"On August 17, 2015, Tierion announced that it has been contracted by the Connecticut government to aid officials in surveying 200 of the top technology firms in the state. The company’s job is to gather responses to survey questions and then create the blockchain receipts that are needed for timestamp and content verification of each respondent’s answers. The reasoning behind the use of this technology is simple: it will help the state avoid potential disputes over the data."



I was not aware that the block chain could be used for anything other than recording transactions... Does this mean that the block chain could potentially be used for other purposes as well?

Happy Tuesday everyone! Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this forum. It has been a necessary tool for learning the way digital currency works. YouTube has also been surprisingly helpful. Looking forward to better understanding every day.

I agree, it is an excellent article and perfect for DCEBrief.  Great choice for the picture - it is breathtaking! 

Things are looking good everyone. The first week of school is finished so back to a "normal" routine. I will be more present from now on. I received this in my email and wanted to share:

Bitwage    Connecting You to Financial Freedom

Hello,
I recently came across your contact information while I was researching Bitcoin enthusiasts.
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I'd like to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about Bitwage and our Payroll Solutions tailored for you---the individual:

BITCOIN PAYROLL INDIVIDUAL

Receive any percentage of your wage or salary in Bitcoin regardless of your employer signing up. No bank account required.
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How it works:


    We give you a bank account number.

    You tell your employer or payroll provider to send your payroll to that bank account.

    You get Bitcoin Next Day after Deposit.


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Simple right? We would love to hear from you if you are interested in our payroll solutions. You can learn more and sign up at https://www.bitwage.com. Please feel free to contact us at info@bitwage.com so we can help you get set up to receive a bitcoin wage--your first "bitwage" from Bitwage!
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Lily Baker
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© Bitwage 2013-2015 | Unsubscribe

Bitwage, Inc.
60 Spear St. #1100, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA

Bitwage Ireland, Ltd.
Blair House, Upper O'Connell Street, Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland


Anyone else receive such an email? I will look into it and ask about DNotes as well. This would be very beneficial to the non-technical user and we might be able to use this in conjunction with the CRISP for Employee Benefits. I will keep you posted.

This article pre-dates the 2008-09 financial crisis and the dawn of bitcoin, but it gives you something to think about now that we are beginning the age of global digital currencies.  I don't think a single worldwide currency will ever happen or is even a good idea, but I do think having the option of a global currency like DNotes is the best idea.

I haven't looked very far to see what the author thinks of bitcoin now, but he did make the usual comments (an article from 2013) about bitcoin's lack of trust, volatility, gambling, speculation, etc.


A Single Global Currency

"...US$400 billion of annual transaction and exchange costs will be eliminated"  - The Single Global Currency (book)

"The book also argues that if we had a single global currency, worldwide assets would increase by about $36 trillion"

The article goes on to explain how a single currency would help eliminate global imbalances, crises and speculation, etc.

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/58347.html

Much of the article talks about vulnerabilities we already know, 51% attack and changing transaction history, anyone can run a node etc... Newer developments make that much more difficult like KGW.

I haven't formulated a conclusive opinion as to whether I think the permissioned blockchains would be a better approach for banks to settle internal transactions. I'm sure they could have a solution where nodes are specifically permitted on the network, but wouldn't the nodes themselves be vulnerable to attack creating a bigger security issue than 51% attack or now be vulnerable to internal corruption?

Thinking through this could be beneficial to DNotes one day, but it is a very complicated issue. Think about how long and how many people it took to come up with bitcoin's solution. I don't know what kind of effort they have already put into this solution, but I'm hesitant to conclude anything.

Peer to peer transactions, for everyone else and public use, a public free market blockchain is still, in my opinion, the best option.

It will be very interesting to see how this will play out.

