Well, I mean its good for a person who wants to be anonymous. You knowIm sure
there are lots of valid reasons for being anonymous. You dont want to leave a trail all around the
place that somebody can look at what youre buying just by looking at the money. Butwhich
conceivably a lot of information gets captured but, um.. Theres a reason drug dealers and arms
smugglers and a bunch of other people deal in cash.
Ayush: Yes because they dont want to get caught.
Mr. Cottle: Yeah, and theres a reason the FBI and justice department and others, like the DEA,
want to uh and the ATF, want to track them. So itsI dont view it as a good or bad thing I

view it as good someways and bad someways. So if there are people with a warrant, they would
be able to track things. And some people really really dont want that!
Ayush: So is this the whole downfall of the decentralized system where theres no central
government. If there was essentially a centralized system, they could see likewho was who?
And there would be anonymity until you got to that centralized system.
Mr. Cottle: I thinkI think its a matter of what information gets encoded in the thing. So
remember theres little spaces to encode data, theres little areas to hold the data in there.
Ayush: Mhm, yes.
My. Cottle: So all youre doing is protruding. So all your doing is using the time stamp for
accuracy. Youre using it as a verifiable system, so you can use it for all these different things
like people hide little messages in there to prove They could use it to prove maybe for a patent
idea. I could send some string, some hash string, in a bitcoin transaction that correlates to some
patent thing and I could reference it in a payment method, and its conceivably an anchor in time
to prove that I I mean, theres lots of stuff. Im interested in the topic, but you want you find an
area that technically interesting. But, there are so many used for it that sometimes you wanna add
a cost to something, but if you make it free, people about it. If you make is cost something
Ayush: Then no one would want to buy it.
Mr. Cottle: Well if it was small enough
Ayush: If its small enough then theyd want to use it.
Mr. Cottle: Yep. So you can play the game. Thats what that one article that I found, about digital
rights stuff was about. *brings out magazine and starts looking through it*
Yeah so, yep right hear digital pirates and stuff. Yeah the system tries to guard against spams and
fakes, but um[cannot decipher text from 13:01 to 13:02] changes and adjusts the bitcoin
context to the index. So thats kind of an interesting statement you can verify bitcoins that have
been sent to an address but they can never be spent again by anyone. So thats thats both good
and bad. I guess its like burning money.
Ayush: Mhm.
Mr. Cottle: Governments wouldnot like you to burn money! Cause it costs them to make it,
and they want to be circulating it. And uh I dont know what that might mean for Bitcoin. But
the other thing too is. If youlets think about these issues in the twenty first century. If you
wanted to get away from cash all together and you were dealing with a government entity, and
offer electronic coinelectronic money, how would you do? Can you do it? Can Bitcoin do it?
Or does Bitcoin need to grow to some dimensionten-fold one hundred-fold or a thousand-fold
in order to accommodate it. I dont know. I have no clue about how big the numbers are. So
theres so many but digital currencies are the future. This is just the firstI dont want to say
commercial, but I guess it was commercially successful. I guess if the inventors of it got
bookoo bitcoins which they wanted to cash out and used themtheyve profited right?

Ayush: Yeah.
Mr. Cottle: And at some point in the day, whoever is left holding the bag loses, right? And there
are problems with inflation too.
Ayush: And thats another major problem too, right? Like how currency is based off gold where
Bitcoin is not.
Mr. Cottle: Nowere not on the gold standard anymore. Thats whatso when you hear people
like Ron Paul say when they say that we need to go back to the gold standard. Thats what they
mean. That a dollar is worth x amount of gold. And you have to have that much gold behind it.
I dont think its exactly the amount f gold necessarily, like to the amount of ounces, but youre
basically saying a dollar is part-gold. Both are going to change. The problem with that is we
actually consume goldand Bitcoin is better. The amount of gold ismostly fixed but it grows
and shrinks. Bitcoin is meant to not fall into that rhythm

Summary:
Overall, I think this interview went well. It directed me into the right direction to solve my
research question. I would probably change some of the questions to dealing with security,
instead o the economics of Bitcoin. I could have included more PKI. The most difficult part of
the interview process is the before and afterthe preparation and the transcription, as these are
the more tedious and time consuming. The interview was the best part because I was talking to a
professional in the field about something that I was interested in!