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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - May 30 through June 5 2011
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on: May 31, 2011, 11:43:46 PM
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Sunday, June 05, 2011- Bitcoin Market Suspends PayPal Trading
The exchange Bitcoin Market has discontinued the ability for trades to be made where PayPal is used for payment.
Bitcoin Money writes:
“fraudulent behavior [by some users] has created a tremendous backlog of ‘Unconfirmed’ trades”.
“[PayPal] can also be considered to be a P2P2P (person-to-person-to-person) payment network as well. A buyer can take advantage of the social network to find a trusted connection who might, in turn, have a connection to a Bitcoin seller. Physical proximity is not required”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6208332487 - New Exchange - Bahtcoin (Thailand)
A fixed-rate exchange serving Thailand.
- http://www.bahtcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bahtcoin - The Next Web - Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World
TNW’s readers already know a little about Bitcoin so Joel Falconer (@jfalconer) digs down to the next layer. Some inaccuracies were identified however.
“Bitcoin aims to create a decentralized, anonymous, uncounterfeitable, transaction fee-free currency”. [Anonymous -> pseudonymous, Fee-free -> low-fee. - Editor]
“It’s fairly early on in Bitcoin’s potential timeline and we’re already seeing five to ten minute delays between sending money and receiving it”. [That wouldn’t be because of bandwidth, storage or anything relating to scalability. - Editor]
- http://tnw.co/lzyLJp - Newest Version Of Bitcoin Client Released, v0.3.22
This is largely a bugfix and TX fee schedule release.
- Remove ‘generate coins’ option from GUI and remove 4-way miner. (miners use software from elsewhere now.)
- Add -port option for P2P port.
- Minimum TX fee reduced to 0.0005 BTC (Client will accept and relay the lowered fee. GUI application remains at 0.01 BTC until v0.3.23 though.)
- Bug fixes, source tree reorg and more.
Upgrading to the most recent version of the client is not mandatory. With 0.01 BTC being worth as much at $0.18 USD recently, many individuals have reverted to v0.3.20 which does not impose the minimum fee that was introduced with v0.3.21. That older version has issues which were fixed with the newer releases but for an individual the older version is suitable for use in transacting with others. The minimum transaction fee when using v0.3.23 will be an amount 1 / 20th of the amount that the most current version of the client requires. As such, it is likely that v0.3.23 will follow shortly.
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12269.0
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.22
Saturday, June 04, 2011- Falkvinge.net - Bitcoin’s Four Hurdles: Part One – Usability
A man who recently claimed to have invested all of of his savings and all that he could borrow into bitcoins does what is in his self-interest, he works to make that investment more valuable. He has become a participant in the mass collaborative project called Bitcoin.
Today he starts with part one of a series addressing the hurdles that he sees that Bitcoin must overcome. The first: Usability. He writes:
“A person who is great at making complex logic work flawlessly is never great at making that logic easy to use and understand. This is how you send money. I mean, come on.”
“Why can’t I pay with my phone without risking loss of my money through theft or loss of my phone?” [It’s coming, Webcoin. - Editor]
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability - Bitcoin Money - New Service: Blind Bitcoin Transfers
Consider this service along the lines of being a deposit service where the history of the bitcoins deposited can be unlinked when later withdrawn.
“After receiving depositing bitcoins the service will sign digital tokens for the depositor which can later be redeemed for bitcoins that would not be associated with the ones deposited.”
- http://blindbitcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blind_Bitcoin_Transfers
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6187527905
Friday, June 03, 2011- Bitcoin Money - History of the Cypherpunks (via Cypherpunkd)
Bitcoiners will appreciate this podcast with stories from the Cypherpunks of their fight to get encryption tools into to the open. Digital cash is discussed.
“I can’t think of any way of making it available to everyone without making it available to the bad guys. The effects on society weigh more positively than the advantage it gives to the bad guys.”
”[Digital currencies are always launched by] the banking industry and unfortunately the banking industry has a huge vested interest in not providing anonymous payment mechanisms.”
“The know your customer rules are really just about controlling cash, controlling movement, and collecting taxes.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6136537609 - Daily Reckoning - An Emerging Free Market Currency
Though there was no shortage of dissuading voices this past week today the voluminous collection of propaganda can be deemed offset in its entirety with just one word. The Daily Reckoning’s managing editor Joel Bowman concludes his article: “Bravo”.
“The history of centrally controlled monies is a history of theft, inflation and, eventually and invariably, defaults. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that […] the free market would demand – and will eventually provide – a superior alternative.”
“We expect all the usual arguments from all the usual suspects: Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and therefore provide cover for peddlers of child pornography and drug traffickers, they will contend. But the astute reader knows in his gut there is something very wrong with this line of thinking right from the beginning. Cash is anonymous too.”
“The question, however, is not whether the Feds should do something, but whether they could do something, even if they wanted to.”
- http://dailyreckoning.com/an-emerging-free-market-currency
Thursday, June 02, 2011- @MtGox - Total @Dwolla transactions in May, 2011: 4,401
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox shared a metric from May: 4,401 transactions.
No disputed payments or chargebacks. No frozen accounts. No rolling reserves. No fees over the fixed $0.25 per-transaction fee.
- http://twitter.com/#!/MtGox/status/75829234349768705 - SmartMoney - The Currency That's Up 200,000%
Jack Hough (@JackHough) writes in SmartMoney:
“The finite supply of Bitcoins might help explain the frantic demand for them. Dollars and euros are created at will by central bankers.”
“Dollars can’t be cashed in for anything; rather, we accept them as payment with the belief that others will accept them, too. That’s another reason the price of Bitcoins has rocketed over the past year.”
- http://bit.ly/m4paxN
Wednesday, June 01, 2011- ReasonTV - Bitcoin & The End of State-Controlled Money: Q&A with Jerry Brito
This video on ReasonTV by Jerry Brito (@JerryBrito) gives a two minute overview of Bitcoin.
“There are two main benefits in Bitcoin that people who like liberty are going to be excited about. One is this idea that a central authority doesn’t control the money supply. And so they can’t just print more money”.
“There’s no Bitcoin corporation, there’s no Bitcoin building”.
“Whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails itself is really neither here nor there. If it’s not Bitcoin it is going to be something else that is going to be a virtual currency that has distributed, that’s anonymous and it doesn’t have a central intermediary”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTqvYqXRbY - The Underground Economist (Sean Lynch) - Replacing Bitcoin
Sean Lynch, (@DrPrettyBad) defends Bitcoin by countering a weak claim.
“If account keys need to be strengthened or ECDSA deprecated, support can be added for new key types, and a date can be agreed to after which ECDSA keys will no longer be allowed to spend Bitcoin”.
“This is an intentional design choice: we trade the ability to have no coordination whatsoever for the network effect advantages of a single digital currency. If people consider this trade-off better than the trade-offs of a fiat currency, they’ll use Bitcoin”.
- http://undergroundeconomist.com/post/6078039278 - BVDW.org - BVDW Warns Consumers And Dealers On Using Bitcoins As Payment
BVDW.org is an organisation, according to its website, that “represents the interests of companies in the field of interactive marketing, digital content and interactive added value”.
This German lobbying organization issued an alert that warns how Bitcoin will in the long term harm society [This comes from a translation from German to English by Google Translate so hopefully that is. -Editor]
Fortunately, a Bitcoiner has provided a translation that not only is much less verbose, it infuses the true meanings (with umm … slight interpretation) of the words that emanate from the BVDW release:
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11061.msg158226#msg158226
- http://bit.ly/lPmOlV (BVDW alert, in German)
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607243 (comments on HN) - AstroHacker - The Time is Now for Bitcoin Startups
Ryan make his case for why now is the best time to get started on a Bitcoin startup or to incorporate Bitcoin into your existing business:
1.)“Bitcoin will probably succeed in some form or another”.
2.)“If it succeeds, it will probably be huge. I am not aware of a recent technology so widely useful except for the web, the internet or computing itself”.
3.)“There is almost no competition. You can straightforwardly monopolize any segment of the bitcoin economy by [being the first to create] a really solid business.”
4.)“It has never been easier to start so small and get so big. Businesses that already sell products or services can simply start accepting bitcoin”.
“By next year, all the easiest, obvious businesses will be taken”.
- http://astrohacker.com/ahc/time-is-now-for-bitcoin-entrepreneurship - Bitcoin Money - EFF: Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties
After the EFF removed a Bitcoin address as one of their donation methods a Bitcoiner inquired and received an interesting reply.
”Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties”.
“[We are reviewing] the options and legalities pertinent to bitcoin”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6100385027
Tuesday, May 31, 2011- The Monetary Future - Bitcoin: Timing is Everything
Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) writes:
“Money was never intended to track identity and a payment system should not be used to censor and ban certain types of ‘offensive’ transactions”.
“Free individuals should ‘resist digital money unless anonymous’”.
- http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-timing-is-everything.html - Keiser Report: Jon Matonis on BitCoin vs central bankers
Max interviews guest Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) who introduces Bitcoin to the RT audience.
“Overall though, I do think the exchangers are the weakest link in the chain”.
“On the government level I think what this is going to actually lead to is a move and a shift away from the model of taxing income and I think you’re going to start to see governments move towards some type of consumption-based tax or headcount-type tax and the reason is because the income levels of individuals are going to become more and more difficult to ascertain”
“I believe digital cash will do to legal tender what BitTorrents did to copyrights”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GiQEECNcZM - Bitcoin Economy - Daily Snapshot
1 BTC = $8.90 USD, Size: 6.39M BTC, Last 24h: 0.27M BTC in 6.0K trx, Difficulty: 435K, Forum posts/day: 2,361 Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Bitcoin Money - International USD Wire Option added at Mt. Gox Exchange
“USD funds can now be sent via wire to the exchange’s bank in Japan”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6061806466 - AdWeek - Not So Funny Money
Jotham Sederstrom writes on virtual currencies, virtual goods and virtual companies.
“Millions of consumers are growing more comfortable spending real money on virtual goods”.
“Some experts are taking a cue from China, which has set limits on the widespread trade of virtual currency, which in 2008 reached $2 billion in that country.”
“From rules governing gift certificates—perhaps the closest thing to virtual currency—to state money transmitter laws and federal banking and money laundering laws, federal regulators in the U.S. are now wrapping their heads around an industry that only a decade ago hardly existed.”
