(This is not exactly a press article, rather a blog post, so if it's not OK to be here, please mods move it. Thanks)

http://athousandnations.com/2013/06/13/bitcoin-and-unbreakable-law/

Hello all,

I'm trying to understand this new cryptocurrency making the buzz lately.
Ripple looks interesting. For what I can see, there are two different things in Ripple (as in BTC): the "payment network", a p2p trust-based network, that might be useful in many situations, and  the "ripple currency", a cryptocurrency that does not use a blockchain for consensus.
AFAICT, the payment network is totally complementary to Bitcoin. Actually, I think they could have just developed this payment network and have used BTC as settlement currency if they wanted, but it seems they had more ambition.
The XRP is not complementary to BTC, though. It's a competitor. And perhaps the first one with potential to shake things on the cryptocurrency world.
The main difference between XRP and all BTC-based cryptocurrencies is the fact that the p2p consensus is obtained without the use of a blockchain. That's quite interesting, because a blockchain is an expensive thing to maintain. If XRP consensus can prove itself to be as safe as the blockchain, then I see no reason to keep spending so much money to keep this expensive data structure. If their p2p consensus is really safe, eventually they would beat BTC.

So, I started reading about ripple and went right away to the consensus wiki article.

After reading it I had a doubt. I imagine there is a solution to this, but I just couldn't find it detailed anywhere.
How does this consensus process deal with a fork?

With a blockchain it's pretty straightforward: the larger (as in amount of calculus done) chain wins. Simple. Even if a piece of the Internet is temporarily disconnected from the rest of the world, as soon as a single link between them is available, consensus will be once again established by having everybody accepting the largest chain.

How does that work with Ripple?
Say node A has a UNLa and node B has a UNLb. And suppose the intersection between these two UNLs is small, like, less than 20% of the size of each.
Isn't it possible that node A sets on a different Transaction Set than node B? Both nodes will agree with the large majority of their UNL, it just happens that their UNLs don't agree among themselves. Couldn't that "fork" the network, at least temporarily? How does the Ripple protocol avoids and/or fixes such forks?

By the way, won't the Ripple people create a forum.ripple.com for questions like this? (so that eventually it gets crowded with trolls saying lots of BS and making those responsible for ripple.com ashamed and, in an elitist attempt not to get mixed with such trolls, kick the forum to a new domain like rippletalk.org or something  )

I've seen many people on these boards attempting to input this recent price fall on MtGox issues.

I'm sorry, but this is just silly. The price fell because too many people sold at once. These were mostly, IMHO, people who had bought bitcoins without even knowing what the hell they were doing - they only saw the price increasing like crazy and decided to get in.

The price soared insanely fast and now it has fallen. This shouldn't be such a surprise.

I'm not trying to defend Gox or anything (although I think that, if you're not satisfied with them, either use someone else or open your own exchange*, instead of complain like a baby that wants everything delivered to him). But blaming them for the price fall is just not fair. The price fell because too many people panicked too easily and started selling, that's all. Blame these chickens who don't get Bitcoin if you want a scapegoat, not MtGox.


* I realize that now it's much more complicated to open your own exchange due to different state rulings, and it's thus impossible for most. But still, if you want to criticize someone for this, it's your government, not MtGox, that you should target.

Hello,

Is it true what's being reported here? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173108

Please comment on that topic if you have more info. Thanks.

[sozinho contra todos os hackers mal intencionados do planeta!]

Não acompanhei todos os detalhes, mas não pude deixar de notar a quantidade de brasileiros nervosos com o incidente no Mercado Bitcoin. Vi gente dizendo ter até 2k BTC estocados lá.

Porra galera. Vocês não aprenderam nada com todo o histórico de incidentes do tipo até aqui?

Não pretendo questionar a idoneidade ou a competência do Leandro César, até porque as ignoro. Mas, até onde eu sei, o serviço era operado unicamente por ele, e estocava uma Hot Wallet sem multisig. Por mais competente que ele seja, era ele sozinho contra todos os hackers mal intencionados do planeta! Todo hacker que merece o nome sabe o que são Bitcoins, e conhece portanto os serviços que possuem hot wallets. Esses serviços serão sistematicamente visados! Seres humanos cometem erros, e era só questão de tempo até o Leandro cometer um e deixar um ataque passar.

