Rising Bitcoin expert Annie Gaus ventured to San Jose for the Bitcoin 2013 Conference to better understand all things Bitcoin. She discusses the legal ramifications of the online currency with some attorneys, and talks to the founders of Buttercoin, an open source Bitcoin exchange platform. She also chats with the founder of Foodler, the first food delivery service to accept Bitcoin, and a representative of the Bitcoin Foundation about the current challenges facing the online currency.
Andy May 23, 2013. Kim Dotcom has announced that he is the inventor of the so-called two-step authentication system and has a patent to prove it. The Megaupload founder says the security mechanism, which has just been introduced by Twitter, is being used by U.S. companies more than a billion times every week without permission. Dotcom says he doesn’t want to sue, but might if the likes of Google and Facebook don’t help fund his legal battle with the U.S. Government.
While the United States Government paints Kim Dotcom as some kind of international super criminal, the Megaupload founder sees himself rather differently.
Continually over the past year and half, and particularly since his January 2012 arrest in New Zealand, the German-born entrepreneur has described himself as an innovator, someone who creates rather than destroys as the U.S. would have people believe.
Dotcom’s achievements are many and his cloud storage companies past and present have certainly generated hundreds of headlines. However, it seems that the New Zealand resident’s creative mind was already working overtime more than 15 years ago to come up with an idea that is now gaining serious traction online. Read more: http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-to-google-twitter-facebook-i-own-security-patent-work-with-me-130523
Published On May 20, 2013 at 20:56 BST | By Carrie Kirby. Largely untapped markets such as global remittances represent a huge opportunity for Bitcoin, but the digital currency has not yet arrived at its most difficult stage of development, BitInstant founder Charlie Shrem said at this past weekend’s Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose.
“Global remittance is one thing that Bitcoin can do really well,” Shrem said, giving the example of a nurse working in the US who wants to send most of her pay back to family in the Philippines. Using a money transfer service such as Western Union, the nurse would have to pay a large fee and wait a week for the money to arrive.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Shrem said. If more foreign workers adopted Bitcoin, they would be able to safely and instantly send money home to families at low costs, he said.
Shrem’s optimism for the potential of Bitcoin, which he refers to as “cash with wings,” is tempered by the difficult fights with regulators he expects lie ahead. At this point, he said, Bitcoin is at the stage where more people have heard of it, but most people dismiss it as something silly. This, Shrem said, is not the scary stage.
“The scary stage is the fighting stage,” he continued. “That’s when we’re going to see regulators coming down hard …. Look what happened with Mt. Gox.” (The US Department of Homeland Security last week seized funds from Mt. Gox, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, and Dwolla, alleging that Mt. Gox and a subsidiary were operating as unlicensed money transmitting businesses.) - Read more here: http://www.coindesk.com/bitinstants-charlie-shrem-sees-bitcoin-battles-ahead
MAY 22, 2013. The Bitcoin2013 conference attracted a mix of businesspeople in suits and entrepreneurs in jeans and untucked shirts. All were excited about the technology's potential to disrupt the payments business – specifically micropayments, international remittances and charitable giving. For merchants, Bitcoin offers faster and cheaper payments than incumbent systems. The U.S. government's recent crackdown on Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, failed to cast a pall over the event.
In our newest video, Dr. Chris Martenson and Mike Maloney take some time to discuss Bitcoin, precious metals and the future monetary system. Read more here: http://goldsilver.com/article/bitcoin-vs-gold-and-silver-mike-maloney-and-chris-martenson
We first celebrated Bitcoin Invading Mainstream Banking on January 11, then reported here on April 30 that Canada had tightened its grip on Bitcoin exchanges. In another article (with video from Mike), we posed the question: Could Bitcoin Eventually be the New World Currency?
The big deal over Bitcoin is our freedom of choice, because if digital options such as Bitcoin or U.S. dollars were equal in value as money to gold and silver, the owners of the systems wouldn't need laws to enforce a currency monopoly. Mike has already taken sides in this controversy, saying, "I'm for whatever the free market picks for currency."
Dr. Martenson agreed, wisely pointing out the ongoing "Cold War race between security professionals and hackers."
Down The Rabbit Hole w/ Popeye (05-14-2013) Hack Miami, Bitcoin’s Future, The TPP & Bad CopsOn this edition of DTRH Popeye spends the first hour talking with fellow member of Federal Jack, hacker, and friend Alex. They go over what Hack Miami is, the 2013 Hacker Convention in Miami, the future of Bitcoin in the wake of the DHS seizure of funds from Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, and more. In hour two Popeye covers the TPP or Trans Pacific Partnership and what it potentially means to everyone in any country involved; Police brutality, in this case cops in Florida running over a man for not wearing a seatbelt, and cops in California who just kick in a door, no warrant, and taze the residents in the house. Ending the broadcast on a positive note Popeye plays INCHES, and reminds everyone that "THE SOLUTIONS TO OUR PROBLEMS ARE AN INSIDE JOB."
Popeye's Archive Page: http://www.federaljack.com/dtrh-radio-archives/
DTRH w/ Popeye Downloadable Radio Show Archive: http://federaljack.com/popeye/
Listen Live Page: http://www.federaljack.com/radio-show-chats/down-the-rabbit-hole-chat/
Unbound Radio: http://unboundradio.com/
5/24/2013 @ 12:45PM. If you’re involved in Bitcoin, you have no doubt been asked the question “So, who accepts bitcoin?” True, it is the quintessential chicken and egg paradox, but that is not unexpected for the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency lacking a political authority.
Commodity money and quasi-commodity money must gain their legitimacy and acceptance through the rigors of the free market unlike political currencies that simply gain prominence by virtue of State sanctioning. In the true absence of State sanctioning or legal tender status, the monetary unit with the superior features will prevail in a competitive marketplace.
