Bitcoin Forum

EDIT:

Video interview with Jered Kenna, TradeHill and Bitcoin.com, CEO & Charlie Shrem, CEO BitInstant.com @ Future of Money & Technology Conference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3DM6CbR5k

EDIT 2:

Some HQ Pictures: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wz6gv59qamgkq89/CdT_gHFzyr (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wz6gv59qamgkq89/CdT_gHFzyr)

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Hey guys,

The panel went super well! Jered and I had a standing room only presentation, Philips Rosedale (Founder of Second Life and Linden Dollars) was totally pro-Bitcoin and was on our panel as well and gave a great perspective of Bitcoin and that of his Linden Dollar Monetary Policy.

Thanks for everyone who came to represent. We had a fantastic and unexpected Bitcoin turnout, excited to hang out with you guys some more!

I can honestly tell you, and with no exaggeration Bitcoin is the undertone of everyones conversations. With the anonymous Bitcoin sponsorship which got a banner on the same wall as everyone else. People really like the idea and the understanding behind Bitcoin.

Twitter is abuzz right now about Bitcoin! https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23futureofmoney%20bitcoin (https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23futureofmoney%20bitcoin)

This is what I asked a VP at Amex https://twitter.com/#!/CharlieShrem/status/194466803081162753 (https://twitter.com/#!/CharlieShrem/status/194466803081162753)

....and this is what we were asked in return  ;D
https://twitter.com/#!/x1bennylava/status/194556777193422849 (https://twitter.com/#!/x1bennylava/status/194556777193422849)
https://twitter.com/#!/leimer/status/194540047620521984 (https://twitter.com/#!/leimer/status/194540047620521984)

Jered and I did a bunch of interviews after, good press loving the pro-Bitcoin atmosphere

Overall amazing

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/927/photo4axq.jpg

There will be some video/audio soon, gotta get back to it!

Charlie

This one? http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2012/04/bitinstant-hints-at-new-contract.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Kind of like Paynearme vouchers in 7-11? That'd be awesome. There is of course, one problem: Online gambling. All the prepaid vouchers in US have to promise they can't be used to gamble online. Paysafecard had to make special USD vouchers that no online gambling site can use, same with Paynearme.

If you can get around this would be epic, Ukash will be pissed they can't get into the US market and have been trying for years

Great job Charlie!

Super job!  Keep up the good work!  :D
I know we'll be seeing some awesome stuff from you guys!

Nice!

Is Bitcoin considered money as far as gambling goes? This is one big step for Bitcoin.

Thanks for the updates Yankee.

Getting more people involved by making it more accessible within our current monetary framework is a good step for Bitcoin. This will definately increase Bitcoin awareness for sure. For the next level or step we need to be able to broadcast buy and sell offers, maybe in the blockchain with something like Namecoin along with Escrow services. This will move Bitcoin away from being a commodity or stock and towards becoming a currency that can compete against other FIAT systems throughout the world.

I can verify that bitcoin was often a topic of conversation today.  People from Amex and Intuit are well aware of bitcoin and what we are doing.  They are all in a wait and see attitude.

And we are in a fed up and moving on attitude. I wonder exactly what they think waiting-and-seeing is going to accomplish?

Because Bitcoin is, in their mind, not a currency yet, just some small trading fund to invest in, and they are right. Total Bitcoin value needs to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars before they're in, if it's not killed off by those who have Bitcoin by the short and curlies first.

Wow, this is great news!

Nice job!

Quite cool.

I see the most difficult part of Bitcoin acceptance being the difficulty in obtaining them.

How will they be priced at checkout?

Good Show Charlie! Excellent work.

I still can't believe how often I heard "Bitcoin" at that conference. Most people knew all about it.
I also only recall hearing "Silk Road" once and it didn't turn in to the 20 minute debate that it would have 6 months ago.
I believe people are actually starting to discuss the potential (and existing) real world uses for Bitcoin instead of focusing on what makes the biggest headline.

