the Silicon Valley 'startup' scene was literally built around a program to shut this movement down.  Today virtually all of this overblown, overhyped activity really has the invasion of privacy at it's core agenda.  Some of the people posing as 'Bitcoin Experts' are from this network of people and are attempting to steer the Bitcoin community.

It's no accident that the second issue of Wired magazine(owned by Condé Nast) featured the Cypherpunks on the 2nd issue.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

the system I designed creates a congress of authority nodes who can preside over the application of various laws(which are defined by the participants).  Thus you can have things like refunds, bankruptcy, etc.  It's more like a distributed government/legislation system that is specifically designed for economic purposes.  It also has a stronger privacy model than Bitcoin.  The main difference is it doesn't use PoW and it doesn't attempt to deliver 'zero trust' [1].

-bm

[1] personally I think that the trust model for Bitcoin is flawed anyway.

the theory for decentralized exchange is in place.  see the link I just posted.

we are working on these problems: http://www.altchain.org/?q=whitepapers/paper2.html

some(perhaps all) the technologies that OP mentioned do not actually have a decentralized exchange.  Much of what comes out of those projects is not reliable information or claims.

kind of interesting that there ARE alternatives out there but strangely the one that took off is the one that 1) doesnt offer privacy 2) requires expensive processing banks.

kinda makes you think for a moment...

-bm

This technology gives you anonymity, but does not give you decentalization.

the problem with OpenTransactions is it doesn't do what it claims.  I spent several months working with the OT code.

the code will be in Java.  Certainly you could get involved building out the GUI or related tasks.

There are profit models here, you could build the TXs to support TX fees, or get involved as a market-maker.  For instance you could price and issue options, or you could buy credit risk.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.  It's coming along.  I've simplified a lot from bitcoin, and when you build in Java from the ground up it's much simpler.

not looking to spam this board but I do occasionally link the site when I think it's relevant.  They haven't hassled me but do give me a handicap, for instance my *number of posts* is permanently set at a given number.

this seems to be the main question people ask.

It's not like Bitcoin.  It's not an open house party, not everyone gets to be a node.  Instead, the node identities are defined in some way.

Let me explain a bit... as I've spoken enough about confidence chains to warrant a more in depth explaination.

The idea came to me after I was following the work of the Color Coins project.  Color Coins, as you probably know attempts to map 'colors' onto the existing block chain.  The point is that these colors are EXCHANGEABLE for some other asset.  They are VOUCHERS.  Color Coins also claims to be ZERO TRUST, because it relies on the block chain and doesnt have some central authority controlling the ledger... BUT the coins themselves rely on redemption!  Thus you haven't really achieved ZERO TRUST, you've only achieved some kind of hybrid chimera of zero trust which exploits the existing hashing banks whose incentive is the generation of BTC.  The whole idea is doomed to fail.  Secondly the group is claiming to offer similar features to Confidence Chains, but falls short in a multitude of ways.  The underlying concept of Color Coins seems to be in a constant state of revision, which shows that they don't have very clear thinking.  Confidence Chains has not changed since it's initial publication some time ago.  There have also been offshoot projects of Color Coins that are high on the fraud scale that I simply don't have the time or the incentive to address.

To have a voucher system, you only need a credible ledger of accounts.

ex.

30 MeanieBucks from Account A1 to Account B1
40 MeanieBucks from Account C1 to Account B1
10 MeanieBucks from Account B1 to Account D2

balance is 60 MeanieBucks on Account B1

as long as I have cryptographic evidence of this ledger and the authority that issued the currency has notarized it, then they MUST redeem my balance if I choose, or be convicted of fraud.  If someone presents cryptographic evidence of ownership, and the issuer fails to honor that evidence, then the value of their vouchers will plummet(not good).

but there's a problem,  1) what if someone shuts down the server?  2) what if different account ledgers don't match(double spend)?

