Hey everyone,

Simple question:

Is there a way to make a Raw Public Key from a Bitcoin Address.

The Raw Public Key is used to make a Lockbox but I can't find a conversion tool anywhere to do it without using Armory itself. All I can find are ways to create the Hash 160. The reason I am asking is that I am wondering if it's possible for anyone to create a Lockbox for two different people with only their public keys in Base58.

And thank-you for such a great open source product. 

Ghash.io, Cex.io Coindesk, Bitcoin Foundation all under one very exclusive roof in Canary Wharf, the financial fraud capital in the world. At £720 per ticket for entrepreneurs this is an interesting approach to a decentralised network that empowers the individual.

How very posh

If you don't know Canary Wharf, it's rather like Dubai without the weather.

So if you have something to say you can watch the content for free on their Livestream and have your say on Twitter #Coinsummit (I believe they have the hashtag up on their big screen at the venue).

I am watching it now, if I get significantly annoyed by the elitism I may be moved to do a show on World Crypto Network and I would be keen to get any insight from you guys here. Are events like this harmful or do you think it's just a load of old money trying to stay relevant?

We will be having a panel debate on the recent hacks and setbacks for Bitcoin. We are planning a live Youtube linkup with New York to talk to Kristov Atlas and Josh Walker.

Check for details: http://www.meetup.com/London-bitcoin-meetup/events/172326872/

Update 4th April: We now have almost 200 people signed up!

[free space London's O2]

I'd really like to get everyone's feedback on something. I have managed to get some free space London's O2 which is a huge venue and a bit of a coup. I know I am insane and have thrown myself in waaay too far at the wrong side of the pool but I'm doing it anyway and want to get people here involved.

This is what the venue looks like on the inside:

It has a 16x9 foot screen behind it as well on which I plan to place Mr Antonopoulos : )

The concept

A live adversarial debate on the state of Bitcoin following the hacks on its ecosystem. Here are some initial thoughts:

The issue I want to address is that while Satoshi got the protocol locked down pretty tight his innovation didn't allow for human error. It's all very well having a really secure piece of software but if exchanges etc have sloppy code then it is all undermined.

Trowing technology at some of the problems we face is not going to make them go away. Is Bitcoin just a redistribution of wealth from one group of people to another?

Code is the new law. Are coders the right people to be deciding what's right and what should be legislated?

Barclays have PingIt and there are many other emerging p2p payment networks so is Bitcoin even necessary as a standalone currency? Why can't the banking system simply integrate Bitcoins open source code in to their existing infrastructure?

I do not hold these views myself, I just want to address them as I hear them being raised by critics and think they need exploration.

Andreas Antonopoulos and I will be taking part, Max Keiser will be appearing later in the evening but have asked if he can attend earlier. I even have received interest from Barclays and Lloyds to take part in the debate.

I want your ideas, suggestions and questions that you would like to see addressed. I can select key questions from this thread and raise them on the day.

EDIT 27/3: Speakers for the panel are now confirmed and 110 people already signed up

EDIT 22/3: Andreas has had to cancel along with some other speaking arrangements https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/447102361815617536

Am working hard now on finding a replacement, any ideas/help are welcome.

[Featuring Max Keiser]

Hello friends,

I am here to tell you about an event I am helping to organise that grew out of London Bitcoin Meetup. Patrick and Matt came up to me and asked me what I thought about the idea of Kickboxing event in which the winner would receive Bitcoin? Well one thing led to another and yesterday we met with Max Keiser and he agreed to get on board and join us as a special guest on the night.

Featuring Max Keiser

Max Keiser will be presenting the championship belt and the Bitcoins to the winner and we need you to help us make this the biggest Bitcoin event of all time. The venue has a capacity of 1,700 seats ranging from Balcony seats to ring side tables.

Buy from the venue O2 Box Office
Or
Buy in Bitcoin and back us at StartJoin

We are a 3 man startup and are borrowing quite a bit of money to make this happen so with your support we'd love to finish the evening up by announcing the next event in the summer which will be a Heavyweight category. You can follow us on Twitter for more details where we will be giving away free tickets and special offer discounts for Bitcoin purchases.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #22]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #22
Tuesday 4^th March 2014

One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Feathercoin Key Stats
321 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 35,300,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 14.67 days behind target generation rate

Bitcoin isn’t just an opportunity, it’s an obligation. The biggest threat we face isn’t fraud, it’s the unwillingness of good people to question their previous assumptions and search themselves for their true values. In many ways frauds act to keep us honest because money isn’t just a tool we use to get our needs met, it’s a site that brings together both honest and dishonest intentions.

Last week I felt compelled to comment on what was going on a Gox so Thomas (MadBitcoins) and I made some videos in response to the enormous amount of FUD and confusion surrounding the story. I apologise for not being able to bring you the newsletter as normal but I felt that there was an urgent situation that needed addressing.

And so now it’s over to you. The team at Feathercoin have decided that we would like you to write the Newsletters in the future as a collaborative effort. I will be on hand to write any content for the intros and TL;DRs but I will have no more say over the direction than anyone else. We feel it would be good to hand over the body of the News to the people in the community and it could give you the chance to get noticed and discover your voice.

One of the things I have tried to do with this Newsletter is to use it as a platform for all the hard working people who make Feathercoin what it is today. I think having a platform comes with a duty to help serve others so that they can see how they can help each other. I would like to see this Newsletter continue to shine a light on the people who perhaps aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
 

Oxford Meetup #4
by @Uncle_Muddy

We has a meetup at the Oxford Blue, the local Feathercoin watering hole. It was a good evening for all who turned up with several members from the Oxford Crypto Group arriving to the meet as well. All members of crypto are welcome to attend so please do not think this event is for Feathercoiners only. There was a lot of discussion over the merits of Dogecoin and the disaster that is MtGox.
 

