There appears to be a number of people who use Dropbox or other similar service to backup their Bitcoin wallet. The "Securing your wallet" wiki page ( http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet ) suggests that you might use a service like Dropbox for storing an encrypted archive that contains your wallet. However, it appears many are using Dropbox to do a real-time backup of the (unencrypted) wallet.dat file. There are risks to doing this. A few days ago Dropbox was under the spotlight for having security issues. Coverage by TNW (TheNextWeb) summarized their report with: If you are worried about the security of your files generally, it would be advisable to not use Dropbox because files can be transferred to a computer you aren’t necessarily using. Anyone with access to your unencrypted wallet.dat could grab that file and use it, immediately or at any time in the future to spend your bitcoins. How might this happen? - Does your Dropbox account use the same username (e-mail address) and password that you used with any other site or service? - Do you have Dropbox installed on any other device using the same account? Your wallet.dat will "sync" / be copied to each target. - Are you using anything less than a "strong" password? Here's a good article on Password Security: http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/12645-Check-Your-Password-Security.htmlRecently I learned of an instance where Dropbox was being used specifically to keep a single wallet.dat synchronized between two different installations of the bitcoin client. The Bitcoin client was not designed to accommodate multiple installations like this, and using Dropbox in this manner will likely bring lost bitcoins or other grief sooner rather than later. So that this message isn't overlooked, pardon me for "shouting": ********************************************************************* * * * PLEASE DO NOT USE DROPBOX TO SYNC YOUR WALLET BETWEEN COMPUTERS * * * ********************************************************************* Related: - How to set up secure bitcoin savings account in 14 easy steps http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5194.0 |
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Sunday, Apr 17th, 2011- New IRC channels
- #bitcoin-aus Bitcoin in Australia
- #bitcoin-marketing Marketing and promotion of Bitcoin - New project: NameCoin
A distributed naming system based on Bitcoin. Stores name/value pairs in blockchain. Could use .bit domain to glue namecoin domain names into the DNS
- http://github.com/vinced/namecoin
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6017.0 - Tool: MtGox Sierra Charts bridge
Feeds data from Mt. Gox to Sierra Charts trading and charting tool.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6019.0 - Bitcoin BTC/USD exchange rate reaches an all-time high of $1.14 $1.19 (1 BTC = $1.14 $1.19 USD) on Mt. Gox exchange.
Saturday, Apr 16th, 2011- Press:
Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks by @JerryBrito in Time Magazine’s Techland blog
“The good, though, turns out to be really good. Law-abiding citizens can carry on their affairs without anyone snooping on them or telling them what they can and can’t do.”
- http://ti.me/h5Vv91
Friday, Apr 15th, 2011- Press:
Loosely Managed Digital Currency Could Be Avenue for Crime That’s Hard to Block by Colby Adams, published in MoneyLaundering.com
“‘there are perfectly legitimate, legal and philosophical reasons for wanting the financial anonymity that [Bitcoin] gives, but the other reality is, if this type of currency takes off, it will be a dream for the bad guys.”
“[How bitcoin works is a] step beyond any payment system I have ever seen.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5907.0 - Plato’s #BitcoinRoadTrip update
“Wanna learn about a new kind of money?” - Plato at Union College, Schenectady, NY
“Then to NYC Friday evening” w/ @BruceWagner
- http://therealplato.com/post/4637595448
- Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5-52CPEluQ - Bitcoin exchange CoinPal increases purchase allotments
Purchase Bitcoins using PayPal — up to 50 BTC in the first week, when using a GPG key from the #bitcoin-otc WoT.
- http://coinpal.ndrix.com/page/prices - Business news: Bitcoin powered file sharing service, BitcoinService.co.uk, changes hands.
Negotiation and payment (in bitcoins of course) were completed within 20 minutes after the offer was listed.
- http://bitcoinservice.co.uk
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5879.0
Thursday, Apr 14th, 2011- Rally continues:
Exceeded $1.08 intraday. Multi-day trading volume, in dollar terms, unprecedented for this fledgling currency. - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot
“1 BTC = $0.94 USD, Size: 5.92M BTC, Last 24h: 0.12M BTC in 2.9K trx, Difficulty: 82.3K, Forum posts/day: 738, Nodes: 1.7K”
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Analysis
“BTC/USD rallied +78% over the past 10 trading days”
Long Term: ”The correction/consolidation from the all time high of $1.10 can be declared over.”
Short Term: “Given the huge rally we may see some pausing.” ”However it might be dangerous to bet on the downside.”
- http://bit.ly/evZTaC - Video
Bitcoin The Best Financial Privacy Is Here…Probably on YouTube
“Bitcoin has instantaneous transactions. You don’t have to worry about different timezones, or is it a holiday in that country. You don’t have to deal with going to the bank during banking hours.”
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSLByqTusaQ (length 6 minutes) - Article / Blog post:
Money, Currency and Bitcoin by Jonathan Harris
“We don’t know what money is. But if Bitcoin works as well as any other currency, then its fair to assume that it’s at least as real as anything else we call money.”
- http://jonone100.blogspot.com/2011/04/money-currency-and-bitcoin.html - Cyber Security starts looking at Bitcoin
“port scan for computers with an open #bitcoin port then banner scan that list of computers and wait for #0day?”
- http://twitter.com/SecAndSecTech/status/57626593480282112 - Milestone for Bitcoinity Wanted:
Bitcoinity Wanted shows commitments totaling nearly $1,500 so far in sales that have been pledged towards various merchants as an incentive to persuade them to begin accepting Bitcoin as payment.