I've been reading through the "No, Bitcoin is not the future of securities settlement" article. Pretty long, haven't gotten through it yet.
http://www.clearmatics.com/2015/05/no-bitcoin-is-not-the-future-of-securities-settlement/

"quagmire!!!.........!!!" Get ready. Expect hundreds of different "permission tokens" Confused already. They will be a lot more to come. Those who truly believe in DECENTRALIZED Digital Currency must not allow our voice to be drown out.

impressive

Sorry guys, and girls! I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Major projects at work and the paramedic unit I run with just won a very prestigious award:

"Public Information Office, August 18

Calvert Advanced Life Support has received notification the department has been selected as the NAEMT’s Volunteer Department of The Year 2015. The award, which is sponsored by Zoll, will be presented at the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians General Membership Meeting and Awards Presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 16, in Las Vegas, Nevada during EMSworld Expo."

As Chairman of the Board of Directors of that organization, I have been very busy helping prepare for this. We are sending a select group to Vegas to accept the award and attend the conference. My wife (a past Chief of CALS) will be attending and we intend to extend our stay on the west coast to California to visit family and drive the Pacific Coast Highway, something I've always wanted to do.

So, I'll be reading but not posting much till we return later in the month. As for the subject at hand, I think we all realize that commercial interests such as banks, will exploit crypto every way they can now that they realize it's not going away, this is to be expected.

They will also fail in the long run because they have no soul, no real belief in the greater good crypto can do for the worlds less fortunate populations. Its a sad fact of life that for good to exist, there must also be evil. I personally believe good can triumph as long as people believe it can. DNotes stands for good. I think all of us here are fighting for a greater cause than personal wealth and that my friends, is why we will prosper and come out on top.

DNotes best course of action is continuing to do exactly what we are doing now, educating. We must stay the course and continue to bring the message to those who can benefit most and thats not the bankers, it's the ordinary people, the simple folks, the disadvantaged, the isolated and all those who believe the current system is top heavy and imperfect.

So, carry on, keep the torches lit and rally the troupes as needed, we will prevail in the long game. 

Apologies if this is difficult to read etc, it's one of my 'long posts' where I think of things and get confused about the order I should discuss them, then 'chop and change' sentences around which can make the message harder to follow. These views and 'on the fly' thoughts are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of DNotes.

To begin I'm not sure I like the idea when regulators and officials take jobs from companies who had been lobbying them.

To use a politically neutral example, who remembers Darleen Druyun, former weapons buyer for the US Air force? Well in 2005 she was jailed for (only) 9 months after pleading guilty to giving Boeing special treatment in a 23.5 billion dollar government contract - of course, after the deal was inked, Druyun was hired by Boeing as a vice-president with an annual salary of 250k. Druyun allowed Boeing to negotiate for an extra 6 billion dollars more than the contract should have been. This kind of hiring of 'career' government officials into highly paid corporate executive roles has been routine for decades. I don't know if Mr Lawsky made the regulations incredibly expensive and difficult to comply with, to the detriment of itBit's competition before he left the NYDFS, but considering that to the best of my knowledge, itBit is still the only exchange to have a banking licence... it kinda stinks of corruption. This could be a big misunderstanding though, and those two regulators may have just joined itBit fair and square, or these two regulators made itBit a 'sure thing' - we may never know. The next question would be that in the event that there was unfair favouritism affird to itBit, is it sensible (risky) to go into business with them should foul-play be uncovered in the future, or do these appointments provide some level of immunity? It will take more time watching how this all plays out.


In regards to the 'bankchain' thing, I've been waiting for something like this to come along for a while. We all expected banks to try to take the technology for their own to improve their settlement payments from overnight to near-instant. I can see lots of problems with itBit's idea - but I presume many customers may prefer joining banks that are members of the 'bankchain' system for faster payments, which could encourage even more banks to join. I don't have any issue with itBit being profit motivated, but re-my point about the regulators passing ridiculously difficult regulations in NY that have turned away nearly all of itBit's competitors... it doesn't sound like they're playing fair game. Again, this may not be the case at all - pending further research and developments.