Let’s take a look at the top ten merchant sites on the Internet that are currently accepting bitcoin as payment. Uncensored rankings are based on the amount of three-month traffic received by the website according to Alexa Top Sites (as of May 24th, 2013). The updated list is provided courtesy of The Bitcoin Trader, but a separate version of the Bitcoin Ladder is also tracked on the Bitcoin wiki. - Read more here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/05/24/top-10-bitcoin-merchant-sites
May 23, 2013, by Roger Wehbe. The issue with Bitcoins isn’t actually Bitcoin itself. The problem is the difficulty level in buying and selling them. People constantly complain about the verification process at Mt.Gox, Lack of liquidity on localbitcoin in many regions (or just sheer distance), and lastly the overall process to do it.
Cash for bitcoins is an option, where you can fill out paperwork, make a deposit at CVS and you’ll get your coins. In order for that to happen, it must go though multiple companies and hope everything goes ok.
People often complain much more about the process of getting a bitcoin than the actual cost.
For purchasing small amounts of bitcoins the wire transfer fees generally exceed the actually purchase price of the bitcoins themselves.
There has to be a better way, and honestly the key to that is Paypal. An article today showed up on CNN Money regarding Paypal and Bitcoin.
The moment Paypal accepts and allows for purchase and sales of Bitcoins is the exact moment Bitcoin will exceed thousands of dollars per coin. Though it’s possible 90% of the population has heard of bitcoin, 99.99999% of the people on the street have no idea how to purchase one. - Read more here: http://www.adaptiveglass.com/?p=767
24 May 2013. Welcome to PYMNTS.com’s VC Voices: a weekly column where we bring you commentary from the best of the best around the world of payments investment. Want to know what the biggest backers of our industry’s innovators and disrupters think? We give our VCs 500 words of unedited space to do with as they please, so you’ve come to the right place.
In our inaugural edition last week, we heard from Dan Rosen, general partner at Commerce Ventures, about his experiences at FinovateSpring 2013.
This week, we’re joined by Matt Witheiler, principal at Flybridge Capital Partners, who gives us his take on the Bitcoin boom and what government intervention in Mt. Gox’s business means for the industry.
By Matt Witheiler, Principal, Flybridge Capital Partners
Bitcoin is all the rage these days in the VC community. What started with some mild investor attention a year ago, around the time Dwolla raised their $5 million Series B financing from A-list investors, came to froth-like levels in the past month with high profile investors like Chris Dixon proclaiming that, thanks to Bitcoin, “finally something interesting is happening in financial tech.” Slowly over the past year, Bitcoin has gone from a hacker cottage technology to being the darling of the VC industry. Excitement around the alternative currency seemed insatiable – until last Tuesday. - Read more here: http://www.pymnts.com/briefing-room/issuers/virtual-currency/2013/vc-voices-bitcoin-and-blood-pressure
Published On May 24, 2013 at 11:25 BST | By John Oates. Rumours suggesting the Chinese government was moving to block Bitcoin related traffic on its networks have been dismissed.
News stories about China routinely get traction without being checked and elements of the Bitcoin community seem happy to believe anything which fits with their world view.
But forum posters on Bitcointalk quickly moved to quash rumours that Chinese telcos were being warned to block bitcoin-related traffic.
The original poster quoted a supposed email which said:
“We got further information from our carrier confirming that business such as bitcoin is not a proper financial tool in China and the Authority may treat bitcoin as an illegal business. Unfortunately the China Telecom Authority has requested that all bit-coin traffic to China be blocked.” - Read more here: http://www.coindesk.com/chinese-whispers-hit-bitcoin-again
Manuel Araoz, a 23-year-old developer in Argentina, has an idea for Bitcoin that doesn't focus on money.
Araoz, who works in game development, launched a service this week called Proof of Existence. It's essentially a notary public service on the Internet, an inexpensive way of using Bitcoin's distributed computing power to allow people to verify that a document existed at a certain point in time.
Araoz envisions it as a way to fight efforts to distort or lie about data. "My idea was to give journalists or private statistical agencies the ability to certify data at a certain point in time. If someone denies the data, you have something that proves the data existed," he said.
The Bitcoin system uses a distributed computing network to transfer the virtual currency from computer to computer. Part of the system involves "miners," or computers that cryptographically verify those transactions, which are entered into a public ledger called the "blockchain".
The strength of the blockchain lies in the fact that no single entity controls it. Instead, computers around the world repeatedly verify its integrity, making it a trustworthy, multi-gigabyte ledger based on public key cryptography.
"I always liked the idea of proving a document's integrity by a cryptographic hash," Araoz said in a phone interview from Buenos Aires. The problem, Araoz said, is that you don't know when a document was created. - Read more here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039705/could-the-bitcoin-network-be-used-as-an-ultrasecure-notary-service.html
By JP Mangalindan, Writer May 23, 2013: 12:47 PM ET. President David Marcus tells Fortune why he embraces digital currency, how he thinks the trend will play out, and when Americans can reasonably expect to go wallet-less.
FORTUNE -- The way PayPal President David Marcus sees it, wallets are on the way out. The question isn't "if" they become antiquated, but instead "when."
To wit, the payments company released a study this week that revealed that 83% of people polled in five countries, including the U.S., wished they didn't have to tote their wallets around, and if made to choose, 29% of Americans said they would choose their smartphone over their wallet if they could bring one item when going out. Unsurprisingly, those findings align nicely with PayPal's (EBAY) strategy, which includes the expansion of its payments services in physical retail stores. By the end of the year, Marcus estimates PayPal can be used as a form of payment in 2 million U.S. locations. (This figure excludes the 7 million domestic stores that will be able to accept a PayPal payment card this year as part of an agreement with Discover (DFS).)
