I am glad to announce that november 3rd we have opened a bitcoin embassy in tel-aviv, Ahuzat bayit 1, at street level, right infront of the new israeli stock exchange building.
You can see our landing page www.bitembassy.org and Facebook:https: www.facebook.com/pages/Bitcoin-emBassy-שגרירות-ביטקוין/598594583521066
We have since been been building the place up, figuring out what an 'embassy' should be doing...
Lot's of people come around every day, and there are 3-5 permenant members of the community that come daily and work from the embassy while manning it, plus there is a gallery floor we rent out to a bitcoin startup, and they also keep the place alive.

We have walkins, satoshi square meetings, wallet instructions, developer nights, and we are working to make a bitcoin innovation lab close by. We sell cafe and stuff for bitcoin only (all going towards donations for the community), also hope to install a lamasu ATM we ordered (and should arrive febuary)

The embassy is a non-profit, i am funding it at the moment, but we have much help from the community including the israeli bitcoin association and we hope to make it sustainable within a year

I am glad to announce that november 3rd we have opened a bitcoin embassy in tel-aviv, Ahuzat bayit 1, at street level, right infront of the new israeli stock exchange building.
You can see our landing page www.bitembassy.org
We have since been been building the place up, figuring out what an 'embassy' should be doing...
Lot's of people come around every day, and there are 3-5 permenant members of the community that come daily and work from the embassy while manning it, plus there is a gallery floor we rent out to a bitcoin startup, and they also keep the place alive.

We have walkins, satoshi square meetings, wallet instructions, developer nights, and we are working to make a bitcoin innovation lab close by. We sell cafe and stuff for bitcoin only (all going towards donations for the community), also hope to install a lamasu ATM we ordered (and should arrive febuary)

The embassy is a non-profit, i am funding it at the moment, but we have much help from the community including the israeli bitcoin association and we hope to make it sustainable within a year

[at some point in time transaction fees will amount to the major part of block rewards.]

right now with the rise of ASIC miners the 'voting' power of which version of the protocol is run is in the hands of larger and fewer miners.
this reduces the decentralized effect of bitcoin.

we must also take into account that the set 'block reward' is getting smaller with time, halving every 4 years.
as the network scales up more % of the total block reward is going to come from transaction fees.
at some point in time transaction fees will amount to the major part of block rewards.

question: if i pay a fee for my transaction, can the protocol limit who is capable to mine this transaction and collect the fees with his block rewards [ for example only a miner running the same or lower version of bitcoin] ?

having such a function will assure that in time, when the system is matures enough, market laws will allow voting to return to the users.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

hi,
i am not american and i don't know the system, so help me understand:

as i understand Liberty Reserve is under legal Attack of the FinCen.
this attack will produce many rulings that will be the base of the court's attitude towards Digital/Virtual currency.
this might go all the way to supreme court and force the supreme court to decide important decisions regarding the balance between freedom and the dangers of AML and such.
but i dare guess that the case of Liberty Reserve is not very compelling to rule towards freedom... so in a few years there will be precedents that the FinCen and the regulator will be able to use to make things harder on bitcoin?

hi, i don't understand much about mining, but i wanted to understand this:
if one has a big farm [mining facility], can one use it more efficiently to mine more bitcoins with the same hash rate?
could the work of calculating the nonce [with same bitcoin address] be divided by the available cpu/gpu/fpga/asic and allow less overlay [meaning less chips doing the same work but actually more chips working together] is there a limit to how more efficient a combined mining facility can be over decentralized mining?

שלום כולם,
למי שמעוניין לקרוא וללמוד בעברית על נושאים שנוגעים לביטקוין, לדעת מה חדש, מה קורה...
בלוג חדש שפתחתי, יש שם קצת חומר ואפילו כמה קישורים כללים.
מוזמנים לקרוא ולעקוב.
http://mababit.wordpress.com   ----   מה-בביט

[it is possible to imprint the blockchain itself with the BitCoin Concept]

This post comes with the ever growing concern i share with many members of this community that the original and pure intent that we ascribe to bitcoin will somehow fade away and be robbed by governments and big organisations.
regardless if it might or might not be unavoidable i want to bring up an idea:

same as the people who printed the first dollar bills and coins inscribed  'IN GOD WE TRUST' as a motto for the united states and it's beliefs at the time or casascuis physical bitcoins are inscribed with 'VIRES IN NUMERIS'  it is possible to imprint the blockchain itself with the BitCoin Concept.

as the blockchain can and does contain data that is not purely mathematical and is not only related to the transactions and the public ledger, how about trying to draft in a very minimallistic way the principal and goals of bitcoin [for ex. the way it is described in Satoshi's whitepaper http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf] so it will stay in the blockchain forever?

[Human exchanges]

here's an Idea.

In order to enable common use of bitcoin as currency I prepose a new barter concept.
Human exchanges.
As many people today carry smartphones with them it is possible to transfer bitcoins between two parties without much hassle, It is also possible to geotag one's location.
My proposition is an app that enables a person that needs to pay for a service to locate people who are ready to 'exchange' bitcoins in return for paying for that service [plus exchange fee].
The app could scan the location for potential 'exchangers' and their 'fee' and allow the person to contact the potential 'exchanger' in person. From that point one transfers bitcoins and the other pays for the service with cash, creditcard or any other method of payment.
Of course if both parties trust each other there is an option for 'distant exchange' which allows a person to pay via phone and credit card and receive bitcoins plus fee from trusted party.

For example. I eat in a restaurant, while eating i ask the app to search for a 'human exchange' willing to pay for my meal in the sum of 50$, the app scans my immediate surroundings for matches, it finds a couple of options  of people ready to pay 50$ for x mbitcoins [fee included], i choose the better option and press connect. That person is then sent a message to confirm his ability to come and facilitate the exchange. We meet and say hi, the app allows him to receive the bitcoin as he pays for the meal. We say goodbye and go our way.

So, maybe I am a missing something here but how come nobody generates an existing Private key [by chance/mistake] and gets access to an existing wallet?
i know it's a one in a zillion chance [or even less] but even so,
 does it not make it a little less safe?
and the more people use bitcoins and more wallets and keys they use, does this chance not grow?