A look at the BitFin Conference, Dublin.
To sum up a rather intriguing conference, mainstream financial players want to be in Bitcoin because they are fundamentally driven by profit and they see the innovation here, but they are currently held back by cumbersome regulatory structures. On the other side of the fence the Bitcoin community are divided.

Ultimately, mainstream adoption won’t happen until Bitcoin can play nicely with the banks but this tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth for libertarians and anyone cautious of disciplinary governance tactics. Can you imagine the power that current financial authorities could wield with the ‘Big Data’ sitting on the Blockchain? Letting the banks ‘in’ could be a major mistake unless some of their vast and imposing powers can be dismantled first

Bitcoin invites financial inclusion but there’s one impression I can’t shake off. Panel after panel were dominated by men in shiny suits and shoes reclining at their ease in armchairs – give these guys a few years and a few more steaks and they’ll look just like the ‘fat cats’ they seek to supplant.

Read the full article here: http://www.bitcoinukmedia.com/?page_id=36
Listen to the podcast interviewing BitFin speakers: http://www.bitcoinukmedia.com/?p=141

http://www.bitcoinukmedia.com/?p=122

Listen to #09 of the BitcoinUK Podcast to hear an exclusive interview with Tashoma, organiser of the first Bitcoin Festival to take place in the UK, in Shoreditch in Sept. It's taking Bitcoin to the general public: 2014 might just be the breakout year for Bitcoin!

[Blackcoin]

http://www.bitcoinukmedia.com/?p=109
Find out why people are investing in Blackcoin, what the pump and dump skeptics say and more importantly what an altcoin director does all day long. Also find out how you can get your hands on one of two free tickets to the BItFin conference in Dublin. I also introduce the first regular contributor to the show, Janina Lowisz, who will be taking on the role of altcoin adviser by shining a light on a different altcoin each week – this week it’s NXTcoin.

Bitcoin is having a hard time shaking off its association with criminal activity perhaps because it offers anonymity to its users - a feature that is often used in the mainstream media to slam the digital currency. But Bitcoin’s anonymity is, according to researcher George Danezis, no aid to thieves and launders who in practice find it quite difficult to exfiltrate the proceeds of their crimes.

Firstly, the innovation of Bitcoin is in the ‘Blockchain’ – a transparent, distributed ledger of all transactions - because every transaction is completely visible to all, it is perfectly possible to trace the path of stolen coins and find out the exact wallet address in which the coins end up.

It is then very hard for the thief to extract that value from the system because the wallet can be watched for further activity. Know Your Customer rules lie in wait at the ‘in’ and ‘out’ points, where digital currency meets FIAT. Banking systems, exchanges and payment processors all have to satisfy identity checks to avoid being shut down and these will inevitably expose the thief.

Furthermore, in a small community such as Bitcoin, moving large sums of money around is bound to attract attention. A common workaround is often attempted is called ‘Peeling’ – splitting a large sum into many smaller parts and moving these about to confuse the trail. The problem here is that if you can trace even one of these parts, you can trace them all, so it’s a high-risk strategy. In response ‘Mixers’ are becoming a popular tool to remain under the radar. This clever invention has a coin input and output and somewhere in the middle it forgets exactly which coins belonged to whom - but even this method has its drawbacks. Danezis tells us that by watching the mix and using ‘linear regression from equations derived over time’ it is possible to deduce which inputs are linked to which outputs.

‘All of this illustrates just one point…that it is very difficult to exfiltrate the proceeds of crime’

So Bitcoin in itself isn’t inherently bad, in fact it’s pretty unsympathetic to thieves and launderers, much less so than cash for instance. It’s just that bad actors get all the press.

Many thanks to George Danezis and Professor Nicholas Courtois host of the UCL Bitcoin, Cryptography and Finance Multidisciplinary Research Seminar. Listen to episode 6 of the BitcoinUK Podcast for the full seminar 'Tracing Thieves and Launderers'.

Free event - all welcome.

Interested in learning more about Bitcoin? Join us for presentations and a panel discussion with a number of leading experts on the subject, including Brett Scott (Guardian journalist and author of The Heretics Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money from Pluto Press).

Bitcoin is one of the most potentially far reaching inventions of the digital age, but despite the media buzz, crypto currencies like Bitcoin are far from being viewed as real alternatives to fiat money. The recent collapse of the major Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox revealed just how much work was still needed to sure up the currency and its apparatuses before mainstream adoption would ever be achieved. So why are so many people excited about Bitcoin? This event will ask questions such as:

    How do crypto-currencies challenge mainstream financial systems?
    Is Bitcoin a safe alternative to fiat money?
    Is Bitcoin a currency or a commodity and which outlook is more favourable to its long-term survival?
    What conditions do we need to create to encourage the mass adoption of Bitcoin?
    Will the emergence of crypto-currencies force government-backed fiat currencies to innovate?
    Is 2014 the breakout year for Bitcoin?