- http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/not-so-funny-money-132076 - Bitcoins are rising fast – but risky too
Philip Salter opines on the Bitcoin:
“People living in countries where their governments are worse than criminals, such [restrictions to using Bitcoin] won’t apply. Indeed, it would offer some a cleaner method of payment than usually open to them. Bitcoins wouldn’t have been a bad option for Zimbabweans”.
“Bitcoins can’t compete with the yellow metal. Buying bitcoins could be a profitable, if risky, short-term speculative bet”.
- http://bit.ly/kM8fEr
Monday, May 30, 2011- New format - Individual Posts - RSS Friendly
Going forward, BitcoinNews.com will now include a single post per news item.
- http://www.bitcoinnews.com/post/5996881047 - Falkvinge.net - Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin
Rick Falkvinge, founder of Sweden’s Pirate Party, describes his decision to go all-in with bitcoin.
“[After comparing a bitcoin transaction versus one through a bank, for sending money internationally] it’s not hard to see how this will replace the current financial systems, is it?”
“I can bet a good deal of money that banks and credit card companies will lobby to have bitcoin outlawed, using whatever reasons they can dream up, as this technology makes them obsolete”.
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin - Handelsblatt - Shadowy Digital Currency Gaining Massive Appeal
“Facebook has its own currency for virtual goods. But unlike Facebook’s credits or the Linden dollar there is no company that can create Bitcoin currency at will”.
“Since Bitcoins also be converted into dollars at any time, the number of supporters is growing and the use of Bitcoins as an alternative currency for the Web is an idea becoming mainstream”.
- http://bit.ly/ikvtTa (article on Handelsblatt.com)
- http://www.golem.de/1105/83829.html (same article, on Golem.de) - Bitcoin Money - The Bitcoin Faucet (Free Bitcoins) Has Run Dry
A plea is made to help re-establish a balance with The Bitcoin Faucet:
“Should you have benefitted by receiving free bitcoins from the faucet in the past and are willing to return to the faucet the funds that you received, or should you wish to donate to the faucet an additional amount so that others can experience Bitcoin first-hand as well, please do so.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6014648637 - Bitcoin Miner - Miner Pr0n
“Photos submitted by miners of their rigs range from those that are a whole lot of ugly to […]”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5998282328
- Bitcoin Miner - Price / (true) difficult
A new mining profitability chart identifies why a miner might feel that mining’s best days are now behind us.
“Mining today is producing less than half the revenue that mining was earning earlier in the month”.
“At the same time mining currently brings in, per-day, about twice the revenue it did in mid-April”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/6031094127 - Spiegel Online - Money from your power outlet
“‘This could be stable,’ says Gerhard Rösler professor at the University of Regensburg. ‘I can not see obvious problems’.”
“[Bitcoin community member] Molecular comments ‘Bitcoin is a huge transaction database that functions as an accounting ledger spread over thousands of computers’. He says he is ‘almost one hundred percent convinced that this is technically watertight’”.
- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,765382,00.html - Nick Szabo - Bitcoin, what took ye so long?
Nick responds to Bitcoin Weekly writer gwern following gwern’s recent article.
“The ideas behind Bitcoin were very far from obvious”.
”Hardly anybody actually understands money”.
“[Satoshi] Nakamoto [innovated] by requiring a proof-of-work to be a node in the peer-to-peer system to lessen the threat of an untrustworthy party controlling the majority of nodes. Yet another feature obvious in hindsight, quite non-obvious in foresight.”
- http://bit.ly/j6Azuc (article)
- http://bit.ly/jYLaDS (comments)
- http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html (Nick’s Origins of Money paper)
Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (new posts throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) All posts: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day of the week I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - May 23 through May 29 2011
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on: May 24, 2011, 07:22:26 AM
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Sunday, May 29th, 2011- Video:
Steve Gibson: “These (bitcoin miners) have gone nuts!” on Security Now episode #302
“But you’re not going to use 93 kWh a day, are you? Apparently, yes. These people [miners] have gone nuts”.
“It is a robust cyber currency that as far as I can see was absolutely done right”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLpNGEXLUKY&t=2008s (The bitcoin segment begins at about 0:33:25 in)
Saturday, May 28th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin top 100 ‘Rich List’ 27th May 2011 on The Bitcoin Report
Not only is each bitcoin worth over eight times (relative to the dollar) since the last time the Rich List was published, the number of bitcoins needed to even get on the list has increased.
- http://bit.ly/jA6sKw - Ending soon:
Over 200 Bitcoin-related domain names are being offered for sale. Bidding is (was ?) to end “towards the end of May”.
“SatoshiNakamoto.com highest bid: 4.49 BTC”.
- http://bitcoindomains.blogspot.com - New tool: Dot-bit domain cost calculator
Shows how many namecoins are needed to purchase a .bit domain registration.
Eight hundred domain names have been registered thus far, about a third of them in the past week.
- http://dot-bit.org/tools/domainCost.php
- http://webpagedeveloper.me/name_scan.php (list of the first 500 names)
- http://dot-bit.org/HowToBuyNamecoins (miners trading namecoins for bitcoins) - Announcement:
BitLotto reduces ticket fee for monthly lottery to 0.25 BTC beginning with July 6th Draw.
For wagers towards the June 1st draw the only valid amount remains 1.0 BTC. The blockchain shows those wagers and indicates that the lottery payout will be worth over $1,000 USD. Note: All wagering for BitLotto must sent only from a local Bitcoin client (i.e., not from an EWallet provider).
- http://www.bitlotto.com (local restrictions apply) - Article / Blog post:
A Bitcoin Lesson, From a School’s System Administrator by Ryan Broderick on Motherboard.tv
“[Bitcoin is] one of those things that was created but now exists independently of its creators. They can’t say, “oh we don’t like this” and shut it off. There is nothing to shut off.”
“Say everyone stopped using Bitcoin but I had Bitcoins and you had Bitcoins. We could be the only people using the software online and I could still send them to you.”
- http://bit.ly/lCMCoj
Friday, May 27th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin is Worse is Better by gwern on Bitcoin Weekly
“Bitcoin is a perfect example of Worse is Better. It seems to work. Just like Unix. Unix spread, networked, survived - and the rest did not.”
“Bitcoin tends to turn people into marketers because they feel they have something to gain. Bitcoin’s greatest virtue is not its deflation, nor its microtransactions, but its viral distributed nature.”
- http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-is-worse-is-better - Article / Blog post:
eG8 and Internet Control Points by Simon Phipps on ComputerWorldUK
“[The Dot-BIT/Namecoin project], based on the distributed online currency system Bitcoin, aims to implement a secure DNS that has no points of control. We need this sort of distributed infrastructure so that the control points simply aren’t there to be abused.”
- http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/05/decentralising-the-web/index.htm
- http://dot-bit.org - Article / Blog post:
Cincinnati’s Hive13 Hackerspace adds Bitcoin Local Exchange on Bitcoin Money
“During the Tuesday meetings attendees can trade cash for bitcoins.”
“There are hundreds of hackerspaces globally. Hopefully more will follow Hive13’s lead.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5894406565
Thursday, May 26th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
This Non-Fiat Currency Is Up Over 1,000% by Jeff Berwick on Resource Investor
”Gresham’s law is driving me and I assume many of the others”.
- http://bit.ly/ioN9QO - Markets - Unusual trading activity for BTC/SLL on VirWoX
Bitcoins were being bought using Lindens, the currency in the virtual world Second Life at an abnormally high price at a very rapid pace for several hours on Thursday. The activity appears to have been responsible for the USD/SLL being taken down nearly 10% for at least some period of time as well.
- http://www.virwox.com
- http://bit.ly/m2mxSa - Mining: New software
gpu-watch: dynamic GPU temperature monitoring and fan control
A script that will monitor all GPUs in a machine and control fan speed accordingly.
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=10062.0 - Newest version of Bitcoin client nearing completion, v0.3.22
The upcoming release is currently in final testing (release candidate 5 is out)
Features include:
- Remove ‘generate coins’ option from GUI and remove 4-way miner.
- Add -port option for P2P port.
- minimum TX fee reduced to 0.0005 BTC (Fee in GUI remains at 0.01 BTC until next release though)
- Bug fixes, source tree reorg and more.
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8894.0 - Article / Blog post:
The relationship between bitcoin price and difficulty by nanotube on Virtually Shocking
“The primary effect, however, is the high price drawing new miners in, rather than new mining capacity drawing the buyers in”.
- http://bit.ly/in2jra - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis:
“The BTC/USD market shows a beautiful technical strength, far stronger than any other financial market over the past years”.
“As long as the $7.80 - $8.20 range holds, [the $10] level is in the cards”.
- http://bit.ly/leg3LL - Article / Blog post:
Should OpenSim Use Bitcoin As Its Virtual Currency? on New World Notes
“OpenSimulator is an open source, peer-to-peer virtual world technology with a huge hurdle of its own: There’s no universal currency with which to buy virtual content”.
- http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/05/should-opensim-use-bitcoin-as-its-virtual-currency.html - Article / Blog post:
Difficulty adjusts to 434,877, a 78% increase on Bitcoin Miner
“Another wildcard is the introduction of browser-based webCL miners”.
“The rising exchange rate enables miners to continue investing in additional capacity and still stay one step ahead the difficulty avalanche.”
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5872990977 - Press:
Fox’s Freedom Watch show finds Bitcoin as #1 requested topic suggestion for upcoming show
This would be the first exposure for Bitcoin on any major television media.
- http://freedomwatch.uservoice.com/forums/16625-freedom-watch-show-ideas - Podcast:
Girls Out Loud Episode 34 by Maya Grinberg and Cristina Cordova on GirlsOutLoud.com
“When I go to Vegas, I do not like to gamble. When something like this comes up? I’m totally down. I don’t feel like the house has an edge on me, because there is no house.” Starts at 31:45.
- http://bit.ly/lmCN30
- http://girlsoutloudshow.com/wp-content/podcasts/gols_034.mp3 - Article / Blog post:
Panic (buying) at BitDisco on Bitcoin Money
“There are a few characteristics that make bitcoin trading unique. […] When these situations combine and occur together the end result is likely a frustrated buyer. The result is a buying frenzy”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5865616397 - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin Exchange Announces Plans To Offer Margin Trading on Bitcoin Money
”Margin trading may bring risks to the exchange […]”.