Mas o que é pior é que isso já aconteceu N vezes nos sites gringos. Vocês não acompanham o que acontece fora do Brasil? Acham que o mundo tupiniquim tem alguma diferença fundamental, que o que acontece fora do país não vai se reproduzir no Brasil? Por que diabos vocês mantinham quantias significativas de bitcoins numa eWallet?

Aprender com os próprios erros é normal e parte da vida. Mas muito melhor é aprender com os erros dos outros. E, nesse caso, oportunidades não faltaram! Fiquem espertos, povo!

Espero realmente que o Leandro consiga se recuperar e reembolsar uma quantidade significativa do montante de seus clientes. Espero que a principal (única?) casa de câmbio brasileira seja restabelecida. Mas espero, principalmente, que todo mundo aprenda a lição de uma vez por todas e não estoquem bitcoins numa eWallet por mais tempo do que o estritamente necessário.

E sobre como estocar de maneira segura suas as próprias Bitcoins, não faltam tópicos nesse fórum explicando (paperwallets, offline wallets etc...)

This time on the what-if blog: http://what-if.xkcd.com/36/

[I do not agree to being governed by anyone without my contractually arranged explicit consent and so I do not and ever will agree to voting.]

The Trezor thread got slightly derailed, and as I contributed myself with a couple of off-topic posts, I thought it would be better to take them from that thread and create a new one. Actually I was expecting a mod to do it, but since none took the initiative, I'm doing it myself. The inconvenience is that I can only quote posts, not move them, so the formatting won't be the best (ctrl+ is your friend ).

. . . Mike now goes on to reinvent representative democracy.

Haha, thanks Actually that's an old interest. Here's a paper I wrote about 6 years ago:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jidmNJHWAtsPLCUD7EPPm8jOEV93kSXbZOMycqCWOyA/edit?authkey=CN7BnLUG&authkey=CN7BnLUG

It covers how to use secure hardware to build a new kind of democracy where votes can be delegated by topic up a tree of representatives. I think these days people call it "liquid democracy". I never did anything with the idea. The paper talks about smart cards but Trezor style devices are a better fit.

. . . Mike now goes on to reinvent representative democracy.

Haha, thanks Actually that's an old interest. Here's a paper I wrote about 6 years ago:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jidmNJHWAtsPLCUD7EPPm8jOEV93kSXbZOMycqCWOyA/edit?authkey=CN7BnLUG&authkey=CN7BnLUG

It covers how to use secure hardware to build a new kind of democracy where votes can be delegated by topic up a tree of representatives. I think these days people call it "liquid democracy". I never did anything with the idea. The paper talks about smart cards but Trezor style devices are a better fit.

Mike. That was a really neat article!
Truly among great minds. I feel humbled.
This was one of my motivations that got me started on the Bitsafe HW Wallet project.
It's so nice to see it on paper.

. . . Mike now goes on to reinvent representative democracy.

Haha, thanks Actually that's an old interest. Here's a paper I wrote about 6 years ago:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jidmNJHWAtsPLCUD7EPPm8jOEV93kSXbZOMycqCWOyA/edit?authkey=CN7BnLUG&authkey=CN7BnLUG

It covers how to use secure hardware to build a new kind of democracy where votes can be delegated by topic up a tree of representatives. I think these days people call it "liquid democracy". I never did anything with the idea. The paper talks about smart cards but Trezor style devices are a better fit.

Mike. That was a really neat article!
Truly among great minds. I feel humbled.
This was one of my motivations that got me started on the Bitsafe HW Wallet project.
It's so nice to see it on paper.

The whole paper is an expose on how the ultra-naive think about democracy. Here's a short quote:

They can then walk away with their token, secure in the knowledge that it cannot be tied to their real identity.

Then they walk to the party headquarters where they exchange their voting token for one issue of election sausage.

In addition to the above the paper has a whole section entitled "Vote buying" that completely omits the discussion of buying the voting smartcards.

In summary: the whole paper meets the definition of ultra-naivette. May God bless the heart of its author.

In addition to the above the paper has a whole section entitled "Vote buying" that completely omits the discussion of buying the voting smartcards.

