El equipo de Coinffeine ha abandonado el proyecto. Sin embargo su software sigue funcionando y la licencia permite el uso libre. Tan sólo se necesitan 2 peers conectados para que funcione.

Animo a todo el que esté interesado a que se conecte y lo use. Quizás si ven que hay interés y usuarios los propios creadores vuelvan a relanzar el proyecto, o otras empresas recojan la tecnología.

Lo bueno de Coinffeine es que al igual que BitTorrent, no requiere de una empresa ni un servidor central para funcionar.


De hecho aquí hay una importante oportunidad de negocio para alguién que esté dispuesto a crear mercado. Si consigues igualar el rango oferta-demanda al de Localbitcoins, Coinffeine puede ser un mercado muy competitivo. Por lo menos para los usuarios de OKPay.

Also the fact that Localbitcoins does as much volume as Kraken means that people do want and need p2p exchanges.
https://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=24h

Coinffeine transactions are in fact faster than Localbitcoins... so on the convenience front they could have been competitive.

I agree with many of the points that you make. In fact I never saw the main advantage of this to be for final users, but rather for b2b and professionals. If you run a website that sells bitcoins in a fast and convenient way to consumers... and you are buying/selling those bitcoins from a centralised exchange... or if you manage a number of ATMs... then you do care a lot about security.

Another clear advantage is the uncensorable part. Even Localbitcoins has had to exclude a number of countries because of regulations. A bittorrent type system could work in those places.

I'm pretty sure that we can send data at the speed of light now. In fact the Roman Empire used mirrors for signalling a while ago... although probably not to Mars

That's the point. Because you would always have that choice of being your own bank, the only way for banks to attract customers and deposits would be to offer real value-added services. Those that don't will not survive.

Why a paper wallet? Mars is only 10 light minutes away (on average). He could probably still send transactions to the network and get them into the next 1-2 blocks...

Charging for deposits is what banks used to do before they all went fractional reserve. A real deposit contract is like a car-park contract, not a loan. Term deposits on the other hand would still be remunerated.

In fact there are a couple of full reserve banks in existence right now (Peter Schiff's Europacbank for example), and they charge monthly fees for storing your money and keeping it safe, just like a car-park operator would do.

An important addition to this point:

Banks are forced by client demand to use multi-sig deposits, so that they no longer have the power to confiscate or block deposits in current accounts. People would once again be owners of the money that they have in their current account, instead of creditors of the bank.  (Term deposits would still be bank liabilities... but smart contracts would probably put limits on what banks can do with them).

I definitely don't expect them to give up their control easily. Right now they still don't see Bitcoin as a threat... but when Bitcoin gets to 50 or 100 million users they will definitely try to take over. The reason that attracts me most to Bitcoin, as opposed to other alternatives, is that it will be very difficult for them to do so. Even if they succeed in this... it is now so easy to fork Bitcoin or create altcoins that they will be chasing a moving target.

Also a tx tax (unless it is minimal) will make the networks that have it less competitive than those that don't, so users would mostly choose the free fork vs the govt. fork, even in the absence of other (eg: privacy) concerns.

OK, let me give it a shot....

1. Banks go the way of Newspapers.
They won't disappear, but they change focus to value-added services like lending, intermediation and lose their current massive scale. Many disappear or break up, the most flexible go online for everything and start going after clients in a global way. In 2025 surviving banks are more like those newspapers that have survived the blogging revolution: different business model, focus on quality and brand-recognition and permanently aware that there are a million alternatives out there ready to eat their lunch if they don't treat clients well.

2. Central banks go the way of the Postal Service.
They will still exist, still think that they matter and still perform some functions... but their influence will be hugely reduced. They will be almost universally ignored... just the same way as central bank presidents in dollarised Latin American countries just focus on supervision and fraud prevention and have little to say on monetary policy. In 2025 they will still be able to move interest rates and do QE... but the ease of capital flight to quality and yield will mean that they cannot use these tools as freely as they do now for fear of seeing an immediate reaction in the FX/Crypto markets which negates their intended effects.

