Judge.me got a little publicity in the past week. I didn't see anything here on BitcoinTalk, even though it should be a topic of great interest here. So here are some links that provide some good reading: - http://entrepreneur-stories.com/dont-judge-me-for-wanting-to-fix-the-legal-system-peter-jans-celis/ - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4015142 - http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/t7eil/i_am_the_ancap_founder_of_judgeme_ask_me_anything/Judge.me is by Peter-Jan Celis (forum user BitFlow): - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=37156Let me tell you a secret: I first applied with a Bitcoin related idea to Startup Chile, putting my judge.me idea to the background because Bitcoin was exploding at the time. We wanted to create a futures market for next gen mining technology, virtual options that materialized into physical mining when the next tech became available. This would stabilize Bitcoin we reasoned. Than Bitcoin crashed, I had a fallout with my co-founder and I came to Startup Chile alone (I was the recipient of the grant) and switched back to the judge.me idea.
So yeah, I would certainly be willing to integrate with Bitcoin. The new escrow aspect can potentially be very useful for judge.me to track payments by losing parties to prevailing parties. My goal for the next 6 months is turning judge.me in a platform rather than a service, so this escrow connection could tell me which user profiles to flag as not trustable (because they did not honor the arbitration award).
Please feel free to send me email via the "Contact Support" button on judge.me or by mailing the email address "pj with than an @ and than judge.me". - http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/t7eil/i_am_the_ancap_founder_of_judgeme_ask_me_anything/c4k82jl1. Yes I am an anarcho-capitalist and this is the reason I started the company.
2. Judge Judy is indeed arbitration, where parties waive their right for privacy in return for a free arbitration.
3. Ancapistan would fundamentally be a Kritarchy (rule of judges), so arbitrator reputation is crucial and case law can develop from that. Also, even "ex aequo et bono" arbitration simply means applying contract law in practice. - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017784I believe that people will increasingly care about their reputation on the internet, and as a result enforcement of arbitration awards could start happening by ostracism, i.e. warning the community not to do business with people who fail to make the prevailing party whole again. - http://entrepreneur-stories.com/dont-judge-me-for-wanting-to-fix-the-legal-system-peter-jans-celis/Transnational Arbitration - Arbitration not controlled by national law: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-WByzfiEQ |
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"Thank God for federal government grants, and the NIH, and Musk, and Google." - Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank (and professor at Berkely and Stanford) BLANK: I see my students trying to commercialize really hard stuff. But the VCs are only going to be interested in chasing the billions on their smart phones. Thank God we have small business research grants from the federal government, otherwise the Chinese would just grab them.
THOMPSON: What's the fix?
BLANK: I don't know what the fix is. Thank God for federal government grants, and the NIH, and Musk, and Google.
"The Golden Age of Silicon Valley Is Over, and We're Dancing on its Grave" - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-golden-age-of-silicon-valley-is-over-and-were-dancing-on-its-grave/257401Suggested repeatedly in the comments was crowdfunding / Kickstarter. Unlike other [Edit: equity] crowdfunding platforms, GLBSE has the opportunity to reach globally. So maybe there isn't enough backing for something like early Bitcoin enthusiast Mark Suppes (@FamulusFusion)'s $200 million nuclear fusion reactor from the crowd in one country, but perhaps adding the rest of the globe makes it so something that was previously not possible suddenly becomes possible. - http://videos.liftconference.com/video/4816805/open-source-nuclear-fusion - https://twitter.com/#!/famulusfusionBecause maybe 10 million people in the world with $20 to invest can figure out a better place for that money than the federal government, the NIH, Musk and Google could. |
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Bitcoins: A Decentralized Digital Currency? A possible alternative to our growing financial crisis
For all its novel interest and seemly good intentions, this currency remains somewhat of a play thing for those involved with or curious about computer programming and economics. Considering how drastically different Bitcoins are from our current system, it is unlikely for the moment that this ‘change’ is going to come.
- http://www.arbitragemagazine.com/topics/finance/bitcoins-decentralized-digital-currency[The Arbitrage Magazine (Toronto, Canada) is North America's largest, student driven magazine that specializes in one thing: Business News with BITE.] |
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Money from unexpected places [ABA Banking Journal] Review of the SWIFT Operations Forum occurring in April, I believe it was. Some developments mentioned at the event:
- Online gamers buy fantasy weapons with virtual currency then sell them for dollars (Bitcoin users via eBay);
- Another virtual currency, the Ven, now trades on Thomson Reuters;
[...]