-Jered

Truly was amazing!

You go girl!

its very apparent to me that Silicon Valley finance companies take a different attitude towards Bitcoin than the NY Banks.  I was equally impressed with the knowledge and general attitude towards bitcoin at this event.  I'll be at the next one!

Right? Even California banks take a different attitide.

A banker walked up to me and said he knows all about Bitcoin and our business model and would be happy to be our bankers. WTF I have to beg NY Banks!

If it happens, "game changer" is not too strong a phrase!

Good point!

Bankers love it, then their compliance department sees it...

Hopefully the future of money is that it stops being used.

Depends on your definition of money. If you define it as "transferable value" then that's not going to happen any time soon.

-Jered

Best way to end off the conference.

Ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming.

The Future

Of

Money

and Technology

is

BITCOIN

LightRider.... money allows prices to be set. Prices are the information that, without central planning, allows production to be adapted to demand, and thus allows prosperity for more and more people.

There is of course something very wrong with current fiat money system. But this thing is the central planning that comes with central banks. It's not money it self.

Please, learn and think about economic topics before trying the reinvent the world. Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions

The purpose of money is to deny prosperity to more and more people. Technology is what improves people's lives, and such developments are independent of any economic scheme. Prices distort perceptions and values because they have no physical referent, and are manipulated to corrupt, abusive, wasteful and destructive ends.

Money emerge naturally when two kids play with collectible stickers.

The purpose of money is to shift purchasing power through time.  It's ignorance, mismanagement and corruption that leads to bad outcomes.

Sorry, no. I'm going to use some money today, for the purpose of exchange. To whom am I "denying prosperity" by this exchange? Money does not deny prosperity, it enables it, by offering to society a common means of exchange by which variant interests can be brought into harmony through the mechanism of pricing.

You're correct that technology improves peoples' lives. Think long and hard on the subject, and you may realize that money is technology. Bitcoin, as it happens, makes this fact even clearer. It is the best money-technology produced thus far.

Further, it is in fact impossible for an economy to operate at any desirable level without money. For if we took money away, people would barter. What would they barter for? Well, they'd find things which brought them relatively greater gain for their exchange. Over time, as people barter, they realize certain items are easier to trade than others. It's easier to trade eggs than it is to trade a hair dryer. It's easier to trade cigarettes than bicycles. It's easier to trade uniform gold and silver coins than either eggs or cigarettes. Certain bartered goods have properties that make them more useful in exchange than others, and when these exchanges play out we discover that people gravitate toward a small number of very tradable goods, and these become a common means of exchange. The term for this, is money.

So get rid of money, and it will reappear necessarily and unavoidably. The only way to prevent "money" is to use force to continually outlaw whatever subsequent product starts being exchanged commonly. The only way to prevent money, is thus to prevent barter, and that means to condemn each man to enjoy only what he can produce by himself in isolation. A sad state of affairs that would be.

Your hostility toward "money" is wholly misplaced, and should be more correctly oriented at the real villain - forced adoption of a "specific" money via the State, a money arrived at not through voluntary market exchange, not through barter, but through coercion.

Coercion is the problem, not money.

Money is coercion. We should continue this OT conversation here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5373.0) though.

Glad to hear all went well at the conference!  It is exciting that Bitcoin is being taken more seriously by some of the corporate folks...

Thesis · Antithesis · Synthesis

The Zeitgeist/Venus Project people have to get over the fact that human desires are endless, so there will always be means to barter, thus money.

Even in a fully automated world, unless we become some kind of hive mind, there will always be scarcity, or rather a subjective perception of it. Only one individual or family or group can live at that one exclusive penthouse near the beach at the same time.

What we can work on however is to make everything in life as "free" as possible, starting by automating the provision of our basic needs. The open source movement is surely a great force in this. What this essentially can lead to is that there will be many "flatrates" for most aspects in daily life, the cheaper, the better.

