Private accommodation giant Airbnb is taking an increasing interest in blockchain technology – and has invited Coinbase to give a talk at its San Francisco headquarters December 3.
Airbnb announced on its blog that director of engineering Adrian Macneil would present the Bitcoin blockchain as part of the company’s meetups program.
Accoding to the event’s description, Macneil will:
“[L]ook at how transactions are generated and broadcast in a completely trustless peer-to-peer network, discuss what role miners play in this network, and whether the blockchain network could exist independent of the Bitcoin currency, look at some of the potential future applications of Bitcoin and the blockchain, including sidechains and decentralized asset tracking.”
Despite several companies in the tourism sector including Expedia publicly experimenting with Bitcoin this year, Airbnb has hitherto been silent on the issue. Cointelegraph invited Airbnb to comment on the possibility of Bitcoin acceptance earlier this year on the back of Expedia’s decision, but did not receive a response.
The Coinbase invitation further seeks to concentrate less on Bitcoin itself, Airbnb explicitly stating that “the real power of Bitcoin stems from its underlying decentralized ledger, the blockchain.” It further describes Bitcoin as “a global digital currency with an avid following, and a wildly fluctuating price.”
That a speaker from a payment processor was selected to present is perhaps telling, however, and attendees are due to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon arrival.
While it is too early to speculate on whether Airbnb is indeed considering following in the footsteps of others in the sector such as Expedia and Cheapair.com in experimenting with Bitcoin integration, the occasion could well trigger comparisons between Airbnb’s style of P2P accommodation and the blockchain’s decentralized nature among commentators.
Full details of the event and how to attend can be found on Airbnb’s website.
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