[mindslight]

BitC is often referenced from object-capability literature, which is one way of decomposing problems to mutually-trustable solutions. It's certainly possible to understand adversarial system design without having come across the ocap model, which is why I said 'most likely'.

Question: What is the fundamental problem that bitcoin solved in a novel way? If your answer is something from cryptography, you don't know its context.

[tedunangst]

I would say the fundamental problem is some sort of distributed knowledge proof system, and in my taxonomy of learning, that'd definitely be near the cryptology department.

To be honest, I think I'd been lumping bitc in too much with PL research, and hadn't considered that other people may have an interest.