Back to the Oxford Blue

As you will know we as a community have been working together to raise funds for Prostate Cancer UK, and with your help we smashed our original target of 3,000 FTC and have set our sights on doubling that goal. Again I would like to say thank you on both behalf of Prostate Cancer UK and the Feathercoin Community. Some of these funds were raised through a raffle which was drawn at the Oxford Blue, congratulations to all the winners.
 

A massive thank you has to go to the following people for donating prizes:

• Netnerd[/*]
  
• MTRinser[/*]
  
• Matl[/*]
  
• HopeStillFlies[/*]
  

And whilst I have Netnerd in my mind he brought along a few of his new Gold Edition cold wallet coins and they look fantastic! Complete with Certificate of Authenticity, to show where in the limited edition run of 100 your coin is. These unloaded, DIY cold storage wallet coins will soon be available on the Feathercoin Market for purchase.  

Gold Edition Coin

Warwick University Talk

by ChrisJ

Last Thursday I had the pleasure to attend Warwick University's Economics Society on a debate entitled The Future of Finance. I was expecting to met with skepticism as I was the only person there representing a crypto currency but to my pleasant surprise everyone was very curious to learn more with some of the students already mining!
 

The students or as I like to call them The Future

This talk made me realise something. The real battle ground isn't about winning over governments or pandering to regulators. A Cryptocurrency is already regulated in the code. The code is the law. The real battle ground is with the young as they are the ones who are going to inherit the system we leave them with.

The real battle lies outside of these chatrooms and forums, it's out there in towns and cities all over the world, it's with the people on the fringes.

My plan for the future is to spend more time pounding pavement and meeting people; there is plenty of awareness about Bitcoin but not very much understanding. This Friday I will be at Hull City Council to talk about how their local needs can be supported the power this technology provides and I would really appreciate your support.
 

Feathercoin 0.8.6
@Bushstar

Feathercoin has now been updated to 0.8.6 which fixes a bug experienced by some Mac users and other fixes included in Bitcoin 0.8.6. We are also including some of the excellent features that have been included in Bitcoin OMG. These include Disable Wallet Mode which allows you to run the client without a wallet attached and Coin Control so you can specify where the funds come from when sending and where the "change" should go. More control for the users is always a good thing.
 

Coin control gives you more choice over how your funds are moved in the wallet

To update to Feathercoin 0.8.6 please head over to the download section at the Feathercoin website. This includes the Windows, Mac, Linux wallets and a link to GitHub for those who want to compile their own.
 

MtGox
by @motherlode1

The MtGox fiasco has left the Crypto community shocked and confused. The exchange that started it all turned around and abandoned us. Not something anyone would have foreseen. Some members of the community are rethinking their stance on Crypto and one can’t blame them for it. A lot of them have potentially lost a fortune. Add to that all the other incidents that have happened, anyone would have second thoughts. These are truly trying times for us.Those of us who were not invested in Gox can only offer our sympathy.
 

Our @ChrisJ is now a regular on the Bitcoin Group and the new World Crypto Network

We are limited by what we have and who we are but that does not mean we cannot push ourselves further. Bitcoin is not just an amazing piece of software, it’s more than that. It’s an ideology that has brought like-minded individuals together, it’s an ideology that has spurned the growth of start-ups, and it’s an ideology that has given us what we lost during the industrial revolution. It has given us control over our financial future and given us the freedom of choice. And it is our duty to ensure that this piece of software lives on.

To those who are having second thoughts about Bitcoin or feel that it may not survive. I want to borrow some lines From Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”.

“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Take from this what you will.
 

Feathercoin ATM
by @Bushstar

UncleMuddy our resident engineer has taken a thread started by Kevlar and turned it into a working ATM. This is excellent work and shows the talent in our community. This ATM should début at the next Feathercoin meet in Oxford where we can buy preloaded private keys for English pounds. If you want to know more you can contact Uncle Muddy over at the Feathercoin forum.

[img=https://forum.feathercoin.com/uploads/monthly_03_2014/post-1-0-50376600-1393848424.png]

Working Feathercoin ATM. The private key is dummy data so no need to try and scan it, I already did!

New Team Members
by @Bushstar

Please welcome to the Feathercoin team Uncle Muddy, Netnerd, MrWyrm, Draco and motherlode1. Uncle Muddy is the chap responsible for the ATM above and last weeks unofficial newsletter, you will have seen him on the stream from the Oxford Blue if you watched it, I put him on the spot by getting him to do it. He did great so do not let him say otherwise. Netnerd is a very active member of the community who has been producing physical Feathercoin wallets like the gold one pictured in the newsletter above. motherlode1 has been doing an excellent job running the Feathercoin Reddit community and has a critical mind to apply to Feathercoin. By popular demand MrWyrm has been added to the team, he is level-headed in times of chaos and we appreciate his high levels of sanity. Draco bring in years of marketing and promotional experience and plans to work in areas of general marketing, merchant adoption, brand recognition and organising charity events.
 

TL;DR
by @ChrisJ

Communities form around a common need and it's important to remember that fraud isn't something that happens somewhere else, it's a threat that everyone needs to aware of. MtGox provides us with an opportunity to show the world how to respond to dishonest behaviour in the financial system.

We have suffered many economic crises in the past but for the first time in history the people have the tools they need to fix it for themselves and take back control. If you work for someone who creates a climate of fear you have an obligation

You can find the last official newsletter here: Everything Points Towards Success. Today special thanks go to Uncle Muddy, Motherlode1 and Ruthie for their contributions to this newsletter.
 
You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.
 
Thank-you for your time.

http://youtu.be/1mWkY5yIAnc

Thanks, we can take some questions later on Youtube

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #21]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #21
Tuesday 18^th February 2014

Everything Points Towards Success

Feathercoin Key Stats
307 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 33,700,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

Or is it every-one? Nothing is just everything without direction and greatness cannot be achieved until we learn to love what it is we do. Today we show the power of execution.

This week we would like you to join us on our new website...

Read More

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #20]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #20
Tuesday 11^th February 2014

"Change Before You Have To"
~Jack Welch

Feathercoin Key Stats
300 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 32,900,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

Passion without purpose turns in on itself. And passion isn't really a choice because suffering is not an option in life. Having too much of what is valuable to others has a tendency to corrupt when there is no clear direction of travel that accords with the underlying values we hold.