It does, it clearly states that such risk is irrelevant. Buying individual votes like this is much less efficient than buying politicians today. Plus, the keys could expire once each 5 years or something.

Also, selling your vote is not much different than blindly delegating it, or blindly voting. Do you really expect somebody that easily sells his vote rights like that to even mind about voting at all? What you seem to be criticizing is democracy per se, not his particular instance.

OBS: I'm not sure I support his idea, although I'm inclined to think it might be a good improvement on status quo. A more direct democracy might considerably decrease the effect of "dispersed costs, concentrated benefits", which are pretty much the norm in democracies. But it's still far away from full decentralization of power, which is the "nirvana", let's say.

In summary: the whole paper meets the definition of ultra-naivette. May God bless the heart of its author.

Do you honestly believe that the current widely adopted representative democracy models are so superior? Buying politicians is pretty much the norm on them. I guess you're the naive one there if you think otherwise.

<off-topic>

In addition to the above the paper has a whole section entitled "Vote buying" that completely omits the discussion of buying the voting smartcards.

It does, it clearly states that such risk is irrelevant. Buying individual votes like this is much less efficient than buying politicians today. Plus, the keys could expire once each 5 years or something.

Also, selling your vote is not much different than blindly delegating it, or blindly voting. Do you really expect somebody that easily sells his vote rights like that to even mind about voting at all? What you seem to be criticizing is democracy per se, not his particular instance.

OBS: I'm not sure I support his idea, although I'm inclined to think it might be a good improvement on status quo. A more direct democracy might considerably decrease the effect of "dispersed costs, concentrated benefits", which are pretty much the norm in democracies. But it's still far away from full decentralization of power, which is the "nirvana", let's say.

In summary: the whole paper meets the definition of ultra-naivette. May God bless the heart of its author.

Do you honestly believe that the current widely adopted representative democracy models are so superior? Buying politicians is pretty much the norm on them. I guess you're the naive one there if you think otherwise.

</off-topic>

I made a full quote to protect against further editing.

Buying politicians became an expensive requirement when the previous strategy of buying votes (one vote -> one sausage and/or beer) became hard to enforce by combination of voting in public but casting the actual vote in secret.

Now we are dscussing a supposed improvement where for the cost of one sausage buyer gets all future votes cast with particular token.

I'm just going to quote some select parts from the Wikipedia's article on idiots:

An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs. [...] Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are "stupid".

I can muse a little about how IQ is not an one-dimensional quantity. An individual can be a competent software (Mike Hearn) or hardware (allten) designer; and yet completely fail the basic civic class material where grade-school children are taught why everyone is asked to vote in public, but the actual vote marking process is obscured and why nobody is allowed to accompany the voter while marking the vote; not even a husband can assist his voting wife (or wives).

This central-bank-killing-liquid-democracy device may become the killer gadget for Occupiers world-wide.

Again: may God bless your little hearts. The brown-shirted functionaries of our party will allow you your continuous use of your knees just for the cost of letting them watch while you press the buttons on your trezor in the privacy of your house. If you drop your trezor in our party headquarters you will be paid one sausage for your kindness and cooperation in furthering the efficient democracy.

Again: may God bless your little hearts. The brown-shirted functionaries of our party will allow you your continuous use of your knees just for the cost of letting them watch while you press the buttons on your trezor in the privacy of your house. If you drop your trezor in our party headquarters you will be paid one sausage for your kindness and cooperation in furthering the efficient democracy.

Geez, you think this is some sort of conspiracy or something? The Trezor represents an idea, not just a single device. Bitcoin is an experiment just like democracy was an experiment. The latter failed. Let's just give these little wide-eyed optimists the benefit of a doubt to play their own experiment out. You can sit by and make insults, but it doesn't really add anything except to the ignore files. Besides, there is nothing wrong with buying votes directly if you are not allowed to just print your money though monopolistic powers.

. . . Mike now goes on to reinvent representative democracy.

Haha, thanks Actually that's an old interest. Here's a paper I wrote about 6 years ago:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jidmNJHWAtsPLCUD7EPPm8jOEV93kSXbZOMycqCWOyA/edit?authkey=CN7BnLUG&authkey=CN7BnLUG

It covers how to use secure hardware to build a new kind of democracy where votes can be delegated by topic up a tree of representatives. I think these days people call it "liquid democracy". I never did anything with the idea. The paper talks about smart cards but Trezor style devices are a better fit.

