Bitcoin Forum

uhoh...

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/

HN discussion on the matter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3797977

Interesting.

Looks like coin generation is through trusted brokers.

Looking through the limited information I am not sure how they prevent a double spend.

This only 2 days after the reuters article (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-traders-bitcoin-idUSBRE83108120120402) that cointained the following quote makes me think if we haven't been taken for a ride by the one that Phinnaeus Gage so dearly calls "Our Girl" by using Bitcoin to advertise a competing system backed by The Royal Canadian Mint...
From "exploring how to issue digital currency in the future" to launching it in a couple days...

MintChip is inflatacoin. The system imposes no limit to how much "cash" the issuer can magically create.

So how long before this is hacked?  Place your bets!

I think I'm seeing a thinly veiled threat or maybe I hearing a dog whistle?

"but that could change very suddenly... Without that backing or a similar power base, Bitcoin lives with the ever-present risk of failure."

I think not very long.  The details are very limited but it seems like all tx validation is done locally on the smartcard chip.  Hack that and you should be able to double spend at will.

There is also a central authority which is the Royal Canadian Mint.  Kudos to them for taking this effort unlike other mints around the world.  But at this point I am skeptical.

Intesting! So fast!

Makes you think about it, doesn't it? ;)

Replace "MintChip" with "bitcoin" in the video, add a part about decentralization and an analogy to gold, and you get a bitcoin ad.

This is a great idea...who wants to do it?

With regard to currencies, fiat or crypto, I see 2 issues: 1) the currency itself 2) how to make payments with the currency. In this case this will help to make new ways to pay with Canadian dollars which is good. But since it's still using the Canadian Dollar, the currency itself has the disadvantages of fiat currencies, namely the tendency of the central bank to increase the money supply over time and reduce the purchasing power of the currency. That's where fiat currencies are not doing a good job and where bitcoin could really shine, as a store of value and preserving its purchasing power over time.

Have fun...

So you can buy drugs with MintChip and send MintChips across borders.  If the gov't of Canada can do this then U.S. politicians must give into bitcoin.  I see this as a bitcoin win.

This is a clear sign that Bitcoin is ahead of it's time and we should be stressing this point (and pointing out the clear difference that MintChip still requires trust in a government).

+1 for double standards!!

Standards are like testicles: Every dick has 2.

yup, way ahead i'm afraid. There will come lots of centralized versions of digital currencies by powerful players first that probably also have the resources to provide a strong network effect. People will have to get burnt time and time again until they learn the value of decentralization.

Ironically, they're getting burned and burned time and time again with decentralization too.

Thread title is inaccurate. It's not an alternative to Bitcoin because MintChip is centralized and requires trust in one entity. It's a competitor, however, because it competes on an electronic functionality level.

Exactly. And compete it shall!

and with official currencies too and still they don't learn  >:(

MintChip is DOA: Dead on Arrival

+10 ;D

I'm not so sure.

One thing this, and Bitcoin too, has shown me is that money is changing -- it no longer needs to be local to gain adoption. People are going to look for whatever is most convenient to exchange and is the best store of value, two key functions of "money". In the past, since people and economies were separated physically, and money was/is physical, the local currency would win by default.

With the Internet this is no longer the case. Now it comes down to the nitty gritty. Currency systems will compete globally. And since software can be the same anywhere, the money that wins will be what people agree has the best value.

Inflated paper currencies are on their way out. They are about to self-destruct anyway, but even if not they represent old technology. Globalized e-currency will be what is next.

However, just as the Internet enables better money systems it will allow people to get better at identifying them. Information is no longer encapsulated and unavailable to the uninformed. It won't be easy or perhaps even possible for currencies to be inflated without being severely devalued. I believe the world will identify gold and silver as a benchmark. These metals have been recognized as valuable as money for thousands of years, and are not inflationary. I doubt that will change.

I think people will maintain a physical store of gold/silver as savings, and convert them to the winning e-currency(ies) as needed. Bitcoin, with its transparent, verifiable cap at 21 million coins, and authority-less features, will have obvious value. The governmental/regulatory environment that springs up around it will determine what role it plays in everyday mainstream use.

On the other hand, currency like this MintChip is novel as the first e-currency sponsored by a government. What they do with it remains to be seen, but it appears they are looking to inflate it. The only clue we have is from the CEO who commented (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/01/traders-bitcoin-idUSL6E8ET5K620120401) it would be "backed by a fund". Not backed by gold or silver (which could be surreptitiously inflated anyway), but backed by a fund. That leads me to believe it won't go very far with acceptance.

EDIT: Here is more reading I found on MintChip. It appears there is more in store from them April 17th.

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/canadian_news/2012/03/15/3426.html

This is a good thing for bitcoin. Canada's backing will put MintChip into many stores as a payment option. Exchange between MintChip and Bitcoin will be easier than any other fiat currency with its irrevocable electronic transactions, anyone will be able to start an exchange without having to rely on paypal or other processors. Essentially we could end up with a system like:
MintChip = checking account
Bitcoin = savings account

Hopefully, MintChip will be even better than Interac e-Transfers for buying bitcoins with canadian dollars.

The options for depositing/withdrawing on CaVirtex are quite limited by my bank.

A hard backed Bitcoin alternative would be pretty easy to setup I think. All you need is to remove the coin generation, and start the initial block with a ridiculously large amount of money. So the Canadian Mint holds the private keys to 10 trillion BTC. These could possibly be timelocked as well, so they absolutely cannot go into circulation all at once. Then they have an open contract to sell anyone funds from their huge reserve of BTC in exchange for equivalent CAD which they will remove from circulation, and they also agree to buy back these BTC for the locked away (or freshly minted) CAD.

You know, this really gets me thinking - what if the US gov were to start Bitdollar?  They just have to require all merchants (in the US) to accept it as legal tender.  Seems like Bitcoin would immediately become irrelevant as Bitdollar would quickly be adopted world-wide.

Yes, a hard backed Bitcoin alternative could be set up quite easily. But then the government couldn't inflate the currency. What incentive would a government have to do it? The goodness of their heart?

Of course they could inflate the currency - they can change the software/protocol any time and require everyone to update.

No merchant is under any obligation to accept legal tender.
Legal tender requirements only apply to debts.

Still why would US govt want to start Bitdollar when they can just keep printing trillions and trillions of increasingly worthless dollars.

Since the security is in the hardware device, I'm sure there will be a limit on the value of each transaction. Also, expect every coin to keep a full history of the bank account it was originally created from, the devices it traveled to in the meantime, and the bank account it was later deposited to.

This means that unlike Bitcoin, if you ever funded your MintChip from you bank account, all your operations on that device will become trackable by the central bank. It's not clear as of yet if one will be able to purchase MintChips anonymously, or there would be some kind of forced "activation" where the devices is tied to your bank account, thus obliterating any trace of privacy. I'll put my money on the later.

I would go, but its $2200!

Just validates Bitcoin as a technology game changer. Also, validates its legal.

Sure they could. Remember that the government controls and keeps a huge portion of the digital currency in reserve. The reserve could theoretically be larger than the entire amount of real backing currency in existence. And they still control the backing currency. Inflate that and you inflate the digitally overlaid currency too. Or they could separate the backing whenever they wish and sell off their entire reserve of digital currency while refusing to buy any of it back.


No they can't really, at least not the way I described it. The underlying network is still bitcoin and there is no way to force people to update their client short of passing a law.

I'd put my money on the latter too.

However, their site says "all the benefits of cash ... instant private secure". I'd imagine that means anonymous too, but I guess we have to wait and see.

As soon as they announced this required update you can bet everyone would be running to exchange the currency for its backing.

hmm. this makes it appear that MintChip just make a way to use regular currency digitally, rather than creating a new currency.

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/api/java/ca/mint/mintchip/contract/package-frame.html


The chip appears to "enhance privacy" by making your private transactions recorded by the RCM. It appears to conduct transactions in standard reserve currencies (EUR,JPY,USD.GBP, etc)

It makes it appear to the parties in the transaction that it's private, while likely allowing the RCM and possibly others to dig up the entire transaction history.

Can U say "big brother money chip?" - I knew that you could.

When you say "real backing currency" you are talking about reserved gold or silver, as that's what hard backing means, right? So they would keep a larger amount of digital currency in reserve than the gold/silver they used as backing? I'm pretty sure the public would want to verify they had the amount of precious metal they claimed.

What do you mean inflate the backing currency? You can't inflate gold or silver.

i say we make it possible to buy bitcoin with mint chip, and submit that as our proofs of concept utilizing MintChip!

Owned   8)

the future is going to be filled with "new money systems" i think bitcoin should be prepared to embrace all these systems, and hope we come out as the Gold standard of digital money   

This ^^ lol

I gave some current examples - EUR, GBP, USD, CAD, JPY. They are listed on the diagram in the link I posted.

I specifically doubt that this MintChip will use XAU or XAG (gold and silver) as currencies. They are not on the list.

I did not mean "real" as in "hard commodity" I meant "real" as in "accepted government backed currency" - I meant "real from the perspective of the Royal Canadian Mint - not my own perspective. Sorry for the confusion. Poor word choice.

absolutely.  Show how MintChip is limited and it can be converted easily to something that is unlimited. 