Our purpose at Feathercoin is to learn from the mistakes of the past so that we can have a future worth living for. It is our assumption that the reason the world got in this financial mess is because the people got lazy and outsourced their wealth to a small group who formed an industry without those underlying values and whose only purpose was to grow without any regard as to why.

We refused to understand the complexity of their financial instruments, we looked the other way while they gained huge cash sums on deposit that they had immediate access to leaving the rest of us with nothing but pixels on a screen showing numbers with nothing to support them.

Yes, we all know that if we turned up at the ATM tomorrow and tried to withdraw our hard earned cash we would soon realise the truth; that our time (the non refundable stuff) has been wasted, that all along we were working for someone else. So instead we choose denial. But denial is hard work because to stay there you have to know what the truth is; otherwise it's not denial is ignorance.

The people at the top may force us to look at history, it's our responsibility not to ignore it. Our purpose is to educate and inspire people to understand the underlying technology so that we never have to repeat this sorry episode in the human story again. You never really understand something until you own it.

Prostate Cancer UK

That's right and part of the story means honouring the origin of the word Currency which comes from the latin word currens to mean flow. But John Locke had more in mind than that back in 1699, the meaning of currency embraces the idea of extending the present in to the future. Having control of currency gives us the power in the present to communicate what is important to us, to help those around us and to have some impact.

Check out the neat banner by @Severino which we hope will be included on the Prostate Cancer website

Thanks must go to @Uncle_Muddy for putting in the time. He even got a response from Prostate Cancer UK who said:

Thank you also for this very unique opportunity.  I must admit that I have not heard of Feathercoin, but it sounds very interesting and your fundraising efforts would be the first of its kind for us.

I have passed your details to our digital team as I am sure that they would like to feature this initiative.

That's wonderful. You can read it in full here.

How Can I Donate?

You can make a donation by sending your Feathers to the below address or scan the QR code

6eshhwBr7W8ynbFobDyoMD5zPK9F5E5ghP

See the Raffle Page here where you can claim your ticket.

Hey, how embarrassing would it be if we didn't reach our target and I had to announce that?

Target is 3,000 FTC. That's 4.45 Feathercoins for each person who read this newsletter last week on the forum. If there's anything we can do to help you open up your wallets and give to this worthy cause please let us know.

There are also more prizes as well like this Will Work for Feathercoin T-Shirt donated by @MTrisner.

Nice!

Also big thanks to @Matl for donating 100 FTC for the 6th and 7th prizes. Who knows more on the way.

Coinfest

This Saturday it's Coinfest and Feathercoin will be there. I am also hoping to do a Youtube Livestream, details to be arranged, and I will be talking to people live around the world.

Let's distribute it : )

@motherlode1 aka Norman has made us proud sponsors of the Coinfest who now take Feathercoin as payment. We are planning on doing a Giveaway for anyone in Vancouver using Michael Harrison's Feathertipper who is able to meet Norman at the stall. We have had some banners made and will hopefully have some miners on show. If you are from Canada and would like to attend or help Norman out please get in contact with him. I am happy to take requests.

Feathercoin on Windows Phone

We were joined recently by Joel who works at Microsoft in Richmond on the upper left hand side of the USA. He came to tell us about the CoinBank Wallet for the Windows phone.

I am loving the Feather in the background

Right now the app is available for beta testers from the Windows Phone Website. Quoting from the site:

[It's] a simple multi-crypto currency storage tool with Live Tile support for use as a replacement for "paper wallets"

I love that it can import private keys. This is a feature that needs to be implemented in the QT Wallet as well which I have put in a request for as Paper Wallets are by far the safest method of crypto storage when done right.

It's Something Kids Can Do

And finally, we all remember the famous words of Mark from our video back in the summer. Crypto currency is something kids can do and that is exactly what @new2crypto is discovering right now by turning that statement in to an experimental question of microeconomics by paying his kids pocket money in Feathercoins.

@new2crypto, real name Mark, says his kids love it. He looks after their coins on his phone but rewards them for chores. His son James who is 4 has 15 FTC and Zara, 6, has her own wallet and plans to convert her FTC so she can play arcade games on their next family holiday. She is even taking an interest in the market volatility; well that's the retirement fund sorted out.

I think getting this technology in to the hands of kids is a vital part to the adoption. What are the feds going to do, lock up a bunch of a 11 year olds?

TL;DR

Those who do not learn from the past don't have a future. Goals are not destinations they are starting points we move to in order to discover new opportunities in our lives.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Change Before You Have To Pt1 Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #19]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #19
Tuesday 4^th February 2014

"Change Before You Have To"
~Jack Welch

Feathercoin Key Stats
294 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 32,100,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

The more we change the more resistant we are to manipulation. Today's news is sponsored by the word enthusiasm. It comes from the Greek Enthusiastikos it means something like "the god within". Enthusiasm can be understood as a celebration upon discovering our own unique perspective on the truth; a discovery of what we are here to learn. And truth is the only commodity in any market that never loses its value. The more I think about it the more I have come to believe that having enthusiasm means realising our direction before the journey itself has begun.

And yes Dostoevsky may have been right, that 'everyone believes they have unique access to the truth' but what is remarkable is when we do our work, show it to the world and others join us to bring all the perspectives together.

We can't procrastinate over tasks that don't matter. If you're putting it off it's probably important. Movement is change and just starting with something, anything is often enough to get your moving. So let's go!

New Ways to Buy Feathercoin

Change is the new normal and I thought I would start by listing some new exchanges in addition to Bittylicious and BTCe. Here is a list:

Feathercoin Reddit Exchange
mentioned last week, buy Feathercoins peer-to-peer LocalBitcoin style using Reddit
Morrex
a 100% Canadian exchange
ZipZap
Buy Feathercoins for cash over the counter, this has been soft launched more info soon
Vault of Satoshi
a fantastic looking setup out of Canada

The vault of Satoshi have a great piece on their Philosophy page:

We are a fun spirited team of seasoned technology entrepreneurs who get excited about making changes that matter. One thing we all have in common is that we all care deeply about creating positive change in this world. We know what doesn’t work in our society and are eager to support new ideas that evolve us as a collective.