3.Taxes will trend to fee-for-services and real estate.
As capital becomes more mobile and it becomes ever easier to escape tax-heavy jurisdictions, governments will tend to tax more heavily assets that cannot be moved (real estate) and also services that they provide (toll-road model). Tax competition will increase... countries and cities will try to become attractive for investors and residents through lower taxes and more choice. The world will look a bit more like Swizerland where taxes are mostly collected and spent at the Canton (regional) level.

4. Africa will become much richer.
As millions of people can suddenly interact directly and get paid by employers in the developed world or receive remittances from their families at zero cost and without their local governments easily confiscating them. Anyone with technical and language skills in Africa who can get online will suddenly be able to compete with US and European workers for jobs and wages. In 2025 people living in extreme poverty will be less than 5% of the world population.

5. More Peace.
The increased difficulty in collecting taxes or printing money for unpopular causes like war will mean that wars last less and are more limited in the harm that they do. We will see tax revolts as a form of anti-war protest, with millions of people refusing to pay VAT or income tax until the government listens to their cries for peace, and rulers will be unable to do anything to persecute such a massive passive, peaceful resistance movement.

6. Technological Renaissance.
As capital accumulation in the technology sector grows and is less stifled by taxes, regulations and monopolies... investment in R&D grows and the rate of technological advance increases. Technological and economic growth see exponential rates last seen in the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance.

We've had a million predictions of doom, all the bad things that can happen if Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies spread. We have also had an unending stream of "Bitcoin is dead" and "Bitcoin won't last another year" predictions.

What I would like is to try to imagine a best case scenario of how the world could change for the better if Bitcoin became as popular as e-mail or social networks and billions of people were using it.

So... what is your best case scenario for 2025?

I saw the CEO during the Barcelona Blockchain Week. He confirmed it.

It is very sad.

An exchange which never touches customer funds (neither BTC nor fiat) and therefore has no legal liability, as well as being global and uncensorable seems absolutely necessary to make Bitcoin more resilient.

The good news is that even if Coinffeine (the company) disappears, their software still works. It just needs users.

I urge anyone who can to get the code for v. 0.12.0 from github, compile it, run a couple of peers and try a few transactions. https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

The reason that Bitcoin's permissionless nature is so important is that it has enabled an explosion of innovation and different integrations that permissioned or closed Blockchains simply cannot countenance. It brings with it risks, of course, but that is inevitable with change.

Most closed networks die a quiet death when the company that creates them gives up on them, whereas Bitcoin is resilient and will survive, even if it is only used by a few thousand people. It also has the potential to go viral and adapt to exponential growth and uses that are unimaginable at the moment.

Coinffeine (the company) is shutting down, as often happens with startups. However the software is open source and distributed, so it can work even if its creators disappear as long as there are a couple of peers running it.

They have taken down the download links on the website:   http://coinffeine.com/download.html

...but the last version 0.12.0 is on github:
https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

We still very much need a decentralised p2p exchange which does not touch user BTC or $. We still need an exchange that is global, distributed and uncensorable.

It is easy to forget that most of the early Bitcoin exchanges were hacked, went broke or ran off with user funds.

Apparently Coinffeine is closing shop.


Hopefully somebody will pick up where they left off and make some use of their open source software to build a fully functional, liquid decentralised exchange.

The good thing about open source projects is that they can survive the company that started them. Let's hope that this is what happens here:

https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

You can easily build a reversible payment system on top of an irreversible one, but not the other way around. For some things,like micro-payments, reversibility would be an absolute nightmare.

I'm surprised at the few people that consider mining important... I have yet to see an alternative to PoW that has been as successful in securing a blockchain as the Bitcoin mining system has...

Does someone have any evidence of PoS or other systems working well?

This might also help:
http://cryptovoter.org/

So 37/46 (80%) voters think the 21m coin limit is fundamental. 74% believe BTC should remain decentralised.

It's important to make this stuff clear both for current developers and for future ones who might not have such a clear idea of what the community wants.