year I finally realized that we now live under a new, super-sophisticated version of global corporate fascism wherein CURRENCIES DO NOT MATTER. It is irrelevant whether your fiat is ye olde Dollars, pink Renminbis, or spiffy new Weyland Corp. GloboCredits. They are playthings of London, New York, and Beijing. The world changed under your feet. You haven't realized it yet.
Can I trade BTC for GloboCredits? Seriously though. I've vaguely been following the progress of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which apparently allowed other currencies for oil-trading since March. Not heard much recently, but suspect that's me not them. The really important thing to remember is just that Debt = Power. Just like any bank holding credit over a customer, the notion ( both emotional and legal) of "being owed something" is directly tied to being able to control what the debtor owes (and therefore can and can't do) in the future. Having something worth lending is just the carrot. Possibly worth a read or not: http://www.serendipity.li/hr/imf_and_dollar_system.htm |
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A few weeks ago we released the album 'Stillium Partita' on CoinDL.com. blocknois.es is now proud to release the companion album 'Stillium Reworked', available on CoinDL.com here, 1 week earlier than its "official" release, exclusively for Bitcoin buyers. Tracks are also available individually. Stillium Partita, the first companion album, is also available at a 20% discount for this first week. Espen J. Jörgensen, one of the collaborators on the 2 albums, has an ongoing interest in virtual currencies, and would like to see what Bitcoins can do for music. He talks to the other artist, Rupert Lally, about their music here. blocknois.es is the first* effort dedicated to bringing more musicians into the Bitcoin world. blocknois.es has more releases lined up, but is very interested in working with more artists to get some decent tunes available for Bitcoiners, and to start pushing the boundaries of releasing digital music. Contact us at h3ll0@blocknois.es or at @blocknoises on Twitter if interested. See the announcement below for more info. *[citation needed] Original announcement below.  .//////////////////////////////////////////\.
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http://blocknois.es/
http://twitter.com/blocknoises
Bringing music & musicians to Bitcoin.
== OUTPUTS> ==
: STILLIUM PARTITA
blocknois.es is launching with the Bitcoin release of 'Stillium Partita' by
Rupert Lally & Espen J. Jorgensen, a landscape of ambient glitches and digital
rhythms.
Download free 3-track sampler: http://j.mp/PnZnfA
Listen to full stream: http://bit.ly/P941Ml
Buy for Bitcoins: http://bit.ly/P942A4
: STILLIUM REWORKED [2012-09-24]
blocknois.es proudly brings the remix album of 'Stillium Partita' to Bitcoin
one week before the official release date. Available from http://coindl.com on
Monday 24th September, 'Stillium Reworked' drastically edits the previously-
ambient landscapes of its origins into more hard-hitting resonance.
Preview free single 'Pistolero': http://bit.ly/RISth5
: COMING SOON
More music from indie artists at a variety of price levels - see below if you'd
like to take part, or know someone who might.
: FEEDBACK L00P
1% of every album sale goes to Bitcoin Faucet (http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/) to
encourage new users into the world of Bitcoin.
== >INPUTS ==
Interested in releasing your music to the Bitcoin world? Drop us a line at
h3ll0@blocknois.es or via Twitter at @blocknoises
blocknois.es is open to open-ended collaboration on release details, pricing,
etc and seeks to actively encourage progressive musical distribution. Artists
do not need a Bitcoin account - remuneration can be organised through any means.
blocknois.es does not specialise in any single genre.
blocknois.es does not condone DRM technology.
[END]
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I'm UK based and have done a few over-the-net exchanges via GTalk and bank transfer / Google checkout, looking to do more by cash (in person) and drop Google checkout but it kind of works. Also listed on localbitcoins.com. Feel free to drop me a PM or on Twitter (@exmosis).
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Been reading a bit about semiotics and myth recently, and have realised that signs and symbols are actually a *really* useful way of thinking about what "exists". In a zen kind of way (does a falling tree in a forest make a sound, yadda yadda), all symbols only exist if/when they can be tied back to some original "value" - i.e. Bitcoins "exist" if you can spend/sell them.