@guruvan - my reply there was actually to Dan The Man :)

lol. Sounded like I would have said it too.  ::) ;D

Double Spending Issue:

MintChip Value

On receiving the value request message, the Sender's MintChip creates the value message that represents a monetary value in transition. The value message contains the requested monetary amount and can only be consumed by the Receiver's MintChip identified by its unique ID. The value message is digitally signed to protect against any tampering. Once the value message is created by the Sender's MintChip, the MintChip's balance is decreased by the corresponding value. This transaction is irrevocable. The Sender cannot stop or cancel the transaction after the value message has been created. On receiving the value message, the Receiver's MintChip verifies the validity of the message using the digital signature and the Sender's public certificate embedded in the message. It also verifies that the value message is not a duplicate using the challenge value. If the value message is valid, the Receiver's MintChip balance gets incremented by the amount specified in the value message.

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/devguide/transactions.html

.....They basically lead you to believe that there is no central authority, but all these rules are made and governed by the Canadian Mint, so they are above the law and can do what they want.

that's sure how i read it.

Great opportunity for P2P-exchange between Bitcoin and MintChip.
Bye-bye Gox and last Bitcoin weakness.
This is really exciting times.

Actually its more of direct threat to Mt. Cocks then it is to Bitcoin.

Just came back in from one of my warehouses and was going to post a similar sentiment. Embrace MintChip by using it as a marketing tool when bringing awareness to Bitcoin. When approaching potential converts, point out the fact that Canada is embracing the Bitcoin model. See what I did there?

~Bruno~

I concur with Guruvan. Remember that with a system built around bitcoin that doesn't use mining, you can only inject coins at the genesis block. Having a method for later injection from a trusted source is asking for hacking. The way the backing would work with newbitcoin wouldn't be that you set aside a backing for all the Newbitcoin you produce. That could leave you with a big pile of shit really fast. Instead, you would produce way more Newbitcoin than you will ever use or need. And you set aside the backing currency when those newbitcoins go into circulation. So you as the central authority, have an open contract to buy and sell newbitcoin at 1:1 for Canadian dollars. Since you start with a monopoly on all of the newbitcoin in existence it is an easy contract to keep.

Nothing exciting nor threatening to bitcoin ... governments printing (sorry... electronically issuing) fiat. NO thank you. I saw how it ends ;) Backed by the Royal Canadian Mint? How is this going to be "Private"? Governments desperate to seize control of at least a portion of the electronic currency revolution.

Bitcoin and the exchanging ecosystem might need to mature, but I'll rather stick with it.

exiting times! this thingie looks like bitcoins handicapped brother.

on the negative side:
- obviously double spends will be possible
- requires special hardware
- is still fiat money whose value always goes to zero

on the plus side:
 - has gov. backing
 - is tied to the CAD which might be better than USD or EUR in the mid-term future.
 - is already an currency, more clear legal status
 - the whole website seems to be targeted to developers with actual code and is not just slapped-together powerpoint slides

i'm going to study the code samples etc ASAP.

yes, it totally reminds me of that. somebody tried to pitch it to Eric Schmidt recently.

I guess it is in the eye of the beholder as they say. This to me is a HUGE setback. With paper printed monopoly fiat, at least the government does not have a way to track my activity. I'll stick with that short term, and with bitcoin long term.

You keep talking about a "backing currency" but we were originally talking about hard backing. That means gold or silver.

I wasn't talking about gold or silver, and he said he wasn't either. So that leaves only you talking about gold an silver. Consider the context of the Canadian Mint creating a digital currency and it becomes more clear that the backing in this case is Canadian dollars.

Roberto I agree 100%

Agreed, it's a good thing short term; but bitcoin will prevail long term. (fingers crossed)

You were not talking about gold or silver?


Bold emphasis mine. Hard backed means backed by gold or silver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_money_(policy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_money_(policy))

Anyway I've got to log off now. Be back later.

This seems fake.

It's as fake as a fake can be.

of course, this all depends on the perspective. from a plain'ol merchants POV this is positive, since they will not have any legal hassle.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
i'd really, really like to get that physical kit for playing around with it.

Also, I find it funny that David Birch, the Bitcoin nemesis is one of the judges in the challenge.

"the core of MintChip is an integrated circuit "

OK this is yet another hardware based, centralized system ..

As much an alternative to bitcoin as .. (fill in whatever crosses your mind now)

I would say an engagement in the patent war to get electronic "fiat" money onto SIM cards and EMV cards.

Well this is interesting.  So many thoughts.

First of all, April fools!

Obviously there is a vacuum for a digital currency backed by precious metals (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68162.msg794795#msg794795).  Perhaps that is what they are thinking.

If this actually exists and is as "private" as they claim, it could be a boon for Bitcoin in order to help stabilize inter-exchange arbitrage without relying on shifty 3rd party payment networks.

And finally, the invasion begins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxPRHXgYVlk) in 3, 2, 1...

Okay and what about unichs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jgbk9BIVlQ&t=3m22s

just downloaded the java examples (which come compiled only)
i decompiled all jar/class files using JAD to get a quick overview how it works in detail. this info may not be 100% correct since i only took a quick look and i do not have the hardware

in depth it looks like it works like that:
1) a service decides it wants to get paid. it issues a IValueRequestMessage which contains
amount
currency
payer ID (looks like its sort of customer number/or user definable number)
annotation (msg to go along with payment)
challenge which may be generated at random? from Hardware
response-address; base64coded from ASN-serialized/DER encoded binary message which is basically an equivalent of an Tx Output

2) the payer replys with a IValueMessage containing
amount
currency
payeeId
payerid
payercertificate
challenge
min-version ??
generation time
annotation
ASN-serialized/DER encoded data which comes from the hardware-chip that encodes a set of Tx Inputs. It looks like to handle "change" money the payer may first split existing outputs into multiple child nodes. this splitting occurs also on hardware.

so the hardware not only stores private keys, it also stores all relevant previous transactions.

the API supports both debit and also credit transactions, they seem to be two distinct crypto chains. so you can also pay someone without having a positive balance. the credit can be paid off by receiving valuemessage
according to error codes - for credit there seems to be a limit stored in the HW.


what looks like unspecified is how payee+payer communicate their data. in the android demo application you have to load the message from SD card. i'm not sure if it may be possible to encode all this ASN/DER encoded payment graph into a QR Code.

There's no specific reason they couldn't issue to MintChip XAU back XAU (Gold) though, just as they would for USDs.  They could issue BTCs through MintChips and back them as well.

But will the Royal Canadian Mint honestly be holding JPY, RUB and CHFs to back funds issued on MintChips in those currencies?  Or will they only happen to use CAD, even though the technology supports the others?

we might be able to use this mint chip to finally be able to implement a fully decentralized, automated, and anonymous  bitcoin exchange!

Ok, so TechCrunch I think gave a good run down of the differences:

I'll post relevant quotes from: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/04/royal-canadian-mints-mintchip-looks-to-officially-digitize-cash/


Thoughts?

This sounds like a desperation move as the RCM monetary overlords (and other CB's no doubt) have fully realised the implications Bitcoin has for their monopoly power over money and are mounting an unseemly, hasty effort to outflank. Maybe Canada is a test case for global designs?

It is half-baked, ill-informed and vague, desperate even. Gold bounties for developers to join their forces reeks of kitschy imitation of the organic bitcoin bounty system for devs. It is something they would dearly love to have but can never grasp .... with all the 'money' in the world.

I would say this move is definitely prompted by the advent of Bitcoin but it has inevitable and epic fail written all over it ... steer clear.

Also it means Bitcoin has progressed to the third stage of Ghandi's conflict maxim: "First they ignore, then they ridicule, then THEY FIGHT ....."


Edit: the big lose for me though was they named it after an ice cream flavour

MintChip has gr8 potential, and anyone here that cant recognize that lives in a bitcoin bubble. bitcoin's approach to digital cash is fundamentally better, and actually is a new currency system. But this is partly why it is so hard for people to accept it.

people will see like this:
 bitcoin is wild and unfamiliar, and MintChip is the same old money they trust, in a digital form for connivance.

in any-case MintChip is exciting news, more so for bitcoiners then anyone else.

Freudian slip...

Seriously? You found this in TechCrunch? ;) It is surprisingly right on.

This is exactly how I read the web pages they provided. Yeah, it's as anonymous and secure as informing the government of your every move. If it weren't for the trust model I'd like it, probably. I do like what it will do for getting more people into the idea of 100% digital money. But, I also don't really expect everyone to jump right into the P2P trust model either.

This sounds to me like the old sci-fi promise of using "credits" in some vague electronic way.

More than anything it seems a pretty straight forward attempt at being able to digitally wiretap all financial conversations. Maybe they just want to try that out in a "small" place before they roll it out under the Federal Reserve.

(oh, yeah, TC might even be right about BTC fluctuating too wildly for spending on coffee...I'd sell coffee for BTC , though!)

I just want to see if they keep the no-chargeback policy or if they will pull a Dwolla...

Should we add that to the Bitcoin lexicon? First, we had Goxed (and Goxxed), then Zhoutonged, and now, pull-a-Dwolla, or would Pulla-Dwolla have a better ring to it?

Fake Quote

Wouldn't that be "got Dwollared"

as in "Trade Hill got Dwollared when their merchant account containing hundreds of thousands was frozen"

Yep, but opt to pull away for the "got" part since psy wrote the following:


As I've stated, it has a nice ring to it: pull-a-Dwolla or pulla-dwolla or Pull-a-Dwolla.