- http://bitcoinity.org/wanted
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoinity_Wanted - New site: BitcoinGamer.com
Online gambling including Coin Toss, Roulette, Penny Slots, and Darts. Wagers from 0.01 BTC.
- http://bitcoingamer.com
Wednesday, Apr 13th, 2011- New exchange: Bitcoil
An exchange that trades between bitcoin and either Israeli New Shekels (ILS) or USD. The exchange rate is pegged to the market rate on Mt. Gox. This brings a total of 4 new currencies (GBP, PLN, BRL, ILS) which now have at least one Bitcoin exchanger.
- http://bitcoil.co.il
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoil - New Bitcoin Wikis recently added
The Bitcoin.it wiki already sites for English, French/Français) and Chinese/中文(中国大陆) and now the wikis for additional languages have been added:
- Italiano (Italian): http://it.bitcoin.it
- German (Deutsch): http://de.bitcoin.it
- Russian (Русский): http://ru.bitcoin.it
- Español (Spanish): http://es.bitcoin.it - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin, Precious Metals, and Monetary Debasement on Practical Agorism blog
“The best part about it is there are so many ways to take advantage of the opportunity. You can start a business that accepts Bitcoins, you can build mining rigs, you can open an exchange, or you can simply buy Bitcoins and wait for them to appreciate.”
- http://practicalagorism.com/2011/04/12/bitcoin-precious-metals-and-monetary-debasement - Video:
Using Technology to Advance Liberty presented by Eric Johnson during Agora.io unconference
“Assault on people’s freedoms are coming from all directions.” “This presentation is about another way to fight back, by using technology.”
Covered are i2p, tor, osiris, freenet, truecrypt, mesh technologies, and Bitcoin.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/4590735908 - Article / Blog post:
Legal Tender, Illegal Tender - will Bitcoin be banned? by Vitalik Buterin in The Bitcoin Weekly
“The government relies on the perception of legitimacy to survive, so it will fight against such an ideology tooth and nail, and if Bitcoin is too strongly linked to agorism it will itself be persecuted.”
The article was also published in The Monetary Future blog.
- http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/legal-tender-illegal-tender-will-bitcoin-be-banned - #Bitcoin-OTC marketplace sees first bitcoin PUT option contract traded
“a challenge because not only might the two parties not be in the same country, they likely won’t even know each other’s true identity.”
- http://bitcoin-otc.com
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/4585101363 - Market exchange rate: Parity with USD reached once again on Mt. Gox exchange
Intraday high of $1/BTC reached, first time in nearly two months.
- http://bit.ly/hu3aH8 (chart showing 8-day, 40%+ rally)
Tuesday, Apr 12th, 2011- Bitcoin Charts - new feature, Weighted Prices table
The weighted prices for several currencies is now displayed in table form. The weighted prices show for 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day periods.
- http://bitcoincharts.com/markets (viewed in column on the right hand side)
- http://bitcoinwatch.com under the title Currencies (Weighted Prices)
- http://bitcoincharts.com/t/weighted_prices.json (JSON feed) - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis - Special Update
- 3rd highest trading day ever on Bitcoins (in $ terms)
- After break out above $0.80 we immediately jumped to next resistance $0.90 as predicted. Surprises on the upside expected.
- http://bit.ly/fH1w5a - Exchange rate jump:
BTC/USD climbs to $0.89 on heavy trading on Mt. Gox. - Article / Blog post:
Bowling for Bitcoins – Meet the Trader 05 on The Bitcoin Bulletin interviews Gavin.
“Bitcoin has to find initial market niches where it is significantly better than existing solutions. I don’t think being less expensive than (for example) credit cards will be enough on its own”
- http://bit.ly/eLpk6X
Monday, Apr 11th, 2011 - Discussion thread on Bitcoin:
A thread titled Bitcoins - digital currency in the forum for the TwoPlusTwo poker strategy site caught some interest. Some excerpts:
“It seems like exchanges are the easiest target for governments (just like with online poker)”
“There are like 1,000 geniuses out there not sleeping at night. And you can buy “stock” in this start-up…Simply by buying the currency.”
- http://bit.ly/f2okfe - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot
1 BTC = $0.76 USD, Size: 5.89M BTC, Last 24h: 0.09M BTC in 2.0K trx, Difficulty: 82.3K, Forum posts/day: 638, Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - s3052’s Technical Analysis
Short term update:
- “BTC/USD pushed through 50h moving average and short term trendline.”
- “If 0.8 $ is broken, the 2 month downtrend is over”
- http://bit.ly/gONUJ8 (short term update)
Yesterday’s “weekly edition”:
Long term:
- “From a technical standpoint, the correction/consolidation looks bullish, as prices have formed a down-sloping parallel trend channel, often referred to as ‘Bull Flag’.”
- http://bit.ly/eaK98I (weekly analysis) - Plato’s cross country, bitcoin-only road trip has begun
First stop was in Quincy, MA. Plato’s V-6 firebird was getting 30 mpg — even so that’ll be a lot of bitcoins before L.A.! He’ll talk about Bitcoin at Union College on Thursday.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4752.0
- Map: http://goo.gl/CflUH - PayPal applies “reserve requirement” to CoinPal
CoinPal, one of two exchanges which accept PayPal for purchasing bitcoins, has assessed by PayPal a 5% reserve requirement. ”They’re just being cautious” claims the exchange’s operator.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555.msg83900#msg83900 - Audio podcast / MP3:
Cypherpunkd Episode 005: “Bitcoin Mania” Part 1 - mids from AgoristRadio.com
On the fascination with the mining aspect of Bitcoin: “Don’t focus too much [on mining]. With gold, do you care where it came from? It’s the scarcity of it that people value.”