Of course, ItBit and the banks are still at a disadvantage - they haven't fixed the money, they still use fiat. I could go on and on with various graphs and points (may I point people in the direction of IMZ's crypto kindergarten blog posts on cryptomoms.com forums), but the reality is that fiat is created as debt, which means new money must come into creation to pay for the interest owing on that debt, which is completely unsustainable. World governments are in massive debt crises, and they have all failed to create the next 'economic' bubble that would give a false sense that the 'real' economy isn't in decline.

But why has recovery been unattainable on this occasion?



https://www.quandl.com/data/FRED/DFF-Effective-Federal-Funds-Rate

Take a look at the effective federal funds rate in the link above. The interest rate tends to be lifted by the fed in times of economic boom, and severely lowered in times when the government want to promulgate economic activity, which leads to 'bubbles' (stock bubble, dotcom bubble, housing bubble etc). The chart clearly shows drops in the interest rate in ~1988, ~2001 and ~2007 in line with the decline of each bubble. These low interest rates make borrowing really cheap, and encourage ridiculous investment activities that no sane person would make if interest rates were dictated by the free-market. Currently, the Fed has an effective 0.14 % interest rate, and it has been near zero since ~2010.

The fact that interest rates are still low, is the obvious tell that there has been no 'real' economic recovery. What is worse, is that there is now nothing in the way of 'government tools' to improve this situation - QE has already convoluted the real decline in the US economy, and dropping interest rates any lower would make them go negative. I hardly think anybody would be interested in running a restaurant where they paid customers to come and eat, and I think it would work the same with your bank deposits if you were earning negative interest - It would mean the destruction of the banking system. I could go into this much further, and bring about many other points, but this should suffice for the moment. Basically, crypto currencies have more long-term stable potential than fiat currencies do. Crypto is going to become a more attractive alternative, and quickly.

But DNotes doesn't only have the advantage of sound money - It is a good point to highlight that DNotes is creating a global digital currency that is useful everywhere and holds an equal value worldwide, so there is no requirment no transfer between currencies (i.e. Euro to USD) like with itBit's system - (presuming foreign banks co-operate, or foreign exchange is possible as a service of the banks through the bankchain).
ItBits 'bankchain' simply can not compete on the near-zero transfer cost possible with DNotes and our ecosystem. Not within the same country, and certainly not internationally. If ItBit does try to compete, the banks will not be pleased to forego all of their processing fee's (income) and leave the bankchain. If they don't try to compete on processing fees, then DNotes holds a competitive advantage and consumers would get more value using DNotes for transfer. ItBit's strategy could like like any number of things, but one could be that they work to get adopted by the banking system, and quickly, then proclaim victory and hope everybody else gives up - including crypto industries. They would come up with some slogan to entice banks like "Bitcoin brought instant payment transfers, banking uses 'real' money. ItBit brings you both". ItBit may simultaneously remain one of the only exchanges where crypto-USD transfers are permitted by the US Gov through banking licences, especially if the NY regulations are adopted in other states (which looks likely). ItBit could continue to accommodate the 'niche' crypto market and make extra profits as a monopoly / oligopoly player to supplement their 'bankchain' income - which would be a great way to hedge their bets in the short term.

Normally I try to avoid speculating this far ahead because there are too many assumptions made along the way. Changing one assumption, would then change the 'next step'. The above is but one potential path we could see.

Chase, I have no idea if banks in developing nations would be invited to the party. I imagine it would be the US banks that wouldn't want to deal with those in developing nations. Assuming any banks even wanted to use ItBit's platform, I doubt the US government would allow the banking system to shift from predominantly being traded in USD, to being traded in "ItBit tokens"... I think DNotes and digital currencies in general are safer from government trying to shut down their ecosystems. It would be much more likely that if this 'bankchain' thing is successful, the US government would buy the rights to it, then force all banks to trade using their own 'issued' tokens by the "BankFederalReserveChain". That way the US government would be able to spy much more easily on every banking transaction, and all but make physical cash illegal...

Of course, at that juncture, who knows how many everyday people would have decided they would prefer to use decentralized crypto's like DNotes?

Anyway, hopefully it sparks an interesting conversation.