Wolverton: Tech underlying Bitcoin could take off -- even if currency doesn't

You may never use Bitcoin, but there's a decent chance that you'll eventually benefit from the technology underlying the virtual currency.

The designers of Bitcoin didn't just create a new kind of money. They essentially created a way of transmitting, recording and verifying information about ownership over the Internet. That system, called the blockchain, is in some ways comparable to the protocols used to send Web pages or email messages and could have similarly wide-ranging implications with the potential to impact everything from real estate transactions to voting.

At the Future of Money and Technology conference in San Francisco last week, investors, analysts, artists, Bitcoin backers, entrepreneurs and technologists discussed and enthused about the potential uses of blockchain technology. Bill Tai, a venture investor and board member of BitFury, which helps maintain and distribute the Bitcoin blockchain, compared the state of blockchain technology to the Internet in the early 1990s.

"It's crazy to see what evolved over next 15 to 20 years. I feel like we're at the front of the same thing," he said. "When you're looking at the applications of the blockchain, it's a crazily exciting time."

You can think of a blockchain as a kind of accounting ledger that's open to the public and widely distributed. Every Bitcoin transaction is tallied on the Bitcoin ledger. Each one is time stamped, encrypted, validated and recorded by multiple computers -- and permanent.

In essence, the Bitcoin blockchain is a history of all the transactions that have ever taken place with the digital money. You could use the blockchain to trace back how a particular Bitcoin has changed hands over time to when it was created.

The blockchain technology was designed to ensure trust among Bitcoin transactions. The system prevents Bitcoin users from spending the same coins in multiple places or illegitimately creating new money out of thin air. It was also designed to work quickly, at least compared to the traditional means of transmitting money. New lines -- or blocks, which represent collections of new transactions -- are added to the blockchain ledger every 10 minutes.

http://www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton/ci_29203700/wolverton-tech-underlying-bitcoin-could-take-off-even

Serica Bowing Out Of Precious Metals Game, Moving Towards HealthCare?

Serica will stop offering digital versions of precious metals and hard assets. The company announced today in an email to the media that effective this month, it will no longer be offering precious metals and hard assets on the blockchain. Their website now makes references to reducing the cost of healthcare through the blockchain, but it is not immediately clear what that will entail.
Serica trading currently touts “Peer-to-Peer Payment Innovation for Healthcare” on its front page, which would be quite a change from digital assets. References to their asset marketplace have been removed for non-users, but it can still be found by logging in.

http://coinjournal.net/serica-bowing-out-of-precious-metals-game-moving-towards-healthcare/

Islamic State members tap e-payments to evade trackers

PARIS -- Terrorist groups' funds are growing more difficult to trace as prepaid bank cards and virtual currencies become more widely used, opening regulatory loopholes that governments are yet unable to close.

Easy anonymity

Members of the extremist Islamic State responsible for a series of terror attacks here Nov. 13 apparently used prepaid bank cards, issued by credit card companies and others, in their preparations, including to pay for goods and lodging. Funds are loaded to such cards at purchase, and then can be freely spent by the holder.

     The perpetrators of the Paris attacks were drawn to the cards because of the anonymity they afford. The instruments can be bought without identification from retailers and online. Under French law, the cards can be funded up to 2,500 euros ($2,738) annually without identity checks. Certain varieties can draw on a third party's bank account. It is thus difficult for investigators to trace purchases made with the cards back to their users.

     The cards are easy to come by even on the run, and members of terrorist and other illicit groups can use them to transfer funds to one another from around the world. French authorities think members of the Islamic State have begun doing just that.

     The government here intends to enact new restrictions on the cards' purchase and use. Buyers will be required to show ID as soon as 2016. France looks to call on other European nations with looser regulations to take the same steps. Ideally, all of Europe will have the same type of restrictions, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said during a Nov. 26 appearance on French television.

New technologies

Terrorist groups also are adopting virtual currencies. Bitcoin and similar technologies could account for up to 3% of the Islamic State's annual income, or $15.6 million, U.S. outlet Fox News reported Nov. 25. Bitcoin and the like are traded outside of any existing banking network, permitting simple transactions between individuals. The technologies are not thought to be directly linked to the Paris attacks, but the Islamic State is believed to have converted illicitly obtained funds to Bitcoin to avoid detection.

     Regulation of virtual currencies is a work in progress. The U.S. has become the first to treat the currencies like any other, requiring companies to record transactions over a certain value. European Union leaders vowed Nov. 20 to "strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies." But no agreement has been reached on specific measures to prevent those instruments from being used to fund terrorism. Japanese laws on the matter are only now being drawn up.