- http://agoristradio.com/?p=112
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/4531092714 - Article / Blog post:
BitCoin – a monetary revolution by TerjeP on Thoughts on Freedom blog
“Governments will always be able to shut down any serious alternate money schemes. Or at least that’s what I thought until I recently discovered BitCoin.”
- http://blog.libertarian.org.au/2011/04/08/bitcoin-a-monetary-revolution - XKCD Mining Pool
The allocation, if any, of mining proceeds that go to support XKCD has not yet been determined.
More information from the #xkcd-bitcoin channel on irc.foonetic.net
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4528907258 - New mobile service: SMSBitcoins.com
Charges for the SMS fee are billed to the mobile user’s phone bill.
Currently Belgium and the Netherlands. Eventually U.K., Australia and Ireland too.
- http://smsbitcoins.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/SMS_Bitcoins
Got 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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The Week In Bitcoin - Apr 04 through Apr 10, 2011 Saturday, Apr 9th, 2011Friday, Apr 8th, 2011Wednesday, Apr 6th, 2011Tuesday, Apr 5th, 2011- Mt. Gox exchange now accepts Euro transfers via SEPA.
No charge for adding funds this way. Funds are credited as soon as they are received and converted to USD, at the raw ECB conversion rate.
- https://www.mtgox.com
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5461.0 - New site: BitLotto
Payout is 99% of proceeds. Each pick is 1 BTC. Not for eWallet (e.g., MyBitcoin) users.
- http://www.BitLotto.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitLotto - “What is Bitcoin” video
Bounty paid to the video’s producer: 8,511 BTCs (about $6,000 USD).
In the first two weeks since release, the video has averaged more than 1,000 views per day.
- http://WeUseCoins.com
New version, in Russian:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdWgvOxjYi8 - New Bitcoin market exchange: BitMarket.eu
European markets: BTC/EUR, BTC/PLN (Polish złoty), and BTC/GBP (British Pound Sterling)
Orders entered are matching is automated however payment (e.g., wire transfer) is then coordinated between buyer and seller.
- http://www.BitMarket.eu
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitMarket.eu - Service disruption with Bitcoin Central exchange
Reports of bitcoins deposited not registering and a currency funding transaction not getting credited.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4228.msg79123#msg79123 - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin, the amazing new cryptocurrency, in lay terms by Erik Pukinskis
- http://snowedin.net/blog/2011/04/05/bitcoin - Liberty Reserve service resumes
The outage lasted about 90 hours, including the performance issues resulting from getting swamped once they were back online.
http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2011/04/liberty-reserve-is-back-up-solution-for.html - New app: Miner Status
A mobile app for Android that monitors the status of your miner. Requires access to a JSON data feed available through only one pool at the current time.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Miner_Status - Press: Bitcoin article in Digital Gold Currency Magazine - April, 2011
The monthly magazine includes Doctor Nefario’s article Anonymous Money Needs An Anonymous Exchange, which was initially published in February.
Describes “a protocol that would allow a [bitcoin] exchange to run it’s operations in total secrecy and anonymity.”
- http://www.dgcmagazine.com/PDF/39-Digital-Gold-Currency-Magazine-April-2011.pdf - Press: Bitcoin mentioned in The Atlantic
How to Start Your Own Private Currency by Derek Thompson
“The good news about fiat is it allows us to create more money — trillions more —when the economy tanks.”
“The only thing valuable about BitCoin is that there are other nerdy internet denizens that will accept it for payment for things”.
- http://bit.ly/gPQYfm
Monday, Apr 4th, 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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The Week In Bitcoin - Mar 28 through Apr 03, 2011 Sunday, Apr 3rd, 2011Saturday, Apr 2nd, 2011Friday, Apr 1st, 2011Thursday, Mar 31st, 2011- Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin: An Anarcho-currency on Anarchist Discussion Forums
- http://flag.blackened.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=76826 - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $0.79 USD, Size: 5.80M BTC, Last 24h: 0.16M BTC in 2.1K trx, Difficulty: 69.0K, Forum posts/day: 786, Nodes: 1.6K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Podcast:
Bad Philosophy podcast, Episode 88: Some People Talking About Bitcoin
Interviewed is Darrell Duane of Bitcoin Bonus.
“You’ll just have a larger than usual group of computer geeks controlling the system. […] It’s not going to be usable except for an elite group.”
- http://bit.ly/g63Wr1 - s3052’s Bitcoin Market Analysis
Longterm: “RALLY.”
Short-term: “Bitcoin is in a sideways pattern, unless $0.80 (upside) or $0.70 (downside) are cleared.”
- http://bit.ly/hV2V0N - Article / Blog post:
Microtransactions in the Internet Economy and Bitcoin by Vitalik Buterin
“Sending someone bitcoin, even if the recipient is not part of the same proprietary ecosystem as you, is a simple process that barely takes half a minute.”
- http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/microtransactions-in-the-internet-economy-and-bitcoin - Bitcoin principal Gavin Andresen will be on EconTalk next Monday.
