UK Digital Currency Association Launches as Local Community Voice
Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on March 24, 2014 at 18:31 GMT | Europe, News

After a few months of behind-the-scenes work, the UK Digital Currency Association (UKDCA) announced its official launch on 24th March, a declaration that signifies it now has an incorporated entity, an operational website and established working groups.

The UKDCA is most notable for its work consulting with the UK’s tax body, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), on its decision to eliminate added costs imposed on bitcoin trades earlier this March. The decision was championed by the international community as a progressive move by the HMRC.

UKDCA member and Bullion Bitcoin owner Adam Clary spoke to CoinDesk about the launch, indicating that this will be just the beginning of the organisation’s work.

Clary said that the UKDCA will serve as a trade association that benefits both the domestic bitcoin community, as well as the wider UK population.

Bitcoin community members can join the public group, free of charge, though paid memberships come with more substantial perks. Likewise, Clary indicated that the public will gain a trusted informational resource.

Explained Clary:

“Governments, regulators, businesses, the media, [they] like to have these focal points they can deal with in old-fashioned, legacy terms. A trade association provides this focal point for the wider community.”

The organisation is being run by an interim board. An election will then be held to determine a full board of directors.

Interim board members include Clary, Elliptic CEO Tom Robinson and BankToTheFuture.com co-founder Simon Dixon, among others.

Membership tiers

Clary explained that the UKDCA plans to introduce three tiers of membership, using a model similar to the one the Bitcoin Foundation has parlayed to international success. The group had previously been operated as a part of the London meetup group.

The UKDCA’s three membership tiers will include:

Industry members – pay the highest membership fee in exchange for the ability to display the UKDCA logo on their websites
Individual members – pay a small subscription fee to have their name listed on the UKDCA website and for board member voting privileges
Supporters – do not pay a membership fee, but are able to signal their support.
Working groups will be focused on four topic areas – exchanges, regulation and accounting; business and financing; media, education and charity; technology and mining.

International collaboration

Clary indicated that the UKDCA has been in touch with the Bitcoin Foundation, and that the two groups are currently discussion how they can best work together.

The UKDCA, Clary noted, will be looking to support the foundation in the UK:

“We are absolutely 100-percent non conflictive. We are here to do our stuff in the UK, and to be a UK-centered organization, whereas the Bitcoin Foundation is global.”

Clary likened the organisation to successful groups formed in the Netherlands, Canada and Australia that operate as national trade organisations.

First public event

The UKDCA will hold a panel discussion on 31st March during FinTech Week to mark its launch.

Clary, who is moderating the talk, indicated that it will primarily highlight the technology of the blockchain. Panelists include Ethereum’s Stephan Tual; Netagio’s Simon Hamblin; and more.

Following the introduction, the event will feature a regulatory update, a startup stories exchange and an open networking period.

Those who wish to attended can visit Rain Making Loft, International House 1 St Katharine’s Way, London, E1W 1TW.

Kraken’s Audit Proves it Holds 100% of All Bitcoins in Reserve
Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on March 24, 2014 at 10:45 GMT | Exchanges, News

Bitcoin exchange Kraken has passed a cryptographically verifiable proof of reserves audit with flying colours.

The audit, which was carried out by Stefan Thomas on 11th and 22nd of March, proved that more than 100% of Kraken’s bitcoins are held in reserve.

The process was designed to allow the auditor to verify that the total amount of bitcoins held by Kraken matches the amount required to cover an anonymized set of customer balances.

Covering all balances

Thomas said the audit was very strict, but at the same time it maintained “absolute privacy” for customers. He also added that Kraken have expressed interest in conducting regular audits in the future, with different auditors each time. Thomas said:

“I am attesting to is the root hash of a merkle tree containing all balances that were considered in the audit. If you are a customer of Kraken, you’ll be able to verify using open-source tools that your balance at the time of the audit is part of this root hash. If it is and if you believe that I am trustworthy, then you can be confident that your balance was covered by 100% reserves at the time of the audit.”

Using the ‘Merkle Tree’ technique originally proposed by bitcoin developer Greg Maxwell, the auditor went on to explain the gritty technical details. He was provided with a JSON file from Kraken, which contained the list of the exchange’s addresses and balances. The file was then compared against a copy of the block chain.

The results were in order, Thomas concluded: ”The actual holdings were very slightly (< 0.5%) above the required holdings, meaning Kraken had greater than 100% reserves at the audit block height.”

A competitive edge

Following the Mt. Gox crisis, many exchanges are keen to distance themselves from the troubled exchange and other bitcoin outfits with a chequered track record. Security and transparency have become selling points, hence exchanges appear to be doing their best to reassure investors on a regular basis.