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Islamic-State-members-tap-e-payments-to-evade-trackers

Former White House Communicator Jamie Smith joins BitFury as Global Chief Communications Officer

 Jamie Smith Background:

Smith most recently served as Executive Vice President at Edelman Public Relations where she oversaw multi-channel media strategies from Washington, DC. Prior to that, she served as Special Assistant and Spokesperson for President Obama and Deputy White House Press Secretary. She also previously served as Director of Public Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Communications Director for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and its then Chairman John D (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Traveling Press Director for Secretary Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, and Communications Director for Madeleine K. Albright and The Albright Group, LLC. Smith is from Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and a graduate of Kenyon College.

About BitFury Group:

BitFury Group is the largest private Bitcoin Blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company in the world. Founded in 2011 by Valery Vavilov and Valery Nebesny, BitFury has management offices in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, Amsterdam and London, as well as data-centers in Iceland and the Republic of Georgia. BitFury derives sustainable advantage through its custom-made application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), optimized to achieve the lowest power consumption coupled with the highest processing metrics – the parameters that drive mining margins. BitFury has an impressive track record, having successfully delivered several prior generations of silicon and has a roadmap to at least double performance-per-watt every 6-12 months. BitFury’s management team and board include seasoned industry veterans with a history of execution in silicon engineering, operational build-up and capitalizing businesses.

BitFury is a registered trademark of BitFury Group Limited.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151204005608/en/White-House-Communicator-Jamie-Smith-joins-BitFury

Why 2016 May Be the Year of Real Estate on the Bitcoin Blockchain

The Blockchain Can Save the Real Estate Industry Significant Amounts of Money

When discussing the advantages of the Bitcoin blockchain for property title management, Ragnar Lifthrasir was quick to point out the current costs associated with title insurance and title fraud:

“Putting property titles on the Bitcoin blockchain will bring the real estate industry out of its existing 18th century technology. Title insurance is a $20 billion industry. It’s estimated that the total annual cost of fighting and resolving title fraud is $1 billion.”

Lifthrasir also noted how easy it is for a criminal to create fake documents that can cause serious issues for homeowners. In his view, the Bitcoin blockchain can offer an improved system for tracking property ownership records. He explained:

“Using Photoshop and a $15 stamp, a criminal can create a fake document that transfers ownership of your house to himself. Compare that to what it would take for that criminal to break the cryptography behind Bitcoin. I can’t predict exactly how much time and money would be saved by using the Bitcoin Blockchain for real estate titles, but clearly, it’s significant.”

Lifthrasir is a big believer in the idea of smart property, and he’s currently working with a group of individuals from the International Bitcoin Real Estate Association on an application that will streamline the entire property transfer process. He noted:

“I want to also say that uploading a deed to the blockchain is only half the solution. For full security, the actual transfer of real estate needs to be done with the Bitcoin token. By that I mean a colored coin solution similar to the one NASDAQ and Overstock are using. A couple of us at the International Bitcoin Real Estate Association are currently working on a combination title document plus property transfer app.”

http://insidebitcoins.com/news/why-2016-may-be-the-year-of-real-estate-on-the-bitcoin-blockchain/36126

b) Make a statue of Gandalf

so how is soon will be period of time
PRE ANN with little information is such normal thread not ANN

working fine with me
thanks a lot ...

sure Xapo and faucetbox is the more famous website for collection
waiting your list

how anyone can trust in you
Trust: -16: -4 / +0

better leave this account away and don't try to scam any other people here

minimum investment for this is $20,000

maybe I will invest my money when it bigger than this value

God-Luck 

I don't get any problem to use your faucet
I got it easy  2125 satoshi was sent to your Paytoshi account.

thanks man ,

where is data center location and could your provide speed test from it ?

PM sent to testing your program

Bitcoin Mining Hash Rate Briefly Spikes to Near 700 PH/s

Bitcoin’s total network hash rate briefly spiked to near 700 PH/s (1 PH = 1015 hashes, or encryption procedures), continuing its upward trajectory amid higher bitcoin prices.

The rate quickly retreated to below 600 PH/s shortly after hitting its peak. Currently near 580 PH/s, it is still well above the recent average.

The total hash rate gravitates towards an equilibrium of slight profitability for network participants. High profitability brings more equipment into the network until the increasing difficulty makes it no longer profitable to do so. Conversely, when prices unexpectedly drop, hardware may depart the network until slight profitability is restored.

After exponential increases in prior years, the recent phenomena of network saturation and bitcoin price declines rendered mining profitable only for those with the most advanced and efficient hardware configurations.

The hash rate is on pace to roughly double in 2015, despite a stagnant first half of the year. Bitcoin’s miserable decline in 2014 had knocked a large number of miners off the network because they were unable to stay profitable.

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-briefly-spikes-to-near-700-phs/

b) A hummingbird is sitting on a boulder. Is the hummingbird falling toward the Earth or is Earth falling toward the bird?

Bitcoin Trade Reversal On Gemini.com Could Be Unjustified

On November 14th, Gemini Bitcoin exchange personnel put in place a Trade Reversal on a transaction that happened few hours earlier on their systems. On November 20th, CoinTelegraphCT r:  25 received a very upset email from Mike Miescke, one of the users affected in the transaction.