“The exchange’s operator has stated that testing [of the trading system and its risk management algorithms] involves simulations to ensure that the customer’s funds are 100% safe.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5856849119
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011- Bitcoin exchange rate: Intraday spike to $9.33, record high
Record volume on bitcoin’s leading exchange, Mt. Gox, in dollar terms with over $0.5M USD traded in a 24 hour period.
- http://bit.ly/ixYf86 - Bitcoin History: Anniversary of Laszlo’s 10,000 BTC Pizza - March 22, 2010
Earlier this week was the one-year anniversary of one of the first real-world transactions involving bitcoins. You’ve come a long way, Bitcoin!
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/3109720916 - Infographic:
What is Bitcoin? [Infographic] by Sean McColgan on Money Saving Blog
Asks “Can Bitcoin change finance the way the web changed publishing?”
- http://www.promotionalcodes.org.uk/26970/what-is-bitcoin - Bitcoin Wiki Trade page (merchant directory) gets censored further
”Then they came for the gambling, and I didn’t speak out because I don’t place wagers.”
Following the April censorship moves which removed references to The Silk Road Anonymous Marketplace, this latest purging targeted links to online gambling websites.
Even with the removal of gambling sites the page has become unwieldy — as wiki pages were not designed for this purpose.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9770.0
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
No One Sends Bitcoins on Ironwolf blog
“The idea that Bitcoins are ‘sent’ from one person to another like conventional money [is wrong]”.
“It looks like something has been “sent,” but this is just a useful fiction”.
- http://ironwolf.dangerousgames.com/blog/archives/1105 - Article / Blog post:
What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters by Tom Simonite in MIT’s Technology Review
“Even limited success could allow Bitcoin to change the fate of more established currencies. ‘Competition is good, even between currencies—perhaps the example of Bitcoin could influence the behavior of the Federal Reserve’”.
- http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37619 - Business:
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox adds Australian AUD bank direct deposit (BPay) funding method.
Fee is AU$2 per-deposit. Funds are converted to USD at the current rate. Transfers take one business day.
- http://mtgox.com/users/addFunds - Press:
What are Bitcoins? on NPR’s All Things Considered radio program
Slates’s economic and business reporter Annie Lowrey explains the basics of Bitcoin.
- http://www.npr.org/2011/05/24/136620231/what-are-bitcoins - Update on @TheRealPlato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip: (Denver, CO)
Travel in some less populated regions meant that Plato has needed to use his Shell prepaid gas card which was purchased with bitcoins (incidentally, obtained from the operator or BitcoinExchange.cc).
- http://twitter.com/therealplato
- http://www.youtipit.org/t/J2937 (Plato's tipit. Donate a little for the cause.) - New website:
BitcoinExchange.cc is now online.
The Bitcoin forum member “BitcoinExchange” launched the site to improve the cashout service that has doing business since April. Previously most transactions for the service occurred online through the forum, by e-mail, by IM or by on Skype.
The service serves those wishing to redeem bitcoins or a variety of other digital currencies for payment through PayPal, ACH (direct deposit) or other online currencies or to receive e-gift cards, phone cards and other mediums of exchange.
- http://www.bitcoinexchange.cc
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinExchange_Services - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $7.07 USD, Size: 6.32M BTC, Last 24h: 0.34M BTC in 5.7K trx, Difficulty: 244K, Forum posts/day: 2,055 Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Article / Blog post:
Opportunity: Thy Name is Bitcoin by Brian Cunningham of YouTipIt
“Any conventional method solely based on Dollars/Euros would be prohibitively expensive, with numerous legal pitfalls.”
“We jumped at the opportunity to base our application on a currency as innovative and flexible as Bitcoin.”
- http://enabledidler.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-mat-cropps-excellent-article-for.html - Business: Bitcoin Solutions, LLC acquires BitcoinCashout.com
Just weeks after launch, Bitcoin Cashout, a fixed-rate exchange where bitcoins can be traded for prepaid gift cards, has been aquired.
Bitcoin Cashout offers Visa, Mastercard and American Express virtual prepaid cards.
Following PayPal’s actions, prepaid card and gift card cashout services are likely seeing brisk business.
- http://www.bitcoincashout.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Cashout
Monday, May 23rd, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin miners busted? by Darlene Storm in ComputerWorld blog
“DEA Agent: We thought it was a major grow operation … but this guy had some kind of business involving computers”.
- http://bit.ly/l8hhRP - New site: TheBitcoin.US
Provides a general overview of Bitcoin with links to the more popular components in several categories.
- http://thebitcoin.us
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/TheBitcoin.us - Video:
Twenty four rigs, 130 amps, custom exhaust hood - represents about 1% of the entire total of all mining occuring today.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5f_e4P6gMA - Article / Blog post:
Report: Police Confuse Bitcoin Miner’s Power Use for Growing Weed by Jerry Brito (@JerryBrito) in TIME TechLand blog
“Ubiquitous prosumer computing could well lead to false positives, not just for Bitcoin miners, but for hardcore gamers, [and others]”.
- http://ti.me/iD8oIQ - Article / Blog post:
Bit Players in The Daily online e-paper
“It’s going to be somewhat difficult to convince people to leave ‘the dollar ecosystem’”.
- http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/23/052311-apps-technews-bitcoins-1-2/ - New site and service: BTCRate.com
Provides currency conversion between Bitcoin and other world currencies.
- http://www.btcrate.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BTCRate.com - Article / Blog post:
Upcoming Changes For Mt. Gox in Bitcoin Money
“Development and testing effort has been underway at Mt. Gox. An update is targeted for being rolled out at the beginning of June”.
What’s coming: New currencies EUR, JPY. Iceberg orders. Full decimal trading. & More.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5765886176 - New feature: YouTipIt
YouTipIt escrow tipits to any Facebook User.
- http://www.youtipit.org
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/YouTipIt#Escrow_Tipit - New website: Bitcoin Prices
Provides exchange rates for bitcoins versus multiple foreign currencies.
Choose from any of several exchange markets.
- http://bitcoinprices.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Prices - Magazine: The Bitcoin Sun (2nd edition)
‘Specupreneurs’ and the Bitcoin Economy by Matt Crop
“We [Bitcoin business entrepreneurs] double as speculators, since we willingly expose ourselves to the risk of the erosion of those profits by a decline in the value of Bitcoin in exchange for the opportunity to realize large gains should the currency appreciate.”
The Bitcoin Island by Ploum
The forum is full of people asking why they do not get any bitcoins. Sadly, most of the answers they receive explained them how to build mining rigs with expensive hardware, how to join pools”.
Bitcoin, The Darknet Economy, And the Low Over-Head Revolution by Kevin Carson
”Despite my reservations, I consider Bit-coin to be grounds for enormous excitement”.
Rain Droplet Interview by Matt Cropp
“Our biggest accounts and most involved participants are Bitcoin users, and much of our feedback and new traffic come from the Bitcoin community”.
- http://www.bitcoinservice.co.uk/files/877 (click reload page after visiting to get download) - Article / Blog Post
Will Mining Bring The Police? in Bitcoin Miner
“Looking only at the electric usage for the residence the consumption will look not much unlike the usage for a marijuana grow-op”.
“[A Mission, BC bylaw allows police to] search people’s homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5762837023
Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - May 16 through May 22, 2011
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on: May 17, 2011, 04:20:22 PM
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Sunday, May 22nd, 2011- Press:
Make.Money.Slow : The Bitcoin Experiment by Jon Evans on TechCrunch
“At best it might eke out an existence as a distributed local currency for hardcore libertarians”.
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/21/the-bitcoin-experiment
- http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20110521the-bitcoin-experiment (Japanese)
Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency by Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture
“How we create and measure value is going through a change that has not been seen in over 600 years”.
“It is a snowball today, but tomorrow it is an avalanche. Just watch”.
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/bitcoin-ven-and-the-end-of-currency - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (special update)
Mid term: “DOWN as long as the high of $8.90 remains intact”.
Short term: “RALLY from the low of $5.57. $6.50 must hold for the rally to continue”.
- http://bit.ly/iKxync - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin by Justin of Nine Zero Nine blog
Justin describes his foray into mining. He learns about variance (“some days I would go without mining a single BTC and others I would get 3”) and ups the ante (“I impulse bought two more 5830s just yesterday”).
- http://ninezeronine.net/2011/05/22/bitcoin - Article / Blog post:
Why Bitcoin is Smart, and Not a Scam by Brock Tice (@BrockTice)
Rebuttal by this long-time community member to the many recent criticisms of bitcoin.
“At one time there was a risk that someone with a botnet could easily overtake the network. That risk is now minimal and getting (exponentially) smaller every day”.
“What makes bitcoin so cool is the combination of [fixed rate of inflation, blockchain, hashing targets, cryptography, anonymity] in one system”.
- http://virtuallyshocking.com/2011/05/22/why-bitcoin-is-smart-and-not-a-scam
Saturday, May 21st, 2011Friday, May 20th, 2011- Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $6.55 USD, Size: 6.27M BTC, Last 24h: 0.35M BTC in 4.8K trx, Difficulty: 244K, Forum posts/day: 2,018 Nodes: 1.9K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Article / Blog post:
Open Source FGPA Bitcoin Miner on Bitcoin Miner
“The cost of the equipment and not the cost of electricity continues to be the primary concern affecting miner’s decision on whether or not to add capacity.”
“When power consumption limits are a constraint, then the FPGA with its significantly higher power efficiency might be the only method to increase mining hashing capacity.”
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5672391181
Thursday, May 19th, 2011- Video / Podcast: Buzz Out Loud 1469 (CNET)
Hosts Molly Wood and Brian Tong discuss Bitcoin (from about 0:18:50 through 0:25:45)
“There is no small representation of anarchist philosophy in the Bitcoin forum, but I gotta admit that frankly, I’m pretty mad at the banks and you can understand how this kind of revolution starts to come to pass”.
“Once it gets to the point that its on this show it’s reaching mass saturation in the geek community and I suspect that we’re not far away from the point that goverments [take notice].”