~Bruno~

Maybe we could offer merged mining for the lulz.

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/assets/images/eco_system.jpg

The MintChip technology only supports non-reversible transactions.  If you notice in the flow diagram though there is only one arrow on the "Redeem MintChip".   There actually should be another arrow the other direction indicating the redemption payment that is made in CADs or other currency to the MintChip acceptor's bank account.  If "chargebacks" occur, they will come in either blacklisting Acceptors or in clawing back redemptions sent to the bank accounts.

If the merchant gets left holding the bag after accepting "bad" funds in a transaction using MintChip then the merchant is going to adjust and not accept MintChip payments from questionable people, or to start requiring identity information from the buyer, etc.   Then that starts a chain reaction so maybe who knows if they'ld start doing that.

What will make all the difference is knowing if there will be restrictions on how these are issued (i.e., can be bought anonymously) and if there are restrictions on their use.   If the MintChip can be sold from the broker without requiring identification and there are no restrictions on its use (e.g., if you happen to find a MintChip on the sidewalk you are allowed to keep it), then the MintChip becomes a different animal.

Not sure why there is so much negativity in the comments here. This is great news for Bitcoin. Certainly MintChip is completely different in technical terms, but it shares some attributes with Bitcoin as far as a lay person or a judge or government bureaucrat is concerned. If you look at this picture

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/assets/images/eco_system.jpg

you will notice that Bitcoin essentially provides a secure, decentralized way of doing what the top (minting) and bottom (p2p transactions) of the picture represent, while eliminating the centre. If this picture is legal, so is Bitcoin.

Is anyone thinking about the inevitable mint chip cloning. 

A successful clone would need a private key, but maybe a virus could harvest these. 

Double spending shouldn't be an issue, as there is a random code placed in every transaction, if two transactions have the same random code then only one will be accepted. 

It just has a serious ring of big brother wanting to know about the small cash I transfer, and about potentially wanting to use that evidence against me (whether I have committed a crime or not). Seems pretty innocuous in Canada. I doubt it would be here in the US. It would go right up there with other choice things like the NDAA and the Patriot Act. Even if the government can't wiretap your financial transactions through MintChip, I'm sure it would be excellent for forensics. I'm sure all the hidden APIs will be super fun for LE.

I am skeptical of the "anonymity" - my normal presumption would be that there is ID involved in the transfer of funds via the Trusted Broker from your bank or from cash to a MintChip.

I really like the fact that it looks like it may be able to be used exactly like cash. I owe you $20K, I bring a microSD card w/ a MintChip w/ the funds, and give it to you by hand.

The other thing that may be a significant issue for this is that if it can be used in the way I describe above, it will start to trade at its own value, which would fluctuate with the value of the currency used in it, but not directly. One of the two (paper or chip) will likely start to trade at a discount to the other. (Depending on the market forces which would be dictated by the preferred means of the vendors, and the ease of anonymous acquisition of the chips).

The chip dollar and the paper dollar may have the same face value, but if you can't spend one much (likely paper) then you'll pay extra to get the other. Right now, Paper USD trades at a premium to digital USD (most of the time)  that credit/debit card money you spend is usually 1:1, if you take the same card  to the bank, there is a fee - the paper is trading a little higher than the digits.

TBH, my negativity is more rooted in the chip than the specifics of the rest of the model, which I said i thought I like. I especially like the psychology of what this type of "authorized" technology does for future bitcoin adoption.

I believe many here echo the same sentiment, it's just that's there's so much information to currently digest, users are just expressing the myriad aspects of MintChip, some of which involve negative components.

~Bruno~

Are we talking about "anonymity" or "privacy" for, remember, David Birch is a judge in this endeavor? Review the following video to see what I mean. What I'm in reference to is in the beginning, but take the time to re-watch the full video if it's been a while since you've last view it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhPZv8nOq5o

~Bruno~

I have a feeling this is a very bad thing. Essentially, it will privatize the entire Canadian money supply as a for-profit no-bid contract. Privacy and free-trade are likely to be the first casualties.

The only way to improve upon this image is if you had another Financial Institution image on the far left, move the the other one further right, then link them with a double arrow, thus creating value among themselves.

Just thought of something else. Have a faded dotted line from below, linked to them, representing a bone (donation) tossed their way for provided the rest of us entertainment.

~Bruno~

the thing is mintchip is just not as good as Bitcoin. It lacks some of the most attractive aspects of BTC. 
But when is a movie with "2" in the title ever as good as the first?

I wonder how this is a whole lot different than the smart card on my university ID I used more than a decade ago in the vending machines?

It seems like this'll make a great complement to Bitcoin, as well as legitimizing it greatly.  I highly doubt it will replace Bitcoin.  Just too much stuff different.

I am guessing if your chip stops working (e.g. takes an ESD hit), you're screwed, your money's gone.

And if someone cracks the chip and extracts even a single chip's private key, seems the whole thing fails.  As I understand it, Canada has got some seriously good reverse engineers of chips, judging by the sophisticated means they use to crack the regular revisions of the US satellite TV smart cards... cracked mainly because that's the only way to get the programming that's simply not offered in Canada.

My initial reaction was fear. My current reaction is laughter.

This is HUGE for bitcoin.  Anything that legitimizes and introduces people to purely digital currency is good for bitcoin.  It will expand the market of people who can come into contact with bitcoin.  This is a good thing.  And exchange between mintwhatever and bitcoin will also be very easy to set up.  God I hope pokerstars allows cashouts to mintship.  I'm losing about 20% every fucking cashout!

If i don't see source code posted anywhere, then i don't treat a digital currency seriously.


Also, +1.

MintChip itself is nothing like Bitcoin, but its existence is good for Bitcoin.

Obviously the important feature here is the ability to make transfers without access to a central clearing house.  That's an advantage over Bitcoin.  And it doesn't seem that useful in a first world country.  I'm guessing this is designed for export, and will be aimed at developing countries with poor telecom/internet infrastructure.

Since Canada is set to maintain a huge export trade in natural resources, perhaps they are looking to collect enough foreign currencies to back this system, and parlay that into providing currency services globally.  Seems risky.

Which means they have likely already planned to have US military support.  So, is this the Dollar replacement?  Being beta-tested on those willing heathen socialist Canadians?  Chipcoin?  666, mark of the beast?  Do we all get one implanted?  And when it runs out of memory from too many transactions, we get to visit our friendly local "trusted broker" to have the contents downloaded for analysis and the transaction count reset?  Perhaps with a few extra chipcoins thrown his way, my trusted broker can be convinced to overlook some of my transactions, wink wink.  Perhaps he could even be convinced to up my chipcoin balance a bit.

I don't know.  I don't like the way this sounds.  It seems too ambitious.  Even the video showed all the transactions in USD.  And the development is aimed at Americans as well.  Normally, co-opting the US Dollar gets you liberated or thrown in jail.  Something is fishy.

The big win for MintChip is ease of use, which may lead to ubiquity. In every other respect, Bitcoin beats it.

not yet. currently there is basically no ease of use. in the two demo apps if you want to pay someone you have to download a ValueRequestMessage which is a file minimum 200 bytes (can be even larger) then the user has to import it to his MitChip App and generate a signed response. send the file over to the merchant. merchant imports it.

of course in practice this will be significantly easier (NFC, QR Code, URL, callbacks), if all MintChip standardize on a way to exchange ValueRequestMessage+ValueMessage but right now Bitcoin usability is OK-ish and MintChip is abysmal.

Reasons why mintchip will succeed and be massively addopted and bitcoin will not:

- Videos, just look at that one single video they put out, it's better then all the bitcoin videos from over the past 2 years put together. (they know how to market their product)
- ... Hmm... that was it actually...

When talking to strangers and bring up bitcoin, they have never heard of it, none of them... (and yea, then it all starts over again 'ponzi scheme, scam, blabla...').
But this, this is the Royal Canadian Mint, or FED or whoever comes up with it. They have instant trust, specially with these smooth videos.

to be clear, the one video we're talking about is the video in the first link in this thread here:

http://developer.mintchipchallenge.com/

right?

Are there any videos showing this in practice?  Or is it not even ready for release yet?

Nope, my point exactly, and i think people will already be drooling over the idea... 'oh wow, if only this would be released to the public!'
Also, im just ranting out of frustration by how people react to bitcoin.. :)

I'll be waiting for a Prime Time tv show (http://www.sidereel.com/The_Good_Wife/season-3/episode-13) to be about Mint Chip.

Since Canada will be able to print Mint Chip at will, maybe they found a way to buy into Bitcoin without all the hard work of running miners or trading bots.

You got me! Upon hovering over the link, I learned it wasn't directed toward The Bitcoin Show.

Did you know the Canadian mint is discontinuing the penny? http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/03/29/federalbudget-flaherty-penny-cent.html

Also, Fast Company just released a similar article, one with Bitcoin in its title: http://www.fastcompany.com/1829662/canada-to-launch-its-own-version-of-bitcoin-called-mintchip?partner=gnews

~Bruno~

Yay, more false information about bitcoin... -.-
The only link between bitcoin and mintchip is that it's digital as far as i can tell.

+1 !

Isn't there encryption involved as well? 

How much more of a link do you need to say they are related?

So winzip and Bitcoin are related.

Even if we exclude the fact of trusted brokers and central issuance there is the fundamental concept of security.

