http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/458540-bitcoin-is-poised-to-shake-the-world-are-you-paying-attention/


Insightful article. Good to see that some journalists are finally starting to look beyond the hype and think about the impact bitcoin could have.  

http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/17/iamsatoshi-how-an-alliance-of-bitcoin-traders-could-catalyze-a-new-digital-civilization/

A thought provoking article on the long term implications of bitcoin - proposing an active, global alliance to promote worldwide adoption.

Anything published by the SCMP and other Chinese press should be recognized as the govt sanctioned propaganda it likely is.

Remember China is a country where the govt is not accountable to anyone except itself - a country where prison (i.e. slave) labor is commonplace and protesters are met with bullets, labor camps an sometimes even tanks. Citizens are permitted to live under the illusion of an open, capitalist society when in actual fact they are mere pawns under a malevolent, totalitarian, communist regime.

Worth considering before buying any more cheap plastic trinkets that say "Made in China"


Yeah, sure!

Something like that could work - as long as the customer is running your code and you could be reasonably certain that verification isn't easily spoofed. Keep in mind that NFC is a (very) limited bandwith connection, typical NFC messages are well below 1kB, usually just a few 100 bytes or even less.

Interesting question.
Existing NFC POS applications (Visa, Google Wallet, etc) tend to use conventional online POS terminals and do not require the customer to be online.

Sounds like you're suggesting the reverse scenario, where the merchant (recipient/payee) would be completely offline, yet be able to verify a transaction? It's difficult to see how that could be done without it being an entirely trust-based exchange - you'd be relying on the payor (customer) to communicate to you somehow (via NFC) that a tx was broadcast to the network, or alternatively pass you a private key that you'd have to trust was worth what the customer claimed. Not sure what you had in mind...

NFC is already used for Visa/MC/Eurocard payments, at least to some extent, pretty much everywhere except the US.

OpenCXP is a cryptocurrency POS spec proposal based largely on the NFC (NDEF) standards. It's still in RFC (req for comment) stage but the draft whitepaper is available for review at www.opencxp.org for anyone to read and submit comments before an official release in Jan.



 

Regardless of how it found its way to the wiki (over a year ago), BIP38 has already become the defacto standard for single key encryption for off-line storage, possibly since there wasn't really anything else out there. Many (most?) paper wallets now support it, along with at least one major wallet (Blockchain).

To be sure it may have a few shortcomings like fixed scrypt parameters, but its actually pretty versatile and cryptographically sound for its intended use: Encrypting single private keys and third-party key generation - it appears that it was never really intended to create/backup deterministic wallets, so these aren't necessarily shortcomings anyway, since the standards probably don't have much overlap for most use cases.

Great feature. BIP38 decode support would be a very useful addition to the merchant API too - most POS terminal hardware is painfully slow at scrypt. Since BIP38 support has now been added to the Android app can we expect to see it anytime soon for the merchant API?

In terms of brute-force resistance (dictionary attack etc.) BIP38 should be marginally more secure since each attempt would typically take longer than the BitcoinQT target difficulty of 100ms - mainly due to the Scrypt parameters used for BIP38.

+1
His guest (Bill Still) admits not really knowing anything at all about the technical aspects of Quarkcoin - but still pumps it as somehow being more secure than bitcoin?

QRK seems to be fundamentally no different from other pre-mined scamcoins - or is there some reason it's "better" (other than Still's security FUD)?

So, in other words: "learn to english" or stfu?

Yes, we must all being to "learn to english" 

Bitcoin has shown itself to be a very effective way to circumvent chinese capital controls, explaining the sudden heavy handed attempt to shut it down.

It may go off the radar there (like many other things) but it definitely won't be going away.

You'll still need access to the blockchain, either directly (to a local node) or using a remote API like blockchain.info etc.

A private key will allow you to sign the tx inputs, but you'll still need to get those specific outputs from the blockchain to use as inputs in the transaction you are planning to create and transmit. This can be done quite quickly (milliseconds): For example even the Blockchain Android/IOS app creates tx's using the remote API to the blockchain very quickly (a few seconds).

Actually my views on this come from having been both a participant and observer to many in-person retail transactions using the Blockchain app, etc. And yes, there's plenty of both fidgeting and waiting for tx's (compared to a tap-and-pay NFC, swipe or even chip-and-pin transaction).

Please note that I was explicitly referring to mainstream retailers (i.e. large, major retailers like grocery, dept. store, etc) - not small cafe's, shops etc. of which a (very small) percentage are already are adopting btc. These are usually single-location retailers with bitcoin-enthusiast owners/managers willing to sacrifice efficiency just for the novelty of accepting btc.

I'll stand by my "ignorant" statement that mainstream retailers will never adopt bitcoin payments in their current form - it will need to become much more streamlined. OpenCXP is a decentralized, non-commercial proposal that addresses these concerns (and can still use smartphones, without requiring them).

Anyone who has paid by smartphone at retail will recognize that it's not really ready for primetime. It's pretty surprising that retailers are using it at all considering how inefficient and time consuming it is compared to other payment methods.

Any solution that requires fidgeting with phone apps, internet connectivity, waiting for confirmations etc. is a non-starter for any mainstream retail environment. There's just no way it will be adopted until a workable alternative similar to existing payment methods comes along.

Existing POS solutions are really not too workable for major high-volume retailers like these. They're very unlikely to adopt a solution that is cumbersome and involves people fidgeting with phone apps and waiting for confirmations.

There is a solution soon to be released which is almost exactly what you describe (including NFC): OpenCXP (http://www.opencxp.org).
Presently it's in pre-release RFC (request for comment) stage, the official release should be coming before year end.

OpenCXP is very close to what you've described: http://www.OpenCXP.org

Currently in pre-release RFC stage (request for comment) but the official white paper should be released soon.

Don't underestimate the difficulty in replicating Coinbase, coding a site and back-end is the easy part. With the number of users they're signing up each month accelerating like it is, it's actually surprising that there's any possibility of individualized support at all. These are just growing pains - they're eclipsing every other service out there by orders of magnitude in terms of user base.

Anyone who remembers the Paypal launch has seen this movie before. They'll undoubtedly sort out most of their issues soon, but there's no question they've already captured the first-mover position - just like Paypal, Ebay, Amazon, Quicken etc etc have in their respective niches. Lots of copy-cats have all fallen by the wayside in each of those categories over the years.

If you don't run into problems with verification or have API coding issues (i.e. if you're just a typical user with a linked bank account) Coinbase is actually an amazingly easy, inexpensive and secure way to buy, keep and sell bitcoin.

Rejected patent claims can often be quite useful as well in establishing prior art and/or non-patentability (i.e. to preclude anyone else from making identical patent claims at a later date)