The Library of Economics and Liberty has a weekly podcasts show, hosted by Russel Roberts. EconTalk was voted Best Podcast in the 2008 Weblog Award.
Recent guests included George Will, Tyler Cowen, and Kevin Kelly.
- http://www.econtalk.org/archives.html#date - MyBitcoin - new messaging system for customer support.
Communications with the eWallet and shopping cart API provider can now be made directly thanks to a new messaging system.
- https://www.mybitcoin.com/contact-us.php
Wednesday, Mar 30th, 2011- Press: Hacker News
- Bitcoin, a service and the micro-micro-economy (w/ link to article on Witcoin)
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386392
- BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market? (w/ link to Bitcoin Charts)
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375430
It is always interesting to see the comments on HN to learn how the community of techies are now responding with better questions and have a better understanding of what Bitcoin is (in comparison to just a few weeks ago):
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=220070 - Bitcoin Central exchange, service restored.
”upgrade the bitcoin daemon for the site by the end of the week, so this shouldn’t happen again.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4228.msg75858#msg75858
- https://bitcoin-central.net - Article / Blog post:
BitCoin: digital money for a world without banks in Manzana Mecánica (Spanish)
“BitCoin was created under the following premise: Is it possible to have money and trade, without the need for banks?” (quote from the article, using Google Translate)
- http://bit.ly/fJm8tc - Article / Blog post:
Can The Cloud Print Money? by Ray DePena
“Could one or more SpotCloud compute instances (currently starting at $0.001 cent an hour) compute enough hashes per second of BitCoin’s algorithm to produce a net positive financial gain, in effect printing money?”
- http://raydepena.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/can-the-cloud-print-money - Article / Blog post:
Bowling for Bitcoins – Meet the Trader, Episode 04, by Spencer of The Bitcoin Bulletin
“I am a fan of Reddit and also StackOverflow and have allowed their influence to help shape witcoin. My focus with witcoin is not to compete with existing sites, although there is some overlap [… and instead am] focusing on making it easy for users to profit from their content.”
- http://www.bitcoinbulletin.com/2011/03/29/bowling-for-bitcoins-meet-the-trader-04 - Article / Blog post:
Bitcoin - A Virtual Currency by Jason of 404 Tech Support
”Since Bitcoin is a new currency that plays by new rules, Bitcoin gets scrutinized far more than today’s paper and coin currency.”
- http://www.404techsupport.com/2011/03/30/bitcoin-a-virtual-currency
Tuesday, Mar 29th, 2011[skipped] Monday, Mar 28th, 2011Got a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.com ( RSS) 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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COIN: a distributed accounting system for peer to peer networks Fabio Varesano from Torino, Italy writes: The main part of the project was the designing of an accounting protocol for a P2P network. I based my work on Pastry and David Hausheer's PeerMint.
The second part of the project was implementing the P2P accounting protocol. This has been done using FreePastry,
From #bitcoin-dev: 13:11 fax8 hi guys, I just discovered the bitcoin project.. some years ago I developed something pretty similar for my thesis.. details at http://bit.ly/fyuTRr13:12 fax8 I'd like to know if you were aware of my work, and if you used something from that? 13:17 fax8 molecular: actually, there's was a lot of literature on decentralized accouting system even at that time 13:27 fax8 thank you, I'll surely get in touch with them. we do have a quite strong research group on p2p, may be cool to start collaborating.. - http://veritas.maximilianeum.ch/bitcoin/irc/logs/2011/03/25#l1439
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JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will stop offering debit-card rewards for almost all of its customers in July The Fed proposed capping debit-interchange fees at a flat 12 cents a transaction in December, compared with the current formula that averages 1.14 percent of the purchase price or about 44 cents. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/jpmorgan-will-cease-debit-card-rewards-program-because-of-proposed-fee-cap.htmlPNC Bank and U.S. Bancorp also have rolled back some perks. This will be beneficial for alternate payments, including Bitcoin, as the rewards were seen as one way that debit cards stood out over paying with cash or check. |
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The Week In Bitcoin - Mar 21 through Mar 27, 2011. Sunday, Mar 27th, 2011- Upcoming events:
- [ACH] Payments 2011
- Austin, TX, USA - April 3-6, 2011
- http://payments.nacha.org/c/DiscoverPAYMENTS2011.cfm
- Bricks + Mobile 2011
- Spertus Institute, Chicago, IL, USA - March 30, 2011
- http://www.remodista.com/bricks-mobile-2011
- 10th international epca conference
- Amsterdam, April 4-6, 2011 (w/ genjix’s Bitcoin workshop on April 4th)- http://www.epcaconference.com/index.php/2011/2011/program
- London Pub Crawl
- April, 2001 [Date and location TBD]
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5007.0
- Bulletin board for all Events, meetups, conferences and other events:
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4526.0 - s3052’s Technical Analysis
Price action review over the past days:
“BTC/USD is up +27% in only 3 days”. [Update: BTC/USD has retraced 50% of this.]
Long term: Prices may accelerate towards $1.50-$1.70 and $2 quickly.
Short term: Support levels are now the broken trendline and then $0.80.
- http://blog.bitcoinwatch.com/2011/03/bitcoin-is-back-in-the-rally - The Bitcoin OTC web of trust (WoT) has surpassed the milestone of having over 100 users who have registered a GPG key. The over-the-counter market is used to buy and sell bitcoins, currencies, options and even physical items. Orders are listed in a web view of the order book and trade occurs in the #bitcoin-otc IRC channel.