For example, a Venus Project city is nothing more or less than an enterprise that has to household with its resources, input vs output. If it can produce more energy than it needs, then living there will essentially be free for its inhabitants.

We can and should work towards this future in a bottom-up way, mind you, not like dictator Peter Joseph imagines things, wanting to centrally control the world's resources.

Fire emerges naturally when two kids play with matches.

Babies emerge naturally when two kids play with each other.


And that's why I was never allowed to walk Susie home from school...ever again

Money is the technology of value... Bitcoin is the technology of money

Was this posted somewhere already:

Video interview with Jered Kenna, TradeHill and Bitcoin.com, CEO & Charlie Shrem, CEO BitInstant.com @ Future of Money & Technology Conference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3DM6CbR5k

Awesome!

What? maybe a million people are using it...? ehh wut?
Where do you get these numbers, the statistics sites show about 100k active nodes daily, i assume most are the same each time... And i highly doubt there's 900k people using ewallets or whatever...

Have used it not are using it. It's really hard to estimate, the numbers are all over the place.
There's a lot of people that have downloaded the client or sent 1 btc then never used it again and they've still tried it.
If there is 100k active a day (didn't think it's that high at the moment) then there are a lot more than 100k that have tried it.

I liked that interview, bummer the camera was tilted and you can't see Charlie for half of it.

Jered

It is impossible to know how many users as some have an account at an exchange or EWallet only and never show as their own node nor even have a balance on a bitcoin address that could be considered.

Incidentally, there were 642,432 addresses with non-zero balance, as of a recent block:

 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3524/how-many-unspent-transaction-outputs-are-there

That number alone doesn't say much but its change over time will help to indicate the level of growth occurring.

That number has been increasing at about 3% per month.  If the user population growth is at the same level that's about a 40% annual growth rate.

It's not inconceivable to think that in the year or so that Bitcoin started to be discussed in the tech arena that there have been a million people that signed up, and got a payment from the Faucet, for instance or made a small investment that remains on an exchange, for instance. 

The number of transactions on the blockchain show a much smaller active user base though.  Fortunately, that too is growing (and at a faster rate even)

charged addresses: merging addresses reduces anonymity so why would people consider addresses staying constant for a constant user count?

When spending the client chooses coins so that the combination resulting in the least amount of change is the result.  (Ignoring special case, like coins that haven't confirmed yet).    Oftentimes this will "merge" coins whether that was the intention or not.

So an active user will generally not have much growth to the number of addresses over time even though each payment received is to a different address.  The ones that save without spending are the ones who will end up with many addresses holding unspent coins.

But you are correct, it is really hard to have any assurance that an estimate based on data like "addresses with unspent coins" is anywhere near accurate.

I hate to bump almost a month later but has there been any progress on this? It seemed really exciting and then I heard nothing more about it.

Actually yes, we should be launching it within 72 hours if all goes well  ;D

Wow, cool.  Define "launching"?

I just realized there is one small change we need to do which shouldnt take more than half a day.

Having said that, we have a few things to finish up- hence the reason I gave myself a 3 day time frame.

Test in a live environment, do a physical test, make sure its aesthetically pleasing, do some stress tests, and I think we are good to go.

It was a long project, took alot of contracts, down payments, late nights, brining on another full time programmer and full time attorney, but I think we got this shit ready.

I've already said more then I should  :D

So like... is it this bitcoin card thingy? Because that would be nice to get out on the streets asap. Otherwise, I'll wait and see, I guess.

Will it work with Entel in Chile?

No, it's not the Bitcoin Card.


Not yet, but it will include Boleto in Brazil.

So, by launching, you mean, being ready to begin production to pass off to Walmart?

Basically, what I am after is, when will we begin to see the cards in Walmart?

The system is already built and tested in Walmart and our other partners, nothing more they need to do.

Also, I mentioned earlier there are no cards.

Oh, interesting...  :)