Now that's a mission. I haven't spoken to them yet but it's definitely high up on my list. So please spread the word, tell 3 of your friends about Feathercoin and show them these ways of buying. If there are any other new places that accept Feathercoin please let us know and we will add them here.

List of Scrypt ASIC Miners

@Chirale came to see us at the last meetup in Oxford and we had a great time. He has been kind enough to start a thread keeping people up to date on the progress of the ASIC companies; their shipping times; hashrates; links to their websites and announcement threads. Good effort and very helpful indeed.

One of the most helpful posts ever

Multicoin.eu

I got an enthusiastic PM from @prensel telling me all about his project called Multicoin.eu. I don't know much about mining but it comes with something called a JSON Output whoever he is and this is what prenel had to say about his project:

Yes okay it features Dogecoin, alright Shibes?!

Every minute Multicoin.eu calculates the most profitable coin, yeah i know nothing new, but this one is a bit different...

The output on screen is also available in a json output http://multicoin.eu/json.php (for free, unlike at coinwarz where you have to pay for it).

On each of my miners i have a small script running invoking the json output and redirecting the cgminer to the most profitable or next best profitable p2pool server for that moment. It is similar like sites as multipool.us but instead of having to use their own server you can use p2pool servers with this system and you control which p2pool server for which coin. Easily configurable with a local json file. So you're not tied to a ddos'ed server or high fee server anymore and still have the advantage of automatically mining on the most profitable server.

There you go. You no longer need to be tied down to a ddos'ed server... I think we all know what that feels like. But seriously that's a cool project, please jump on and let us know how you get on with it.

Feathercoin Raffle

@Uncle_Muddy (aka Rob) is doing a raffle in support of the Prostate Cancer Charity. As you know we are big fans of organised giving around here and Rob has already successfully raised 400FTC in support. Before we go in to the prizes let's talk about why it's so important:

Prostate cancer kills one man every hour and the number of men with the disease is rising at an alarming rate. While it is already the most common cancer in men, it is predicted to become the most prevalent of all cancers by 2030.

1 Feathercoin = 1 Ticket, don't forget to let Rob know on the thread or via PM

That sounds like a pretty worthy cause to me. It also goes to another worthy cause which is showing the world how much we care and that we didn't just buy our Feathercoins to hold on to them and sell them for more later.

This is what is up for grabs:

1st Prize

Limited Edition Laser Etched Physical Feathercoin Wallet (0010-W1)

Pre-loaded with 55FTC!

2nd Prize

£ 50.00 or $ 50.00 worth of Amazon Gift Cards!

3rd & 4th Prize

3rd Prize Approx. 1.4Mh/s Mining for 5 days! (3rd – 7th March)

4th Prize Approx. 1.4Mh/s Mining for 5 days! (17th – 21st March)

Quite a few people have just donated without buying tickets.

The winners will be announced on the 22nd February in our favourite venue the Oxford Blue.

Coinfest

Representing Vancouver, Canada @motherlode1 (aka Norman) is working hard on getting Feathercoin in to ATMs and the Coinfest meetup. He says he needs to raise $200 for Feathercoin to get us a stall. We'd also be interested in hosting a Coinfest meetup here in the UK as well.

There's just too much going on with Norman for me to tell you about all the opportunities he wants to take up but I think a good start would be putting our support behind his efforts. Here is a brief summary Coinfest's mission has to offer:

Coinfest is a fun gathering for people of all kinds who are curious about Bitcoin. Here you can practice and learn about the revolutionary technology and concept behind new digital money.

Andreas and the NYC Hearings

Last week I had the great fortune and serendipity to join in with Thomas and Andreas while watching the New York regulators try and work out how they can leech off of Bitcoin. You can checkout the video here. The video features Christopher Franko of Frankocoin at the beginning and I come in around 2hrs48mins.

This facepalm went viral on Twitter during the hearings

A lot was discussed including how we could take something positive away from such a dreadful experience. The important thing for me was that we shouldn't give these parasites anymore attention than absolutely necessary. We got in to this mess in the first place because we saw fit to outsource our wealth management. Those people promptly developed a gambling addiction and are now showing us imaginary numbers (not the good kind) when they let us have guest access to our 'bank accounts'.

Following the discussion Andreas was kind enough to invite me to a group discussion over dinner before the official meetup. I had the pleasure to meet Nicolas Cary CEO of Blockchain.info; Kyle Drake of the powerful Coinpunk project which let's people run their own Bitcoin wallets; Gabriel Sukenik of Coinapult which lets people send their coins over SMS and email;

Artist's impression of the dinner

So I was super chuffed to be there. I did ask the restaurant if they still took British pounds and I did shame their staff after they refused to take Bitcoin. Sadly everyone paid in fiat and despite the table being full of computer scientists the bill did have to be split using a calculator!

After the dinner I was spoilt even more when I got to meet the lead dev of Etheruem, Erik Voorhees (well I got to see him from a distance) and finally got a meeting regarding that Bitcoin Design meetup I talked about a couple of weeks ago.

This guy is like my hero, he's brilliantly eloquent and inspiring. He did a quick fire Q&A, very improv

Andreas ended the evening with a fantastic performance. The whole place was packed out, in fact Paul announced on stage that the London Bitcoin meetup is now the largest Bitcoin group in the world. Rock on!

TL;DR

You know that niggling voice in the back of your mind that says "you're wasting your life, you're wasting your life". Well there's a Japanese word that I couldn't find on the internet but it describes someone who just does the right thing even if they really really don't want to because they know deep down that what lies the other side their effort is too important.

Make time.