Recently, he bought drinks in a Toronto bar with the Ven, a currency originally created for internet micropayments that exists only as a symbol on his cell phone.
[...]
A common hypothesis remained: networked information is (almost) the ultimate value. The common question: How do you bring elements outside of the system into the (automated) information loop? Those elements are both cash/competing currencies and paper.
[...]
However, Schlegel, in her session, warned banks to heed the “mistrust of large corporations” evident in Occupy Wall Street protests and, as yet, emergent currencies. Her research shows small businesses willing to trust their social networks over banks. “There’s a huge shift in values.
- http://www.ababj.com/briefing/money-from-unexpected-places-2959.html |
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[MintChip] isn’t an alternative currency in that it’s a digital representation of the sovereign currency — the Canadian dollar. Nevertheless, digital money geeks are atwitter, especially with comparisons to Bitcoin. Wired: I’ve read that MintChip is just a central bank’s attempt to come up with its own version of Bitcoin. Is that accurate or bogus? Why? Brule: As mentioned previously, the Mint has been following the digital-payment space for a long time. Through our early research, we discovered some market needs that we felt were not addressed with current payment offerings. Wired: You recently said that Bitcoin works for the small group of people who believe in its value. Can you speak a little to that pixie-dust aspect of currency and money? I mean, it’s true that more people currently believe in the value of Canadian dollars than Bitcoin, but that’s an equally ethereal phenomenon, is it not? Brule: All currencies rely on the underlying belief by people who use them – that they have and will have value. So in that way, you could argue that all currencies are ethereal phenomenon. MintChip, backed by hard currency held in trust, could gain wide acceptance on its applicability. - http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/mintchip/ |
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I've been perplexed as to why there is so much activity for the recently launched SatoshiDice.com betting site. Certainly, there are many, many options for wagering using bitcoins, as Mem's list shows: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75883.0. So why is this two-week-old site pulling in a thousand wagers or more each day now? The reason I am so curious is that the number of transactions on the blockchain each day have skyrocketed recently: - http://bit.ly/JgmqmCAnd it appears much of the growth can be attributed to wagers placed with SatoshiDice.com: - http://SatoshiDice.comThe Recent bets table shown on the site shows the 200 most recent bets made but now that consistently shows four to six hours worth before hitting 200 rows. So that means between 800 to 1,200 wagers are placed on the site in a day (this may be off as I haven't measured each of the addresses to determine a full day's betting volume, but 800 looks to be safe to use as the lower bound.) Each player making a wager sends a payment to an address for one of the bet types shown on the site. The service then runs a calculation and returns either a transaction to the winner that includes the appropriate payout or it returns a transaction to the loser that includes a tiny fraction of bitcoins as a consolation prize. The only way the player knows if the bet won or not is based on the return transaction. So there are two transactions on the blockchain for each wager. If there were 800 wagers for the day then there were 1,600 transactions on the blockchain. With the total per-day activity to the blockchain exceeding 10,000 transactions recently, SatoshiDice wagering represents at least 15% of all blockchain traffic in a day. In trying to come up with reasons why this site might be growing so fast, one of the suggestions offered to me was that it worked as a great mixing service. That explanation didn't register with me at first, as the spend transaction is returned instantly, so there is a direct connection between the payment sent to SatishiDice and the transaction that is returned. A mixing service not only mixes coins but also has a time factor. Coins can be returned a little at a time to different addresses which makes tracing more difficult. With SatoshiDice.com returning on average more than 99% of the wager amounts then a mixing strategy might be to send coins through multiple times. Some earlier passes will be winners and payouts with "clean" funds are sent on the return transactions. The coins used for wagers that lose get chewed up and only a tiny morsel is returned. After a few passes the makeup of the wallet at the end would be coins that look significantly different from the coins that were held before the wagering. Could it be then that these blockchain-based wagering services are being used widely for mixing coins? |
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Charlie Shrem @CharlieShrem Any Portuguese speakers looking for some work? We need #BitInstant translated in a few languages. Please share this if you know anyone - http://twitter.com/#!/CharlieShrem/status/196420103112376322 |