Given the rate of expansion, Marcus predicts many Americans -- or at least a fraction of PayPal's 110 million-plus active users -- will be able to go wallet-less within the next 18-24 months. "There are roughly 9 million places in the U.S. that accept credit cards, but there are really 5 million that matter," he pointed out to Fortune this week. And by the end of 2013, PayPal will be supported in just under half of that. "Then there's another half that we need to get to basically be at every place you want to be." Read more here: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/23/why-paypal-is-bullish-on-bitcoin/
Published: Monday, 20 May 2013 | 12:56 PM ET. With news last week that U.S. authorities had seized assets of the world's largest bitcoin exchange, traders and other people interested in the digital currency are looking nervously at the future.
Bitcoins have always operated outside of the established financial system, so does the action by the Department of Homeland Security signal the start of a movement to regulate the field? And if so, how will the people who use the virtual currency react?
Financial experts said they don't expect the action to throw the bitcoin world into chaos—and if regulation is coming, it might actually be welcomed. Some, though, think the government might be acting in a knee-jerk fashion.
"It is a little bit of a hysterical reaction from the U.S. authorities," Jon Rushman, former managing director at BlackRock and a professor at the University of Warwick in the U.K. said in a statement
"There are concerns of bitcoin being used in illegal ways, but unless there is more substantial evidence of this, I don't think there is any reason to shut down the main bitcoin exchange. U.S. dollars, Russian rubles and euros have all been used by criminals, but nobody is suggesting their central banks should be closed down and their governors imprisoned." - Read more here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100750803
Posted May 23, 2013 5:45 (GMT) | By FX Empire Analyst - Barry Norman. As I scour the internet looking for a simple straight forward explanation I do not seem to get one. I read this morning the following:
“Bitcoin’s design had flaws, but the original code was good enough to entice programmers like Jeff Garzik, a coder at Red Hat, and Gavin Andresen, a software developer at University of Massachusetts, to work on it for free. The fundamentals were strong: transparency created trust; a network of users substituted for a central authority; and built-in deflation canceled out any circumstantial inflation that might devalue the currency. Whenever a problem arose, members of the community worked together to fix it. Everyone who has tried to find a fatal flaw in Bitcoin, including renowned security researcher Dan Kaminsky, has failed.”
This left me totally confused, if bitcoin is simply computer code and programming than what is it. Before bitcoin can really launch off the general public needs to understand what it is.
As most of my follows know I have spent 30 years trading with most them in the forex markets so I understand currencies and in the recent years in binary options. I see some similarities, namely both of these vehicles were new to the investment field and needed to go through a growing process to reach maturity. At first a good deal of the financial markets thought that binary options were a scam or just a short lived fad. Most of the early companies are long gone and with growth, the government regulation agencies have gotten involved, it has taken years for these agencies to decide what and who and how to regulate binary options, with the US lagging behind. But as we move forward, regulation will add legitimacy and this is the same course that bitcoin needs to follow. - Read more here: http://www.fxempire.com/news/economic-news/is-bitcoin-an-investment-a-currency-or-a-payment-system
FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE · MAY 21ST, 2013.
This is important.
I’ve been warning about an outside attack on Bitcoin for some time, but the biggest threat may come from inside: from people who profess to love Bitcoin.
The people I’m talking about don’t love Bitcoin itself, and they don’t love the freedom it brings, no matter what they say. Instead they love the money they hope to make by becoming the new techno-riche: successors to Zuckerberg, Gates and the rest. (Yes, that’s an unfair thing for me to say, but I’d also be willing to bet large on it.)
The people I refer to are a neo-plutocracy — insiders who wish to institutionalise Bitcoin, making billions for themselves while turning it into just another version of PayPal.
One long-time bitcoiner has been warning for some time that this group controls the Bitcoin Foundation. He describes them as “regulatory statists.” He has analyzed their backtalks since their beginning and has been telling anyone who would listen that they wished to politically co-opt the Bitcoin market.
At last weekend’s Bitcoin conference, he was proved correct. - Read more here: http://www.freemansperspective.com/bitcoin-inside-attack
Published On May 24, 2013 at 08:22 BST | By Danny Bradbury. We’ve had independent cryptocurrency exchanges, “roll-your-own” cloud-based exchange services … and now it looks as though we are heading towards complete decentralization.
Welcome to the Skype of bitcoin exchanges.
A new company is about to launch a service that it says will entirely decentralize alternative currency exchanges, making it practically impossible for regulators to shut them down. MetaLair — based in Sussex in the UK — will soon unveil an open-source software client that will serve as a cryptocurrency wallet and exchange client. While traditional exchanges need a back-end trading system, this won’t.
There have been very few other attempts at P2P bitcoin exchanges. Dark Exchange is a client that posts searchable bitcoin trade requests online. But the as-yet unnamed MetaLair product will apparently go far further. According to co-founder Jonathan Turrall, it will enable trading directly from one client to another, in any cryptocurrency, while also warding off the double-spending problem.
Turrall likened it to a Skype for cryptocurrency exchanges. Just as Skype decentralized the VoIP network, so this will fragment and distribute the exchange of cryptocurrencies. But unlike Skype, which is proprietary, this will be an open protocol, replicable by anyone.
Users will be able to exchange any cryptocurrency on the network without having it approved by an exchange, Turrall said. Currently, exchanges must approve the currencies that can be swapped on their network, leading to patchy – and in some cases nonexistent – exchange support for many alternative currencies. Incumbent Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox is still mulling the inclusion of Litecoin, but there are many others (more, even, than listed here). Read more here: http://www.coindesk.com/uk-firm-promises-skype-style-bitcoin-exchange
In a special segment of Techendo (http://techendo.co), Dan Gailey (http://twitter.com/dpg) interviews Paul Bohm (http://twitter.com/enkido) the founder of Buttercoin, an Open Source Bitcoin Exchange. They review the past, present and future of Bitcoin and how its future is based on trust and building a strong Bitcoin ecosystem.