You can find last week's newsletter here: The Trust Issue Today special thanks go to @Ruthie, for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #18]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #18
Tuesday 28^th January 2014

The Trust Issue

Feathercoin Key Stats
287 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 31,310,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

The only commodity that never loses its value in any market is the truth. People talk about virtual scarcity but easily forget that what's really scarce right now is trust.

When talking about the internet we often use the word virtual which comes from the word virtue. It means something like merit, high moral standards and has associations with courage and valour. The internet is what's important to us. It's an abundance of activities and objects listed in a randomly accessible way with the complete removal of space and almost all economic barriers. The only thing that guides us online is how much we care.

Just take a look at how much effort we go to in order to feel safe when relying on each other. Look at the data mining companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, there to track our actions, solicit data entry with fields covering our legal identities, habits and skills. Could it just be the excuse we need to contract with with each other?

Scrypt Cloud

One of the downsides to removing space as a feature of our world is that it's much easier to treat someone like an object when you can't look them in the eye. Sat behind a computer screen people look like objects and thinking of someone like this can often lead to treating them as one.

Back in December we saw @FTClover, real name Shane, join the forum, and for several months all seemed well, he was active, participating in discussion and suggesting ideas. Which is why when his project to launch a Cloud Mining company turned out to be a scam it came as such a shock to all of us.

If we want to improve the way we overcome the limitations of the physical laws first we have to be careful in creating the ones we make for ourselves. We need to set the rules of the community according to how we really are rather than the way we hope to be.

Ruthie's has laid out some guidelines and we welcome your input.

If you wish to trade / invest with a forum member consider this:

- The length of time they have been a member of the forum.

- The type of interaction they have had with forum Admin, Staff and Team.

- Do they have proof of their business working; if they have their own website address consider how long it has been running and whether their services have been used before.

- Check to see if they have any type of reputation else where ie bitcointalk forum / litecoin forum /

- Twitter / Reddit,  this is just a small example of where to look.
I ask you to be careful and always check before handing over any funds.

Kevlar has been working hard, having spoken to Shane he has suggested coming back with a report and a plan of action ahead.

Note that Kevlar has also kindly offered escrow services for future funding efforts.

The marketplace is full of temptations and this is a problem everyone should be worried about, we would not like to let this be a repeat of the way Tradefortress was handled over on Bitcointalk where everyone just forgot about it, leaving him to create a new identity and possibly do it again.

Reddit Exchange

The worst thing of all would be if we let what happened with FTClover spoil it for everyone else. So I am delighted to tell you about the Reddit Feathercoin Exchange!

Recently two people joined our forum, @Kinsi and @motherlode to tell us they were planning to launch a Local Bitcoins style exchange on Reddit where they were already moderators of one of the Feathercoin mining forums.

Kinsi says he has been coding for more than 4 years and is currently on an apprenticeship. He made this software to solve his own problem when he noticed that buying Feathercoins was so hard. I have been speaking with the guys on Skype for about a week now and would love to help them prove their product that is already delivered and working.

It launched yesterday and we want to do a call out for users to help bootstrap the project.

Our very own Local Bitcoins style exchange wonderfully put together by @Kinsi on Reddit using .NET

This is a great opportunity for professional day traders to set up a small business in distributing Feathercoins and investing in a reputation score that can put value back in to the community.

Please note @Kinsi's warning in the sidebar: do not put anymore coins on the exchange wallet than necessary. This is always a good idea for all types of exchanges. The software doesn't touch the fiat transaction, which is done using traditional methods such as bank transfer or paypal, but be careful of chargebacks. In the UK the Faster Payments using online banking have no chargeback facility.

If you are a Full Member on this forum but do not have a Reddit account which complies with the following rules please contact forum Staff. You will need:

• A verified email.
• At least 400 comment karma.
• At least 1000 combined karma(link+comment).
• An account that is at least 4 months old.

This is to keep the scammers out!

To get started make your way to the Wikipage where you will find a list of the shortcodes with handy buttons that help prepopulate the fields.

Have You Updated Your Feathercoin Wallet?

Checkout the new splash screen, now make sure you have updated by the 31st January!

Please upgrade your Feathercoin wallet now if you haven't already. It's more important than your tax return (British cultural reference!)

Download the Windows Wallet
Download the Mac Wallet
Download the Linux Wallet

Oxford Meetup

We had another great meetup in Oxford on Saturday. We had many new faces including a couple of guys, who we think made it all the way over from Holland to see us! It wasn't entirely clear but we were very grateful at any rate and we have taken their email so that we can talk to them more at length.

Make sure you have signed up to the Feathercoin Meetup Page and let us know if you would like to host one in your area.

Harriet (51:13) was unhappy because she was on camera without wearing any makup - which is fine because neither was I!

We also did one of our signature livestreams, and yes it was full of the usual chaos and gaffs but somehow it keeps you all intrigued so hopefully overtime I will get better at doing them. I was joined by my long time friend Harriet, who I dragged on to the camera. We often have long rambling conversations on the phone, putting the world to rights and I wanted to see if it worked on camera.

Apparently you liked it!

Talking to Dave (26:37) from Hull City Council about the potential of cryptocurrency as a solution for local government

We also had a great conversation with Hull City Council who were looking for some advice and guidance on how they could leverage cryptocurrencies at the local level as a way of helping the poorest members of our society. Since our conversation we have been invited up to Hull to sit and chat with them (without the stress of the cameras!). I really look forward to reporting back on this, I was over the moon at their initiative and they travelled such a long way to see us.

@Uncle_Muddy shows Bianca how to use Bittylicious

Bianca, the barmaid, was curious to know what all the fuss was about. She got a lesson in crypto from @Uncle_Muddy. Did you know she jumps out of aeroplanes for a living?

By the way watch out for Uncle_Muddy, he's got some big plans 

Also it was a joy to finally meet @Netnerd who was with us to show his limited edition physical coins:

Check it out, I got issue number 1 of 24!

These Laser Etched Feathercoins rock; not least because they look great; they're handmade; and with a few tweaks it will be possible for you to control the private key stored inside the coin. This is a common problem among many physical wallets, the manufacturer creates the key pair which means you never really know if you can trust them with your wealth.