With Bitcoin what prevents you from cheating?  What prevents you from making coins out of thin air or spending the same coin a billion times?  The blockchain.  The consensus reached by the distributed network.   You don't send coins to the receiver you record the tx into the blockchain.

With MintChip there is no blockchain. There is no central ledger (centralized or decentralized).  What prevents security is the "chip".  Given every single chip ever made to control access to value (cellphones, sat TV, software, DVD/Bluray) has been broken it is highly unlikely MintChip won't also be broken.

With Bitcoin breaking the client is useless.  The security comes not from the client but from the network.  With MintChip there is a direct tangible benefit of breaking the chip.  A hacked chip would allow you to create tx which are worthless but completely undetectable by the recipient. 

This is amazing.  It looks like this whole system is designed for the very low transaction amounts of 1cent to $10, and for OFFLINE transactions from individual to individual.

This isn't any kind of competitor to bitcoin, this is a companion product. Anything over $10 would make sense to use bitcoin, but you would also keep one or more mintchip cards in your phone etc. And transferring very small amounts person to person would use mintchip. I think its genius.

I would say the security concerns would be balanced by the fact each mintchip probably has a maximum balance of like $10. So it would cost millions of dollars of scanning electron microscope equipment to try and extract a private key to only get $10? Thats infeasible enough that it works perfectly fine I bet.

I doubt it will take millions of dollars in hardware to break it but hypothetically lets say it did.
There is nothing that indicates the max per chip is $10 but lets say it is (honestly a chip w/ max of $10 is essentially useless.  couldn't even use it to settle up on a business dinner).

Still lets pretend both those conditions exist:
1 million tx of fake $10 ea = lots of fake money.

In essence it is like inflation but instead of the central bank inflating it is thieves who are inflating.  As the # of chip dollars grows in excess of the reserve the redemption rate of chip:physical will decline.

If the microsd cards do all the encryption internally, then you need to physically get the encryption key out like they do with current smart card hacking, which means hours of work and massive expensive electron microscopes. And UNLIKE the satellite video hacking that goes on you need to do it for EACH and every private key you want to acquire, instead of one used by all devices in existance.

If you read the developer documents and the video they specifically say the system is designed to work on transactions under $10, and especially down to 1 cent. So this sytem is designed to be used on digital goods purchasing, or vending machines, or very small transactions.

This is solving a very specific and huge gap in current economy where small transactions are infeasable due to transaction fees. Limiting the value on a single card makes perfect sense as to make hacking it not worthwhile.

You are not suppose to use mintchips to pay for lunch or buy anything over $10. That is not its purpose, its purpose is for shifting very small amounts around between individuals. Its alot like the Ripple Project, where its not designed for a big company to collect much income. It is for many people to collect small income from each other and move it around amongst themselves.


How do you expect to make these millions of fake transactions? If you have to communicate with mintchip central to reload your "hacked" card that can only hold $10 maximum (this is an assumption i dont know for sure yet, but I have to assume it has a fairly low maximum load) And the time it would take you to hack many many cards would be infeasable.

What are you talking about?

The point of hacking the card would be to extract the private keys and use those to create tx.
Tx that the the receiver's chip will validate as 100% authentic.

Card with $10USD
tx 1 for $10 USD
tx 2 for $10 USD
tx 3 for $10 USD
....
tx 1,000,000 for $10 USD.

In Bitcoin this is impossible because each tx is submitted to the blockchain.  The merchant getting tx2 will see tx1 on the blockchain and know it is fake.  With MintChip there is no central "ledger".  Each chip uses ONLY the tx is receives to verify if it is valid.  Nothing else.  No calls to trusted broker, no central ledger, no communication with central bank.

If you make a fake/duplicate tx which is signed as valid the receiver has no way to know it isn't valid.  In essence you just printed money.  Your logic is like saying nobody will ever counterfeit $20 bills because they are at most worth $20 ($20 is most commonly counterfeited bill).   Sure if you intend to only make 1 fake $20 bill it isn't worth it but making 1 million fake $20 bills isn't much harder than making 1.  Obviously nobody intending to counterfeit intends to only make a handful of fake bills.  

With digital currency making a trillion fake $10 tx is no harder than making 1 fake $10 tx.

And lastly obviously buying funds from the central bank wouldn't be fake funds would it?

Given every single "the secret is on the chip" system has been broken to think this one will be the impossible one is kinda naive.  At one time people said counterfeiting sat TV cards was impossible too.

One particular thing I found interesting is that the field for the dollar amount in a transaction is only a 24-bit integer denominated in cents.  That means the system, by design, is being built with a hard coded limit of 16777216 cents, or $167,772.16 in Canadian dollars, per transaction.  That seemed like a very low limit for something being designed as "the future of currency"!

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was much better than the original Star Wars. :)

MintChip, meet Ice Cream.

http://www.zayetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ice-Cream-Sandwich-OS-Android-4.0.jpg


Soon accepted at all Baskin Robbins in Canada.


http://www.poi-factory.com/files/img/baskin-robbins1_0.jpg

---

List of Judges: http://mintchipchallenge.com/details/judging

Osama Bedier
Vice President of Payments, Google

Ian Bennett
President and CEO, Royal Canadian Mint

David Birch
Director, Consult Hyperion

Bob Borchers
General Partner, Opus Capital

David Crow
Chief Marketing Officer, Maintenance Assistant Inc.

Jeff King
Senior Director X.commerce Platform Partnerships, eBay

Amanda Lang
Senior Business Correspondent for CBC News and Anchor of The Lang & O’Leary Exchange

We can't buy bitcoins with PayPal or Credit Card because it's almost impossible ,or very very costly, to connect reversible and irreversible payment systems. Looks like developers of MintChip don't know that yet.

Well three possible outcomes:
a) they crash and burn because it honestly is a real difficulty problem.
b) they figure it out and we copy them.
c) they figure it out but we can't copy them so we buy BTC with MintChips.

Honestly I think a is going to happen but any of the three is a win.

But Episode 2: A New Hope was lame... The Phantom Menace was better.  I don't agree that 5 was better than 4, but that's irrelevant to RodeoX's point.

Why do you think this? I thought the description made it pretty clear there is a central clearinghouse for all transactions. Your money is not on the chip, the chip is just an account# and keys to spend. The balance is recorded in the central clearinghouse. The devices are just able to check that transactions are signed by the certificate authority without having to ask the clearinghouse themselves, basically it means the business you are transacting with can give you a receipt that proves they sent/received the money.


c
Western Union currently does this, they make it clear to banks any money sent to them is nonrefundable (they are large enough to negotiate such an arrangement unlike other smaller processors and thus banks have serious limits on how much they allow you to send to western union and probably more sensitive fraud detection) or they require you to hand money over in person. There is no reason why a government could not tell banks in its country that any money sent to mintchip cannot be reversed, and leave it to the bank to decide how much they want to risk.

Well, there will be a ledger recording issuance and redemption I'm presuming, it just won't be real-time.

For instance, the broker will know which MintChip id the funds went to.  So the Mint's "centralized ledger" will probably show that.

After that, the broker doesn't and can't know if the funds have then been spent to another MintChip though.  Those transactions are from one MintChip to another MintChip and don't have to to be checked against a central ledger to see if the funds are good.  

Only when a person or merchant redeems the funds on its MintChip back to a broker (in exchange for fiat) does the trail of transactions become known to the broker or Mint.

So technically there is a centralized ledger, it just isn't complete with real-time information as to which MintChip has what funds.

Absolutely nothing indicates that.  Nowhere in the docs, descriptions, API.  Nowhere.

Tx are person to person.

Receiver chip makes a request. Sender chip uses that to create a credit, sign it, and give it DIRECTLY to the receiver.  Receiver chip updates internal balance and senders chip reduces internal balance.

Please indicate anywhere that indicates tx between users are recorded to a clearinghouse.

Well technicalities or not the point is that when User A is paying user B, user B is relying on the fact that user A "can't" break the chip.  The chip ensures security.  If User A has extracted private keys and can generate thousands or millions of duplicate tx at will there is nothing user B can do to detect that.  To user B chip the tx looks as valid as any other valid tx.  

If I'm reading their specs correctly, if A manages to break the chip she could generate duplicate transactions for the full value stored on the chip to B and C and D (and E and F and...).

But she wouldn't be able to double-spend the same funds to B, because B's chip is able to detect that attempted double-spend.

Eventually, I assume the Mint would figure out that the same funds were spent at B and C and D and... etc, just like the Mint eventually figures out when a lot of counterfeit paper notes are being spent in a particular area. And I imagine they'd deal with it the same way, interviewing merchants to ask them if they have a record of who made a transaction at a particular time, etc.

And assuming B/C/D/... did nothing wrong I bet the Mint honors all of the the A -> B/C/D/... transactions, so B/C/D/... don't lose any money. The Mint eats the loss (it just shows up as inflation in the money supply, so really EVERYBODY pays for the fraud), and if the problem gets large enough they declare version 1.0 of their chips obsolete and come out with a New and More Secure version.

It all looks pretty nifty to me, I hope it is a big success; it could be a great way to buy Bitcoins (non-reversible, cash-like...).

That is my understanding also based on the limited information.  My issue would be the track record of "secrets on a chip" is pretty bad.  It really is only a matter of when not if the chip gets hacked.


That is what I am thinking.  Would they just raise fees (to remove the surplus currency from the economy) or would they eventually be forced to lower the exchange rate (i.e. 1 mintchip dollar = 0.97 physical dollars).