Published On May 22, 2013 at 16:00 BST. For all the fuss about Bitcoin — it is turning us all into tax-dodging, drug-taking criminals, etc., etc. — its most important impact might have nothing to do with money at all.
The technology at the heart of Bitcoin is the world’s biggest and most powerful supercomputer. It could be this that has a real impact on all our futures. A network that is already as powerful as 500 supercomputers has to be taken seriously.
Google, Facebook and the other internet giants spend billions of dollars on their networks of data centers. Companies switch computer processing from data centers around the world depending on off-peak electricity costs or the presence of colder temperatures to reduce cooling costs.
The industry depends on tiny improvements in power or heat performance to cut prices for hosting websites or more complex computing functions.
But the Bitcoin architecture of a perfectly distributed computer would allow its network to run almost any computing function.
This isn’t the first such network … anyone remember SETI@home? - Read more here: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-biggest-legacy-could-be-in-computing-not-finance
Posted on May 21, 2013 by Julia Dixon. The 2013 San Jose Bitcoin Conference has proven to be rather controversial. While it is considered to have been a success, being well attended and attracting high profile speakers, it has brought up a very divisive topic in the Bitcoin community…regulation.
In his presentation at the conference Peter Vessenes, the executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, announced that the Foundation will be hiring a lobbyist saying “It’s time to engage with regulators and have a good, productive conversation.”
High profile investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss declared that “Cooperation [with regulators] is really the way forward.” And expressed that recent moves towards Bitcoin regulation are a good thing saying “FinCEN acknowledges virtual currencies. They’ve given guidance, which is a big step.”
There are many in the Bitcoin community who worry that close co-operation with regulators will destroy what Bitcoin is meant to be, free from political control and anonymous. Lifetime Member of the Foundation, Mike Gogulski, has even called for the disbandment of the Foundation. - Read more here: http://www.dgcmagazine.com/bitcoin-selling-out
Vitalik Buterin | On 21, May 2013. If anyone had any doubts that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies would ever amount to anything in this world, after the events at Bitcoin 2013 it is safe to say that most of these doubts are now gone. Roughly a thousand people were present, dozens of booths featured businesses with products of such high quality that they may be indistinguishable with something from a mainstream corporation, and the organization of the congerence itself was nearly flawless. Presentations and panel discussions featured dozens of speakers who are experts in matters of technology, business and regulation, and the topics were equally interesting; among the discussions were subjects involving cryptocurrency-based stocks, using Bitcoin for digital charity, two implementations of decentralized mixers, regulatory and security challenges and creating whole new nations.
For every conceivable application to which cryptocurrencies can be put, there are at least two projects implementing it, and for every problem with Bitcoin that still remains to be solved there are at least three projects working hard on a solution. Altogether, the conference has been almost universally applauded as a huge success. As Sean’s Outpost founder Jason King described it after the fact, the halls of Bitcoin 2013 were filled with a “hopeful energy” and excitement that he had not seen since the first conference of the World Wide Web itself.
Independently filmed videos from the conference are available on Youtube already, and the Bitcoin Foundation’s own videos will soon be available on their website. Summaries of key announcements can be found scattered throughout the internet (some content has been posted and more will be added on our own website). Here are some of the key takeaways that I personally found important: Bitcoin is being taken seriously. - Read more here: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/decentralized-currencies-digital-panhandling-startup-governments-its-a-cyberpunk-world
By Tom Simonite on May 22, 2013. The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.
This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills and began feeding them into what looked like a small, white ATM in San Jose Conference Center in California. The machine swallowed the bills smartly and credited him with an equivalent value in bitcoins, an intangible, digital currency that is backed by not gold or any government, but by math.
Scribner was one of an estimated 1,100 people who attended Bitcoin 2013, a weekend-long event in the heart of Silicon Valley and the first large conference dedicated to Bitcoin. Unsurprisingly, all those present seemed certain that the cryptocurrency was set to upend the world of finance, perhaps more. But the event also offered something new: evidence that Bitcoin is gaining traction outside its existing community of enthusiastic early adopters.
Bitcoin’s origins are mysterious. It was created by an unknown individual or individuals who used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Cryptographic operations and oversight from a peer-to-peer network of people running Bitcoin software process transactions and protect against counterfeiting without the need for a central authority (see “What Bitcoin Is and Why It Matters”).
Commercial enterprises based on Bitcoin are gaining momentum in part thanks to people like Scribner, who, after buying large numbers of bitcoins early in their short history, has seen them soar in value and is in a position to invest. “I’m going to buy one of these and put it in Mall of America,” Scribner told me after using the dollar-gobbling machine, which has a $4,000 price tag. He described a plan for a small booth that would offer passing shoppers Bitcoin literature and the opportunity to exchange greenbacks for bitcoins on the spot. Scribner, who works in teleconferencing near Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, could probably afford to do it. He says that he bought his first 100 bitcoins when they were just $3 each, and then steadily amassed more at relatively low prices. A single bitcoin today now sells for just over $120. - Read more here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/515061/bitcoin-hits-the-big-time-to-the-regret-of-some-early-boosters
May 23, 2013by Stephanie
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:57 — 41.4MB)A very special wrapup of the #Bitcoin2013 conference from me, Stephanie Murphy, and Brian Sovryn at Sovryn Tech. - http://www.porctherapy.com/2013/05/23/porc-tech-bitcoin2013-conference-wrapup/
May 22, 2013 by Stephanie
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:58 — 7.3MB)
Enjoy this repost of Free Talk Live from Sunday night at the #Bitcoin2013 conference!