Earlier this month UK-registered bitcoin exchange Bitstamp released the results of its own financial audit, which found that it held 100% of its validated BTC balance and USD funds. No issues were raised by the auditors.

Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodrič told CoinDesk that his company plans to perform regular audits, with quarterly results posted on the Bitstamp website.

As investors demand more security and transparency, exchanges have to oblige or suffer the consequences and lose their competitive edge. Low fees are just one way of remaining competitive, but transparency and sound reporting practices might prove more important in the long run.

New York Gears Up for Inside Bitcoins Event
Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on March 24, 2014 at 15:03 GMT | Events, News

With Inside Bitcoins NYC 2014 fast approaching, event organisers continue to roll out more information about what its thousands of anticipated visitors can expect during the two-day conference on 7th April and 8th April.

Inside Bitcoins, to be held at the Javits Convention Center, most recently revealed via its website that American Banker executive director Marc Hochstein, with support from Wedbush Securities’ Gil Luria, will be giving the keynote for day two’s events.

The announcement finds Hochstein and Luria joining Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire and Blockchain CEO Nicolas Cary on the list of the event’s keynote speakers, though their presence is no doubt a signal of the increasing appeal of bitcoin outside the industry.

However, good news for Inside Bitcoins NYC isn’t limited to bolstering the event itself. As BitcoinNYC founder Jonathan Mohan can attest, Inside Bitcoins has a big impact on his weekly meetup group serving New York.

For Mohan, the conference is an opportunity to capitalize on increased local awareness of bitcoin. Explained Mohan:

“The conference is great as an onboarding progress, because it gives people who aren’t in the community an easy roadmap into the community.”

It’s also popular with his existing members. Mohan indicates that since informing his community about the event to his group, more than 100 of its members have expressed that they’ll be in attendance to access the show’s free vendor booths.

Added Mohan with an air of understatement: “There’s a lot of interest.”

Inside Bitcoins 2013

Bitcoin NYC hasn’t always been able to rely on strong strong support, however.

Mohan indicated that his group formed in March of 2013, a few months before the inaugural Inside Bitcoins NYC, held last July. Since then, he indicates he has noticed a key change at his meetup groups: attendees are more open about revealing their backgrounds in discussions, a sign he suggests that bitcoin’s credibility is increasing, thanks in no small part to events like Inside Bitcoins.

Said Mohan:

“Initially in early last, we’d have people say ‘I work in finance’ or ‘Oh, I work on Wall Street’. Now we have people who say [they] work at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or Bloomberg.”

Preparing for the event

Of course, Mohan will have a bit more responsibility at this year’s event than his fellow meetup attendees. That’s because Mohan will be moderating the “New Ideas in Bitcoin” discussion, one of two panels that will directly follow the event’s opening keynote speech.

That panel will include Peter Earle, chief economist at Huminit; Chris Odom, co-founder of Monetas; Ryan Charleston, CEO of Bitcorati; James Gatto, a partner at Pillsbury Law; and Bitcoin Center NYC deputy director Austin Alexander.

Still, Mohan isn’t phased at the prospect of leading one of the day’s first events.

“I see it as no different than a meetup, which is to say, I don’t see it as the Jonathan Mohan show, I see it as facilitating a discussion between the people in the group. It’s a logical extension of something I’ve been doing for a few hours a week for the last year.”

Event preview

Mohan was able to share some of the topics that he is excited to speak about with his panel at the event. These included distributed corporations (Ethereum, MasterCoin, BitShares) and branded coins, among other topics.

Mohan also suggested that his personality would be onhand to help energize event attendees for all that day one has in store.

“I’m a high energy guy. I’ll try to keep them awake.”

Though, if the event’s full speaker lineup is any indication, he likely will have plenty of support in this goal.

Australian Manufacturer Debuts First Cashless Bitcoin ATM
Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on March 24, 2014 at 11:53 GMT | Bitcoin ATM, Companies, News, Startups

An Australian company says it has produced one of bitcoin’s holy grails: a cashless ATM that allows users to buy bitcoins using a credit card, and sell bitcoins via a direct deposit to their bank account.

The first fully functional Diamond Circle ATM arrived from its manufacturer in Brisbane this week. Unlike competing ATMs and vending machines that rely on QR codes and cash, Diamond Circle’s solution is based on near-field communication (NFC) technology with paper receipt backups.

