This article while technically correct from an academic point of view misses a crucial point. In order for a bank to create money by fractional reserve banking there has to be a person who is both creditworthy and willing to borrow. Furthermore the borrower must be willing hold the loan for a significant period of time in order to have an impact in the M1 money supply. The trouble is that no borrower in their right mind will borrow Bitcoin, a currency that has increased in purchasing power by a factor of 25 in under 6 months only to then "correct" in the "bear" market to "only" 14 times the purchasing power! By the way the real issue here is not volatility but rather the massive unrelenting bull market in Bitcoin driven by the adoption of the currency. Bitcoin borrowing and lending will only make sense once adoption of Bitcoin has reached close to its saturation level, at that point it will behave a lot like gold does today. In the meantime Bitcoin only makes sense as an equity based form of money and the Bitcoin monetary base will be for all practical purposes effectively equivalent to the entire Bitcoin money supply including M1, M2, M3 etc. The author's site https://www.bitbond.net/ and concept is in fact so far ahead of its time that it actually at this point in Bitcoin's development highly dangerous to both borrowers and lenders alike.. ^^ +1 Mortgage backed securities are a good example of a significant contributor to USD M1. Would any sane person take out a mortgage denominated in bitcoin? Cryptocurrencies will likely coexist with fiat currencies for at least several decades. |
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Don't mean to rain on their parade, but there's no way Paypal will be okay with payments for "pre-orders". This probably won't last too long.
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Somehow managed to miss this interesting announcement: (...apologies if its already been posted, but I couldn't find it here anywhere) From the Coinbase blog: 30/7/2013
Welcome Charlie Lee (creator of Litecoin) to the team!
We’re excited to announce Charlie Lee has joined the Coinbase team!
Charlie was previously an engineer at Google working on Google Play Games, Chrome OS, and YouTube. Charlie is probably best known as the creator of Litecoin, the most popular Bitcoin derivative. He layers on more mental horsepower here at Coinbase with his BS and Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
If you use Google Authenticator to secure your Coinbase account or Authy’s voice support feature to verify your phone number, then you’ve already benefitted from some of Charlie’s early work!
...just about spat my coke all over my litecoin rig when I saw this.  |
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Anyone in the bay area attend this panel? Hopefully the video will be posted soon... Bitcoin. It’s the new black. It’s ushering in the new Gold Rush. It’s what everyone will be using in the next few years. It's the future of money. But wait, what exactly is Bitcoin? And how is it going to affect the way we buy and sell in the future?
Join us and our panel of experts who will demystify the new form of digital currency that everyone’s been talking about and using.
This Panel includes:
Moderator: Kim-Mai Culter, Journalist, Tech Crunch
Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase
Paige Freeman, VP of Sales, Bitpay
Jared Kenna, CEO, Tradehill
Stefan Thomas, CTO for Opencoin and Founder of We Use Coins
This panel is hosted in collaboration with General Assembly and made possible by our sponsor, Getty Images
6:30 p.m. -- Doors open
6:30 p.m -- Reception with small bites and one complimentary free drink
7:10 p.m. -- Welcome & Introductions
7:20 p.m. -- Moderated Panel
8:35 p.m. -- Q&A
8:45 p.m. -- Drinks & Mingling
*Please note there are no refunds on tickets and this event is 21+ |
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The choice to me here is very simple, secure Bitcoins, or full DRM support in the OS but not both. I use GNU / Linux for my Bitcoins for this very simple reason and can sleep well at night knowing that the GPL v3 code deep within GNU / Linux helps keep my Bitcoins safe.
+1 |
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'After the last week report that the National Security Agency has leveraged its cooperative relationships with specific industry partners to insert vulnerabilities into Internet security products.'
And none of them are open source. which is the point. bitcoin is open source. if it wasn't, it would be dead in the water.