Technology - and language, marketing, etc - is all about symbols. Does a Facebook "Like" exist? Perhaps it "exists" if it gives me emotional feedback, in the same way that a sunset "exists" as an emotional thing. Can I buy food with a "Like"? No. Well, not directly. Can I buy food with a Bitcoin? Yes - because it enforces scarcity and therefore ownership and therefore is equivalent, in terms of physicality, to a "real" food "object".
So Bitcoins exist, but their existence is tied not to the "belief" in them, but to supply and demand. They exist, like any unit of currency, as a representation of desire to swap stuff.
Or something.
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Did they ever figure out who he was?
Not yet. |
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Man, memories - I was well into the whole PerplexCity game. I was amazed when someone found out where exactly in the world he's actually standing. (It's in Kaysersberg, France). More background on the old PXC wiki: http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Billion_to_OneGood times. Still looking for him. |
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blockchain.info/wallet just isn't very brandable.
www.blollet.com is still available though... |
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No immediate answer after some searching, but does looks like the domain was registered in March last year, at the same time as blockchain.net and blockchain.org - maybe that helps to widen the net? Source: http://www.dailychanges.com/registrar-servers.com/2011-03-09/You could try doing a historical DNS search using the DomainTools Pro features, in case the whois privacy was added later for some reason. |
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Good timing, I'm just starting to look at the feasibility of using Bitcoin ad networks so definitely up for having a play... my ID's 1039, I think.
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Excellent, can't wait to get it sent through :-) will be interesting to see what kind of use it gets.
My main aim is to take it along to hackdays, geek meetups and other day-long conferences and advertise it as a open social stuff box for all the people with documents/pictures to share.
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@ Scribe:
I tried to do it with your charts this time, but unfortunately they dont seem to update and dont show the August stats atm. Would that change automatically at the end of the month?
Do you think you could get this highcharts implementation done?
Finally got round to setting this up to run daily - http://www.exmosis.net/btctt/stats.csv should update the latest month's figure when any changes are made. Not got much time to look at highcharts for a few weeks. The current page has an "export image" button top-right, but can't think of a way to do this automatically. Also for some reason the chart isn't displaying properly in my browser until you turn some categories off and on. Keep up the analysis  |
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So as of September we can't use Intersango any more to buy BTC's basically in the UK?
That sucks and is going to be problematic for a lot of people.
That's the gist of it. We're actively seeking new banking relationships and investigating other means of doing business in the UK. Just to be clear this will not effect EUR/PLN/USD transfers and will certainly not be effecting bitcoin transfers. Infuriating. But not surprising. Even faintly amusing when British banks are under so much fire for systemic problems anyway. Will transfers into Intersango be OK up to the end of the month, and will they persist in an Intersango account once the Metro bank account closes? |
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I feel almost petty saying this after all that, but is the "Local Currency" option broken on the web wallet? I was expecting it to change the USD amount (e.g. to GBP) in the top-right, and the converted amount reported when sending money, but they seem stuck as USD whatever "Local Currency" is set to.