I would expect someone who gets a chip's private key could just mint their own money without needing to double spend. Afaik when a chip signs a message to transfer value, it has no burden of proof that it ever received that value from somewhere else, it is simply trusted to only sign payments out of its balance and to not sign payments without sufficient funds. With a hacked chip or compromised private key, one could simply issue new transactions without limit, they wouldn't need to be double spends.  Such fake transactions could be used to top up real non-hacked cards.

where are you getting the information for the chips technical details?

are you just assuming it works like you think it would?

This seams plausible, I wish they would issue some detailed information about how it works so that we could determine the actual failure modes of the setup.

Open Source it and let's see how "great" it really is ..... if it can't survive in  the free market for ideas it probably can't survive long term.

It should be worth a chuckle to see what problems they face with adoption. Perhaps we'll have a Bit-Minstant service before long for people that want an e-cash that's easier and friendlier to use.

Three words:  exploding chipcoin implants

That could be made into a promotional video.  Chipcoins use advanced tamper-detection technology to protect against counterfeiting hackers.  Oh no, Barbara's chip accidentally self-destructed.  Ted didn't pay a parking ticket, so his chip was deactivated.  Choose freedom.  Choose Bitcoin.  Don't get chipped.

Seriously, though, this is probably good for Bitcoin.  There's that theory that, you know, having a wingman who kind of looks like you, but is less-attractive, is a benefit.  It might be limited to small transactions.  It's not going to be anonymous.  There will be chargebacks.  Obviously it will be inflationary.  I'm looking forward to it.

One thing that strikes me as very odd, is the amount of marketing and press releases put forward into MintChip, even though the service isn't readily available. If you Google both words, MintChip & Bitcoin (without quotes), you'll be surprised by the total search results.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/05/royal-canadian-mint-aims-to-kickstart-digital-currency-with-mint/


Followed by 47, and counting, comments. A good read!

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2012/04/mintchip-currency.jpg

Yeah it is called astroturfing.  The good news is most astroturf attempts fail when the money stops.  Everyone has a budget ... well I am not sure that applies to central banks given they can just print more money.

Just found an ass-long read, and I'm still reading, but wanted to share the link nonetheless: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3797977

One thing I learned:



~Bruno~

Didnt you know? Canadian bitcoins are worth at least twice as much as normal bitcoins! Dafuq is that sht?!

Took some digging, but discovered what backs the MintChip:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Cgkg7Ju_kac/SuIaenokfxI/AAAAAAAACzE/7WGjXvKjQUs/s1600/canada+million+dollar+gold+coin.jpeg (http://lunaticg.blogspot.com/2009/10/worlds-largest-gold-coin-million-dollar.html)

what makes you think that?

His sense of humour I would say ;)

Indeed.

The Bank of Canada Has Virtually No Gold Backing the Canadian Dollar (http://www.internationalman.com/global-perspectives/the-bank-of-canada-has-virtually-no-gold-backing-the-canadian-dollar)

Your right. :-[  and I thought of other examples since posting. :'(

What MintChip & Bitcoin seem to have in common benefit to the users are:

1) Digital
2) Irreversible
3) Low / Non-Existent transaction fees

So looking forward to the day when PayPal declares bankruptcy b/c it is no longer necessary; Another +1.

Regarding #3 when has a monopolistic entity ever offered low/no fees?

When it is run by the government as a regulated monopoly.

Examples?  I can't think of many govt regulated monopolies which are efficient.  Why would they want to?

The gov't regulates monopolies to prevent high fees and allow economies-of-scale.
Examples: Water, Power, Telecommunications, mail, health care (not the US, but note that US health care is more expensive and has worse outcomes on average than gov't systems in most other developed countries)



From wikipedia:

Nobel economist Milton Friedman, said that in the case of natural monopoly that "there is only a choice among three evils: private unregulated monopoly, private monopoly regulated by the state, and government operation." He said "the least of these evils is private unregulated monopoly where this is tolerable." He reasons that the other alternatives are "exceedingly difficult to reverse," and that the dynamics of the market should be allowed the opportunity to have an effect and are likely to do so (Capitalism and Freedom). In a Wincott Lecture, he said that if the commodity in question is "essential" (for example: water or electricity) and the "monopoly power is sizeable," then "either public regulation or ownership may be a lesser evil."

Milton Friedman was of course a conservative ass motherfucker.

1) The US regulated utilities tend to be more expensive than independent power producers where wholesale power is trading on open market, and don't get me started on how worthless US mail service is despite their monopoly.


2)  None of that applies to this scenario.  A monopoly isn't necessary for MintChip, or Bitcoin to (co)exist and it certainly isn't a natural monopoly.

3) From your own quote "the least of these evils is private unregulated monopoly"  and "that such action by government should not consist of forbidding competition by law"

The regulated utilities are forced to offer services to everyone. Of course they are more expensive, the urban people have to subsidize the rural households. Redneck conservative are enjoying cheap power on the liberal urban dwellers' tax dollar. Makes me furious. Would rather they were denied all services based on their identity.

What does forbidding competition by law have to do with this? Who said that was a good idea? Where did you go strawman? come back!!!!

Of course, currencies are a natural monopoly. Very large network effects -> natural monopoly

There is only one issuer of MintChip.  Maybe you forget we are TALKING ABOUT MINTCHIP.  I know it may be confusing that the topic is MintChip in the fraking mint chip thread.

My point before you went off on one of your asinine derails is that ...

There is no proof #3 is true.  MintChip hasn't released any fee schedule and based on the fact they are a monopoly it is very unlikely that it will be true.

MintChip is issued by the Royal Mint of Canda.  There is a single issuer and single issuer only.  Good idea or not the reality is there is no competition.  Period.

Isn't bitcoin a competitor?

Anyways. I don't disagree with what you are saying. We don't know much about it at all right now, but that cuts both ways. It is too soon to say anything negative or positive.

Honestly not really.   Fiat to fiat centralized currency has very little to do with Bitcoin.

It is like saying Paypal will drop their fees 90% because Bitcoin exists.  By your logic Paypal with their near monopoly position should have very low fees right?

There were two features of Bitcoin which first made me so wild about it:

1) Decentralized - no party could prevent a transaction or freeze an account in any way.

2) New currency - was an entirely new currency, without perpetual debasement, not just a way to transfer USD, etc.

Without these two features, Bitcoin would be nothing. I think any "competitor" to Bitcoin without these two features will be feeble and irrelevant.

With that said, MintChip is somewhat exciting, and I hope it's successful as it will dovetail nicely with Bitcoin. Perhaps it will be one more bridge to Bitcoin that the peons can trample across as the global fiats fall apart.

No. Paypal is a natural monopoly. Network effects. It is not due to gov't sanction. Only paypal can exist, dwolla is illegal. No. It is a natural monopoly.

Yes, but you are a libertarian asshat. Most regular people just want an easy way to send money with low fees.

Which is why Paypal already existed and it has low fees.   So problem solved? er wait.

There are only two outcomes with a centralized issuer:
Network remains small and utility is low.
Network becomes large and monopolistic, prices continually increase as the monopoly entity exploits this fact.

This is run by the government... thus the discussion of regulated monopoly. It wouldn't be good gov't policy to have high fees like paypal. The gov't can just tax people if they want money. Why would they choose to get revenue in an inefficient way?

Most services provided by the govt ARE inefficient.  They have no profit motive, no need for lower costs.   Like any govt agency it will become fat, bloated, and inefficient.  

That's likely true, but it would need to be pretty fucking inefficient to need paypal like fees to support itself. I don't see that level of inefficiency as likely. Bitcoin itself is already extremely fat, bloated, and inefficient by design.

This is no threat to bitcoin. I have been told on IRC that I am straying into speculation territory, so take this with a grain of salt.

- http://mintchipchallenge.com/rules (http://mintchipchallenge.com/rules)

Not only do they not publish a protocol specification or source code: they prohibit third parties form doing the same. That (IMO) can mean only one thing: Security relies on "Copy Protection" Built into the SD card (https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/copyright_protection/). In this case, CPRM (http://www.4centity.com/) with device revocation.

If CPRM has not been cracked already, it is probably because nobody actually uses it. This initiative will make cracking profitable. If it is true they are trying to use "copy protection" to prevent double-spending, this project has failed before it has even started by trying to fight the law of entropy. Maybe that is why they keep introducing draconian copyright legislation: the future of fiat relies on it.

The person on IRC informs me that the SD standard supports things other than block devices. These may be real "smart cards" in a micro-SD form-factor.

You obviously have never been to the DMV.

Still it likely will have lower fees that Paypal.  Paypal is just abusing its monopoly posistion.  If anything MintChip is theoretically more of a competitor to Paypal than Bitcoin.  If MintChip is successful and has lower fees than Paypal then Paypal may need to lower fees.

It all depends on how much fraud MintChip has to ammortize.  Given those chips WILL be broken I wonder how much the first widespread organized attack will cost them.  Every dubious "secret of a chip" system in the past has been broken I doubt this will be any different.

Note: I ignored your usually Bitcoin bashing.  Just not worth responding to.

The protocol would seem to indicate that is the case.  The chip stores an irrevocable keypair.  The chip signs tx with private key which can be verified by other uses with the public key.  The chip decryments the value on spends and increases value on payments. 