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This thread is to function simply as a relatively chronological index of the articles that appear in the Press forum. This thread is useful as it provides a convenient notification method to learn about each new thread posted. Those wishing to "subscribe" to this thread with a post are welcome to do so, but please keep it one word ... "subscribe".With the new Watchlist feature, simply click the link for Watch in this thread to cause this post to reappear in your watchlist whenever there is a new entry added to this index. Here's more on the Watchlist: - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90136.0 An alternate approach is to use the new Watch Board feature, which will automatically add all new entries to the Press board of the forum to your watchlist: - http://bitcointalk.org/watch_board.php (input 77, then press "Watch board") There is also this method to simply view the list of posts, chronologically: - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=77.0;sort=first_post;desc (Sort By First Post - oldest first) Please no comments about the articles here, and no links to the article itself, only to the new forum thread created for the article. |
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There are some gambling sites usign hashing algorithms to generate a random number based on information from the blockchain. For instance, http://SatoshiDice.com does a hmac_sha512(secret, transactionhash) to create a hash, and the first four bytes of that hash are used to determine the "lucky number" from 0 to 65,535. Bets are placed on whether that lucky number will be below a certain level, with levels being less than 64,000 less than 48,000 less than 32,768 less than 32,000 less than 24,000 etc,, down to less than 4 less than 2 less than 1 Is the resultant four bytes of the hmac_sha512 hash truly random? - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6234BitLotto is another that uses the results of hashing based on the bet's transaction hash to determine the winner: - http://bitlotto.com (Method for determining the winner: http://bitlotto.com/details.html ) Using the blockchain as a way to verify that cheating isn't occurring is a radical concept for gaming, but I'm not entirely convinced there are no advantages that can be gained by someone attempting to cheat. BitLotto's approach seems to be more than adequately secure (hash message includes transaction id plus results of an event that happens after the transaction id was created.) This one I'm not quite as sure about though the odds to the house are big enough that even finding a slight advantage probably wouldn't be profitable enough for the cheater to profit. More discussion on the Satoshi Dice game here: - http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/segz0/anyone_want_to_run_my_bitcoin_casino[Update: These sites return the winnings to the same address from where they were sent. Do not send bets using a hosted EWallet service like your account at Mt. Gox, PayTunia or InstaWallet, etc, as someone else will be the recipient of your winnings. Only use a Bitcoin client like the Bitcoin.org client, or a Javascript wallet like BlockChain.info/wallet or StrongCoin.] |
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 Total Output - 60 days, 7-day average - http://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?showDataPoints=false×pan=60days&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0 Number of Transactions - 180 days, 7-day average - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=0While these numbers can be fabricated, these look authentic and look like what they should look like as Bitcoin gains traction, particularly when they aren't accompanied by selloffs or rallies (where the bitcoin flows spike up significantly as all the transfers to and from the exchanges are what results). The big variable though right now will be the impact of the Dwolla actions. If all of Mt. Gox's customers who use Dwolla now must go through their new hoops that could choke off some of the funding flows, --- enough to affect the exchange rate. Mt. Gox recently shared the amount of volume they have with Dwolla. I can't remember the number and no longer have a link to it, it was in the tens of millions since Dwolla and Mt. Gox started working together. The Dwolla issue will likely have some negative effect, though whether or not that is more than offset by Bitcoin use growing in other areas is not yet known. |
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If you accept either Green Dot MoneyPak or WalMart MoneyCard as payment when trading your bitcoins, you may wish to take extra caution. But when she tried to activate the first of the cards over the phone, she had no luck. This is for a WalMart MoneyCard (same concept as MoneyPak). The card had already been redeemed when the customer tried to load the funds (presumably to a reloadable prepaid debit card) using an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. So the problem is either at that specific WalMart, with the IVR system, or with Green Dot's system. Cote returned to Walmart with her two cards the next day, spending more than an hour with store associates. She said they even unsealed Cote's other card and tried to activate it themselves, and they couldn't do it. So a second, sealed card also couldn't be used as it too had already been redeemed. someone outside the country had stolen her thousand dollars electronically before she even got home.