I’m sorting through the dozens of interviews I did at the conference, but in the meantime check these out. More on the way!
Topics: Teresa Warmke treasurer of Fr33 Aid, first bitcoin based charity :: Jason King, bitcoin based homeless advocacy organization :: David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple, peer-to-peer lending system :: Josh Harvey from Lamassu Bitcoin Ventures, bitcoin vending machine :: Trace Mayer from How To Vanish :: Adam B. Levine from Let’s Talk Bitcoin :: Stan Stainacker – The Ven :: Dan Dascalescu from Blueseed :: Jan Moeller from Mycelium the bitcoin card :: Anthony DiIorio founder of Bitcoin Alliance of Canada :: Mike Caldwell from Casascius - http://www.porctherapy.com/2013/05/22/free-talk-live-2013-05-19-from-bitcoin-2013
2013-05-23 By Bitcoin PR Buzz Feed. In 2011 Bitcoin sports betting service AnoniBet.com was launched. AnoniBet is an online sports betting operator dedicated to offering an anonymous betting experience to punters worldwide. AnoniBet is an established company and has been accepting bets with Bitcoins since December 2011 – serving thousands of customers over the last two years. The platform offers an anonymous betting experience, which rivals and in many cases exceeds the best online sportsbooks in the world, through accepting Bitcoin, the ever popular cryptocurrency that doesn’t need a central authority or government to operate.
The company prides itself in offering one of the largest selection of sporting events, and the best odds to be found online. To register with AnoniBet, all customers need to do is provide an email address and password. AnoniBet never requires any identification information from their customers. The minimum deposit amount is just 0.001 BTC or 1 mBTC and the maximum amount you can withdraw from your Anonibet account is 500 BTC during any 24 hour period. - Read more here: http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/online-bitcoin-sports-betting-service-anonibet-requires-just-an-email-address-to-start-placing-wagers
Vitalik Buterin | On 21, May 2013. Regulation has been a hot topic in the Bitcoin community since the FINCEN guidance in March, and in the Bitcoin conference that took place this past weekend an entire quarter of the conference was dedicated to economic and regulatory issues. The guidance evoked strong feelings of both relief and uncertainty throughout the Bitcoin community; although ordinary Bitcoin users are now almost certainly clear of regulation, a fact that has allowed the Humble Bundle and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to feel comfortable accepting the currency, Bitcoin exchanges will now likely be required to have money transmitter licenses in all 48 states to operate across the country – an extremely onerous procedure that has repeatedly stymied even businesses outside the Bitcoin space. Many figures have been thrown around as to just how much that process costs; a common understanding was that it takes millions of dollars of legal effort and surety bonds, and Jeff Berwick said in his resignation from the Robocoin Bitcoin ATM project that the main obstacle too US participation was “a $25 million “insurance bond” necessary as being deemed a “money transmitter” in the US.”
However, a deeper examination into the issue at play shows that things are not nearly so bleak. The requirements for becoming a money transmitter largely fall into two separate categories: bureaucratic legal effort and surety bonds. With surety bonds, a common requirement is that you need to be insured for 2% of the total volume that you plan to be processing over the next year. If you go over, you need to buy more surety bonds. The cost is thus less prohibitive for small businesses, although there are usually minimums; the Florida regulations specify a minimum of $50,000. In order to get insured for this amount, most insurers charge about 2%, so a money transmitter in Florida would need to pay at least $1000 per year in order to operate. Other states have similar requirements, and altogether the minimum amounts add up to about $7 million. Of course, one also needs to convince surety bond brokers to deal with Bitcoin exchanges, although some are appearing now specifically to serve the legal industry. - Read motre here: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitinstant-we-have-money-transmitter-licenses-in-30-states
Wednesday, May 22, 2013. It's not often that you run across something that Bill Gates calls "a techno tour de force" and Warren Buffet's partner Charley Munger calls "rat poison" -- in the same interview. Imagine a financial service that blows away Paypal for speed and efficiency in transferring funds (at a third of the fees if exchanged into dollars -- and generally no fees if purchasing goods or services directly). Imagine a technology that solves the long-standing ecommerce problem of micro-transactions by being divisible down to eight decimal points, and that has no problems with chargebacks or fraud (like cash, it can be stolen, but unlike cash it's then rendered worthless).
Imagine an asset that's at once currency and commodity, that even though it's digital can be mined like gold, and that has risen in value more than 10x since January and is up more than two million percent (this is not a typo -- it went from half a penny to today's valuation of $122.93) in the past three years. To say these early numbers are reminiscent of the early growth of the Internet, Napster, YouTube and Facebook is not hyperbole. Of course, only three of those became successes in the end, but they were among the biggest successes in business history.
Welcome to the exciting, bizarre and intriguing world of bitcoin, the first "cryptocurrency' to come out of the secret, arcane world of gamers, libertarian "seasteaders" (create your own country on a boat) and hackers -- and land squarely in the world of mainstream finance, with top-tier VC money pouring in from Union Square Ventures to Andreesen Horowitz. - Read more here: http://www.socaltech.com/articles/will-bitcoin-spark-a-wave-as-big-as-the-internet-/a-00234.html
May 22, 2013 Posted By Jonathan Stacke.
Bitcoin has grown impressively in the past few years, yet still faces a number of significant hurdles before widespread adoption becomes a reality. The lack of a centralized entity is one of Bitcoin’s core strengths, but lack of an accountable entity beyond every individual for storage of wealth will make many uncomfortable holding such a currency. Even simply exchanging traditional fiat for bitcoin remains a time consuming, expensive and confusing obstacle for many.
In this article, we’ll explore how a decentralized credit union could solve those issues, as well as provide a series of other significant benefits to the bitcoin community.