- http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-20063349-10.html - Forum post: Public Relations by Gavin Andresen, technical lead of Bitcoin project
“Bitcoin as “The People’s Money” is the right way to think about it”.
“Creating solid technology was just the first step in a long road for bitcoin”.
“It is international, decentralized, and completely open to innovation, very much like the Internet.”
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8940.0 - New software: ToyTrader
An open source command line trading tool for Mt. Gox.
- http://github.com/toyotasupra/ToyTrader
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/ToyTrader - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
Long term: “Chances are high that we see at least 2 months of declines or at least sideways action”.
Short term: “Bitcoins continue the way down. A break of 6.7-6.8$ is needed to start the next leg down”.
- http://bit.ly/kPhS2s - New miner: Browser Bitcoin Miner
A cpu miner that is launched from the browser, requires no installation and runs as a Java application. The author’s goal was to make it easy for those who are not technical to start mining.
- http://www.bitcoinplus.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Browser_Bitcoin_Miner - New site: Spend bitcoins
“A buying service in which purchases through Amazon.com can be made and paid for using bitcoins”.
- http://spendbitcoins.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Spend_bitcoins - Milestone: What is Bitcoin video passes 100,000 views
Less than two weeks after reaching 50,000 views the video that introduces Bitcoin has doubled that earlier number and has passed 100,000 views.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo - Article / Blog post:
The Information Policy Case For Flat Tax And Basic Income by Rick Falkvinge
“Distributed cryptocurrency is here to stay. Its use case is so hands-down attractive that it beats the legacy banking and transaction systems on walk-over on point after point”.
“A lot of individuals in government will react with normalcy bias to [not seeing an individual’s wealth] and say ‘but we have to!’. It doesn’t matter if you have to. You can’t. Period”.
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/19/the-information-policy-case-for-flat-tax-and-basic-income/ - New mobile app: btcMobile
A mobile app for iPhone and iPad used for checking mining pool statistics and for reviewing weighted average market prices.
- http://btcmobile.jworley.kodingen.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BtcMobile
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
What Happens When Anonymous Gets A Bank? by Dominic Basulto (@DominicBasulto) in Big Think
“Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency”.
“Bitcoins are globally transferable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it’s banned by a sovereign government”.
- http://bigthink.com/ideas/38488 - New IRC channel: #bitcoin-otc-eu
Complement to the #bitcoin-otc marketplace is a dedicated EU trading channel.
- http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-otc-eu
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8819.0 - Article / Blog post:
Difficulty adjusts to 244,139, a 55% increase by Bitcoin Miner
“The mining profitability level is high enough yet that few except for those running the most inefficient hardware will continue mining”.
“By some estimates, the Bitcoin network now has as much computing power as half of all the Top 500 Supercomputer projects combined”.
”’“Too much computational power is being expended to protect too little value’”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5622597370 - Press: Slate.com
My Money Is Cooler Than Yours by Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey)
Another media reporter who misses a few concepts that are basic to understanding Bitcoin:
“In the event of such a Bitcoin panic, there would be no FDIC to insure each account and no Fed to stabilize the value of the currency. (That’s another reason to recommend the dollar)”.
- http://www.slate.com/id/2294980 - Article / Blog post:
‘Will Work for Bitcoin’ Coder Says Most People Just Using It as an Investment Vehicle by Adrianne Jeffries in NY Observer’s BetaBeat.
“[The billable rate for the project] equates to a rate significantly below my normal hourly rate. However, I expect Bitcoins to appreciate significantly in value”.
“As an average Joe, I plan on using Bitcoin as I would any other currency.”
- http://bit.ly/mFWeAC - Article / Blog post:
Who You Gonna Believe, Them or Your Lying Eyes … by Bitcoin Money
Tracking feedback from a technical community over the course of nearly one year shows that there are and will continue to be doubters, but the data doesn’t lie.
“‘They’ either didn’t want this day to come or don’t see how a decentralized currency is such a game changer”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5612828148
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011- Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $7.61 USD, Size: 6.23M BTC, Last 24h: 0.28M BTC in 4.4K trx, Difficulty: 157.4K, Forum posts/day: 1,351 Nodes: 1.7K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Article / Blog post:
Trading coins for clicks by Charis Palmer in Technology Spectator
”Collaborative consumption is a buzzword for the rapid explosion of swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting that has been enabled through new technologies on a scale never possible before, and it’s a trend worth watching if only for the innovative start-ups it’s spawning”.
- http://technologyspectator.com.au/emerging-tech/social-media/trading-coins-clicks - Bitcoin Trading Signals Short Term Update:
“The oscillator it’s oversold but i dont think i’ll see a buying opportunity today”.
“Once the low is in place […] I expect it to carry the btc up and above the 8 level”.
- http://btctrading.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/short-term-update - Article / Blog post:
Response to question ”Is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin a good idea?“ on Quora.
This older question on the Q&A site has been seeing a lot of activity, including a follow up by Sean Lynch (@DrPrettyBad) who previously wrote a post titled “Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency”. He maintains that “there are still potentially serious problems with Bitcoin” however he now acknowledges “none of them seems like an obvious killer to me”.
- http://bit.ly/j3k7JE - Article / Blog post:
Can BitCoin, the First Open Source Currency, Threaten the Dollar? by DJ Pangburn on DeathAndTaxesMag.com
“It occurred to me that someone must create an alternate currency through which individuals can disengage from their country’s currency, thereby bypassing violent insurrection”.
“Whatever happens, the invention of the BitCoin is a rather seismic event, and might point to the way of the future, in which the people might finally wrest the power that the state and corporations have held over individuals for far too long”.
- http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/90660 - Article / Blog post:
L020: Is Bitcoin the Wikileaks of Monetary Policy? by Robert Tercek on Launch.is
“In the past, you as a citizen were powerless to stop [currency debasement] until the next election cycle”.
“The link between money and identity enables the government to monitor your behavior and enforce a range of laws including compliance with tax codes, gambling statutes, drug laws, money laundering laws and more. Bitcoin presents the option to avoid these regulations”.
- http://launch.is/blog/l020-is-bitcoin-the-wikileaks-of-monetary-policy.html
Monday, May 16th, 2011- Discussion forums affected by traffic levels
The immense amount of traffic to the Bitcoin.org website and then to the discussion forums caused performance issues for several hours on Monday. The buzz occurred as the result of @Launch’s newsletter followed by the attention on Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, etc.
- http://bit.ly/h2JuOF Bitcoin.org web site performance monitoring
- http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&date=2011 (The spike shown by Google Trends) - Site update: YouTipIt.org
Youtipit got a whole new look and a few new features, including the term Junket being replaced by the more intuitive name — a tipit.
An upcoming feature not yet released will be Escrow Tipits. These allow tipping to any Facebook user regardless of whether or not the user has already registered with YouTipIt.
- http://www.youtipit.org - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin - The Tool For Topping Up by Bitcoin Money
“Recently there have been many innovative payment systems introduced to make it easier to move money among us, person-to-person”.
“But each of these innovations is flawed in that a delay is introduced by the banking systems they rely on”.
”Enter Bitcoin and the #bitcoin-otc marketplace”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5548223879 - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
Analysis: “As long as 5$ holds, much higher levels are possible”.
Long term: “BTC/USD seem to behave much as SILVER”. “4.7 is the 50% retracement”.
Short term: “Prices still seem to be just before the next wave down [though] bitcoins often surprise on the upside”.
- http://bit.ly/l8VWwk - Press: Wired UK
Peer-to-peer currency Bitcoin sidesteps financial institutions by Duncan Geere
“Subscribers to the cypherpunk mailing list were discussing the idea of a “cryptocurrency”. Wei Dei crystallised this into a proposal — one that doesn’t rely on trusting one central issuer, who can flood the market with more currency”.
“[How is Bitcoin used?] A programmer named Nicholas Carlson recently accepted a job offer in which he’ll be paid in Bitcoins”.
- http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/16/bitcoin-p2p-currency - Article / Blog post:
Lords of a new economy by Alaric Snell-Pym (@Alaric)
“It’s not often that you get to see anarcho-capitalism and enlightened self interest having such free reign of expression; and it will be interesting to see how it pans out”.
“At worst [an attempt to regulate using new rules would] just cause a fork of the chain, as people who want an unregulated economy will just go off on their own separate way with the old rules.”
- http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/16/lords-of-a-new-economy - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin, Wikileaks, and the Rise of In-Spite-of-Archy by Kenneth Myers
“Bitcoin changes everything. If you want an alternate currency, you buy in. If you don’t, you don’t”.
“It’s encroaching on the sort of grand scale project space that first gave governments their legitimacy. I think this is significant.”
- http://bit.ly/lgjjQu
Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - May 09 through May 15, 2011
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on: May 10, 2011, 08:11:17 PM
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Sunday, May 15th, 2011Saturday, May 14th, 2011- Update on @TheRealPlato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip: Austin, TX
This leg of the trip brought Plato to a tech hub and he’s making the most of it. On Friday Plato met CEO of Tabbedout, a company that builds an app for Android and iPhone mobiles that is used at participating restaurants and bars. With the app you can open, view and pay for your tab. Will “pay using bitcoins” be added as one of the payment options? Let’s hope so!
Following that was a visit to the McCombs School of business at UT Austin. Plato met with @LizWinks of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC). The CREC’s director, Andrew B. Whinston was interviewed in February as part of CBC’s SPARK 139 episode on Bitcoin.
- http://tabbedout.com/sections/13/how-it-works/consumers/pay-your-tab
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/3554485526
- http://twitter.com/#!/therealplato - New blog: Bitcoin Trading Signals trading blog
The author of the blog follows the Btc/Usd cross ratio and lists the trading signals detected. The blog reports on trades that are made and lists a profit summary.
- http://btctrading.wordpress.com - Article / Blog post:
Can BitCoin be used for mobile payments? question on Quora
The short answer is: Today, technically yes, though it isn’t pretty. Additional and better options are forthcoming, but Bitcoin’s decentralized architecture adds a significant hurdle.
- http://www.quora.com/Can-BitCoin-be-used-for-mobile-payments - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot: 1 BTC = $8.10 USD, Size: 6.20M BTC, Last 24h: 1.69M BTC in 4.3K trx, Difficulty: 157.4K, Forum posts/day: 1,781 Nodes: 1.3K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
Friday, May 13th, 2011- Please accept our apologies, the news editor was AFK on Friday.