Can't wait until the next one, which the Oxford Blue want to do next month.

Bits Be Trippin'

And finally. I cannot believe I left this out of last week's news letter! @BitsBeTrippin are a bunch of guys we love having around and they came on the forum not so long ago to tell us that the Feathercoin Logo features in their new promo video.

Not to mention one of their sponsors has made them a T-Shirts featuring Feathercoin alongside Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Checkout the funky Ts

The cool mining T-Shirts can be purchased on the Hollow Wear website although wearing one as you walk past the hundreds of CCTV cameras everyday will somewhat undermine the pseudonymity of cryptocurrency!

TL;DR

Parasites help us discover the people who work the hardest. They act as a signal that what lies beneath their surface must have a lot of value, else why would they be drawn to them in the first place?

Most people get hung up on Scammers and choose to get angry and I would like to propose an alternative way of framing the problem, because all the technology in the world will never overcome the human failings. Trustless systems don't make trust less important, if anything it makes it vital and I hope together we can hold Shane to account. I hope we can all learn something from the experience.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Stay Hungry Today special thanks go to @Ruthie, for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #17]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #17
Wednesday 22^nd January 2014

Stay Foolish

Feathercoin Key Stats
281 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 30,070,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

It's been a fun packed week of adventure and I am excited to bring you this special Wednesday edition of the newsletter. Super rare, one of its kind. You can't mine it with your fancy GPUs because it's made of an entirely different substance, the one that money can't buy that takes as its mode of production the human spirit and creativity - I'm referring to yours rather than mine .

We have had some people come to our forum asking about the price. Oh, the dreaded price. So I have put forward some suggestions which I think we could do here on a thread called Increase Feathercoins buy volume. Click any of the following links to take ownership of the problem:

• Improve the website
• Spend and earn your Feathercoins for real goods
• Get involved: if there's a problem you are the problem

Outside of our thoughts our relationships are all we really have. Listening to our thoughts, expressing our ideas to others brings about a struggle for resources and an continuos debate on which ideas should be executed and how they should be reached.

Silence won't save you because markets are conversations where people come together to get their needs met and their ideas understood. Let's get started...

London Bitcoin Meetup

Stock markets are a relatively new invention largely fuelled by the development on electronic communication and computation. Modern markets are a product of the modern technological era. But as markets rush in to ever more efficient modes of operation they leave behind something very important which is the connection people need to feel before they transact.

Bitcoin open outcry in Satoshi Square London was the central feature of Saturday's meetup. Each event Ian and the team puts on gets bigger and bigger with new people joining with every event to learn all about the world of crypto currency. Interestingly we don't see a drop off of past attendees. That is to say, once you go Crytpo you don't go back. It's non reversible oneway transaction.

Mt Gox? For 60 minutes London was upgraded in this old school Open Outcry market place

That's right, a Bitcoin market place with instant withdrawals that actually work as expected! Sure there were some latency issues in the order matching process but this neat little experiment proved that market making is not as important as peoples ability to transact in tangible and meaningful ways. Voices were raised, preferences were revealed and the forward pricing mechanism gave rise to the invisible hand.

Then, last night I had the pleasure of meeting with Mike Hearn of Bitcoinj fame.

That's a slide of Gavin on the right, burning his government money

@Kevlar was getting all fangirlish and apparently I had to go talk to Mike and report back but he was undergoing a human DDoS and I didn't really get the chance to say much. But what I can say is that I did have a very good meeting with someone from the London UX Design community, very prominent one, who has agreed to put on a Bitcoin Design meetup, stay tuned for more details.

Hacker's Choice

As you must know by now our famous forum was compromised by a hacker. There was much confusion and fear as everyone scrambled around looking for the answer to the question:

Is it a cat or a fox?

But it was Michael Harrison of FeatherTipper fame who finally saved the day by looking at the div and could conclusively confirm that it was in fact meant to be a cat and not a fox as many people had thought.

We are proud to be the hacker's choice of coin. Feathercoin may not be as attacked as Bitcoin is but we are proud to take second place. So we say thank-you to the hacker and if he/she/they are reading this (and I think they probably are) could they please do us some neat ASCI art like the cat one and I would gladly pay in Feathrcoins. We'd also like to know if you are available for hire for some other projects?

But on a serious note our biggest threats lie inside of us. Hackers are every bit a part of our enterprise as we are in that they co-exist with us. Just because they do not share in our goals does not mean they do not strengthen our ability to reach them. On the contrary people are only capable of growing through many short, intense shocks. But intensity is nothing compared to the longevity of dedication. Intensity looks like noise on a time horizon stretched out by a group of individuals on a mission.

Bush did a great job of painstakingly going through the code and getting the forum back up and running. It's a thankless task so please take the time to consider how much time and effort this guy puts in. Always here, always ready to respond.

Bitcoin Minus Bitcoin

Another guy you certainly can't keep down is @Kevlar. He is focussing on a new project called Bitcoin Minus Bitcoin designed to attract new developers to the Feathercoin project and crypto currency more broadly. The idea for the name comes from Garfield Minus Garfield a project that reveals the absurdity of our lives and the existential angst we face.

One of the ways Bitcoin Minus Bitcoin is going to achieve this is by making it easier for developers to build the code and make changes. Right now that process is long and involved and acts as a huge barrier to entry. We believe it should be much easier and no more difficult and complex than it needs to be. Over the next few weeks Kevlar aims to do 2 things:

• Provide a Github repository which contains all the dependencies, and scripts to automate building them all.
• A set of Visual Studio 2012 projects that is already configured with the dependencies which allows you to drop in your QT based wallet eg Bitcoin, Litecoin or Feathercoin. Compile it, make changes to it, run it on the debugger, do code analysis, and all the other great features that VS offers developers.

The job of the leader is to give everyone on the ground the tools they need to achieve their goals. True power is local, great leaders make new leaders and this is exactly the kind of project we need. Checkout the State of the Union for more details.