- http://bitcoin-otc.com/trust.php
- http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratings.php
- http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php - First market for exchanging bitcoins to and from the British Pound Sterling BTC/GBP has opened. Britcoin features:
- Adding and withdrawing GBP funds via bank direct deposit without incurring any fees.
- http://britcoin.co.uk
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Britcoin - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $0.83 USD, Size: 5.77M BTC, Last 24h: 0.15M BTC in 2.6K trx, Difficulty: 69.0K, Forum posts/day: 683, Nodes: 1.6K
http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy - Bitcoin Watch now owned by Bitcoin Charts.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5016.0
- http://www.BitcoinWatch.com
On a related note, tcatm of Bitcoin Charts reported in #bitcoin-otc that there are over 400 simultaneous visitors to the BitcoinCharts.com site, many of which are on auto-refresh (every 5 seconds).
Saturday, Mar 26th, 2011Friday, Mar 25th, 2011- Bitcoin daemon “hang” problem isolated.
An issue that likely was the culprit in causing service issues for a number of bitcoin-related website appears to have been identified. A fix will be forthcoming.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4904.0 - New Guide: How To Set Up Pooled Bitcoin Mining In Windows
Provides an overview of mining pools and instructions to get set up mining against Slush’s Bitcoin Pooled Mining service:
http://www.newslobster.com/bitcoin/how-to-set-up-pooled-bitcoin-mining-in-windows - Miner software updates:
DiabloMiner 2011-03-25 updated.
- Merged jwadamson’s patch that gets rid of the OSX dock icon.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4098046014
m0mchil’s Python OpenCL miner, poclbm updated
- All changes were pool related.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4091959986
BitcoinPool’s poclbm-mod-03.24.2011 updated.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4097210791 - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $0.88 USD, Size: 5.75M BTC, Last 24h: 0.29M BTC in 1.9K trx, Difficulty: 69.0K, Forum posts/day: 732, Nodes: 1.5K, #bitcoin
http://bit.ly/gBCrrX - New features added to BiddingPond auction site.
- New layout.
- Unique QR code displayed on each listing.
- Auto-generated payment address (payment handling optional through BiddingPond).
- Social network integration (Twitter, Facebook, etc. )
http://www.biddingpond.com
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=574.msg72007#msg72007 - A Bitcoin predecessor?
COIN: a distributed accounting system for peer to peer networks [2006-2007]
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4944.0 - Network Hashing Difficulty adjusted to 68,979, a decrease by about 10%. Difficulty only decreased once before (May 19, 2010).
http://bit.ly/fHZbQ3 - MtGox Exchange - Euro transfers are now free.
http://twitter.com/#!/MtGox/status/51213844948860928
Thursday, Mar 24th, 2011- New sites and other content:
Bitcoin wiki article: Myths
The recent influx of new visitors from the slashdotting renewed the need for an update to the Myths article in the Wiki. Here’s an example:
Myth: Early adopters are unfairly rewarded.
The vast majority of the 21 million Bitcoins still have not been distributed. By starting to mine or acquire Bitcoins today, you too can become an early adopter.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths - s3052’s Technical Analysis
Long Term:
“The decline from the 1.1 $ high looks only corrective (a-b-c). This is a good argument for the longterm bulls.”
Short Term:
“Next resistances are $0.90 (very weak), $0.95 (strong), $1.00 (medium), $1.10 (strong).”
- http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4497563#post4497563 - “Quick alert” (mid-day)
“Today, the 2 months downtrend line has been broken to the upside.”
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.msg71455#msg71455 - BTCMine - offers incentive to miners, 5 BTC bonus to miner responsible for solving every 5th block:
- http://twitter.com/#!/btcmine/status/50920930322546688
Wednesday, Mar 23rd, 2011- s3052 describes “curve filling” and why the jump up in the USD/BTC market exchange rate was no big deal.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4795.msg70824#msg70824 - Press: Mentions in HackerNews, Reddit, Slashdot, DailyPaul, and more.
Bitcoin.org website “slashdotted”, meaning it was not able to keep up with the amount of traffic. Traffic to the homepage was directed to the Bitcoin wiki.
Tuesday, Mar 22nd, 2011- Event: Using Technology To Advance Liberty presentation.
Will be presented online, Sunday, March 27th, 2011 at 2:00PM EST.
- Presentation sneak peek: http://bit.ly/ijdKGn (pdf)
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4792.msg70038#msg70038 - s3052’s Technical Analysis Mini Update:
Longterm: RALLY
Short-term: RALLY has been re-ignited. Next resistances: $0.88-$0.90.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.msg70024#msg70024 - Video: What is Bitcoin, from @JustMoon
Excellent animated video introduction to Bitcoin.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/4032796289
The animated video was created in response to a very sizable bounty offer. If the video’s producer is awarded most or all of the entire bounty, that payment will represent the largest known payment in exchange for services to-date.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=697.0 - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $0.78 USD, Size: 5.73M BTC, Last 24h: 0.20M BTC in 2.2K trx, Difficulty: 76.2K, Forum posts/day: 616, Nodes: 1.5K, #bitcoin
- http://bit.ly/giys0m - Bitcoin Open Source - One Stop Shopping.
Over twenty Free/Open Source Software projects are in this new repository.
- http://gitorious.org/bitcoin
- http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin (BitGit)
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Open_Source - The number of unconfirmed transactions queued had exceeded 2,000 transactions with some having been first queued for more than 24 hours.