Correspondent of Cointelegraph spent almost 2 weeks to investigate this story. Here is the results.
The beginning

To summarize the events, on November 13th, Mike placed a large BitcoinCT r:  8 buy market order to fill various limit prices up to $2,200 per Bitcoin. The operation was clearly atypical, as the average trading value was set around the $340 quota at that time.

With the transactions, Mike earned up to around 6 BTC for each Bitcoin sold.

Was that a typo from the buyer? Was that a slip on the mouse button? We can’t know, and it surely isn’t Mike’s business.

The transaction went through, there was no system malfunction, and everything looked fine.

To say it in other words: it was entirely the buyer’s error, as later confirmed by GeminiCT r:  68 executives.

Despite this, few hours later the trade reversal happened.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/115785/bitcoin-trade-reversal-on-geminicom-could-be-unjustified

   
BitGo's Key Recovery Service protocol offers familiarity and new security options

A typical concern raised by those new to bitcoin is that having no central administrator nor authority makes it too dangerous to keep substantial amounts of money in, simply because there is no one to ask for a replacement private key should they lose theirs.

While bitcoin's decentralized properties make it excellent for censorship resistance, a trade-off of that, many believe, is a lack of familiarity in the security process. While public key encryption is well documented as one of the most types in history, the general public's understanding of it is minimal, mainly because it doesn't look like the standard username and password security prompt on most websites and applications today. It's just not a familiar process, and that in itself creates a security problem, since so few understand how to be safe using it.

To present a private key “prompt” that looks like a typical password prompt on your bitcoin wallet would greatly degrade the security of it. Even if people were willing to put up with that, the process is still impossible for decentralized cryptocurrencies because there would be no one to contact for the “Forgot Password?” link,  and no email address associated with your account for a new password to be sent to.

To help bridge the gap between these two systems, so that new users to bitcoin could one day see the wallet login process as something more recognizable, leading cloud wallet BitGo has released a whitepaper detailing an open source protocol that solves a lot of these issues, and gives all bitcoin holders a new option for strong wallet encryption.

In a recent blog post, platform lead Benedict Chan announced the release of a new “protocol to facilitate provisioning of public backup keys,” introducing the concept of third party Key Recovery Services (KRS). This protocol makes it easy for wallet providers to deploy multisignature wallets for their customers, where they keep one key, the customer keeps a second key, and the third key goes to a KRS of the customers' choice.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitgos-key-recovery-service-protocol-offers-familiarity-and-new-security-options/

CFTC Commissioner: The Blockchain Could Cost Wall Street Jobs

A commissioner for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said earlier this week that, if broadly adopted by the world’s financial institutions, the blockchain could cost recordkeeping professionals their jobs.

On 1st December, Commissioner J Christopher Giancarlo discussed bitcoin and the blockchain during a wide-ranging guest lecture hosted by the Harvard School of Law that focused, in part, on new financial technologies.

Giancarlo said that the open ledger underlying bitcoin has "the potential to revolutionize modern financial ecosystems", pointing to examples like the recent blockchain working group established by the London Stock Exchange, the CME Group and several European banks and trade settlement organizations.

Should such a revolution happen, he noted, the impact on those working in the financial sector today could be significant:

http://www.coindesk.com/cftc-commissioner-blockchain-cost-wall-street-jobs/

Sia Launches Decentralized Blockchain-based Storage Platform Similar to Filecoin and Storj

Decentralized cloud file hosting service operator Sia has announced the launch of an automated peer-to-peer blockchain-based collaborative cloud for data storage, allowing users to create tailored storage plans with robust security protocols. Similar to decentralized storage projects Filecoin and Storj, Sia aims to create a trustless, fault-tolerant, file storage service.

The Sia platform stores personal and user data across multiple nodes and tracked by automated smart contracts. Files are protected through a multiple-stage process and encrypted with an algorithm called Twofish.

The strength of the platform relies on its Reed-Solomon-based file distribution system. All user data is split into several pieces as it enters the Sia client, leaving very few fractures necessary to recover the original data. These pieces of sensitive user information are padded to 4 megabytes, to protect user privacy. Finally, each padded piece is encrypted using unique encryption keys in the client side.

These security protocols are designed to prevent hackers from seizing user data of the Sia platform in an event of a data breach.

“Hosts receive an encrypted blob and are not given any information about where the other pieces of the file are. Even if they found out, they would still have to crack multiple encryption keys to recover the file. Cryptographic checksums are maintained by the client that alert the user to any tampering that the hosts may have attempted,” the Sia team told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview.

According to the team, the sophisticated encryption and decentralized file distribution system of the Sia platform could be used for decentralized application development. Its API enables developers to store files of the application directly into the Sia client, allowing third-party app users to directly access their customized data storage systems without revisiting the original client.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/sia-launches-decentralized-blockchain-based-storage-platform-similar-to-filecoin-and-storj-1449082814