Establishing Trust
We would likely all be astounded if we knew just how many bitcoins were lost forever, yielded unrecoverable due to user error and mismanagement of wallets. So long as a single human is required to be the sole source of access to their funds this will continue to happen, making onboarding and retaining new bitcoiners perpetually challenging.
Companies like coinbase have done a great job building a separate account layer on top of wallets to make the user experience more manageable. This enables people to transact in bitcoin without having to worry about which wallets to use. That, along with the notion of password reset via email are basic expectations of familiar banking institutions. Those are a great start, but there are abundant additional services the bitcoin community will soon require that could only be achieved with a registered financial institution. - Read more here: http://www.thegenesisblock.com/the-case-for-a-bitcoin-credit-union
The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents. RT's Bob English explains what's behind this crack down.
Is Bitcoin a viable alternative currency? Is it as volatile and dangerous as critics claim? Are virtual currencies the future of banking? And is Bitcoin the political equivalent of the Occupy movement? CrossTalking with Amir Taaki, Daniel Castro and Ed Butowsky.
And as most of our viewers are keenly aware of by now, Primer Interest Producer Bob English and Perianne traveled to the Bitcoin conference in San Jose, California over the weekend. They got a chance to speak to many of the movers and shakers in the up and coming crypto-currency realm. Bob interviewed Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of OpenCoin, which is developing Ripple.
21/05/2013. Professor Jon Rushman believes that in the long term cyber currencies like Bitcoin could see the end of central banks and foreign exchange and so it is understandable governments are nervous about it.
The new virtual currency has become progressively more popular since the financial crash and its proponents say it will revolutionise banking. Its main exchange, Mt Gox, was raided by the US Department of Homeland Security, who usually deal with terrorist threats, last week.
Rushman (pictured), a former managing director at BlackRock, says: “You can understand why governments are nervous about Bitcoin.
“It is fascinating. I think Bitcoin or something like it has a real place in the future. Imagine a world where foreign exchange doesn't exist, monetary policy doesn’t exist, and there is no inflation. Society would be free to use all the talent currently directed to these issues elsewhere. Meanwhile, governments could still raise taxes and borrow but without uncertainty as to the unit of account. - Read more here: http://www.hedgeweek.com/2013/05/21/184646/governments-should-be-nervous-about-bitcoin-says-rushman
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, has taken aim at bitcoin poker sites.
In March, FinCEN exercised its power under the Bank Secrecy Act to clarify its position on convertible virtual currencies. The Final Rule amendment defines a person as an “exchanger” and “money transmitter” if he provides the means by which an exchange of convertible virtual currency is transferred from one person to another. The convertible virtual currency must be used as a substitute for a legal, centralised currency (such as the dollar).
The clarification means bitcoin poker sites that accept US players could find themselves in hot water if they facilitate the transfer of convertible virtual currency, which occurs whenever a player gains from or loses to another bitcoin poker player. Read more here: http://www.bitcoinpoker.org/news/us-department-of-treasury-targets-bitcoin-poker-sites
What’s the deal with women and Bitcoin?
Anyone who’s spent more than 12 seconds browsing the discussions on the Bitcoin Forum, reddit’s Bitcoin subreddit or any other Bitcoin-related site could be forgiven for thinking the digital currency is inherently a guy thing.
Pua Pyland aka “The Bitcoin Wife”
There are Vinnies, Rons, Dans and Alexes galore, with avatars of dudes, battleships and fireballs. (Similarly, the “real-world” crowd at this past weekend’s Bitcoin 2013 was also heavy on the testosterone.)
The XY- to XX-chromosome imbalance of the Bitcoin world is so baked in that newbies are actually warned to have their scam antennae on the lookout for “any user blatantly claiming to be female.”
Why is that? On the one hand, it seems to make sense in that Bitcoin is a creation of the coder/hacker/tech community, which skews extremely male. On the other hand, bitcoins are just money … and no one designates GDP as boy- or girl-only. (Although some enterprises in the “real-world” fiat economy seem to think in those terms by coming out with ludicrous offerings like pens for women.) - Read more here: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-is-more-than-a-guy-thing-women-bitcoiners-insist/
John Treadgold22 May, 10:31 AM. As the dust settles on Bitcoin’s fledgling flurry of rallies and crashes there is mounting speculation about its potential longevity. The Bitcoin economy is now worth more than $US1 billion and has now piqued the interest of financial regulators and industry players alike.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the US is currently investigating whether Bitcoins are being used as the basis for derivatives contracts and thus fall within their regulatory mandate. Earlier this year, a department of the US Treasury concluded that Bitcoin miners, or those that generate digital currency and then sell them for real currency, would fall under the classification of Money Service Businesses (MSB’s) in the US.
The elegance of the Bitcoin system is that it attempts to circumvent such controls but if the motivation is there it wouldn’t be difficult for those at the reigns of US banking licenses to exert pressure on those banks providing real currency liquidity to traders.
Any attempts at regulation or oversight would have a big impact on Bitcoins core principles of being anonymous and untraceable. While it would be difficult to control the sharing or trade of Bitcoins between individuals it seems their focus would be on those that are operating as intermediaries between Bitcoins and real currency.
As far as industry players are concerned, Bitcoin is little more than a fad. The head of MasterCard’s emerging payments division, Jorn Lambert, recently told The Australian Financial Review that the virtual currency was for ‘geeks’ and that the greater public will not latch onto it.
While Lambert’s sentiment attempts to play-down the growth of Bitcoin as a potential competitor in online financial transactions, it also demonstrates that the likes of Mastercard are well aware of the growth of Bitcoin. More pointedly, it shows the conservatism with which MasterCard views the future of online transactions. - Read more here: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/22/technology/can-bitcoin-go-mainstream
by David Kinkade May 22, 2013. The digital currency Bitcoin has become a focal point as business leaders, investors, regulators, and law enforcement seek to understand how the emerging world of virtual currency may change how we think about money, payments and finance.