- Temporary workaround: Some mining pools accepting free transactions.
- Fix will come with Bitcoin v0.3.21 (which includes “limitfreerelay”).
- http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin - New sites and other content:
Bitcoin Wiki:
- New article: Why pooled mining
- An analysis of the costs/benefits of pooled mining.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_pooled_mining
- New article: Infrastructure
- Describes the varying components of Bitcoin and the protocols it uses.
- Composed by luke-jr.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Infrastructure
- New article: LAMP developer intro
- For assistance with integrating a shopping system to accept Bitcoin.
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/LAMP_developer_intro - Discussion: On Whirlpool Forums (Australian internet and technology forum)
Good example of the varying opinions espoused as to why Bitcoin cannot and will not succeed, yet here Bitcoin stands — after showing continued and significant growth in its traction (evidenced by number of transactions, transaction volumes, network hashing strength, depth of merchant, exchanges, mindshare, etc, etc.)
- http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1663664 - Article: BitCoins - the cryptocurrency of a free world? - Daily Paul
More insightful commentary: ”How is this any different than the fiat toilet paper the world now uses?”
- http://www.dailypaul.com/160149 - Bitcoin Bounty / Pooled Donations site.
Used for proposing features for Bitcoin, donating to the feature’s bounty pool.
http://bitcoin.cz.cc
http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BT_Feature
Monday Mar 21th, 2011- Plato’s Journey: Bitcoins or bust!
Armed with a laptop and tethered 3G service, Plato will be chronicling his adventure as he heads east to west using only bitcoins as payment for expenses.
Stops along the way will be made to speak at universities, libraries, and other venues to discuss the Bitcoin project.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4752.0 - Article: Bowling for Bitcoins: Meet the Trader 03 - The Bitcoin Bulletin
Episode 03: Michael Hendrix of CoinPal and Coincard.
“[First started with Bitcoin by] writing a market maker bot for Mt. Gox. That asymmetry (more buying than selling) made it nearly impossible to be a market maker”.
“At the moment, CoinCard volumes exceed CoinPal volumes.”
- http://www.bitcoinbulletin.com/2011/03/21/bowling-for-bitcoins-meet-the-trader-03 - Upcoming events:
Agora I/O “Etienne”, Online conference, March 25-27, 2011
- http://agora.io/etienne/schedule
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4526.msg68193#msg68193
Bricks + Mobile 2011, Chicago, IL, USA, March 30, 2011
- http://www.remodista.com/bricks-mobile-2011
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4526.msg67009#msg67009
Payments 2011 [ACH], Austin, TX, USA, April 3-6, 2011
- http://payments.nacha.org/c/DiscoverPAYMENTS2011.cfm
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4526.msg66307#msg66307 - s3052’s Technical Analysis:
“BTC/USD is down -36% from the high. The bears are in still in control.”
Short term:
- 3 alternate scenarios for the coming days and weeks:
- Highest likelihood - BTC/USD has finished or will finish the consolidation at around the 0.7 $ level very soon.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4487523#post4487523 - Miner update - poclbm-gui-20110321
Update from kiv: self-extracting archive, improved shares status display, token-based pools balance checks, other bug fixes.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3878.msg55160#msg55160
http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4002359117 - tcatm’s Unconfirmed Transactions page receives a fix.
Transactions that have been confirmed will no longer erroneously show.
There are hundreds and hundreds of these unconfirmed transactions.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4143.msg68759#msg68759
http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin - jgarzik’s CPUMiner v0.8 released.
Includes long polling (beta), syslog support, and new command line options.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1925.msg24217#msg24217
http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/4001054157
Got a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.comPrevious weekly 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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This is likely the most convoluted and expensive way to purchase Liberty Reserve (which can be used to purchase Bitcoins on the exchanges). There is a phone verification step, so keep that in mind. Go to www.AurumAge.com, register and follow these steps: - go to deposit money, choose Visa/Master/Spry and enter the desired amount to deposit;
- then, at SpryPay website click “I agree to the terms” (and read them) checkbox and choose Visa/Master_Card (LiqPay) USD (or other currency)
- then you will be redirected to LiqPay website where you need to finish the payment by specifying the card details
- then, LiqPay notifies SpryPay about successful payment, and SpryPay notifies our system, and your casino account is credited accordingly.
- Cashing out from this account is only possible to LibertyReserve, though, because SpryPay only allows to accept payments, not to send payments… and since there are no requirements to play games before you cashout this casino works as a great instant exchanger.
And there you are, deposit the money into AurumAge casino instantly and they will alow you to cashout to your Liberty Reserve account immediately. This is the fastest service you will get, however SpryPay will take some fee from you. |
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Catherine Eagleton is the Curator of Modern Money at the British Museum. She asked to send her examples of anything that should be preserved.
"she also mentioned in passing how difficult it is to think of ways to preserve World of Warcraft gold pieces or Facebook credits for posterity
http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_money/2011/03/still-going-strong-after-14-years.html I'm thinking that a wallet.dat containing the generated bitcoins from a very old block, even if the bitcoins have since been spent, would be a candidate for preservation. That's all long before I knew of Bitcoin, however. Her contact info: http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/departments/staff/coins_and_medals/catherine_eagleton.aspxAs an aside, I occasionally see numismatic value of bitcoins discussed. There are thousands and thousands of early blocks whose generated 50 BTC have not been spent yet. These will be interesting, because there's no way to tell if the wallet has been copied previously. Its value will come from knowing how secure it was previously, especially if it has changed hands. Are virgin bitcoins (generated but never spent) the equivalent of the "uncirculated" grade assessed a physical coin? |
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Here's a blog post from Dwolla, contrasting themselves against PayPal. http://www.dwolla.org/blog/dwolla-vs-paypalSimply replacing the word Dwolla with Bitcoin makes a nice FAQ: Why is DwollaBitcoin the best alternative to Paypal?Bitcoin allows you to to receive payment directly from Bitcoin balances at an exceptionally low cost. A few nice applications are: - If your client selects to pay with Bitcoin, it won’t cost you a percentage based fee to get paid.