Mike. That was a really neat article!
Truly among great minds. I feel humbled.
This was one of my motivations that got me started on the Bitsafe HW Wallet project.
It's so nice to see it on paper.

The whole paper is an expose on how the ultra-naive think about democracy. Here's a short quote:

They can then walk away with their token, secure in the knowledge that it cannot be tied to their real identity.

Then they walk to the party headquarters where they exchange their voting token for one issue of election sausage.

In addition to the above the paper has a whole section entitled "Vote buying" that completely omits the discussion of buying the voting smartcards.

In summary: the whole paper meets the definition of ultra-naivette. May God bless the heart of its author.

I didn't even read the paper but I already know I'd mostly likely agree with the above poster. (well except with the very last sentence  )

Mike Hearn I appreciate your coding work but man do I hope you never end up in any position of influence or decision making because your convoluted worldviews actually scare me. I can't even understand how a coder, working with logic and math everyday, can fall victim to such an obvious and blatant fallacy as is the belief in a democratic system as the system we should strive to improve and implement for our benefit. That just baffles me.  


I apologize for my off topic post but I was very concerned with Mike for a long time now and I just couldn't hold it back anymore and had to get it off my chest. I just can't help it but psychopathic statists scare me.

I didn't even read the paper but I already know I'd mostly likely agree with the above poster. (well except with the very last sentence  )

Mike Hearn I appreciate your coding work but man do I hope you never end up in any position of influence or decision making because your convoluted worldviews actually scare me. I can't even understand how a coder, working with logic and math everyday, can fall victim to such an obvious and blatant fallacy as is the belief in a democratic system as the system we should strive to improve and implement for our benefit. That just baffles me.  

I've seen many of your posts and I'm aware you're a libertarian. So, I wonder (honestly, this is not an irony), why do you think representative democracy is less worse than a more direct one?
Because that's the whole point of this discussion AFAICT.

I have a tendency in believing the more direct a democracy is, the less susceptible to the "dispersed costs, concentrated benefits" problem it is. Plus, I tend to think that people in general accept more easily the idea that secession is a right than professional politicians whose power and earnings only increase with larger governments. Professional politicians view secession as a problem, since it decrease their revenues and power, but people in general tend to accept it as a right, after all, the whole myth of democracy turns around the nonexistent "social contract".
A government which recognizes the secession right of individuals and of entire regions (while demanding that the new sovereign regions also recognizes the same right) would almost be a voluntary organization (assuming we could "forget" its past actions, how it was formed etc).

I didn't even read the paper but I already know I'd mostly likely agree with the above poster. (well except with the very last sentence  )

Mike Hearn I appreciate your coding work but man do I hope you never end up in any position of influence or decision making because your convoluted worldviews actually scare me. I can't even understand how a coder, working with logic and math everyday, can fall victim to such an obvious and blatant fallacy as is the belief in a democratic system as the system we should strive to improve and implement for our benefit. That just baffles me.  

I've seen many of your posts and I'm aware you're a libertarian. So, I wonder (honestly, this is not an irony), why do you think representative democracy is less worse than a more direct one?

The reason is exceptionally simple: I do not agree to being governed by anyone without my contractually arranged explicit consent and so I do not and ever will agree to voting. The whole concept to me is repugnant and I could never understand how anyone could think they may force me or anyone else to do something or follow some rules just because they took a vote and some majority of some people somewhere voted so.

The reason is exceptionally simple: I do not agree to being governed by anyone without my contractually arranged explicit consent and so I do not and ever will agree to voting. The whole concept to me is repugnant and I could never understand how anyone could think they may force me or anyone else to do something or follow some rules just because they took a vote and some majority of some people somewhere voted so.

Sigh....

You didn't answer my question. I did not ask whether you think scenarios A and B are "fair", "ethical" or whatever. I asked why do you think one scenario is less worse than the other.

These are the off-topic posts so far. I'll delete those of mine from the Trezor thread. It would be nice if the authors of the other posts quoted here do the same.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-16/russia-says-world-is-nearing-currency-war-as-europe-joins

The amount of economic ignorance is impressive.