Due to time constraints (and completely unrelated to any superstition), no entries were made for the day. You can catch up on what was missed by reading Saturday’s post.
Thursday, May 12th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin security by Alaric Snell-Pym
“Bitcoin will be as anonymous as cash - for people who are not the subject of a major, expensive, law enforcement investigation, it’s perfect. It’ll be a lot harder to do the kind of routine mass surveillance that is currently done with card payment records.”
- http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/12/bitcoin-security - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $5.73 USD, Size: 6.18M BTC, Last 24h: 0.21M BTC in 3.2K trx, Difficulty: 157.4K, Forum posts/day: 1,600 Nodes: 1.4K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
Long term: “RALLY”
Short term: “We likely see another triangle with breakout to the upside to higher levels.” [Update: RALLY call has materialized.]
- http://bit.ly/kKQnD2 - Article / Blog post:
The P2P Evolution by Semil Shah in TechCrunch
[This post was from earlier this month, but it is very relevant to bitcoin.]
“We are already into the next peer-to-peer evolution: P2P 2.0”
Though Bitcoin wasn’t mentioned in this article, an organization such as Zaarly will likely find some of its user base more interested in receiving payments using bitcoins than through Square or the other P2P payment service.
- http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/01/p2p-evolution
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
With The Napster of Banking Round The Corner, Bring Out Your Popcorn by Rick Falkvings
“The governments of the world are on the brink of losing the ability to look into the economy of their citizens. They stand to lose the ability to seize assets, they stand to lose the ability to collect debts.”
- http://bit.ly/lyNksE - Earn Second Life Lindens by Mining Bitcoins
Mining 4 Lindens is the third “common interest” community to launch a mining pool such that bitcoins mined generate income for the community’s participants.
Previous endeavors include the XKCD pool and the Reddit Bitcoin Mining Team.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5396637364 - Improvements at #Bitcoin-OTC marketplace and OTC Web of Trust (WoT)
To add or manage listings on the #bitcoin-otc order book authentication with the OTC WoT is necessary. Another method for registering and authenticating to the OTC WoT is now available. The one-time-password (OTP) makes the process easier to automate and for those authenticating manually, the OTP method involves fewer steps.
The marketplace regularly has over 400 IRC users simultaneously and the order book now shows over 200 open buy and sell orders.
- http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/GPG_authentication#One_time_password
- http://www.bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php - Article / Blog post (and book review): in the Mises Daily
The Triumph of Technology over Government Planning by Edward Wayne Younkins
“Cyberspace permits limitless opportunities and empowers the individual. The Internet is making existing forms of commerce more efficient and is fostering the emergence of self-organizing supranational communities. These new virtual communities are bound by common interests rather than by physical borders.”
- http://mises.org/daily/5249/The-Triumph-of-Technology-over-Government-Planning - Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox adjusts defenses following new DDoS attacks
The exchange was offline for over an hour before modifications to the network defenses were sufficient to repel continued distributed denial-of-service attacks against the service. Trading resumed without further incident. - Article / Blog post: in Bitcoin Weekly
The Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange and Why It Matters by Vitalik Buterin
“The intent of [GLBSE] is to allow people to “issue shares to raise capital, pay dividends to shareholders, put resolutions to shareholders and get their vote […]”
“[There are] no minimum income or market capitalization requirements [to become listed.]“
“Anyone can trade stocks and bonds, and it is as anonymous as you want it to be.”
“GLBSE will operate 24/7”. ”The internet never sleeps.”
“GLBSE is not confined by outdated 20th century norms.”
- http://bit.ly/j9KYIw
- http://glbse.com
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011- Update on Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip.
Plato’s bitcoins are lasting longer, thanks to the BTC/USD exchange rate favoring him for most of his travels since the cross-country trip began several weeks ago. His latest disatch reads: “The pancakes I just ordered at this diner cost me 1 bitcoin”. Plato uses as payment a bitcoin scratch-off card which contains a code that may be redeemed for bitcoins.
- https://i.imgur.com/d61XK.jpg (scratch-off)
- http://twitter.com/#!/therealplato - BTC/USD market exchange rate spikes a second day in a row, to $6.065.
The exchange rate on Mt. Gox climbed nearly 20% on Tuesday with some bouncing late in the day.
- http://bit.ly/lWh5Aw - Press / media:
Interview on This Week in Startups, @TWiStartups was Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen and Britcoin’s Amir Taaki. Host of the show was @Jason Calicanis.
- http://youtube.com/watch?v=TwNfBgwbqng - In the video you’ll see that Gavin was stylin’ the I Use Coins T-Shirt. The shirts may be purchased using only bitcoins. The online store uses the Ubercart ecommerce software and, presumably, the uc_bitcoin currency module.
- http://www.iusecoins.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Uc_bitcoin - Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox adds automated withdrawal to Dwolla
The exchange now supports automated withdrawal of USD funds to Dwolla accounts. Added earlier was the ability to add funds to the exchange from Dwolla.
The exchange also has stopped temporarily accepting U.S. bank wire and ACH transactions (either deposit or withdrawal).
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5385683214 - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
Long term: “BTC/USD seem to have completed a 5th Elliott Wave up, which is typically the end of an impulsive wave.”
Short term: “A strong breakout above $5 would make a continuation of the rally possible. Given the overbought condition of the market, watch out for a bull trap above $5.”
- http://bit.ly/lVNArP
Monday, May 9th, 2011- Mining difficulty adjustment - 157,426. A 43% increase in just under 10 days.
- BTC/USD market exchange rate spikes to $4.99
The exchange rate on Mt. Gox rose 25% in seconds late Monday (Pacific Coast time) on a couple of large buy orders before settling at about the $4.50 range.
- http://bit.ly/j1x34X - Article / Blog post:
BitCoin. Good as Gold? by Adam Curry, co-host of the No Agenda show (along with John C. Dvorak)
“The idea of having something I can send digitally in it’s original form is interesting and in many ways appealing.”
- http://blog.curry.com/stories/2011/05/09/bitcoinGoodAsGold.html - Press: The Hindu (Bangalore, India)
New currency on the block by Deepa Kurup
Introduces Bitcoin to its readers.
“BitCoin is yet to make an impact among Indian users. But considering the thousands of PayPal customers who suffered last year when the firm withdrew services from India, this is one idea that is likely to catch on among freelancers and small businesses.”
- http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2001732.ece - Article / Blog post:
Why bitcoin will fail by Avery Pennarun
Here’s a snippet that will help you decide whether or not to read it:
“If governments can’t control the money supply, then they can’t set interest rates. If they can’t set interest rates, they can’t control the economy, and if nobody is controlling the economy, then the economy will act like any uncontrolled complex system: it’ll go crazy.”
- http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201105#08
Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - May 02 through May 08, 2011
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on: May 03, 2011, 07:38:15 PM
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Sunday, May 8th, 2011- First monthly BitLotto winner receives winnings
The 1 BTC lotto wager paid out 128 BTC. Lottery winner(s) receives 99% of all wagers placed. The winning entry is picked based on the sender’s address. All wagers and the payout are fully auditable in the block chain. Next draw is June 1st. Wagers should only be placed when using the bitcoin client. Wagers from an eWallet (MyBitcoin, Mt. Gox, etc.) cannot win.
- http://www.bitlotto.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitLotto - DeepBit pool temporarily reaches critical 50% threshold
“This specific situation is why Bitcoin payments are not considered ‘confirmed’ until enough subsequent blocks have been solved such that there is effectively no chance that that a double spend attempt would be successful.”
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205 - Work begins on BitFN (Bitcoin Freenet) project
BitFn will transport BitCoin (blockchain, TXes and seeds) over Freenet and other like services. The project’s coordinator, da2ce7, has been fundraising since December. The 800 BTC bounty will cover initial development though additional funds will likely be needed.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7181.0 - New Exchange: MeuBitcoin (Brazil)
Fixed-rate exchange (price related to BTC/USD market rate). Payments are sent and received through, MoIP (Money over IP) which transacts using the bank wire network.
- http://www.meubitcoin.com.br
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MeuBitcoin - Withdrawal limit at Mt. Gox for those in the EU can now be raised
“People who live in europe and have nationality of a country located in europe can have their daily withdrawal limit (both in EUR and BTC) increased up to 50k$ by providing the required proofs.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5307524313
Saturday, May 7th, 2011- The “What is Bitcoin?” video on YouTube crosses 50,000 views
Most of the bounty awarded to the video’s creator is still held in the Bitcoin Marketing Fund for promotion of bitcoin.
Viewer demographics shows uneven exposure between gender (i.e., mostly male) and between location + language (mostly English-speaking countries).
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo
- http://www.weusecoins.com/fund.php - Update on Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip: New Orleans
The map shows Plato taking a more southernly route than initially planned, with the latest update came from New Orleans where #bitcoin-otc veteran EvanR resides. Plato is going cross country and spends only bitcoins, even if that means traveling with a full can of gas to be able to make it to the next available merchant or bitcoiner who’ll exchange fuel for bitcoins.
Incidentally, Plato checked in late Saturday to report the discovery that yet another parity milestone has been met — this time the BTC/PBR.
- http://bit.ly/j2YNQn (map w/markers and routes)
- http://twitter.com/therealplato - Service at Mt. Gox exchange is restored following DDoS attack
The week-long distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack has sporadically affected the exchange, including times where the sevice was completely inaccessible. The network defenses to protect against future DDoS attacks are in place though now any future attacks will likely be different and require additional adjustment and fine tuning. - Alert from @BitcoinStatus:
Lots of “low priority” transactions are getting queued up. The latest Bitcoin Client, v0.3.21, has handling to detect transactions that will likely be delayed unless a fee payment is included.
- http://twitter.com/bitcoinstatus - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $3.59 USD, Size: 6.13M BTC, Last 24h: 0.23M BTC in 3.8K trx, Difficulty: 109.7K, Forum posts/day: 1,161, Nodes: 1.4K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Press: Vancouver’s The Georgia Straight weekly
Bitcoin virtual currency challenges world’s centralized monetary systems by
Bitcoin community member Scott Nelson is among those interviewed:
“Nelson’s motivation […] stems from what he said is his ‘deep dissatisfaction with the banking industry and the way it operates’”.
