Well, that is a very common misconception. You haven't created value. You have created something that can be used to represent value.


Anyway, there are 5.5 million people in Finland. If you send each person 1000 coins per month, you will need 5.5 billion coins per month. You only have 313 million coins. Where will the rest come from?

I don't know why people are asking what appear to be serious questions here when we all know this is a scam.

Please don't give them any more legitimacy, and allow them to sucker some poor newbies into sending them money.

This is similar to Coinapult's LOCKS. You can hold value in many forms and then convert it to spend it.

tl;dr: In the future, mining without recycling waste heat will be unprofitable. Recycled waste heat from mining is not useful for anything but heating water, so electric water heaters will be the miners of tomorrow. Power companies will set up pools and mining will be at least as decentralized as power companies.

I think his insight that profitable mining will necessitate recycling of waste heat is good, but I don't think the conclusions that follow are strong.

"Silicone Valley" sigh.

It was not a great interview. He made some points, but he really didn't answer her question until the last 10 seconds.

Yes. All that is needed to back Bitcoin is for someone to be willing to buy an unlimited number of bitcoins for a set amount of something. For example, if the Federal Reserve were wiling to buy all the bitcoins at a price of $1 each, then Bitcoin would be backed by the dollar.

But what is gold backed by?

It's probably a scam. Even if they don't empty your bank account, they are still selling a bogus product. Anybody can pretend to be an expert and sell "trade alerts". I've been trading for several decades now and I can tell you with certainty that people selling "trade alerts" are bogus. However, if your really want someone to tell you when to buy and sell, I'll send you you trade alerts for a ridiculously low price of $20 per month.

That could be a mistake. 99% of the income will be received in the first year (the actual time depends on the rise in difficulty). And if you are paying a maintenance fee, it could exceed your income in just a few months. If you are paying extra for those additional 4 years, you are throwing away money.

Bitcoin Adoption in Asia: A General Introduction

China: Government View
Don't understand, but they believe Bitcoin is bad
China has not cracked down, not because they can't, but because it is too small.

China:Policy outlook
If Bitcoin grows and adoption is high in China, China will try to crush it. If adoption in China is not high, it will ally with other countries to attack it.

Other Asian Countries:
Little motivation and low adoption

Future:
China will be a bitcoin exporter. It has overdeveloped its power infrastructure and power will be very cheap in the future.

Innovating Legal Systems through Blockchain Technology

Smart contracts are self-executing or partially self-executing contracts.

Multi-sig and escrow:
anyone can be an escrow
the escrow does not take custody of the funds
the escrow does not need to be in the middle of the transaction

Mutli-sig good for escrow, governance and estate planning

Multi-sig address usage:
1. Create a signing plan.
2. Create the address: coinb.in
3. Test every signature combination to make sure it works.
4. Create transactions: paste redeem script, enter amount and destination
5. Sign the transaction: paste transaction, sign
6. Broadcast the transaction

empoweredlaw.com

Announcing C-Web: Distributed Computing with the Blockchain

The block chain is a hammer looking for nails and that is a problem.
Context will become one of the most important variables in a connected world. Currently, every application has its own context and is not aware of other applications.

The C-Web (C stands for computing and contracts) is an information-centric computing algorithm that provides a layer on the block chain allowing people to build connected APIs. It is an open source protocol/specification.

The belief is that if the value of the money rises, people are less inclined to spend it. I feel that the ramifications of this effect are vastly overblown.

Regulatory Landscapes on Bitcoin in NZ


The classification of Bitcoin is confused -- it depends on the agency.

Taxes:

Income from trading in taxable.
If you pay for something with Bitcoin, you must pay GST.
If you mine bitcoins, you must pay GST.

AML:

AML is not cumbersome as long as you don't deal with large amounts and you don't have "business relationship" with your customers.
Banks are the big hurdle.

Generations of Cryptoexchanges

A History of Exchanges:

Generation 0:

There was no organized trading. The lazlo pizza trade finally gave bitcoins a real value.

Generation 1:

MtGox rises as the primary exchange.

Generation 2:

Other exchanges are created with more features.

Generation 3: present day

There is a focus on safety, usability, and accessibility.

Generation 4: the future

The focus will be on advanced features for sophisticated traders.
Margin trading
More altcoin-specific exhanges
A flood of exchanges and competition will drive trading fees down.

Bitcoin and The Evolution of Money as a Content Type

Bitcoin is data, and that makes it extraordinarily cheap to operate.

When a medium dominates for many years, people initially confuse the message with the medium, and they confuse the value of the message with the medium's cost. Examples, are news sites, Twitter, and Youtube.

Because Bitcoin, the medium, is an inexpensive way to transfer value, people believe that Bitcoin has little value.

In the end, innovation eventually overwhelms and the future moves forward.

My best advice for new users regarding cloud mining is to be very careful. Most, if not all, of these cloud mining sites are either scams or money losers.

Keep these in mind if you are considering cloud mining:

1. A cloud mining site is a prime opportunity for a Ponzi scheme. Customers pay a bunch of money up front and don't expect a profit for several months.
2. "Instant mining" sites don't make sense because the operator makes more money if they don't sell their hashing power to you.
3. The rising difficulty means your hash power will earn less and less over time.
4. Maintenance fees are usually more expensive than they seem. The maintenance fee could exceed your mining revenue in just a few months.
5. Cloud mining contracts that start in the future must be valued using the future difficulty, and not the current difficulty.

How can people trust you when you are stealing money from a gambling site? How do they know that you won't steal from them?

Open source means that everyone can see the code and you can use it with very few restrictions. You can't fiddle with someone else's code but you can fiddle with your own copy of it.

The nice thing about Bitcoin consensus is that there are no rules and no prohibitions. Anyone that wants to go against any of your principles and prohibitions is free to do so. The trick is to get people to follow them.