Guess we should be happy - if such "war" really intensifies, more people might give Bitcoin a chance. If anything, we'll at least manage to retain part of our purchasing power simply by having less fiat.

Please correct me on what I"m wrong.

AFAICT, a mining pool assembles a block, generate its header, and give the header to its workers. The workers will try to calculate a hash for that header that beats the current share difficulty by changing the value of the nonce. Whenever the nonce is exhausted, they attempt a different block. Pools may change the block header as much as they like simply by generating a new address for coinbase, they don't depend on waiting for new transactions nor rearranging them.

The nonce is only 32 bits long. We can assume that ASIC devices will be able to calculate 2³² hashes very quickly.

Wouldn't that mean too much upload bandwith will be required from pools? Not to mention the capacity to generate lots of different headers quite fast.

I confess I'm quite ignorant on mining since I don't mine myself, so it's quite possible that this problem is already solved, and I'm not aware about it.

For example, do pools allow their workers to change the header themselves, by rearranging part of the transactions for example? That would increase the size of individual messages sent because at least some transactions plus Merkle branches would need to be sent back and forth, but it could certainly decrease the frequency that the worker needs to get new work from the pool. It could decrease the required bandwidth after all...

I was discussing Bitcoin with some geek colleagues today during lunch, and one made a question to which I'd like to verify the answer.

He asked what would happen if somebody send some coins to an address A which I control, but the script to spend this output cannot be executed by me, so I can't actually spend that money (he was trying to imagine a scam in which you claim to have made a payment, the receiver verifies the payment, but then with the use of script you send the money back to yourself).

I answered that what would probably happen is that bitcoind (and I hope every other client) would not consider that the money is in your wallet. If you're not capable of spending it, it's not yours, even if your address is in the outputs of the tx.

That's correct... right?

Can I assume that every time that my client does not immediately recognizes the script that was attached to the output, it considers that the money is not mine, even if the script in question actually allows me to spend that money? (imagine it's a any-of-2 multisig, for instance)?

Thanks.

What do you think about adding an attribute in bitcoin URIs that would allow the recipient to specify how much s/he wants to pay as transaction fee to miners?

If you observe most successful means of payment (credit cards, paypal etc), transaction fees are always embedded in the price of stuff we buy. They are never visible to the costumer. That's much more appealing than letting the costumer know that s/he's paying a fee - even worse if it's up to the costumer to decide how much to leave as fee. They simply don't want to care about it, they care about the final price. Plus, in the case of bitcoin particularly, it's normally the receiver who's more interested in having the transaction confirmed faster.

I know that merchants may always add a second transaction whose inputs will be linked to the output of the feeless transaction, but that generates more data to be included in the chain - and consequently the merchant might have to spend slightly more in fees.

It would be nice if merchants could simply add a parameter in the bitcoin URI specifying the amount they want to send as fee. Then, the costumer's client would recognize it, construct a transaction that would contain the correct outputs and the fee requested, but, when asking confirmation to the user, would show the total amount (merchant output + fee). The costumer would just see how much s/he's spending, without having to care how much goes to the merchant and how much go to miners. Actually, they wouldn't even need to know what the heck is a "bitcoin miner" and why should they be sending money to these miners.

What do you think?

"Visa uses bribery, blackmail and fear to win contracts."

http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/this-is-how-visa-works

I've recently been challenged with this "criticism", "all cryptography is breakable, it's just a matter of time", and thus concluding that bitcoin is not safe.

I'm pretty confident that the odds of a fatal flaw in algorithms so established like ECDSA or SHA-256 are so tiny that we should not even bother.
I wonder though if somebody here has some data that could help me hold such claim.

For example, what was the worst case of "broken cryptographic algorithm"? By "worst" I mean which took the longest to happen and/or affected the largest number of people who were already trusting the algorithm.
Has any fatal flaw ever been found in an algorithm as old (at the time the flaw was discovered, of course) as ECDSA for example? It's a bit clear to me that the longer an algorithm resists to professional scrutiny, the less likely it is to have a flaw. But having some numbers would probably help.

Thanks!