- http://bit.ly/jIB6zB
Friday, May 6th, 2011- Due to time constraints, no entries were made for Friday. Items missed are included in Saturday’s post.
Thursday, May 5th, 2011- Lingering site access problems for Mt. Gox (Service mostly restored)
Fine tuning actions continue to keep the site operational after it was moved to a network which provides DDoS defenses. Sporadic problems accessing the site were reported though heavy trading on the site returned.
- http://www.mtgox.com - U.K. Money Transmitter - TransferWise (GBP to EUR)
Person-to-person transfer from U.K. to EUR recipient. Currency converts at mid-market rate.
- http://transferwise.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/TransferWise - LinuxCoin - Bootable flash media image with client and miner
A lightweight Debian-based OS which includes in the image everything that is necessary to run as a Bitcoin client and everything needed to get started mining on ATI hardware.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/LinuxCoin - Recent additions to Bitcoin Merchant Directory / Trade wiki article:
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) (donations):
- http://my.fsf.org/donate
]There are numerous other recent additions
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
“Prices are in nomansland after the big rally to $4.15.”
Long term: “Rally”
Short term: “Pausing. Correction down seems more likely.”
- http://bit.ly/kPH8Ix - Fixed-rate exchange BitLex resumes with new website address
The exchange enables trades between bitcoins and Linden dollars (L$). L$ are used in the Second Life virtual world. When BitLex first started trading less than a year ago, 1 BTC would only buy L$0.667. Today 1 BTC buys about L$900.
- http://www.bitlex.org
The ability to buy using bitcoins has been helpful as Linden Labs, Second Life’s operator, has found it difficult to integrate with various payment systems globally:
- http://bit.ly/kTh4jt
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011]Wednesday, May 4th, 2011- New software: Zen Cart Bitcoin Payment Module
A payment module that interacts with bitcoind for Zen Cart ecommerce.
- http://github.com/jalder/Zen-Cart-Bitcoin-Payment-Module
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Zen_Cart_Bitcoin_Payment_Module - DDoS protections in place at Mt. Gox
The service is now running on a network that has defenses that protect the exchange from distributed denial-of-service attacks — something that has disrupted service for the previous four days. The attacks have continued in the hours since the service went live under the new protections, however the attack no longer was having any noticable impact on the service. - Mt. Gox exchange says “Dwolla Accepted Here”
Instant funding method. $0.25 per transaction. Per-transaction amounts up to $5K USD for personal accounts and $10K USD for business accounts. Dwolla is an ACH based payment network.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5185875167
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011- Article / Blog post:
PayPal Freezes Accounts of Two Bitcoin Exchangers by Jon Matonis in The Monetary Future
“The real surprise here is that, at least according to PayPal, bitcoin is now a currency.”
“What I find most difficult to believe is how so many people continue to support a system that has repeatedly demonstrated that it knows better than you do when it comes to how to spend your own money.”
- http://bit.ly/kufMst - Article / Blog post:
The Dark Side of Emerging Payments, and What to Do About It by JJ Hornblass in the Bank Innovation blog
“Increasingly, people are using virtual dollars to pay for things.”
“These purveyors require no registration with the government, no license, are free to set whatever terms they want. [This] is of concern as the population of ventures ‘printing’ digital dollars expands.”
- http://www.bankinnovation.net/profiles/blogs/the-dark-side-of-emerging
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7134.0 - Another Bitcoin exchange gets attacked: Bitmarket.eu
The operator of the BitMarket.eu exchange has had taken the site offline, temporarily, following a network attack. [Update: the service was restored after a few hours.]
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7126.0 - Mt. Gox’s DDoS Day 4: Access to Bitcoin’s leading exchange remains intermittent at best
The Mt. Gox exchange has not yet completed the move to a network that has DDoS defenses and as a result has been getting pummeled by network attacks, according to the service’s operator. The distributed denial-of-service attacks began on Saturday, though they have proceeded at differing levels since. There are periods of time where access is acceptable while other times there is no service. The BTC/USD exchange rate has stayed within a relatively narrow range on Mt. Gox and on other exchanges — currently around $3.40 USD.
[Update: Service fully restored.]
Monday, May 2nd, 2011Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well. [/list]
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - Apr 25 through May 01, 2011
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on: April 26, 2011, 08:18:38 PM
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Sunday, May 1st, 2011- Press: Capital.BG (Weekly newspaper in Bulgaria)
Торент валута (Torrent Currency) by Andrian Georgiev
Assuming Google Translate did a fairly accurate job in translation, this was an article that gives a typical general overview of Bitcoin. What was interesting were the comments — sentiment by those who don’t yet understand Bitcoin is the same worldwide:
“Banks and government will strangle the idea.”
”Without a central guarantor of these they are very risky.”
- http://bit.ly/jwK81b (in Bulgarian) - New IRC channel, #bitcoin-pit (“business only” trading pit)
- http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Bitcoin-pit
- http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-pit - Update on Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip (Alabama)
Tornadoes in Alabama have waylayed @TheRealPlato after his presentation on Bitcoin at UAH (Huntsville). He is assisting with the cleanup before continuing west on his cross-country journey. Over 100 BTC were donated to the Tornado relief fund.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6752.msg101417#msg101417
- http://twitter.com/therealplato @TheRealPlato - Bitcoin’s leading exchange, Mt. Gox, resumes service after brief downtime
The DDoS attack that brought the service to its knees on Saturday evening, early Sunday had subsided “subsided a bit” so the service was brought back online after only a few hours of downtime. The BTC/USD market rate following the restart bounced around from as low as $2.50 and as high as $3.80 before settling towards the middle of that range.
The exchange still plans to move to a network that has improved DDoS protection.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6931.0 - Press: The Washington Post (online and print edition [Saturday’s issue apparently … ?])
Imagining a world without the dollar by Barry Eichengreen
“There have already been some attempts to create a true electronic currency, such as Bitcoin.”
“Nothing would ensure that the electronic money you accumulate would hold its value, and nothing would prevent the operators of the platform from issuing more.” [The author was likely describing electronic currency in general and not Bitcoin, which has protections from that occurance, specifically.]
- http://wapo.st/lmhaww - Article / Blog post:
Could virtual currency become king in developing countries? by Brendan Burge on ATM Marketplace
“In developing countries [people] are making a living by performing ‘micro-tasks’ in the virtual economy.”
“PayPal, Google, BitCoin and others offer or soon will offer accounts that do not require traditional legacy backing from credit cards or other ‘hard currency’ accounts.”
- http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blog/5628 - First Bitcoin-related exchange to use a new variant of digital currency.
Though this editor originally believed this topic to be a hoax, there is apparently yet another currency using bitcoin technology being experimented with. Details are sketchy yet but this variant skips the gradual issuance of new currency and instead begins with all coins already minted and issued to a “bank”.
- http://exchange.surething.biz
Saturday, Apr 30th, 2011- Bitcoin’s leading exchange, Mt. Gox, retreats following DDoS attack
“Temporary shutdown” until the appropriate protections [are in place]”.
Service will resume once a new server is operational on a network with defenses against further distributed denial-of-service attacks.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6931.0 - Exchange Nanaimo Gold offers automated exchange between HD-Money and Bitcoin
HD-Money (HDM) is a private digital currency alternative along the same lines as Liberty Reserve and payments made are irreversible.
- http://www.nanaimogold.com/hdm_exchange.php - CoinPal exchange ends service following action by PayPal
CoinPal, the primary where PayPal could be used for payment of purchases of bitcoins has closed.
“PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy specifically states that the service may not be used for a money service business that performs currency exchange activities”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5086167006 - Bitcoin service BitcoinLaundry.com reduces fee
The fee for the service to mix bitcoins with those from others has been reduced from 1% to 0.5%.
“Compared to the traditional financial systems this service might be the equivalent of moving funds through banks located in countries that have strict bank-secrecy laws.”
- http://bitcoinlaundry.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Laundry - Archive containing block chain (through block 120,000) released:
Minimizes delay for downloading transaction data when performing a first-time installation. 152MB download file contains all transactions since January 2009 when Bitcoin genesis block was created.
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain - United States: Virtual Currency -The Legal Issues Are A Reality by Kobus and Schurko of Marshall Dennehey law office.
“An issuer of virtual currency [might be considered] a “financial institution” for the purposes of the PATRIOT ACT by virtue of creating and managing customer virtual currency [eWallet] accounts.”
- http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/article.asp?articleid=130736
Friday, Apr 29th, 2011- Mining difficulty adjust to level that exceeds 100,000
Landed at 109,670 — an 18.75% increase in just under 12 days.
“Calculations for the next adjustment indicate continued rapid growth”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5062580829 - Podcast:
Cypherpunkd Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange and Bitdrop by Hiro White on AgoristRadio.com
Interviewed is longtime Bitcoin community member Nefario who discusses GLBSE, an equities exchange powered by Bitcoins.
- http://agoristradio.com/?p=285 (length: 1 hour, 36 minutes) - Podcast: (from earlier this past week)
Cypherpunkd “Bitcoin Mania Part 2” - The Bitcoin API by Hiro White on AgoristRadio.com
Interviewed is mids who describes integrating with Bitcoin through the API using XMLRPC-JSON, programming a shopping cart, and much more.
- http://agoristradio.com/?p=263 (length: 1 hour) - First DNS server supporting censorship-resistant .bit top level domain (TLD) appears
The first DNS servers configured to support namecoin (.bit) domains are coming online. (e.g., 178.32.31.41). Namecoin is built using peer-to-peer concepts and technology pioneered by Bitcoin.
“The future of DNS starts now.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6793.0 - Press: Bitcoin mention on CNN.com blog
4 trends shaping the emerging “superfluid economy” by @VenessaMiemis
“On the fringes of society exists the complementary currency market”.
”[…] it’s reasonable to expect a serious challenge to the ingrained public perception of money.”
- http://bit.ly/k2Mruh
Thursday, Apr 28th, 2011- s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
“The forecast is even more than 'on track'.”
Long term: “If [stays below trendline] we still continue the overall channel uptrend, but in a more normal pace.”
Short term: “A break below 2.20 $ can lead to a test of old resistance and new support of $1.95 – $2.00. Next support then is the $1.60 – $1.70 area.”