- This allows you to get paid online for larger ticket items and services without losing a significant amount of money on the interchange.
- You can now use electronic transactions where you could not previously.
Why should your business use Bitcoin?- There is a growing group of people using Bitcoin. It makes it easy to find new customers.
- It doesn’t cost you anything if it goes unused.
- There are no set up fees, monthly fees, or hidden costs.
- It will allow you to receive payment for goods or services online even if you do not have a merchant account somewhere else.
The bottom line.Bitcoin will never replace credit cards and it does not do the same thing Paypal does. Bitcoin is not a credit card/debit card system. However. We do represent a solution to merchants looking for other ways to accept payment electronically. If you want to aviod the interchange fee ( aka. swipe fee & credit card fees ) you can’t use credit or debit cards . You need to use a different service. That service is called Bitcoin. If your company has not allowed electronic transactions to be used due to the swipe fee, Bitcoin finally gives you a solution. Even when sitting down to write a check keep this in mind. Using Bitcoin is less expensive than mailing a check, or driving it across town. |
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A thread to use as a bulletin board for sharing meetups, conferences and other events.
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The Week In Bitcoin - Mar 14 through Mar 20, 2011. Sunday Mar 20th, 2011- Press: Open source identity: Bitcoin technical lead Gavin Andresen - CIO Australia
”Disparate group of developers take on the established financial system”
“The goal is to grow the Bitcoin economy so it is large enough you don’t have any exchange rate dilemma – you can buy the products and services you need using Bitcoins that you earn by providing products and services that others need.”
http://www.cio.com.au/article/380394 - Article: Thoughts on The Future of Money, by @webisteme
“Suspicious of government, and equipped with the technical known how to dodge its influence, these hackers have collaboratively developed bitcoin to the point where it now stands as a viable internet currency.”
http://www.webisteme.com/blog/?p=60
Saturday Mar 19th, 2011- Creator of the Liberty Dollar, Bernard Von Nothaus convicted.
“Liberty coins were marked with the dollar sign ($); the words dollar, USA, Liberty, Trust in God (instead of In God We Trust); and other features associated with legitimate U.S. coinage.”
“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism” - US Att. Tompkins
http://charlotte.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel11/ce031811.htm
Friday Mar 18th, 2011- Bounty offer: Sha256 compute shader using 100% open source video drivers on Linux.
Approach is to load a compiled binary object from ATI’s SDK into Linux/OSS driver and execute.
Currently at 300 BTC bounty reward, however target is 1,000 BTC.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4618.0 - Payments: Visa to roll out P2P payment network for credit cards.
Allows one person to send money from a bank account directly to another person’s Visa credit card account (or debit card, or prepaid debit card).
Bank-related part of transaction handled by CashEdge’s PopMoney and ZashPay.
MSN Money article: http://on-msn.com/hIYa1D
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3233.msg67776#msg67776 - New sites and other content:
Podcast: Bitcoin – a Digital, Decentralized Currency, - omega tau
Bitcoin technical lead Gavin Andresen is interviewed.
http://bit.ly/g52Xap
Thursday Mar 17th, 2011Wednesday Mar 16th, 2011Tuesday Mar 15th, 2011- Meetups:
Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, March 17th
- Bitcoin Users and Developers Meetup & Bruce Wagner European Tour
- http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin/events/16907703
Geneva Switzerland, Saturday, March 19th
- The Bitcoin Animated Movie will premiere at the event:
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3216.msg45133#msg45133
Amsterdam, Netherlands, April 4 - 6th.
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3216.msg65690#msg65690
Los Angeles, CA, USA [forming]
- http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Digital-Currency-Innovators-Group
Washington, DC, USA, April 4, 2011
- http://www.meetup.com/BitcoinDC/events/wjmbqypgbgb - jgarzik’s CPUMiner v0.7.2 released.
Includes sse2 implementation from ufasoft for faster mining on Intel.
http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/3895963752 - Alert: Service failure by CoinTumblr.
Reports filed on the forum describe amounts sent to the mixing service, CoinTumblr, not being remitted.
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4476.0 - New sites and other content:
MineThings - a browser-based MMO. Bitcoins accepted to purchase in-game currency.
- http://www.minethings.com
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=30.msg65850#msg65850
Blog post: Bitcoin, The currency of the future? in Aussie Anarchy
- “Like most untested ideas most people will be wary using them in any large capacity, especially ideas that people don’t see a real need for and/or find it complicated.”
- http://aussieanarchy.com/2011/03/bitcoin-the-currency-of-the-future/
Monday Mar 14th, 2011- Miner updates:
- poclbm-gui for m0mchil’s OpenCL miner updated
- Ufasoft’s miner gets OpenCL support
http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/3863859696 - Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
1 BTC = $0.89 USD, Size: 5.68M BTC, Last 24h: 0.21M BTC in 2.7K trx, Difficulty: 76.2K, Forum posts/day: 319, Nodes: 1.5K.
http://bit.ly/hnglAA - s3052’s Technical Analysis:
- “As forecasted, prices have indeed broken out of the big triangle that formed.”