Hello,

Can someone please point me to the full criteria set used by Satoshi client to calculate whether a transaction should have a "mandatory" fee?
Initially I thought it was only transaction size in bytes and the amounts in outputs ("dust"), as said here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees#Minimum_transaction_fees

But apparently that's not all. A friend of mine was testing some bitcoins transfers. He received 1 BTC. He tried to send that 1 BTC to another address. It went, no fees required. Then he tried to send it again to another address. The client required him a fee. He canceled, and some days after tried again, and then it passed without requiring fees.
So, well, data size and output amounts are not the only criteria... what are the others?

Thanks!

[deux billets]

J'ai deux billets pour le concert de Metallica à ce weekend au stade de France.
À cause des raisons personnelles je ne pourrais pas y être, donc je met ces billets à vente.

16 BTC ou 65€ chaque. C'est moins cher que ce que j'ai payé. Les billets sont pour la catégorie 3: http://partenaires.ticketnet.fr/assets/ctx/ticketnet-1/static/images/plans/m_251259.gif

Les billets se trouvent à Paris, avec un ami à moi qui y habite et qui va au concert. Je vous met en contact si vous l’achetez.

Si vous êtes intéressé, contactez-moi vite, vu que le concert est ce samedi!

Merci,
Tiago.

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/1052730-cibercrime-atinge-32-das-empresas-no-pais-diz-pesquisa.shtml

O cibercrime foi a segunda modalidade de crime econômico mais incidente entre empresas em 2011 no país, apontou pesquisa bianual da PwC. Os delitos vão desde o roubo de dados de cartão de crédito até a violação da base de dados on-line de empresas.

Entre as 115 companhias ouvidas, 32% disseram ter sido vítimas de ataques digitais --em 2009, esse tipo de crime sequer era citado. O líder continua sendo o roubo de ativos, citado por 68% das empresas. Crimes digitais desbancaram corrupção e suborno.

Fernando Cevallos, gerente sênior de serviço forense da PwC, afirma que as cifras do comércio eletrônico brasileiro chamam a atenção de criminosos. "A tendência do fraudador é ver a vantagem que eles podem ter." O e-bit, consultoria que audita transações na web, previa movimentação de R$ 18,7 bilhões no ano passado, alta de 26% em relação a 2010.

Embora a incidência de cibercrimes seja alta, 51% dos ouvidos afirmam que suas empresas ainda não adotaram procedimentos de segurança ou implantaram métodos de proteção informal.

Apesar de a imagem arranhada ser a maior preocupação das vítimas (63%), as afetadas relatam prejuízos financeiros nada modestos: 8% perderam mais de US$ 5 milhões; 5% arcaram com rombo entre US$ 100 milhões e US$ 1 bilhão.

Só um pequeno alerta aos que pensam em desenvolver negócios relacionados a bitcoin: não estejam entre esses 51% que não adotam devidos procedimentos de segurança, lembrem-se que transferências bitcoins são irreversíveis!

Have you seen this?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/2322213/998-security-for-real-world-public-keys

Thankfully to us Satoshi did not choose RSA for the private/public key algorithm of bitcoin!

This is important nevertheless. Ok, 2 per thousand is statistically very low, but the fact that all these vulnerable keys can be gathered by any skilled enough attacker is quite troubling.


I wonder how fast would the bitcoin development team be able to work out an algorithm migration if a similarly dangerous vulnerability were to be found on ECDSA or SHA-256 (these are the algorithms used for public/private key and hashing in bitcoin, respectively, right?)

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/multimidia/podcasts/930928-ronaldo-lemos-moeda-virtual-permite-anonimato-na-rede.shtml

Have you seen this?
http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/03/utah-passes-constitutional-tender-act/

Quite interesting and promising.
BitcoinUSA is in Utah, isn't it? Will its owner consider making gold/silver exchanges for BTC as well?

Hello,

Some guy I don't know sent me this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4-D0AVVPKw

It basically talks about how this barter network progressed after the meltdown in 2008. But what called my attention is the last part of it, where the news anchor says that The Barter Network provides legal advice, and even IRS forms, for those willing to work with bartering.

Somebody interested in running a legal bitcoin business in US may try to contact them. As bitcoin is not official money, I suppose the same laws that applies to bartering applies to bitcoins.

If you happen to do it, consider compiling a basic "instruction-guide" for others to follow and post here in the forum.