Green Dot told us that the card, the money from my card, was transferred to another card in Jamaica," Cote said. "Less than 30 minutes after I purchased the card." Somewhere there's a problem, and this lady seems to be in the middle of it. When we asked a manager at the Walmart store on Sheridan Drive about Cote, we were told it is not a Walmart problem, it is a police matter. No, if the second card was sealed then this issue is between WalMart and Green Dot and this woman should be given her money back immediately. After getting the answers we did at the Sheridan Drive store, we contacted Walmart's corporate offices in Arkansas and learned this is not an isolated incident. Yowza! - http://www.wivb.com/dpp/money/4_your_wallet/woman-loses-1000-on-walmart-moneycardSo, the caution is if you are accepting MoneyPak or MoneyCard, then it might be this Jamaican source trading it for bitcoins. There's no reports on #bitcoin-otc of this happening yet, but caution is advised. Even though the code might be redeemable if it happen to be one of these stolen in whatever manner this is happening, then Green Dot could at a later time try to reverse the transaction. The first thing Green Dot will do is ask the person who used the code to come up with the receipt, so if trading bitcoins for MoneyPak from an untrusted source, make sure to get the receipt. |
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I just learned of a startup that has a unique approach which might be of value to those wishing to trade locally. HipSwap: - http://HipSwap.com - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hipswap-officially-launches-in-seven-cities-142365575.htmlThe service started out in L.A. but now lists the following cities: - Los Angeles - New York - Chicago - San Francisco - Austin - Washington D.C. - Atlanta How it works is individuals (or businesses) post items for sale. When a buyer places the order, the payment form is through PayPal and the individual seller's own PayPal account is listed as the seller who will receive the proceeds of the sale. So it is a direct payment between the buyer and seller. HipSwap does charge a fee for using the site -- 3.75% which is a separate transaction that eventually gets billed to the seller's credit card (and does not go through PayPal). Now here's the great part though. For an extra $5 (added to the invoice that the buyer pays) HipSwap will deliver. The seller chooses the time and HipSwap sends a van to pick up the item. They then deliver that item to the buyer at the time of the buyer's choosing. HipSwap's terms of service state that they are a neutral party in the transaction. I was trying to figure out a way that this would work for someone wanting to do an in-person exchange without the in-person part. Simple ... the bitcoin seller uses HipSwap to get cash delivered from the buyer! So here's how this would work. Let's say Bob has bitcoins for sale. Bob posts a listing on Craiglist (or anywhere else) describing bitcoins for sale, $5 each, cash, with fulfillment through HipSwap. Alice sees the ad and inquires, she would like to buy 20 BTC. Bob provides instructions for Alice to place a listing on HipSwap where she lists a special paperclip or some other item for a $1 price and to specify delivery as the only option for the buyer. Bob then purchases the paperclip listing on HipSwap, using the checkout form which pays $6 to Alice's PayPal account. Alice prepares an envelope containing the paperclip plus $100 in cash plus another $6 to reimburse for the purchase and delivery charge. She also includes her bitcoin address, seals the envelope and schedules the time for pickup. Bob, when placing the order, specified time slots for delivery -- with next-day delivery being the earliest delivery, I believe. When the envelope does get delivered then Bob sends bitcoins to Alice's address. Alice's credit card will get charged $5.04 from HipSwap ($5 for the delivery plus 3.75% of the sale amount), but she got $6 from Bob via PayPal (well, $6 less PayPal fees, so about $5.66) so that charge isn't out of her pocket a send time. So for a total of $106 she gets 20 BTC, and this all happens in the same day or next. This is better than sending cash in the mail as this delivery method is probably more secure. This isn't totally anonymous -- Bob knows the e-mail address Alice's uses for her PayPal account. If Bob paid the $6 using his own PayPal account, Alice knows the e-mail address for his PayPal account. If Bob paid the charge using a credit card without a PayPal account, Alice won't know Bob's identity I don't believe. The risk I suppose is if Bob buys the paperclip and truly only gets the delivery of a paperclip. It could happen -- so on average the bitcoin seller is going to want to charge enough to make up for times where something like that happens. There also is a short period of time after the price is negotiated and when the cash is actually delivered. I suppose listing the price as market price + $X or something to that effect will protect the seller if the price moves after the sale begins. I'm sure eventually HipSwap will add to their terms of service that the delivery cannot include cash. At present they do not. If someone wishes to simply use HipSwap