these are the two problems that Confidence Chains solves(also Bitcoin solves these problems but in a different way using Proof Of Work).  The problem of a centralized server, such as that found in Open Transactions creates many issues for currency stability and credibility, for one the server can prohibit transactions, they can privilege the ORDER of transactions, and finally it is prone to attacks by various groups who might see the currency as a threat(this has been a significant problem for digital currencies).  Confidence Chains solves this problem by DISTRIBUTING the server to many nodes.  Thus you must shut down ALL the nodes to disable the server, it is RESILIENT.  Secondly it also offers OBJECTIVITY, no particular node can privilege the order of transactions in any specific way- there must be consensus and this gives you the ability to construct near perfect markets.  This is impossible to achieve with Bitcoin/PoW systems.  These near-perfect markets can be used to issue credit, futures, options and other things I will describe later.  It can replace theoretically ALL our financial technology.

You can build a DISTRIBUTED EXCHANGE with Confidence Chains.  You can broker Gold, BTC, USD, Euros, Turkish Lira, Peanuts, whatever you like.  Naturally it doesn't look as big as other projects, because it is TRUE PEER TO PEER, and thus there is no clear profit model behind it.  We dont have any VC backing, but we have a handful of enthusiasts involved(even a lawyer).  None of us are paid off, none of us are working for some major corporation.

-bm

a basic prototype is coming out soon.  Also if you want a t-shirt I'll send you one, just PM me.

http://altchain.org

(note: seems the moderators here don't want me over-promoting this site so I have to stay on topic)

The VC world is an extension of the banking system.  Bitcoin, in it's natural state, is opposed to the banking system.  Thus you won't find any VCs who 'get it'.

For instance some of those posing as 'thought leaders' are just laughable caricatures who are obviously working on behalf of some monied interests.  Take Facebook for instance, we now KNOW that the story we got(featured in a major motion picture- about a publicly shared company that is only a few years old???), is utter BS, and coincidentally one of the characters in the movie makes a cameo appearance in the Bitcoin world and starts dictating what we should be concerned about.  Look closely at what these characters are actually saying and doing.

Confidence Chains does everything bitcoin does, has a better privacy model, and requires no mining.

Also supports credit, futures, options and other thing yet to be explained.  Clients do not require a huge data structure to run.

The question we should consider is,where are we headed and is it a different placevthan our existing money/payments system?

Sure we can applaud all these great new conveniences, but why would I use them instead of eg. Paypal?

These companies arent building peer to peer systems theyre grafting bitcoin onto the old system

the initial fuel for this movement was an increasing awareness of a systemic bias in our financial system.  So tools were conceived and developed in order to help make a more equitable capital system.  Bitcoin was(presumably) one of these tools.  Sometimes though I wonder if the real story was something else completely.  The system does allow for authorities to track taxibility for instance.  Financial privacy is going to be of increasing importance in the near future, and Bitcoin not only doesn't offer it, it is misleading in that it offers the APPEARANCE of such, which is probably much worse.

Once we have London based insurance on Bitcoin, then we are back to relying on the same systems we were trying to escape.  Why not use PayPal instead of using Bitcoin and buying insurance from Llloyds?  Seems that people on here either 1) cant see the forest for the trees 2) are actively trying to move Bitcoin in this direction.  We even have full time Google employees now sitting in chairs on the 'Bitcoin Foundation'?

the problem isn't how do we get Bitcoin to be accepted by eg. Lloyds of London.

the problem is how do we bypass LLoyds of London completely.

seems that a much different attitude has taken over the bitcoin world these days.

-bm

for sure it's total hypocrisy. They want to maintain their monopoly on our money.

I think it could go in that direction where US regulations get so tight that average Americans start to complain that they are operating at an international disadvantage, while the US continues to alienate states that dont comply with it's concept of financial jurisprudence.

second time this is posted.

if he isn't supplying any detail, how is this anything but spam?

Bitcoin and Tulips(at least during the Dutch Tulip Bubble) were similar:

 1) universally valued

 2) widely accepted

 3) easy to move

 4) limited supply(or at least the semblance of such)

 5) a class of people boosting the value of the item because they were invested in it's production(tulip farmers/miners).

-bm