Still the underlying problem still exists.  The attack vector is to remove private key(s) from the chip.  Once you do that you can forget payment tx which can't be detected by the other party.  Essentially print money out of thin air.  All the profit of counterfeiting without all the physical printing overhead.

Correct.
To compete with Bitcoin, any new virtual currency needs to open its sources first.

Not opening sources immediately means that we cannot trust the currency creator. The conclusion is that this is another fiat money produced by another government, but this time it looks that they want to create a fully digital currency.

However it will be a lot of fun to observe as they get reverse engineered by hackers/cryptographers around the world and fail.

I love that in order to not be an asshat I have to advocate coercion.  ::)

I have no doubt the short-term adoption of something like MintChip would be faster than Bitcoin. It's sponsored by the State and placed in a nice digestible package for the serfs. But I care not about the short term - I care about the long term narrative of monies, and that's why Bitcoin interests me a great deal, and MintChip less so. To solve real problems one needs to fix the foundation of the problem - and that foundation is fiat currency.

The serfs may digest MintChip more readily, but I have little doubt as to the nutritional content of that consumption.

Apparently "non-asshats" advocate inflationary theft in order to subsidize consumerism.

[derail]

Actually a picture of Paul Krugman blowing up a car is an apt analogy.  The guy is a walking broken-window fallacy.  Isn't Syria next on the list of countries to be invaded in order to continue the debt-fueled ponzi of finite-fossil-resource-consumption?  So, Paul Krugman blowing up Syria in the name of debt-financed military Keynesianism, genius.  I wonder if the CIA wrote that script as well.

Personally I think anyone with an ounce of clue and two pennies to rub together (not Canadians soon lol) should rather take a look at some confirmed predictions of real science, as opposed to the Keynesian-voodoo-bullshit promoted by charlatans such as Krugman, to see just which system (realism or populist money-printing) is more "efficient" in the long run.  I think you'd find that they all end up at the same spot, just as the laws of physics dictate.  One gets there with poverty and starvation and debt-servitude and industrial collapse and massive die-offs, while the other at least attempts to avoid all of that by refusing to kowtow to populist imprudence.

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/Futurism-Got-Corn-graph-631-thumb.jpg
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-04/new-research-tracks-40-year-old-prediction-world-economy-will-collapse-2030

[/derail]

What is the number for the Ministry of Eugenics?

[derail]
As bleak as that graph looks, It could actually be much worse. All it would take is an atomic WW3 to send those lines straight down.  No one like to talk about it, but this planet is just about used up (assuming current trends). There are no more lands to discover and the population is exponentially growing. Enjoy it while you can.
Click only if you have a strong stomach -->http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
[/derail]

mintchip: the evolution of currency
bitcoin: the future of money

I love the lack of focus I see here. Take all the obsolescent 19th century economic theories you can find, hell, even throw in Marxism, and they aren't enough to make bitcoin a successful payment system, they are quite simply irrelevant to that goal. So often when the topic of a competing payment system comes up here, discussion descends into still another circle jerk around these irrelevancies.

It's evident that this "odd assortment of uber-geeks, anarchists, libertarians, scammers and forex traders"¹ have little to offer or to inspire folks who would just like to pay for an ice cream cone using their phone, nor to folks who would just like to sell one that way. What I have seen instead is a loss of momentum towards using bitcoins for normal everyday aboveground transactions since 3rd quarter 2011.

Six months of at best sitting dead in the water is a long time, enough to give the competition a significant lead, particularly given the competition does not carry the reputation risk of bitcoin and is focused on the payment system application rather than fears of econopocalypse, zombie uprisings, or having nothing to take with you when you die  ;D

All that said, bitcoin has been successful in three areas:
1. Speculation
2. Money laundering
3. Contraband trading e.g. Silk Road

IMO, it rather looks like bitcoin is headed towards the magical status of being an object lesson in "Be careful about what you ask for, you may get it". If you can't have the success you want, you may have to settle for the success you actually have.


1. Naomi O'Leary, "Bitcoin, the City traders' anarchic new toy"
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/01/traders-bitcoin-idUSL6E8ET5K620120401

Pretty negative view on all the dev. work that has gone on .... just what have you done to further buying your precious MintChip ice-cream with your phone? (sounds kind of irrelevant to me in the big scheme but if that's what twists your knobs ... )

Did you see there is a tenative iPhone app for Bitcoin ... ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75673.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75673.0)

Discussing interesting topics is not mutually exclusive to "inspiring folk who want to buy ice-creams using their phone" .... but I'm not going to go out of my way. You'll get the money you deserve methinks.

Frankly Bitcoin has a lot of obstacles to becoming a widespread payment system.  The largest, price volatility, has only in the last month or so begun to be solved.  The second largest, threat of failure, required the last six months in order to brush aside.  Things like implementation cost and ease-of-use will take time to work out.  The barrier to entry is fairly large.

The collection of businesses that sprang up around Bitcoin over the last year are only a small hint of what is to come.  It is somewhat early still.  Linux took a decade to enter mainstream consciousness, and another five years to reach widespread use.  Today it dominates a few niche areas.  Bitcoin may end up being similar.  Remember, while Linux only had to battle a few aging UNIX vendors, Bitcoin is literally challenging a system with limitless resources at its disposal.

To me it looks like an experiment on post-dollar global currency:

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/m586/bitcool5/eco_system.jpg

1) Nicely put and accurate. Can I subscribe to your posts somehow?

2) It is a volunteer project with no central source of funding or leadership. Monetary incentive to develop useful applications is extremely limited. Charitable incentives are supposed to substitute for this. I made a suggestion about how to fix these problems by the way.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0) However, I don't think that the lack of funding, professionalism, and central direction is widely perceived to be a problem around here.

1) Subscribe to me? Pish, I'm as full of crap as anyone, but even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while :)

2) I think bitcoin is such a interesting phenomenon in so many ways, but I do have perceptions that make it difficult for me to get on board with everything that comes with it. My 30 year career in various financial services like brokerage, insurance and banking doesn't mean I'm the enemy, just that I may have another frame of reference from something I've seen before. In fact, I admire efforts like Dwolla that are attempting to cut the take of my former employers :)

My operations are 100% open source linux. I dig open source deep and heavy, man, it's produces state of the art software of high quality better than any other process I've ever seen :) I even released a little freeware app in the early 1990s. I recall having a firm enthusiastically pick it up and start using it ( it was a disk optimizer for the old OS/2 HPFS file system ) and they had the hardest time accepting that I wasn't in a position to maintain and enhance it but I was more than happy to give away the source code.

Thanks for the kind words. Who knows, one of these days I might find another nut I can share.

This wouldn't be the first time someone here has implied or suggested I should STFU unless I have a better idea, it's such a gamma minus response. BTW I have the money I deserve, more than I ever set out to accumulate, I'm what you call set for life.

As the development work goes, I spent the first 15 years of my career as a software developer, architect, and development team manager, I can appreciate it for what it is more than most people.

It is axiomatic that software is the most labor intensive disposable product in human history. For example, consider this train wreck which I watched from an uncomfortably close distance but was delighted to have absolutely no responsibility for. Around 1997, a certain Fortune 500 bank launched a huge system development project that was to be greater than any sliced bread the world had ever seen before. The project was continuously infested with people who were not makers or builders or engineers or even accountants, they were hand waving career hoppers focused only on looking good for their next promotion. There were hundreds of people dedicated to the effort, including a couple hundred software developers and other technical specialists.

Five years and $500 million later, I found myself sitting in a meeting called by the most senior vice president in the firm to decide the fate of a system that was so woefully inadequate that you couldn't even say it any more, it was a given. I was there to offer my opinions and did my level best to come up with salvage opportunities. As it turns out, the desired goal was agreement to take the whole thing out for a nice drive in the country, shoot it twice in the head, and bury it in an unmarked grave, and that's exactly what happened. The good news was that this abysmal failure, the biggest I've ever seen, never made it's way to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. That wasn't just good news, it was the single most important consideration, throwing away $500 million dollars on a clown show was no big deal at all.

You wanna hear another horror story? I have two more just like that one but not as costly, under $100 million, where the outcome was to chuck it all and start over.

It is the lot of every software developer to at some point cast their finest pearls before swine only to see them ground under cloven hooves. It can be a tough thing to accept and and even harder to let go of, but, as Britney Spears so sagely taught us all, "it is what it is".

Toot, toot ... mighty fine sounding horn you got there ... and what exactly are you saying because you have been involved with some of the biggest software disaster's ever you can recognise Bitcoin as one?

You know I don't really care what you think, believe, know, or think you believe you know but let's just say you don't strike me as a Satoshi .... sooo ... saying stuff like below just smells like a big bunch sour grapes ... or I don't know what.

Why can't we have something as cool as Square's new payment by phone.  No swiping cards and not scanning QR codes.

https://squareup.com/pay-with-square

Square is a company with a professional development team...

ROTFLMFAO! THAT'S some feeble shit indeed. You are clearly confused as your limited knowledge and circular mental processes are not my shortcomings.

As regards Satoshi, the abandonment of public ownership for this 1.0 effort by a couple of Irish guys who worked in Japan or whoever they are does suggest that they do in fact know more than you or I about what bitcoin is and isn't. Good of you to bring this up.

Oh, and BTW, you can blow me any time, little girl, taking shit from inferior assholes like you just cracks me up, I can do it all day long. It's rather like the neighbor's chihuahua growling through the fence, all the time never knowing what a fine football he would make.

