Turing Award winner optimistic about blockchain's future

The father of public key encryption, a Turing Award winner and chief scientist at Cryptic Labs, Whitfield Diffie, is optimistic about blockchain's scalability but believes it's too early to make "a definite announcement" about its impact.

blockchain is different from cryptography, he noted in an interview with CGTN's Global Business.

"Although blockchain uses a lot of terms of cryptography and some of the techniques of cryptography, it is much newer," he explained.

And blockchain is not totally the same as bitcoin, as Diffie considered blockchain as “much broader than bitcoin” in an earlier interview.

When it comes to blockchain technology, people are constantly talking about regulatory uncertainty, scalability and standardization issues. He is positive that blockchain technology could be used on a wide and large scale.

“It's such a general phenomenon that I think there is every reason to be optimistic. It is a young technology and it's really impossible to say yet exactly how it would scale. But I'm optimistic,” he told CGTN.

Meanwhile, Diffie denied that blockchain is a decentralizing technology by saying “decentralizing means taking the control out of hands of small numbers of people and putting in the hands of the population in general.”

Some are arguing that it is necessary to regulate blockchain technology and issue standards for its development. Diffie thought that it's too early to set standards as the blockchain technology is still far from maturity.

“When new technology is not clear on what the standard should be, it's possible to stifle the development of technology by setting standards with refrigerating regulations too soon,” he commented.

“Once again, it's too early in making a definite announcement about what its impact is going to be,” he stressed.