If you click the BTC amount in the top right it should alternate between your local currency and btc. Ah sorry - I meant that the local currency used doesn't switch to GBP, it stays as USD for me, whatever I choose under "Local Currency". (In Chrome, not tested in Firefox/IE) |
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Great to see more Etsy talk on here - and love the octopus Not trying to threadjack, but I'm also accepting Bitcoins on my Etsy shop (see sig) so would be great to discuss tips/questions/what works and what doesn't. Good luck! |
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Posting here more as a way of thinking out loud, as I think this *is* an important issue. I say that having various items for sale, and having sold some of them through other platforms, and none of them for Bitcoins. Right now, challenges selling stuff for Bitcoins are (in no particular order): - price fluctuations mean people either hold on to BTC when they're going up (to sell at a higher price), or hold on to BTC when they're going down (to wait until they go back up)
- the pool of people willing to use BTC *instead* of normal cash (read Paypal) is relatively low, compared to the people using it as speculation - that is, Paypal is actually "good enough"
- handling Bitcoins and converting from/to "normal" currency is getting better all the time, but still requires some learning curve
The trade-off on other services (such as Paypal, Ebay, Etsy, Apple) for higher transaction costs is not simply the technical infrastructure, but the *available audience*. In other words, it's more effective for me to sell stuff on ebay but say that I'm accepting Bitcoins (as well as Paypal), than it is to sell on, say, BitMit. As a seller, why would I cut my potential audience? This is why exchanges and services like bitpay are more important. People care about selling *something* - a lower transaction cost for no transactions is still zero profit. I agree that people (including myself) need to sell stuff that is wanted. But that doesn't answer the question "wanted by whom?" - at the end of the day, if I can make more profit selling to a larger audience than the Bitcoin audience, who will I focus my efforts on? Hunterbunter's point is interesting: Bitcoin has it's advantages (what are they?), and successful bitcoins businesses will be playing to those strengths.
...
One of the advantages of bitcoins is that it's amazingly easy and relatively fast to transfer across the planet. In what kinds of businesses would this be useful?
I tend to agree, but at the same time this means that the marketplace for Bitcoin is based on it as a technology, not a currency. This is exciting and infuriating at the same time. It means there's a whole bunch of "traditional" useful shit (like food, clothing, etc) which are still subject to the GBP or the USD or whatever, and the economic whimsies associated with them. That's kind of not why Bitcoin excites me, but maybe I need to re-assess my expectations. |
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I hate to spoil your joy over this, but this Bristol currency isn't really a currency. As far as I know, it's fixed to the british pound in 1:1, thus it is merely GBP in another form. The reason why they started this project is that once you exchange your money to the Bristol thing you usually spend it there. If you just had GBP you would likely spend it somewhere else. So it helps the local economy. From our point of view this turistic attraction is irrelevant.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I got my information from newspapers and it may be wrong.
Agreed - most local currencies are closer to the Gift Card model used by shops in that it limits where you can spend your cash (except you can convert it back to other currencies, at a push). From the spender's perspective, that's a big limitation - "Like Cash! Only less useful!" - you need to offer a *lot* of discounts (like, system-wide) to make it meaningful/attractive to spenders, and local businesses often don't have the margin to do that. I'd like to see more development around reasons for local currencies - but realistically I think that has to come from, or feed directly into, local taxes/government. Could local taxes be tied into transactions in the local currency for example, e.g. spend Brixton Pounds to give x% to a local development fund? Given that the main draw is to keep money "local" rather than disappear into international companies and pensions, doesn't that open up scope for more local feedback? I'd like to see more online presences for local areas too - electronic local currencies could feed into this nicely, like a kind of gift card for an aggregated online store for an area. An "eBrixton" site could bring together items from shops in Brixton, which you could then buy online using Brixton pounds, or pre-order online and pick-up in person. There's opportunity for gifts if you know someone's going to be visiting a place, but also means that if people have a Brixton Pound leftover after visiting for the day, it's not just lying around in a drawer being forgotten about. |
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Lewes launched their Pound about a year ago - I spoke to a local trader recently who thought it was a pain as a) nobody took them for anything *useful* like car parking, and b) exchanging it back into GBP meant a time-costing trip to one particular building. Good to see it's still going, but there are definitely some real problems around demand and usability that both local currencies AND Bitcoin need to resolve in order to work.
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I did it mostly because I thought it'd be fun (and it was.  ) In among all the bitcoin-grabbing anger on this forum, posts like this are why I love the Bitcoin community Amazing job, Stefan. I feel almost petty saying this after all that, but is the "Local Currency" option broken on the web wallet? I was expecting it to change the USD amount (e.g. to GBP) in the top-right, and the converted amount reported when sending money, but they seem stuck as USD whatever "Local Currency" is set to. |
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