You may go back to being a loser now, you have plenty of company on this board.

I want you on my team, Dutch, and it would be my pleasure if you were ever to kick me off yours. BTW, I knew Satoshi was a couple Irish guys that holidayed in Japan.

~Bruno~

The fact that the core software development follows the open source model is not the big problem.

The problem is that bitcoin-related commercial ventures are left up to small-scale entrepreneurs. Any small-scale entrepreneur thinking about a commercial venture can see that a) the current market is miniscule. No profit worth speaking about is available. b) the future market may be big and profitable. However, there is no reason to expect that getting involved now will be that helpful in accessing this potential future market (which probably won't exist in any case).

The logical response to this is to buy some bitcoin and wait for someone else to make bitcoin succeed. If everyone waits simultaneously, then bitcoin fails. That is what is happening.

To get the ball rolling, you need to have an agency which is heavily invested in bitcoin (say to the tune of ten million USD) to spearhead and fund projects. They would have an incentive to do something professional because they could gain from currency appreciation. This needs to happen in order to get to the future where bitcoin can be big and profitable.

If an agency like this isn't created, bitcoin will continue to consist of hobby businesses. The profits from these businesses are so slim that even when they attract a reasonable amount of interest, the business owners often fail to maintain them. You certainly don't see them upgrading and becoming professional. That makes sense. There is no reason to invest money right now when there is no money to be made right now.

Smart trolls inspire useful change in society. Cheerleading idiots, not so much.

I tend to agree with that assessment.  Bitcoin needs strong leadership backed by some cash on both the development and business fronts.

While success or failure might not be foregone conclusions it's easy to see how easily Bitcoin could wither away.

But let me ask this.  Is P2P digital currency a cash cow in any sense?  Where is the money to be had for big players to come in and push Bitcoin?  I don't see it.

Somehow I only see it surviving in grass roots mode and, of course, that's super questionable.

You are still missing much of the point. 'big money' interest comes from concentrated ownership of the currency. Gains come from currency appreciation not direct business profits. The business activities are likely loss-making, but still in the interest of the concentrated owner to pursue. The problem is that without any concentrated ownership there is no incentive for anyone to undertake anything. This is one reason why I was hoping that Vlad performed the 51% attack. He might become the central owner. I propose a solution that doesn't require a central owner here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0) Essentially, the solution is to create something like a cryptocorporation to run the cryptocurrency.

Coming from an idealist P2P perspective it takes a moment to readjust focus to the points you make.  What I was saying was describing the same problem, but from a different perspective and without attempting to describe a solution.  I said in a purist P2P sense, one without any central ownership, there really isn't enough profit to support single entities in big pushes to develop the Bitcoin market.

I agree with the points you make and that is why I worry about Bitcoin even though I find the idealist points of P2P currency attractive and worthy of survival.

If profit is the biggest motivator maybe the solution you describe is desirable.  Ideally, and accepting the faults of idealism, I'd like to see a coalition or some association that could work to accomplish the big pushes Bitcoin needs that would be funded collectively in a P2P fashion.

It's true what they say that money and leadership is needed to focus progress.

It is unusual for people to be able to screw on another head and use it to think for a moment. I appreciate that.

Check the link? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029.0) It suggests using a P2P system in order to run a corporate-like entity. Is that against P2P principles? Is it bad for the p2p network to elect a leader to represent its interests? Is it bad for the p2p network to vote to tax itself in order to raise revenue to fund projects?

That's because nobody is sure of the legal ramifications. There is big money watching Bitcoin, but it's waiting on the sidelines until legal precedents are set. In the meantime, a significant infrastructure is being assembled by a small number of ideologically motivated hobbyists - and ironically this infrastructure will subsidize the larger players when they're ready to enter.

But the law needs to figure out in which ways it shall or shall not tyrannize Bitcoin before serious money is thrown at the experiment.

Neither of us has any idea what 'big money' plans to do. It is idle to speculate. Of course, I'm very skeptical of that large corporations have any plans involving bitcoin at all. If you have some specific information to divulge, then don't let me stop you.

Damn, and I was so hoping for two albino hairdressers with a trained slug who holidayed at the Hotel Great Northern  ;)

Oh well, back to living in disappointment...

This post by cunicula is so on point.

Definitely saving this for later usage.

If we get enough/all the "hobby businesses" to accept Bitcoin, even if it takes a while of slow persuasion, it becomes a part of the vernacular. That is much more powerful than a large entity promoting it. There isn't any reason to rush into this headlong; slowly but surely is the way to do it.

If $10M is the case, then I believe the same could be accomplished with about 1/10th that amount. Offer Oprah a $1M USD donation to her charity of choice if she'll air an hour long show consisting of interviewing 2-3 Bitcoin notables. With Oprah knowing that her endorsement carries weight, she can hedge her portfolio by investing in Bitcoin herself. She'll then put a nice positive spin on Bitcoin, and toward the end of the show, Gavin (example guess), informs the audience to reach under their seats, whereupon they'll find USB sticks pre-loaded with 100 BTC.

The goal now is for the reader to try to accomplish a similar feat--Bitcoin awareness--at an even lower expenditure outlay.

The other option is that us so called hobbyist keep chugging along with hopes of one brainfart going viral.

~Bruno~

This. Remember the tortoise wins the race :)

I lost money on such a race. Damn Achilles for giving the tortoise a head start.

If you wrote down an economic model of this system, then one possible outcome of "hobby business" development would be permanent stagnation at the current level. Another possible outcome would be worldwide adoption. The bridge between stagnation and worldwide adoption would be a 'big push investment' carried out by a centralized owner. If you don't have a centralized owner, then 'big push investment' will never happen and the currency will stagnate forever. This is the main basis for economic theories of why most countries in the world remain trapped in poverty, while others such as China, South Korea, Japan, etc. have grown rich under an authoritarian central state. You want bitcoin to look like Africa, then just let it continue to remain fragmented. If you want it to grow, then you will need a strong central authority to own and develop it.

I see you've left out a particular large, successful economic powerhouse from your false assertion...

For worms like you, Richard II said it best..."Villeins ye are, and villeins ye shall remain"
Now, get back to breaking rocks before I call the overseer.

Actually, cunicula, you make a good point there.  And it's one that I have considered a lot lately.  Ultimately, though, I just don't think any type of centralized model is going to be compatible with Bitcoin.  There is a need for more large institutions, and more cooperation, true.  But it's like herding cats at this point.  It will take a while.

Ultimately, we aren't the equivalent of Africans in the global market.  That was my point.  We are capable of defending our economy against raiders, large and small.  And we can do so using superior technology in the hands of informed, self-interested individuals, the same way America has for the last 300 years.  In the long run, we will be better off for it.

I don't subscribe to the necessity of a big money central player needing to commit to bitcoin for it to gain traction (in the sense of broad adotpion).

All we need is some time (in which we will work, not only babble about). Rick Falkvinge put it nicely in his talk at the conference in Prague: [quoting freely] A disruptive technology takes about 10 years to get from its inception to blossoming.

For bitcoin this means 2019.

One thing from the last posts is very true: leaning back and waiting for others to do the work will not help.

I for one will stick with this experiement until it fails or succeeds and I will not be crying for outside help, either. If it fails, it's either because the idea doesn't fit the current times or because we are reluctant or lazy. I don't think the latter is the case, too many brilliant and motivated people are commiting large parts of their lives to bitcoin for that to be true. I also don't think the former is true, but that's more of a gamble and only time will tell.

You are ignoring the fact that I proposed a solution that doesn't require any outside help...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75029)

If you are capable of logical reasoning (which I doubt), please provide a logical argument. Otherwise, please do not communicate with me or respond to my posts. You have nothing of value to say.

WTF dude, I posted the thread, and it shure isn't an advertisement.
I did it to watch people diss on MintChip, not to advertise it.

I concur with your fix :D

I don't have an alpaca in this race (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUojz_h2Po4), but...


FTFY

~Bruno~

On the other hand, perhaps it's too early for getting the ball to roll, and Bitcoin still needs a sheltered, hobby status until some technical issues are hammered out (as evident from the recent fierce discussions about various BIPs) and clients and network overlays mature and get tested.  Also, legal status will need to get clearer at least in the taxation domain.

I know this is a chicken-and-egg issue, but it seems to me that Bitcoin has grown quite dramatically in only a year, and I'm happy with the pace. I am neither a developer nor a businessman, but I do what I can - in my case by simply using Bitcoin in everyday life, thereby proving that it works, and works better than the alternatives.

But we went astray from the point of OP.

That said, I'm pretty sure that's why Max and Tony desire to gain only one million new users for 2012, as mentioned at the Prague conference. (this post is not meant to be snarkish toward Max or Tony)

~Bruno~

Agree, decentralization is imperative. I don't see any top down e-money system that can be immune to rampant fraud by the issuer. If money has value based on trust then ANY breach of the system's integrity will have immediate destabilizing effects. 

If Canada or any other country did roll out a centralized dollar-backed Bitcoin chain, it would be great for Bitcoin because it would mean putting in place all of the infrastructure needed to run Bitcoin transactions.

And there are still a lot of advantages to a cryptographically secured digital currency even if it is dependent on a central trusted node that provides the currency backing.

I you've got a centralized system, what's the purpose of a blockchain?