While government officials scramble to craft rules—or crack down—on the new currency, online merchants and financiers hope to determine what role digital currency may play in the larger financial and trade systems.
Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex, suggests that while digital currency experiments like Bitcoin may be relatively small in scale today, they have broader implications for the future.
“Bitcoin is gold for nerds, if you will,” Colas explains in an April interview with Bloomberg TV. “It is something that a whole new generation of people believe in – the online nature of their lives, their economy – and so Bitcoin resonates with them.
How Virtual Currency Works
Bitcoin, though not the only virtual currency, is the most well-known example of this growing trend. The decentralized digital currency launched in 2009 following the global financial crisis, just as confidence in existing currencies was at a low ebb.
Unlike physical dollars, which can be printed at will by a central bank (thus deflating the value), Bitcoins are designed as a decentralized, limited money supply. The currency’s developers created only about 21 million Bitcoins, which users must “mine” by solving progressively more challenging math problems. Bitcoin miners, often working together in pools, solve increasingly complex math problems to release new Bitcoins into the supply. Bitcoin mining is a highly competitive process that requires substantial computing power, so most Bitcoin users don’t mine, leaving that aspect to the more advanced users. - Read more here: http://www.freeenterprise.com/entrepreneur/coin-digital-realm-bitcoin-and-future-virtual-currency
May 21, 2013 Posted by Ron Finberg. For Steven Morell and his team at BTC Global, bitcoins aren’t viewed as a new currency, but the technology of the future. In their world, people from around the globe swap digital currencies as a form of payments, while goods are sent in the form of emails, with the final product being printed by the buyer with a 3D printer. At the heart of all this commerce, are a new form of banks and financial companies, that will be used to store, exchange, and provide merchant services for digital currencies.
In an interview with Steven Morell, the Co-Founder and CPO of BTC Global, he explained to Forex Magnates that looking at charts of bitcoin prices or analyzing whether a bubble exists is useless, since it is more of an emerging technology than a new asset class. Morell said “Don’t look at bitcoins or other crypto currencies and their prices as an asset class. We aren’t talking about it as a currency, but as a disruptive technology – that is exponential. “ He added “When traders are looking at the price chart of bitcoins, they are looking at it with their own price analysis and whether it is overvalued or now. But you have to view it like you are looking at a chart representing technology. Imagine looking at a chart of that showed the growth of new email addresses in the mid 90’s. You wouldn’t say that the there was a ‘bubble’ of email users. Transfer that to bitcoins, and it becomes a chart about technology adoption and not currency prices.”
Targeting this world of changing technology, BTC Global is creating a diverse set of resources to cater to this future. Products on the table include secure solutions for cold storage of bitcoins, merchant services, and trading platforms. Already in existence is BTCXperts, a global directory of bitcoin business and professionals providing consulting services, and coming soon is BitBilly, an online bitcoin payment system, and BTCoinSafe, a high security bitcoin storage facility. - Read more here: http://forexmagnates.com/living-in-the-future-today-btc-global-btc-uy
by Aaron Hoddinott April 8, 2013.
Contents:
- 1 Changing The Paradigm
- 2 Bitcoin: Defining the Free Market
- 3 Fundamentals of Bitcoin
- 4 Creating Coins
- 5 Central Authority
- 6 Bitcoin Math
- 7 Risk Of Counterfeit
- 8 The US Dollar – Not a Free Market Currency
- 9 Bitcoin – A True Free Market Currency
- 10 Single World Currency
- 11 The Antiquated
- 12 Free Market Expansion
- 13 S.W.O.T. Analysis
- 13.0.1 About Aaron Hoddinott
Changing The Paradigm
Many entrepreneurs aren’t familiar with what Bitcoin is or exactly how it works. And those who have read about Bitcoin online have most likely been subjected to misleading information, thanks to a lot of lazy journalism by writers who don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the digital currency being plastered all over the internet these days. Several major media outlets have covered this developing currency, but they aren’t explaining its fundamentals nor practicality properly. In fact, most mainstream media outlets are deeming the digital currency as somewhat of a joke – a fad if you will. I can assure you though, Bitcoin is no joke, and it has made early adopters fortunes in recent years.
Bitcoin, in my opinion, is a compelling example of free market innovation and if adopted on a large scale, could open up markets to entrepreneurs like never before (caveat: I don’t endorse Bitcoin in the slightest, but, conceptually, and if broadly adopted, it could be a force).
Simply put, since 2009 there has been no asset class on the planet which has increased in value more than Bitcoin. As entrepreneurs and investors, that makes Bitcoin extremely relevant. - Read more here: http://capitalistcreations.com/the-only-true-free-market-currency-in-the-world
Christopher Null @christophernull May 20, 2013 1:02 PM. Few phenomena have been so widely discussed yet remain so puzzling as the world of Bitcoins. Businesses galore are now asking themselves whether Bitcoin is something they need to take seriously, even though most have absolutely no idea what it is.
First, a primer.
Bitcoins are, in the words of the Bitcoin Project, open-source, peer-to-peer digital currency. For those accustomed to dollars and cents, almost none of that makes any sense at all. Boiling it down: Bitcoins are a synthetic currency that are kept in a "digital wallet" on your PC or mobile phone. Payments are sent from one wallet to another—similar to Paypal—and an in-depth cryptographic system verifies that transactions (such as purchases) are legitimate. These transactions are verified by other Bitcoin users (part of the P2P aspect of the currency), and as a reward, those transaction processors are eligible to receive newly minted Bitcoins. (These amount to free money, but they are exceedingly difficult to obtain. This has led to sophisticated Bitcoin mining operations sprouting up, as well as an entire industry based on supporting of those operations.)