This unique approach is the brainchild of CEO Stephen Rowlison, a seasoned FinTech (financial technology) entrepreneur with 30 years of IT experience in Australia, Asia and the US. Before founding Diamond Circle, Rowlison was working on various projects developing NFC payment and loyalty card systems for retailers. He said:

“I was interested in NFC technology and payments, but just needed a unit of transfer. After learning about bitcoin, I figured I could combine the NFC chip with the ATM idea.”

He added: “What I’ve really done is just brought together two existing technologies: contactless NFC and BTC. QR code payments have been outlawed in China and have no inbuilt card security, which is why using contactless technology makes so much sense.”

Wallet tags

Although Rowlison is exploring other NFC devices for his ATMs, he has decided to focus on a ‘wallet tag’ for now, which is a small disc that can be used as a pendant or keychain.

“It’s got the same smarts as banking technology except we mandated a Personal Identification Number for all tags that are registered online.”

It’s the same contactless technology being deployed in some countries by Visa’s PayWave and Mastercard’s PayPass. Australia’s point-of-sale debit card network EFTPOS, which uses PC compatible devices, has also begun using NFC chips.

diamond circle btm

This all means Diamond Circle will be in a dominant position to launch its second phase: POS integration that will enable retail merchants to accept payment in bitcoin using devices they already have.

The ‘wallet tag’ devices function as cold storage wallets that communicate with the cashless ATMs. Customers also have the option to print out paper receipts and use them with more traditional smartphone or desktop wallet clients. The paper receipt can also be used as a backup for wallet tag users.

Diamond Circle customers can use the NFC ‘wallet tag’ device with a number of smartphones to check bitcoin balances and broadcast their public address.

More secure storage

Diamond Circle provides customers a secure way to store and use bitcoins. The company does not provide online bitcoin wallets that are often susceptible to theft. Diamond Circle wallets and private keys are stored only on the wallet tag devices and paper receipt backups.

“Even if we get hacked, there’s nothing to take,” Rowlison said.

Diamond Circle will save a fortune by not handling physical cash. Once a machine needs to handle paper (or in Australia’s case, polymer) dollar bills it reduces the value proposition by increasing the costs of its production, materials and maintenance.

He insisted the technology itself was a lesser challenge, since it uses mostly off the shelf components that have already been tested in other payment systems.

“Once we ironed out the problems of bitcoin, the value proposition for consumers and the entire supply chain becomes obvious. instant cheap international money transfer and payments.”

Working with the current financial system

Often the bigger test faced by Diamond Circle and other bitcoin startups is learning to function within the regulatory environment. Rowlison said his focus has been on developing a compliant product with all KYC/AML regulations built in, meaning Diamond Circle ATMs are fully compliant.

This focus has helped the company form the necessary partnerships with banks and other financial institutions, though there has still been some resistance.

“It hasn’t been easy, we’ve had two rejections from major banks,” Rowlison continued.

“They just need to understand risks can be managed, it’s just a matter of getting that through to them. I don’t see it as an ‘Us vs Them’ situation, bitcoin is just another currency, we can coexist. We need to figure out how we can cooperate.”

He said there had also been “a bit of pushback on locations” from larger shopping malls worried about the product being delivered. The company may need to prove its technology first in a smaller location, like the coffee shops and cafes that house bitcoin ATMs elsewhere, then move to larger centers.

International interest

The company is an ‘Enrolled Money Transmitter Business’ and is run by a team with extensive C-Level experience in various fields of compliance in Australia and in the US.

Diamond Circle has received international interest in their ATMs already with queries from customers in in the UK, Canada, USA, Asia and the Middle East, and says it has already sold two of its ATMs within Australia and one to the UK.

The company is listed on cryptostocks.com under the ticker XDC, a direct pass through to their underlying shares, which helped them raise initial seed capital.

I use calculator not to predict betting , just to calculate statistically chance , it doesn't rely matter it showed me 99% chance i will lose 3 times i a row on 90% in 4000 bets, but i made it thru 5000 bets.

U said u would done all in based on bad streak @ 80% but u did not done it coz u refreshed, so u did know seed or something changed , and u started over.

I am rely done arguing. U cant change my opinion on that. Do some research about gambling, about chance and everything.

U did not lost coz of that error not most likely , u lost coz u had 20% chance of losing. And that is it.
Yes it should not have errors , but that error did not change ur chance to lose. U did not lost coz of that error, that is a fact. I don't need to defend primedice, its not perfect it have errors, but it did not caused u to lose. U was aware of error, u changed ur bet coz of it, u decided to continue to bet, u had to be aware of 20% chance to lose. That error had nothing to do with it.
U bet all or ur btc, on 80% chance , NOT ON 100% , u caused ur self to lose all ur btc NOT THAT ERROR. That is simply the fact. And u better ask for help from professionals about ur gambling issue , not here.