Triple Entry Accounting

http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html

It also takes the work out of setting up a central server and secure administration system. Just start up your version of bitcoin and set it free. Run a minimum amount of hashing operations yourself and hope that transaction fees lure more computers. The only thing you really need is someone (the Mint) that you can trust to always exchange these new bitcoins for Canadian dollars at 1:1.

Since they created the new blockchain, they have the power to give themselves a monopoly of all of the new bitcoins that will ever be created. And since they are the Mint, hopefully they have lots of Canadian dollars too. Everything else could work the same way as bitcoin does now. It would make Canadian dollars a great reserve currency because they would suddenly be extremely easy to get and move around.

Yes centralized
Normally I would recommend this but not with the current fed government here pushing for stronger snooping regulations

EDIt.. also seems like they are only interested in 'very low value transactions' according to the site, probably nothing over $5

Regardless lot's of opportunities for devs here to make money expanding and implementing this system, or destroying it's security using methods already implemented here years ago. Just make sure they pay you out in bitcoins or bullion not worthless mintcoins :)

I really don't get why they are doing this. What can you even buy for ten bucks besides coffee and a muffin? If you try to buy any physical goods online, you'll pay that much just in shipping and handling. About the only thing you can buy are mpegs. I have a feeling that they were hoping for more but had to compromise.

If you can live as a tourist in India for less than $10/day, I would think that kind of transaction limit would be extremely useful to locals.  The average sub-Saharan African, for instance, could live for a week on $10.  Or perhaps I'm wrong and this is all aimed towards something like allowance for kids.  Chip your kids...

Chargebacks come to mind. It'll be easilier and less painful to write off potential chargebacks for hundreds of ten dollar transactions then for hundreds, if not thousands (or tens of), of multiple hundred dollar transactions.

~Bruno~

Some guy called Eric just shot his bolt over how great MintChip is ....

http://envelopeeconomics.com/2012/04/11/canada-has-unveiled-the-bitcoin/ (http://envelopeeconomics.com/2012/04/11/canada-has-unveiled-the-bitcoin/)


Small correction: digital Canadian dollars are traceable by design, therefore not fungible.

In the same light, until we see Mintchip showing up on SilkRoad as an acceptable means of payment you will know they are less fungible than Bitcoin. As much as society despises illicit or shady activities, they are the acid test for that most essential property of any money, fungibility. As it has been since time immemorable, yet somehow forgotten by modern monetary managers, when rolling out their meglomaniacal financial monitoring and tracking systems.

If Canada is developing technology to support illegal pseudonymous transactions, then he is probably correct to argue that bitcoin is dead. I'm kind of confused though, why does he think that Canada will develop technology to support money laundering and crime? This seems highly implausible. Is he just confused? Or is this a case of the Canadian gov't's left hand not knowing what the gov't's right hand is doing?

He's obviously confused.  He thinks it will be anonymous.  And he thinks it will be useful for large transactions.

1. Clearly, the technology is not open source
2. It is not decentralized.

End of story. This is in no way competition to Bitcoin at all.
It only may be useful as a suplement to Bitcoin.

http://4funz.com/Funny-Pictures/random/img-nothing-to-see-here-174

For me personally one of the biggest reasons to be involved with Bitcoin is that it is a real original currency that has, in my opinion, a better money supply model than currencies where the powers that be can simply devalue the currency at will. MintChip clearly goes to the latter category which means that I have little interest in it. There are also other reasons to prefer Bitcoin, namely that it is open source and that it's decentralized.

http://envelopeeconomics.com/2012/04/11/canada-has-unveiled-the-bitcoin/ (http://envelopeeconomics.com/2012/04/11/canada-has-unveiled-the-bitcoin/)


I find it curious as to why an economist thinks or cares about the "end" of Bitcoin. He clearly doesn't even begin to understand that these technologies he describes are insignificant compared to Bitcoin's capabilities.

This is fucking nuts! I quit reading after the first paragraph. Somebody inform me if I should have read further. Here's the first paragraph:

They are afraid. Good.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.

Ignore - check
Laugh - check
Attack - check
Win - :)

Go vote:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76410.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76410.0)

Jon Matonis' article in Forbes:

 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/12/mintchip-misses-the-point-of-digital-currency/

There is still hope, is there not? https://i.imgur.com/dWHkU.gif

So apparently the plan is to use this to replace regular coins (lol inflatacoin), as they already officially killed the penny and now are looking into not minting any coins for the future since it costs untold millions to manufacture for some reason.

That is of course if this is actually secure and functions as promised, and somebody 70yrs old can figure out how to use it. Unlikely since it's closed source, old people are still scared of automated doors and credit cards, and I wouldn't trust anybody in the Cdn govt right now to be at all competent to implement this.

This.

Now, I find this very, very interesting:

By chance would this "mintchip" be embedded in the back of your hand ?

If they destroy cash and the only way you can pay for things is by using this chip it becomes a distopian night mare where they can stop you spending money on what you want and instead make you spend it on things they "allow". Say goodbye to buying things the government doesnt agree with :)

Bingo.

Thank goodness Bitcoin was created and will grow in adoption before the governments were able to implement purely digital and tracked money. Humanity dogged a bullet there.

Think of Mint Chip as free advertising for Bitcoin.

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Bitcoin is not a network. Sure, networks can be used to trace some Bitcoin transactions at entry points. Exit points are another matter, and by the time the entry point is traced, it could be long gone. Exit points can be addresses never registered anywhere online.

Could someone please tell me why tens of thousands of people who practice payola aren't fully on board?

~Bruno~

I thought about bolding that. You read my mind.

Would you mind expanding upon this, technically speaking, it's not clear what you mean for a casual user I don't think.

Here's the thing: just because Bitcoin is decentralized like bittorrent, it's not a network like that. A bitcoin transaction is not like downloading files. Normally you can trace file transfers by their origin and who is connected to the file by their IP address. With Bitcoin, there is only one file. It is the block chain, and nearly every bitcoin user has a copy.

To create a transaction requires only the sender to connect to the internet. The recipient of the transaction is merely a bitcoin address that gets added to the block chain by the sender. The recipient only needs to go online when he becomes a sender.

I'm oversimplifying this statement for clarity. The point being that Bitcoin can be very private and even anonymous, though I am advocating neither.

does anyone else think it's funny that mintchip keeps comparing their presently non-existent product to bitcoin? If I knew nothing of bitcoin I might assume from the mintchip press releases that bitcoin is the gold standard in the digital currency and electronic payment game. It almost seems like they are aspiring to be 'as good as bitcoin!'. Are trying a fight with what they believe to be the dominant digital payment system? And they are talking a whole lot of smack right now. Why do they keep referencing bitcoin? Does the centrally controlled mintchip have an inferiority complex? bitcoin has achieved some great things, mintchip has done nothing more than spreading it's propaganda via a few press releases. From my perspective mintchip has positioned itself in such a way that if it does not achieve full spectrum dominance of bitcoin in every way, shape and form, then their efforts will only serve to legitimize decentralized payment systems (bitcoin) it a really big way.

I don't care what you say. I'm going to think of it as a Girl Scout cookie.

Huh, I wonder if that will be enough incentive to grow a huge ass internal Bitcoin economy. I'm thinking... yes.

I was also thinking thoughts like this.

Can you imagine if Bitcoin had this much press months BEFORE Satoshi dropped the code?

It's not a fair fight, but we're gunna crush it.

This is an important distinction.

You don't NEED to use the bitcoin network directly either. I wonder how long it would take to get in a block if I posted a tx with a nice fee right here in the forum.

But beyond that, all the interesting stuff isn't in the chain anyway.

Physical bitcoin checks, cards, coins, and whatever-comes-next will be superior in every way. It would be better for a country to acquire new blocks and build a technology around green addresses.

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

This doesn't look very professional to me.

http://files.sharenator.com/picard_WTF_is_this_shit-s300x266-70964-580.jpg

And your highness would like what kind of changes to make the kit "professional"? It looks rather good to me.

Oh, I'm just trying to be pessimistic here. You are not helping out.

OK, it you want some arguments - it looks shiny and beautiful on the outside, but from the looks of it inside will be far far worse. Still, i might be wrong.

I like to think of it as complementary, not competition, so I am optimistic.

Heh, heh .. looks like an ideal trojan vector to get root-kits onto lots of bitcoin dev machines .... just saying.

Royal Canadian mint USB stick ... just trust us, uh-huh.

In the US the Secret Service is still a branch of the US Treasury I believe.

zomg gonna hax0r my BSD system 11!!!1!

I get that my arguments against it currently aren't very good. I just get a feeling (a "vibe") from this developer kit, that it's shiny and wonderful on the outside, but they spent much less time making it professional inside.

We have a saying in my country - "Krowa, która dużo muczy, mało mleka daje", which directly translates to "A cow which does a lot of noise, gives little milk". Wisdom of the ages. Still current, after all these years.

Well, all joking aside it does serve to demonstrate the first big drawback with MintChip, it is not even attempting a "trust no-one" currency, as bitcoin is attempting.

How do you know that the package of unknown (and advertised as unknowable) hardware that you got sent in the mail was from the RCM? How did you verify with them definitively that is a bona-fide RCM dev. kit?

The proprietary chip is a closed box and you want to stick it into your machine?

If you want to fornicate with hardware you better be wearing hardware protection. Stakes are pretty high, maybe best left to the professionals?