- http://bit.ly/mbXsaQ - Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox prepares to accept Dwolla as funding method
Dwolla is an ACH-based payment network in the U.S. Withdrawal of funds to Dwolla will also be made possible. Dwolla charges $0.25 per transaction. - Custom pool server produces split allocation of generation reward
A new mining pool introduced the ability to split the generation reward (currently 50 BTC per block) into multiple allocations. This allows those mining in the pool to receive their payouts immediately. Block 120,630 was the first block generated in this manner.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6667.0
- http://blockexplorer.com/b/120630
Wednesday, Apr 27th, 2011- Article / Blog post: Mining Guide for Windows
Earn $ with your GPU; a Bitcoin mining guide on Overclock.net
Includes caveat: “Unless you get free electricity you will likely lose money”.
- http://bit.ly/jGGYhj - Bitcoin receives attention re: Gavin’s upcoming trip to D.C.:
Bitcoin technical lead Gavin Andresen will “give a presentation about Bitcoin at an emerging technologies conference for the [CIA] US intelligence community”.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6652.0 - Article / Blog post:
The Bitcoin Bubble by Ploum
“Like every speculative bubble, it inflates, it inflates until someone wakes up one morning and thinks: ‘What am I doing? I’ve spent all my savings into virtual mathematical objects! Let’s sell that quickly’.”
- http://ploum.net/post/bitcoin-bubble - Newest version of Bitcoin client released, v0.3.21
- Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), off by default
- Sending and displaying full precision (e.g. 1.0001)
- SendMany RPC support (make multiple payments in one trx)
- Bug fixes, including a fix for the deadlock issue.
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.21
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6642.0 - Bitcoin exchange CoinCard reduces price for “cashing out”
When selling bitcoins through CoinCard, the fee has been reduced to $1 + 1.25% for amounts sold of $50 or more. Proceeds are delivered through PayPal.
- http://coincard.ndrix.com/page/prices
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3874.msg95925#msg95925 - Bitcoin currency added to exchange: VirWox
Those with Second Life accounts can now directly buy and sell Bitcoins using Lindens (Second Life’s virtual currency) through the BTC/SLL market at VirWox.
- http://www.virwox.com/market_depth.php?instr=11
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/VirWoX - Online poker site betco.in, powered with Bitcoins, reopens
Following a hack attempt the site has reopened with multiple tables, better performance.
- http://betco.in - Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip update:
- In Huntsville, AL. 1800 miles traveled so far. Presentation at UAH.
- http://therealplato.com/post/4980791972 - New site: BitcoinID
A Bitcoin address ownership verification method.
“Potential donors can view the bitcoinID Card of an individual or organization on bitcoinID.com.” “The donation can be sent to the bitcoin address with confidence that it will be delivered to the intended recipient”.
- http://bitcoinid.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitcoinID
Tuesday, Apr 26th, 2011Monday, Apr 25th, 2011- s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (short term update #2)
Short term: “Looking like a bull flag”. “Break above $1.57 - $1.60 will likely mark the start of the next rally to and above $2.”.
- http://bit.ly/dIDcWs - Bitcoin poker site hacked, funds withdrawn
Online poker site betco.in suffered a 1,390 BTC loss and downtime resulting from theft after a security breach. The site’s owner kept a reserve for losses and all players were allowed to withdraw their balances in full. The service has since been taken offline for maintenance.
The addresses for the stolen coins were publicly disclosed though with Bitcoin being a pseudonymous digital currency, that likely won’t help much towards recapture of the funds.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=840.msg93927#msg93927 - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin Poker by Tom Collins
Describes the history of online poker, the passage of the UIGEA and the subsequent reaction by the industry, the players and enforcement with the recent actions that shut down the popular poker website domains.
- http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-poker - Recent additions to Bitcoin Merchant Directory / Trade wiki article:
- http://www.memorydealers.com Networking hardware online store
- http://etfett.net 3D printing service and printed output goods
- http://stamit.gr/bnc4btc IRC bouncer (BNC) service
- http://www.chessmaniac.com Online chess playing community
- http://www.ottonormalo.de Postcard artisan
- http://www.ayarikubazar.com Jewelry ecommerce (uses MyBitcoin shopping cart interface)
There are numerous other recent additions including freelancers, online gambling and organizations accepting bitcoins as donations.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (short term update)
Short term: “Consolidating, looking like a bull flag with breakout to the upside more likely.”
- http://bit.ly/gLHXii
Have a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / UX for bitcoin address field
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on: April 25, 2011, 10:11:47 PM
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The user experience for pasting to the bitcoin address input field in a web form varies widely across Bitcoin's growing presence on exchanges, merchant sites, blogs, etc.
Is it appropriate to massage the value that was input? e.g., to strip out leading blank space character, or a trailing linefeed, etc?
Or are there any other tips regarding the UX for this field?
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / What does Wal-Mart want?
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on: April 24, 2011, 06:56:56 PM
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A payments industry expert from Glenbrook wrote her summary of the NACHA Payments 2011 conference: http://paymentsviews.com/2011/04/06/reflections-on-nacha-payments-2011Included was a description of what Wal-Mart wants to see from the bank ACH network: - same-day ACH clearing (mandatory as opposed to opt-in)
- same day credits
- mobile payments
- corporate eChecks (push ACH transactions)
Looks like Walmart might like Bitcoin? Incidentally. Most bitcoins purchased using PayPal, Dwolla and PopMoney today do result in an ACH transaction. I'm not sure how many people selling bitcoins and receiving funds in PayPal, Dwolla, etc, then withdraw to their bank afterwards though. There's plenty of this type of P2P payments activity on #bitcoin-otc: http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php?notes=paypal http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php?notes=dwollaAlso mentioned in the article was FedGlobal ACH payments: International ACH is not intended to replace wire transfers, but is meant to be an alternative to check payments for non-urgent, low dollar transactions to and from foreign countries. The Fed is partnering with Equens for transactions to/from Europe (SEPA) and with Arias for transactions to/from Latin America.
http://frbservices.org/serviceofferings/fedach/fedach_international_ach_payments.htmlAlso from the same author was another recent article: Research Results: Need for Faster, Easier Cross-Border Payments Participants would like to move away from reliance on wire transfer systems, especially for mid-value international payments. http://paymentsviews.com/2011/04/04/research-results-need-for-faster-easier-cross-border-payments/[edited] |
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / People v. Western Express
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on: April 24, 2011, 05:10:26 PM
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Interesting: A NY Appellate Court significantly weakened the “structure” and “hierarchy” required for an enterprise under the OCCA.
In the case of People v. Western Express, Judge David Saxe, writing for a divided court in the First Department (the Appellate Court in NY that handles cases from Manhattan and the Bronx) found that an internet forum that handled transactions for identity thieves was a criminal enterprise even though there was no connection between the thieves and the forum.
While Western Express offered a variety of legitimate services, such as check-cashing, mail receiving, money orders, digital currency exchange, and Russian/English translation services, it also acted as an intermediary, or “money mover,” providing credit and facilitating transactions for buyers and sellers of stolen credit card data, while earning a commission for each such transaction. What Vassilenko did, the court said was to shape his previously legitimate business “into a hub for criminal activity geared toward maximizing its own and its participants’ profits from the theft and use of stolen credit card information and its protection from law enforcement.” This case could have far-reaching implications if it is not reversed by the Court of Appeals. The idea of the Penal Law is to let people know what is illegal and what ramifications you will face if you engage in certain conduct. It is clear that courts are willing to be flexible and creative as they try and use pre-internet laws to deal with internet related activity. - http://www.courtroomstrategy.com/2011/04/ny-court-finds-loose-affilitiation-of-cybercriminals-to-be-enterprise-under-organized-crime-act |
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / The Week In Bitcoin - Apr 18 through Apr 24, 2011
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on: April 19, 2011, 07:31:13 PM
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Sunday, Apr 24th, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Is the bitconomy the frontier of economic innovation? by Duane Jonson, @CanadaDuane
“One could say that while we live in a political democracy, we live in an economic aristocracy.”
“One of the central questions of the French Revolution and earlier the American Revolution was, “Can a society exist, or even thrive without a king?”
- http://bit.ly/eKHNk3 - New software: Moneychanger, a reference implementation (experimental only) of a currency accounting application that accesses the Open Transactions API. Plans for the app include Bitcoin integration to support Bitcoin as one of the currencies used as backing in a currency trading system or payment network.
- http://github.com/FellowTraveler/Moneychanger
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Moneychanger - New Bitcoin-specific Job board and Freelancer listings: Bitcoiners
Listings include jobs that pay using Bitcoins and a directory of freelancers showing their availability and qualifications.
- http://www.bitcoiners.org
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoiners - Bay area finally warms up to Bitcoin?
Silicon Valley Bitcoin Users meetup group in Sunnyvale schedules first meeting, and the San Francisco group is forming. Meetup.com shows six groups now, including NYC, D.C., Chicago, L.A., Tokyo
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6389.0
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin:Community_portal#Events - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (updates)
“Both [linear and log scale] charts show how bitcoin perfectly follows textbook like chart patterns.”
“The likelihood is high that we see continued rises (after pausing a couple of days [sideways]).”
- http://bit.ly/gc0YvF
Short term: “Another bullish triangle has formed over the last 2 days. Another test [of the $1.95 record level] or breakout above 2 $ possible.”
- http://bit.ly/fd8o7M
Saturday, Apr 23rd, 2011Friday, Apr 22nd, 2011- Article / Blog post in The Bitcoin Weekly:
Expanding the Bitcoin Economy - Legitimate Businesses and Food by Vitalik Buterin
“It is [having those who both earn and use bitcoin in significant quantities] that gives Bitcoin intrinsic value”
- http://bit.ly/eQSQ6f - Video: Don’t Buy Bitcoins
There might be worse ways to spend the next eight and a half minutes of your life. Or not.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoK8HXMSsNg
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6311 - Article / Blog post:
Peer-2-Peer Digital Currency: The Long Road Ahead for FinCEN by Mark Herpel, editor of DGC
“PayPal is an extension of the bank account it is not a digital currency”.
“Software designers have now created, built and operate systems that do not generate any of the traditional markers needed for proper regulation”.
“There about a half dozen of these systems operating across the Internet which are known to the public.”