The fever surrounding Bitcoins has created one of the most volatile investments you can find. A single Bitcoin was worth about $20 in February before climbing to a value of more than $230 by April 10. By April 17, they had dropped to $70. And as I write this on May 20, Bitcoins are trading for $122. Speculating on Bitcoins requires either incredible fortitude or a massive amount of blind faith. - Read more here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039284/should-your-business-start-accepting-bitcoins-.html
RT, Published time: May 21, 2013 07:52. The money that circulates most in the Palestinian Authority (PA) is the Israeli new shekel; guided by an interest rate policy set monthly by the Bank of Israel, which dictates Palestinian finances.
Palestine has tried for decades to establish independence, but Israel has not been willing to give up its colony, so the occupation continues.
But for the first time in history, an emerging country like Palestine has the ability to secede from its occupying overlords by adopting its own cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. Not a shot needs to be fired. No UN votes are needed. No global peace talks. Just Bitcoin for the win.
Pluses include; money can be sent in and out of Palestine completely unmolested by the international bankers who have conspired with Israel to keep Palestinians behind Israel’s apartheid wall; both physical and monetary.
Remember it was an international boycott of UK's Barclays bank that ultimately brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa. Here we have a slightly different situation in that Barclays bank is now part of a government controlled system that relies on rigging Libor, energy, credit default swaps and precious metals markets and there are no exceptions to this rule by manipulation, so mounting a boycott is virtually impossible. Not only has Barclays become 'too big to fail' but it has also become too big to hold accountable for international human rights abuses. (same for the other three big UK banks and the biggest banks in the US too). - Read more here: http://rt.com/op-edge/palestine-switch-to-bitcoin-558
By Adrianne Jeffries on May 21, 2013 09:30 am.The virtual currency has had many near-death experiences in its short four year life, but it just keeps bouncing back. I attended the first Bitcoin World Conference and Expo, held in a second-floor meeting room in a midtown Manhattan hotel, on a Saturday in August 2011. The virtual currency was powering an alternative economy worth around $81 million USD. Roughly 75 attendees, mostly long-haired programmers and pasty cypherpunks, came from as far as Switzerland. After the talks, we took a group photo.
The Bitcoin economy is now worth more than $1 billion USD. More than 1,000 people showed up last weekend at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center for Bitcoin 2013, a much more professional affair hosted by the non-profit Bitcoin Foundation. Lanyarded Bitcoiners swarmed the trade show booths on Friday night, gripping wine in clear plastic cups, as a comedian opened the convention to a lukewarm reception. “Democrats, make some noise!” he cried. Feeble clapping. “Republicans, make some noise!” Another smattering. He looked puzzled until a heckler suggested a third group. “Libertarians, make some noise!” The audience roared.
Bitcoin 2013 had four speaker tracks, catered lunches, and parties with open bars. There was even a celebrity keynote given by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the athletic twins made famous by The Social Network, who recently purchased 1 percent of all the Bitcoins in circulation.
The twins took the stage around 8:30PM, by which time the crowd was so lubricated that a dull hum of conversation continued throughout the talk. Cameron was wearing a blue checked shirt and black pants. Tyler was wearing a black shirt and black pants. They compared Bitcoin to the automobile, voice over IP, and Amazon.com, all disruptive technologies with steep adoption curves.
“Do you guys remember Horton Hears a Who?” Cameron asked, referring to the Dr. Seuss book in which an elephant is ostracized after he discovers a microscopic race that lives on a dust-sized planet called Whoville. “Everyone here hears a Who.” - Read more here: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4348064/why-wont-bitcoin-die
Jerry Brito | May 20, 2013. This past weekend I attended the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose, where over one thousand enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and, yes, lawyers gathered to chart the future of the virtual currency. Here are the top three things I learned at the conference.
Bitcoin is about more than payments
Bitcoin is an even bigger deal than I thought. While the currency is best known as a censorship-resistant and somewhat-anonymous payments system, it has the potential to be so much more.
“Ultimately bitcoins are data, and you can use a data transit protocol to transit information other than just ‘I’m sending you bitcoins.’ It could be ‘I’m sending you a stock,’ or it could be ‘I’m sending you a bet,’” says Jeff Garzik, one of the six Bitcoin core developers.
Thought of this way, the Bitcoin network is a platform on top of which other layers of functionality can run, much like the Web or e-mail are protocols that run on top of the Internet’s foundational TCP/IP protocol. Bitcoin therefore has the potential to spawn any number of other services that are decentralized, and thus difficult to regulate or control.
One application for such an extension to Bitcoin would be decentralized electronic markets—whether for futures contracts, sports betting, or anything else. - Read more here: http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/20/the-top-3-things-i-learned-at-the-bitcoi
RYAN COX | MAY 21ST. Updated with full video, see below.
On today’s SiliconANGLE Live NewsDesk Show, (see embed feed below or visit youtube.com/siliconangle to watch on-demand), we learn that Butterfly Labs has finally begun to ship its long awaited ASIC Bitcoin Miners.
Imagine being told about something great that you want, and then told about delay after delay on a pre-order you made some 10 months ago. That’s the messy story of Butterfly Labs over the last year. Originally, it had promised four different equipment configurations:
- 5 GH/s Bitcoin Miner – Jalapeno
- 25 GH/s Bitcoin Miner – “Little Single”
- 50 GH/S Bitcoin Miner – “Single”
- 1,500 GH/s Bitcoin Miner – Mini Rig
- Read more here: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/05/21/live-butterfly-labs-is-finally-shipping-asic-bitcoin-miners-start-digging
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