to sell bitcoins and accept PayPal, here's an example of how that could be done (at least, until PayPal figures it out, freezes the seller's account and claws back the funds): - http://www.hipswap.com/bitcoin/bitcoin-wallet-19b2e7xgjbqr1wgz7xtnpig6asscbpxpxu-5-btcHipSwap lets the seller indicate delivery options of "meet the seller" so this could be used as a method for soliciting in-person trades as well. The seller can even opt to offer using the "will ship" option as well, if that's wanted. And, of course, my disclaimer. I've no idea on the legality of this. Maybe the laws in your jurisdiction are such that the use of a third party for this type of transaction defines you as a money service business. Also, if there is a dispute -- say the person doesn't send any cash in the envelope and then blames HipSwap for it not arriving, etc. I couldn't guess where that all would end up. I do think this is an interesting development though. Any thoughts? |
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When I want a secure, offline paper wallet, currently I boot to a USB flash drive running with a bootable Ubuntu Live-CD distro and load from that same drive a copy of the page from BitAddress.org - http://BitAddress.orgThough this seems a trivial effort, it is disruptive to me if I have to first shut down, reboot, print, reboot and then log back in to get back to the point I was at when I wanted to create the paper wallet. If I had a spare computer lying around I'ld use that but at the moment I don't. In the near future, however, I might have a Raspberry Pi around. I've not touched one of these yet nor learned much about them either but I'm supposing this unit could be useful as a paper wallet generator. BitAddress has everything that is needed 100% in Javascript so the technical complexity to build this should be low. Though there would need to be an alternative to wiggling the mouse for gathering entropy with this. But for something inexpensive that would let you create a paper wallet and print it out, this seems to be capable. It might have even more use if it could print paper wallets on demand like tickets. I could see using a $50 printer like the Brother QL 700, for instance, where the first ticket / printout is the private key and QR code, followed by a second printout that has the public key and its QR code. (Though I now wonder if thermal paper printouts will fade and become too obscure to scan, as time passes?) So together, for under $100 of hardware, an individual would have an offline bitcoin paper wallet generator. Or at least an excuse to order a Raspberry Pi.  |
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For those in the U.S., here's one way to earn a small amount of bitcoin. This site apparently is still operating and still paying out $1 USD in Dwolla USDs. Send a text message with a profound message to: 1.515.650.4583 That number is for the site: - http://dollarthoughts.comThen they will send a $1 Dwolla USD payment to you. You need to sign up for Dwolla then, but it is free and takes just seconds. But then the Dwolla you got can be sent to any exchange that accepts Dwolla including Mt. Gox, Intersango, Camp BX, Bitfloor, etc. (sign up at any of these exchanges for free too if you don't already use one) and use the funds to purchase BTCs. This offer might be limited to only new Dwolla users, I don't know. Here's more on it: - http://www.twilio.com/blog/2012/01/dwolla-offers-a-dollar-sms-messaging.html |
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A Bokode is an imperceptible visual tag for camera based interaction from a distance. Essentially a long-range barcode. Current optical tags such as barcodes and QR codes must be read within a short range and the codes occupy valuable physical space on products. Bokode tags can be shrunk to a 3mm visible diameter and unmodified ordinary cameras several meters away can be set up to decode the identity plus the relative distance and angle. Here's more info: - http://video.mit.edu/watch/bokode-imperceptible-visual-tags-for-camera-based-interaction-from-a-distance-4282My first thoughts were that this would allow a physical bitcoin to have a scannable optical code whereas currently a QR code is too large for the small form factor of a coin. [update: after reading up, these require an LED and power [update2: or illumination such as from a camera flash] so they are not simply a smaller optical code like I first thought.] Then I was trying to think how else these might be of use. I was thinking of laser tag, for instance. The laser tag gun would have a camera that can scan the bokodes affixed to the players. The shooter with the best aim and control gets the bitcoin. Other uses are maybe something where a bitcoin-laden bokode is the incentive to pay closer attention to something. Like perhaps when trying to awaken an audience by alerting them to the fact that the next slide will have a bokode worth $5 on it and the first to get a scan keeps it. Or other less lame purposes that I'm not creative enough to consider. Maybe like what Qriket does for QR codes: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC5gGQSjLlgAnyway, thought I'ld share this. |
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