Short Term:
- The break […] has opened up potential to reach $0.95, $1.00 and then $1.10.
- A break down below 0.8 $ will likely lead to a decline towards $0.40 - $0.50.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4470542 - Bitcoin-OTC Order Book - new feature, Filter on notes.
This provides the ability to further filter orders for more specific criteria.
For example:
- Buy and Sell Orders for USD currency traded using Dwolla http://bit.ly/hdMZyH
- Buy and Sell Orders anywhere traded using Cash http://bit.ly/gF7dny
Full order book: http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php
Got a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.comPrevious weekly 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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Let's say there is a scenario where I am one of two different people who claim to be responsible for sending bitcoins for a purchase. How could I prove to the merchant that those bitcoins came from my wallet and nobody else's? I was considering that I could sign a message using the address' private key, as described here, http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2373.40however in my scenario, I assume the merchant is non-technical and that this purchase isn't significant enough to warrant climbing the PKI learning curve. I then considered the ability to send another amount, say a token 0.01 BTC, from the same address that my earlier payment originated from. Even if I were able to force bitcoin to use a specific address for the input for the transaction, that transaction would then be recognized as an attempt to double spend and thus wouldn't be honored or relayed by any nodes. Are there any other options for this? |
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The Week In Bitcoin - Mar 7 through Mar 13, 2011. Sunday Mar 13th, 2011Saturday Mar 12th, 2011Friday Mar 11th, 2011Thursday Mar 10th, 2011Wednesday Mar 9th, 2011Tuesday Mar 8th, 2011Monday Mar 7th, 2011Got a news tip, suggestion or comment? http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submitCurrent week (updated throughout each day): http://www.bitcoinnews.comPrevious weekly 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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Yet another Person To Person payments system has emerged: WingCash http://wingcash.com If Bitcoin is described as a decentralized, anonymous digital currency then WingCash is the polar opposite -- a centralized, fully public, representative currency. How WingCash works: - WingCash "Notes" are issued in denominations matching physical U.S. coins ($0.01, $0.05, $0.10 and $0.25) and U.S. currency ($1, $5, $10, $20 and $100).
- Each note is serialized, and can be viewed online. The entire history of the note (the current owner and at least the last eight recent owners) is visible, publicly.
Example: https://wingcash.com/usd/w002-53bd-a7ef-f3d5
When viewed online, the image presented on the note matches the denomination of its physical U.S. equivalent. For example, the $0.10 Note will show the image of a U.S. dime, and the $50 Note will show the image of a U.S. $50 bill. - The owner of the note holds the cash online in a centralized ewallet account through WingCash.com. The notes are backed with cash in a cash account held by the note's issuer -- either Wingcash or a bank partner (I presume this is in cash accounts that are fully FDIC insured funds, similar to how PayPal handles accountholder balances).
- Transactions are irrevocable, which means there are no chargebacks if a transaction sours.
- Selling WingCash (withdrawing funds / cashing out): Notes may be transferred at face value to your U.S. checking or savings account (via ACH). WingCash charges $0.25 per withdrawal. A merchant who accepts WingCash may also cash out your notes at face value without the fee.
- Buying WingCash (adding funds): Notes may purchased only from participating retailers or by exchanging with an individual.
- There are no transaction fees when using WingCash notes as payment with a merchant or between individuals.
- Currently, registration for individuals is allowed only for certain states. The three states, Montana, New Mexico and South Carolina are states in which WingCash can likely operate without registering as a money transmitter. Dwolla followed a similar approach before going national last year. Merchants from any state may register now.
- Money may be sent to users on the social networks Twitter and Facebook. If the recipient has already linked the social network account to WingCash, notes are transferred to the recipient's ewallet immediately. Otherwise, the notes are claimed only after the recipient logs in and links (via OAUTH) the account. There also is the ability to make transfers via email and LinkedIn but it isn't immediate.
It offers merchants the holy grail of irrevocable payment. This proposition is so compelling that merchants may actively seek to promote it as an alternative to most other forms of payment.
WingCash appears to be scalable and sustainable because they have eliminated the complexity and cost of charge-backs, The CEO also founded ProPay, which is one of the few payment alternatives to PayPal on eBay. Bradley Wilkes is part of a payment technology family dynasty. The Wilkes clan has been embedded deeply in the fabric of the payments industry since the nineties. Clay Wilkes is CEO of Galileo Payment Processing, a well known leader in processing General Purpose Reloadable (GPR) prepaid payment cards such as those offered by NetSpend and Greendot (GDOT). Dave Wilkes is Founder and CEO of Fuze Networks. These gentlemen are all veterans of our industry. I think payment technology is part of their DNA. http://www.glgroup.com/News/2011-Startup-WingCash-%E2%80%93-The-Next-Generation-of-Money--52047.htmlBlog: http://blog.wingcash.comFAQ: https://wingcash.com/faqWingCash adds to the crowded Person to Person payment networks, which include Paypal (credit and ACH), Dwolla (ACH), PopMoney (ACH), and a plethora of mobile money startups. Incidentally, WingCash is not to be confused with the mobile cash system used in Cambodia called WING Cash Xpress: http://www.wingmoney.com |
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