Unfortunately there's no guarantee or requirement that bitcoin clients, online wallets, paper wallet generators etc. use verified, open source random number generation instead of some generic Windows or Android SDK "random()" function. |
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... Last month, we reported an Android security vulnerability</a> which resulted in the theft of coins, because of Weak random number generators (RNGs) was implicated in Bitcoin.& Is it possible that this vulnerability was known to be weak by the NSA, and that bitcoin thieves simply stumbled upon the security hole first? ( Source ) More? Here : http://thehackernews.com/2013/09/NSA-backdoor-bitcoin-encryption-sha256-snowden.htmlSo, what do you think about it? The likelihood that the RNG "problem" was at least known to certain agencies should be considered high. Any bitcoin address, existing or future, created using a compromised or purposely weakened RNG is vulnerable to address collision by brute force (the probability is so close to zero it can be ignored with a good RNG algorithm). "Offline" storage (i.e. paper wallets, USB keys etc) are not exempt if they were created using a compromised RNG. It's a trivial and virtually undetectable attack that could be conducted entirely offline with nothing more than a copy of the blockchain (except for sweeping the bitcoin of course). Similar attacks on deterministic wallets are already commonplace: Just try a brain wallet with "Hello World" (or "Goodbye Bitcoin") as a passphrase... |
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Good discussion. There's another panel scheduled on 9/16/13 with the same moderator: This Panel includes:
Moderator: Kim-Mai Culter, Journalist, Tech Crunch
Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase
Paige Freeman, VP of Sales, Bitpay
Jared Kenna, CEO, Tradehill
Stefan Thomas, CTO for Opencoin and Founder of We Use Coins
This panel is hosted in collaboration with General Assembly and made possible by our sponsor, Getty Images http://www.thebolditalic.com/events/6406-tech-panel-bitcoin-and-the-future-of-digital-currencyNote the sponsor. Should be interesting. |
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Agencies tried very hard to regulate Paypal out of existence too in the very beginning, but it had grown quickly and could afford to fight back.
The bitcoin foundation is needed, if nothing else than to fight the future legal battles that will surely come.
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Jeffrey Tucker never disappoints as a bitcoin evangelist.
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Add in conversion charges and bid/ask spread from local fiat to bitcoin.
Add in transaction fee.
Add in conversion charges and bid/ask spread from bitcoin to local fiat.
How 'free' is it now?
Again it is important to be forward looking. You only need a single bitcoin accepting drugstore in Mumbay to slash your third point for thousands of indian foreign workers in all countries. Exactly, just as an employer paying in bitcoin would eliminate the first point as well. The NY-based startup "Buttercoin" that just received $1M funding from Google Ventures and Y-Combinator among others has targeted remittances as a primary business opportunity. |
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Add in conversion charges and bid/ask spread from local fiat to bitcoin.
Add in transaction fee.
Add in conversion charges and bid/ask spread from bitcoin to local fiat.
How 'free' is it now?
Yes, that's an important point, it'll never be completely "free", but it will be a lot more "free" than it is now. Once btc/fiat conversion becomes more distributed, spreads of 1-2% percent will likely be commonplace. Coinbase already has this in the US. Anyone could offer similar rates in another country (Philippines, China, etc.) and total fees could then be 2-4% instead of 8-9%. |
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This will be big.
With 8.85% currently being skimmed by the banking /remittance industry - from those who can afford it least - this will happen all by itself. Guaranteed.
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1) Are there 7/11s, or other 24-hour convenience store chains in Canada?
Hmm.. not so sure.. I know they used to have trading posts. A more important consideration might be keeping it dug-out from under all the snow, and parking for snowmobiles, of course. More seriously: Granville Island or the bitcoin-accepting Waves coffee shop at Howe and Smithe would both be good locations. Or any 7-11 (yes, they have convenience stores in Canada). |
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Old article / even older news.... Thread date should be the date of the article *not* when you happened to see it.
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If Ebay ever adopts or even officially allows bitcoin as a payment method, it would most likely only be as BTC-denominated payments through Paypal (owned by Ebay and not surprisingly also considering bitcoin).
There's no way they'll *ever* allow an irreversible form of payment like direct buyer-seller bitcoin transactions. Paying in BTC through Paypal would add the layer of "buyer protection" (and 2-3% fees). Anything else would undermine their revenue model.
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Paypal is well known to freeze funds (and hold them for weeks) with little or no cause. A simple google search will turn up all kinds of horror stories where companies have been unable to meet payroll etc etc on account of over-reliance on Paypal.
You should *never* keep any funds in Paypal that you can't afford to have frozen for 2-3 weeks. A single "questionable" payment from a customer or even inquiring about unusual activity can be enough to lock down an account for weeks while an "investigation" takes place. Transactions can also be reversed after several months - for all sorts of dubious reasons with little or no explanation given.
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