- http://bit.ly/eIl8D7 - Article / Blog post:
On monetary restandardization on the Unqualified Reservations blog
“I would like to see the gold books of all governments, exchanges, and banks. Who is naked? Who is transforming maturities? It won’t happen.”
“But Bitcoin is not centralized, so there is no way the development team can prevent exchanges from operating. These exchanges are obvious targets for numerous predatory authorities. When they are destroyed, the currency dies.”
[Please take the time necessary this weekend to read the article in full. - editor]
- http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/04/on-monetary-restandardization.html - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin is a thing by Tate Watkins on his blog Short Sentences
“this [Wikileaks] example and this example alone is enough to make Bitcoin novel, interesting, and relevant, and demonstrate its use as a store of value”.
- http://shortsentences.org/2011/04/bitcoin-is-a-thing - Article / Blog post: LewRockwell.com
Poker Freedom post shows a letter by a friend of Lew’s
“It’s taken me less than a week to set up a virtual private network (vpn) that makes it look like I’m playing from another country, acquire a foreign PO Box, …”
- http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/86247.html
Thursday, Apr 21st, 2011- Bitcoin client Spesmilo enters beta-testing:
v0.0.1.beta1 is now available. For Windows, Linux. Connects to local or remote bitcoind via RPC.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6273.0 - New all time high record level for BTC/USD on Mt. Gox exchange, $1.21.
- Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $1.18 USD, Size: 5.97M BTC, Last 24h: 4.42M BTC in 1.9K trx, Difficulty: 92.3K, Forum posts/day: 916, Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - S3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis:
Long term: “Clear rally. No change in outlook”
Short term: “BTC/USD seems to be on the verge of the next breakout from the ascending triangle”
- http://bit.ly/fijXhW - Article / Blog post on TechDirt:
Can Bitcoin Really Succeed Long Term? by Mike Masnic
“I could certainly envision scenarios that lead to rapid Bitcoin (or similar offering) adoption.”
- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110420/02412713972 - New exchange:
BitcoinExchange Services - Buys and sells bitcoins using PayPal, MoneyPak, Liberty Reserve, WMZ, ACH, Wire Transfer & more.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6223.0
Wednesday, Apr 20th, 2011- Bitcoin client v0.3.21 being readied,
The next release of the Bitcoin client is at Release Candidate stage. Help with testing has been requested. Features in the release will include:
- Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), off by default
- Sending and displaying arbitrary precision (e.g. 1.0001)
- SendMany RPC support (make multiple payments in one trx)
- Bug fixes, including a fix for the deadlock issue.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6189.0 - Article / Blog post in Bitcoin Weekly
Generation and Assimilation of Bitcoin Knowledge by Kiba
“Bitcoin development is done in the bazaar style”. Bitcoin Weekly presents information from the project’s forums “in an easily understandable manner.”
- http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/generation-and-assimilation-of-bitcoin-knowledge - Press: Forbes Magazine article (May 09, 2011 issue)
Crypto Currency by Andy Greenberg
“For Bitcoin, a subculture of geek-friendly merchants is catching on.”
“Cypherpunk’s adherents saw cryptography as a way to shift power from institutions to individuals.”
- http://bit.ly/gvBqTW - Bitcoin Charts offers data feed - Mt. Gox history trade data
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6193.0 - Article / Blog post:
Jerry Brito defends Bitcoin by Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution blog.
“I just don’t see why the Bitcoin assets are supposed to be so attractive compared to dollars, euros, Swiss francs, and so on.”
- http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/04/jerry-brito-defends-bitcoin.html - Article / Blog post:
Jerry Brito continues the conversation on Bitcoin that ramped after his Bitcoin article was recently published in TIME’s TechLand.
“Hopefully governments will prosecute those who do ill, and not simply seek to ban the technology. If they do, that’s a battle we’ll have to be prepared to fight.”
- http://techliberation.com/2011/04/20/bitcoin-intermediaries-and-information-control - Podcast: Cypherpunkd Episodes 011 and 012
Introduction to Open-Transactions Financial Crypto System and Integration with Bitcoin on AgoristRadio
Interviewed is FellowTraveler, founder of Open Transactions. Discussed is how Open Transactions picks up where Bitcoin comes up short (e.g. instantaneous transactions, chaumian blinding, and more) and how a combination of the two provides incredible utility.
- http://agoristradio.com/?p=234 (Part 1 of 2)
- http://agoristradio.com/?p=246 (Part 2 of 2) - Latest from Plato on his #BitcoinRoadTrip cross-country Bitcoin-only trip
“… asked if I liked Bitcoin for its technology, economics, or politics. I had to answer ‘all three,’ but I lean a little bit to the political side of the table. David and Jake do too”.
- http://therealplato.com/post/4783447916 - New Bitcoin client for Windows: Bitdollar
The client provides the option to encrypt the wallet and protect it with a password.
“Goal is to manage bitcoin protocol exactly like bitcoin client.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6111.0
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitdollar - Article / Blog post:
The economics of Bitcoin by Tyler Cowen, Economist, on his blog Marginal Revolution
“The lesson here is that enough of you ask me about a topic, eventually I will blog it.”
“The currency will fall to near-zero in value. Hold it at your own risk.”
- http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/04/the-economics-of-bitcoin.html
In the comments is a response by Jon Matonis:
“Free individuals can generate a mass illusion just as a central bank creates the mass illusion of paper as value.” - Video:
Hive45 Singularity Podcast #53 - Bitcoin P2P Virtual Currency by Hive45
“The potential for [Bitcoin] is just absolutely ridiculous.”
“Inflation keeps the economy growing. The problem with deflation [is that it] encourages me just to sit on them.” ”Deflation is its main failing.”
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o0LTTnHZJc#t=1247s
Tuesday, Apr 19th, 2011- Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox adds further Websocket API support
Added ability to subscribe to “Trades”, “Ticker” and “Depth”.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5855.msg88330#msg88330 - New site: Bitcoin Bubble
“Traditional ponzi schemes are illegal, however there are some fundamental differences between a bubble game and a ponzi scheme.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6117.0
- http://btcbubble.com - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
“Bitcoins have indeed evaporated all barriers, including the last remaining one: the previous all time high above $1.10.”
Long term: “Next big targets are $1.70 - $2.00.”
Short term: “Prices may consolidate sideways over the next days before continuing the rally.”
- http://bit.ly/h4bWTm - Article / Blog post:
BitCoin: A Natural Experiment for Credit Union Development? by Matt Cropp in the Credit Union History blog.
“It will be interesting to see how a stable or even de-flating monetary environment will affect credit union growth and structure.”
- http://cuhistory.blogspot.com/2011/04/bitcoin-natural-experiment-for-credit.html - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot
1 BTC = $1.17 USD, Size: 5.96M BTC, Last 24h: 2.46M BTC in 3.5K trx, Difficulty: 92.3K, Forum posts/day: 920, Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/#!/bitcoineconomy - Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip update: District of Columbia
Follow @TheRealPlato on his cross-country roadtrip where he spends “only bitcoins, no fiat money” from east to west.
- http://therealplato.com (blog) - New CPU Miner: Stealthcoin (A/K/A “Bitcoin: Botnet Edition”)
“A modified bitcoind client that mines gently on a Windows system with minimal impact to the user.”
“Profit potential exists when ignoring cost of electricity.”
- http://github.com/bitcoin2cash/Stealthcoin
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Stealthcoin - Bitcoin Faucet resumes service
To combat fraudulent attempts to receive free bitcoins, a “community watch” will be implemented:
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5819.msg89236#msg89236 - New IRC channel, #bitcoin on Freenode
Registration of the channel on Freenode was finally made possible. The channel will be used for general bitcoin discussions.
- http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin (web-based IRC)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6079.0 - Podcast:
Gavin Andresen on Bitcoin interview by Jerry Brito of Surprisingly Free blog.
Jerry is the author of last weekend’s Bitcoin article in Time Techland.
“Bitcoin, like the Internet, doesn’t really respect national borders. The Internet is the Internet, and data is data. It’s very hard to draw lines at the edges of the border.”
- http://surprisinglyfree.com/2011/04/19/gavin-andresen-on-bitcoin (mp3) - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin’s Collusion Problem by blogger Timothy B Lee
“[Would it] be possible for a critical mass of nodes to collude to change the rules”? ”It strikes me as highly improbable that the world’s government’s would leave the Bitcoin central bank unregulated.”
- http://timothyblee.com/2011/04/19/bitcoins-collusion-problem - Britcoin resumes service
After a brief interruption, the U.K. based exchange is back online.
- http://www.britcoin.co.uk - Bitcoin-powered Poker site beneficiary of U.S. Poker take-down
Following the U.S. Federal Government’s shutdown of PokerStars, Full Title and other poker sites, one Poker site, betco.in, is seeing a record numbers of visitors:
- http://www.imagebanana.com/view/rrmdrmct/Selection_001.png - Video:
Geoff Golder on the New Crypto-Currency BitCoin by Matt Cropp on ASR
“No less than four different people have all come to me about a project that seems to be breaking to the surface of the zeitgeist.”
- http://asrblog.com/2011/04/18/2011-04-20-geoff-golder-on-the-new-crypto-currency-bitcoin - Minimum order size reduced on Mt. Gox exchange
Orders may now be place for as little as 1 BTC. Previously only orders of 10 BTC or more could be entered.
Monday, Apr 18th, 2011Got a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) ( mobile) ( email) Previous summaries: http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNewsEach day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.
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Other / Off-topic / The Sharing Economy - Fast Company article
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on: April 19, 2011, 07:02:49 AM
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Here's a pretty decent article from Fast Company titled "The Sharing Economy": - http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/155/the-sharing-economy.htmlFrom the article: "Amazon came first, then eBay, and peer-to-peer is next. It's almost as far as you can get on the spectrum of goods exchanged," That evolution (from a centralized model to a centralized+P2P hybrid model to finally a pure P2P model) is also described here in a post by Tim Hyer of RentCycle: http://blog.rentcycle.com/building-the-bridge-to-p2pSpecifically Tim describes that until eBay really took off, we as a society were too fearful of doing business P2P-style with strangers. Once that fear eased, Craigslist was able to dominate its market. "It’s all about baby steps and doing what’s right at the appropriate time." |
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