Website Redesign

Along with easier to use tools for development we also want people to know that we are a bunch of people who know how to look good. Style is substance. Knowing how to look good is in itself a form of knowledge. And one of the first things people to as a signal of quality is your website and your design ethic.

After a few months of reaching out to designers to put forward their ideas @Severino offered his input.

As mentioned in the State of the Union I cried real tears when I saw this design

Following comments Sev has also done a lighter themed version:

Which one do you prefer? Have your say on the Website Development Thread or forever hold your peace.

Rhett and Link video

You may have missed our appearance on Rhett and Link. @Bush is a big fan of the show and asked the guys to talk about Feathercoin. I loved the way they thread in a bit of education on what money really is and how it works, they really captured the essence of our movement.

Amid all the tumult we featured on Rhett and Link

It's exposure like this that helps us grow as it brings a self selected audience to the community with which it can grow.

Did you like the show, would you like to see more publicity like it? Send us your ideas.

TL;DR - The vision of a hero

An attack on existence provides an opportunity to survive. There have been questions about what people can do to help and here are my ideas again. Click any of the following links to take ownership of the problem:

• Improve the website
• Spend and earn your Feathercoins for real goods
• Get involved: if there's a problem you are the problem

Please reach out to me in private if you have ideas you are not ready to express in the forum. Likewise if you want to be featured in this newsletter like the people above drop me a line.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Stay Hungry Today special thanks go to @Ruthie & @Kevlar for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #16]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #16
Tuesday 14^th January 2014

Stay Hungry

Feathercoin Key Stats
273 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 29,800,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.8 days behind target generation rate

To be entrepreneurial means to anticipate demand. It means to empathise with others and to bring predictability to the uncertain environments they face. But conceptualising a solution to a problem and having the insight to find the way there isn't easy. I believe everyone has the ability to be entrepreneurial but some people have something the others don't.

Because it's not enough to simply want something, you have to keep wanting it over time and that is what separates the entrepreneurs from the wantrapreneurs. It's easy to get excited at the beginning of a project, full of hope and ambition. But waking up everyday wanting it more and more only comes with the devotion of the people on a mission and remember what's important.

You will need to stay hungry in this week's newsletter because Money Bags @ChekaZ is up to his old tricks again. There is some buried treasure in this newsletter and on the internet.
Treasure now claimed. Thanks to all those who took part.

Innovating Feathercoin

Being hungry means being hungry for something. To us that something is financial freedom and currency choice for everyone. Even if you are not a regular member of the forum we would like to invite you all to take part in our survey on what improvements you would like to see in the Feathercoin design. We are still young and feel we have come a long way already but it's important that we stay relevant and want to make our supporters proud.

One of our unique features is the way we do things. It's important to us that the people who hold our coins get some say over the direction of the coin itself. Even if those people don't have the expertise we believe the role of the expert is to give the public the appropriate range of decisions and education they need to make the right choices for them.

So take part in our survey. And feel free to add your own suggestions. At the moment they are:

• Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet (BIP32)
• Zerocoin - privacy by default
• Payment Protocol (BIP70)
• Increase Transaction Speeds
• Improvements to Blockchain Security beyond ACP

Our Next Meetup in Oxford

One thing we want to keep delivering is our face to face meetups. We will be at the Oxford Blue again on the 25th of January. Don't worry there won't be a film crew there this time, you can just chill out and have a drink with the Feathercoin devs. If there is demand for it we will even do one of our trademark livestreams.

We will be at our usual at the Oxford Blue on Saturday the 25th

Please sign up on our Meetup Page or feel free to surprise us! We'd love to meet you all.

Now the map is growing so fast there are rumours it's becoming self aware

If you would like to arrange a meetup in your area checkout Local Feathercoin and look to see if there are others in your town. You can find members on the Forum by going to the menu bar and selecting Members>Search For Members. Then reach out to Ruth or me, tell us about what you have planned in your area and we will add it to our official meetup page.

Feathercoin on Reddit

@motherlode1 would also like you to know that there are some Feathercoin Reddit forums which feature tips for mining, escrow services and monthly compeitions so please check them out:

http://www.reddit.com/r/fcfeathercoinmining ----> Feathercoin community
http://www.reddit.com/r/FeathercoinExchange ----> Feathercoin exchange

Crypto Coin Stats

One person who can never be accused of satiating his hunger is @Tuneman1980. Shane is from Illinois, apparently I don't know very much about it but what I did learn from our Skype interview is that Chicago is called the Windy City because the people there keep talking it up.

Anyway that's not the point. The point is that Shane has gone and created some cool analytics for crypto geeks to go obsess over. Checkout his venture Crypto Coin Stats.

Don't get caught out by those pesky decimals ever again with these on-the-fly conversions

Shane was motivated to build this site after he was finding it difficult to find these metrics for himself while searching the web. With a background in Software Development, Economics & Finance this was right up his street.

Satisfy you Crypto obsession with these glorious metrics

If you have any ideas on what you would like to see added you can send requests to him at requests@cryptocoinstats.com, and make sure you follow him on twitter @CryptoCoinStats. He is also grateful for any donations:

6x5TaGZHXi2a78GRhLEocgbxg9XGuVHVMp

Good work from the pirate state arrggh (I looked it up on Wikipedia).
5nNMc5oWrzQEfJiwnBMErtB

Checking your Wallet Online

Now let's take a look at some newer members at Feathercoin. @prensel joined us in December and stopped by the other day to tell us about his project for checking the status of his Feathercoin wallet from his phone. You can see it in action on his here: http://ftcpool.nl/wallet.php.

He may be new but he's also minted and putting 20Mhs to help secure the Feathercoin Network

You can check your stash anywhere with an internet connection. If you want to have go sign up to http://cryptowallet.eu.

Feathercoin Twitter Tip Bot

Michael Harrison from Indiana stopped by the other day to delight us all with quite a surprise. He told us that he had only gone and created one of the most sought after apps that any coin could have, a Twitter Tip Bot that is called Feather Tipper.