I am sorry u know i always try to help, but u just simply are not right.

So u did change ur bet after error, so U KNOWN that "pattern" refreshed, and yet u say u did not know seed was changed u was thinking everything is the same u would not bet if u known that seed changed. And u did not bet, u just said u would done all in, and u DID NOT done it. So how u can complain after u done it 12 bets later . ITS RIDICULOUS !!! I just cant argue anymore, its just not worth it.

I respect u , but what are u saying is ridiculous , and don't have any sense at all . Pls stop about that here. This thread spammed to much with nonsense.

12 bets is huge , everything changed for 12 bets the same as if that was 1000 bets.

U did not answer me. If u did not know that seed changed, and if u was thinking that error did not affect anything WHY DID U NOT DONE ALL IN ? U changed bet coz of that, and lost after 12 bets that error had nothing to do with ur loss after 12 bets. That is a FACT.

U decided to continue betting UR SERVER seed changed 12 times after that . So everything changed, AND WOULDA CHANGED EVEN IF THERE WAS NO ERROR AT ALL.

Sorry for caps i need to be clear and but this to rest for god sake....

I don't think it would be ok to ask for refund after 1 bet , but that would have just a little bit of sense, just small bit. But why not after 12 ? Well why not after 100-1000 bets ? U coulda keep doing all ins , and then lose , and say i want all that back coz i lost coz of that error 100 bets ago Its just ridiculous.

Did u done all in after refresh that u woulda done if not refreshed or not ? My final question.

No it would not coz u did not lost bet after error , u lost 12 bets after.
Even if u lost next bet after , would be very generous to refund u.

Future of ur life changes every day due to ur decisions and errors and trials. U decided to bet after that error. It was your decision  to gamble , nobody forced u , u known that there is 20% chance to lose. If u did not know that seed was changed, u would done all in , did u done it next bet after refresh ? Did u won ?

Stunna doesn't rely have decision to make, its very clear that he doesn't have any reason at all to refund u. I think u rely need to drop this and put it to rest. That what u asking is just not possible. There is no single small reason for him to refund u. And he will not do it. Rely i think we spammed this thread to much with this.

Again i am sorry for ur loss, but that loss is NOT caused by that error and that is it !
When u got error, u coulda just say well this site is glitchy i wont bet on it anymore and cashout, but u decided to GAMBLE , and u lost and that is it.

Yes withdrawals will be instant on pd 3 at least should be

And how he will have that proof ?

VERY soon , and i rely think this time is serious .

The hurt is that every kid will then come here and cry about some error .
U know that he paid some btc to cheaters , so now he needs to be rely careful about it. I would never pay that . Even if i know 100% that error did occur, maybe if he lost all in first roll after error , than maybe i would at least think about it. But 12 rolls after. Not a chance !

Well its simple those who think that site is fair, they play on it, including me. Those who think site is not fair, can go somewhere else, its simple as that. I don't think they cheat, coz if u do the math, of wagered on site they made 3000+ only on house edge. And we all know they make much more than that coz of addicted gamblers who always come back. So i rely think they don't need to cheat , and they don't cheat , its my opinion and i play there and love it. Every body have a choice.

No ur chance to win on that bet was 80% not 0, also would been 80% if error did not occur . And in both cases u would have 20% chance to lose, witch is not small chance.

Yes it changed outcome BUT NOT UR CHANCE TO WIN!

@RGBkey, i don't think that primedice gives that error to stop u from betting. They can't afford to cheat.
And still he cant prove that he got error and not just refreshed page coz he wanted to.

Patterns doesn't exist , 3x loss on 80% DOESN'T improve ur chance of wining 4th bet. That is only gamblers fallacy.
And it doesn't warn u about seed change, coz it doesn't matter at all. Yes it will change outcome of that bet, but it will not change ur chance of wining that bet. U had same chance of wining it , without seed change or with it. And it had effect only on ur first bet after refresh, was that won or lost ? On bets after that MANY things had effect, but smallest effect had that seed change.

Make peace with it already, it was not pd fault u lost that 12th bet. And that is 100% true. U can do provably fair, to prove that and that is it! And i can guarantee u 100% that u will not get ur money back. So just be done with it.
I say again i am sorry for ur loss but what u asking here is just ridiculous , and we spammed this thread way to much talking nonsense.

What is ur name, or id on pd ?

Try to live just a little bit longer, its VERY close .