Currently undergoing testing please give this a whirl

After the news last week that the British pop singer Lily Allen turned down the opportunity to receive thousands of Bitcoins** 5 years ago why don't you all sign up to Michael's service now and send her some Feathercoins to make her feel better.

D'oh

** Since Bitcoin is barely 5 years old she may well be confusing it with Linden Dollars, anyway it's all digital so send her some Feathertips anyway!

New Moderators

This week we welcome @Calem and @Pryderi to the Feathercoin team. They will be moderating the Newbie forum. The decision to include them was made pretty easy due to the fact that both of them had already been going out of their way to make new people feel welcome and direct them to parts of the forum where they can get support.

It's the muddy shoe problem. If you want to keep your house clean but let a few people in with muddy shoes before you know it everyone is doing it. Setting the tone of the environment early on is a powerful thing, people often look for rules and norms when they enter a new environment so that they know how they should act. We're glad people agree.

TL;DR

What's really inspiring is when people join us and decide they like the atmosphere and then put the time and work in to keep reinforcing it. Constant gardening. But what makes this place special is that everyone has some say over the direction of the ship, we are not elitist here and believe everyone should have a choice.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Fly. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #15]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #15
Tuesday 7^th January 2014

Fly

Feathercoin Key Stats
266 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 29,000,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.8 days behind target generation rate

Happy New Year from the Feathercoin team

A hesitation before the jump could sabotage the fall. Learning to fly isn't easy because most people forget that it starts with a jump. In fact the jump already happened and we're all already falling but with so many looking for something to hold on to it's easy to forget that everything has changed.

If you're still waiting to be born and feel you need more of a safety net before you make your jump I hope you will find all the support you need here. It's important that everyone feels their safety net is adjusted to just the right height - maybe a little lower that we are comfortable with. And that's what the community is all about. A common unity.

To help you on your way @ChekaZ is running a competition. Keep your eyes peeled for further instructions on how to take part.

Peace News Now

I was asked by DerrikJ (no relation) to join him on his show Peace News Now on Sunday and there was much rejoicing...

DerrikJ upon discovering the secret to world peace

I am so glad he invited me on his show. We made some important discoveries like Sacrifice is not the same as Surrender; legitimacy has to be earned; and it should be easier to get to the top than it is to stay there. We also talked about the need to scale but I believe it's not about being big, it's about being relevant. What's decentralised is not the code or the server nodes but the idea itself.

I really look forward to doing more stuff with these guys and if you do too please give us a shout and get involved.

Feathercoin USB Block Erupter

Meanwhile in China @Lizhi has been busy. One of the biggest threats to Crypto Currencies is not centralisation but specialisation. That's when a small group of people have privileged access to information and resources. Even back in the 18th Century Adam Smith noted:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices….

Affordable and scalable; ultimately accessible, meaning: distributed and diverse

We are tool makers and mining hardware needs to be affordable and available to everyone. If I understand correctly @lizhi has created 240Khash output at 2 Watts per unit! This could be pretty significant.

And this is what it's all about: the people at the top giving those at the bottom, who have the best perspective, everything they need to remove their barriers to success. Hardware like this can easily be open sourced and made available to people all over the world to join the network.

Spreading the network across geographic as well as cultural lines places a higher burden on a would be attacker as no attack can take place without collusion. That collusion in turn requires a co-understanding with other peers. Which means that by the time the attacker has achieved their aim they have unwittingly taken part in producing the very outcome we are all here to work towards.

You can follow the thread along with @Lizhi's progress on his thread.

Feathercoin Mining Monitor

But there's not a lot of point in having the tools if you don't have the feedback you need to make the most of them. Checkout this nifty little project from @sradics...

It's a mining monitor providing information on your miner rig, pool and FTC value. Keeping the Blockchain secure and processing payments cannot come at the expense of your financial security. You need to make yourself strong first before you can help others find theirs and it looks like @sradics is well on his way. Here is the some linky goodness:

Monitor is available on GitHub: https://github.com/sradics/miningdashboard
Small description is available at:  http://grow-feathercoin.blogspot.de/2013/12/mining-dashboard-feathercoin-miner.html

Alt Coin Timelines and Merchant Setup Guide

@Severino has been asking for ages if he can get some help making a Merchant Guide and an Altcoin.

Want to help out by filling in the gaps?

Head over to the threads now and get involved. This is a marvelous opportunity whether you are new or an experienced Feathercoin Citizen.

FTC Merchant Guide Project
AltCoin Timeline Project

A Great Doctor Gives Life

Last time we were introduced to John who has a project which writes songs for sick children to help lift their spirits at a very traumatic time in their lives. I reached out to the Feathercoin community asking for support and I am delighted to announce that John has now raised 306 Feathercoins

John's Charity has written over 24,000 thousands of songs for sick children

John got in touch with me to say that if we raise $250 worth of Feathercoin that will be enough for him to write a song for a child. How cool would it be if we could help him achieve that?

Remember that a Feathercoin is divisible to 100 million units. Our power lies in our diversity and numbers not our personal wealth.

Target 650 FTC, 47% of the way there
Make a difference now:
6jaSoTGmfyZiU8F1ydUqwWfssShS3vSe9F

New Feathercoin Website as Bittylicious run out of Feathercoin!

This year must start with a much needed revamp of the website. Right now it simply does not do us justice. We jumped in so fast that we just didn't get the time to sort out some of the basics. We even ran out of Feathercoins on Bittylicious this morning (there were 10s of the thousands before Xmas) because sometimes it's too easy to take on too much at once and lose yourself.

Well this week I am making all this a priority. @Wrapper0Feather has started a thread here so get involved if you think you're hard enough.

The Future is Already Here

"The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed."
-William Gibson

I am delighted to tell you (again!) that Kevlar's Blockchain Link project went live on the 31st December. Here's the elevator pitch:

Link is an open standard for embedding data in any Blockchain to create an open market of searchable information that is free of control from governments and censorship.
Think pirate bay for crypto currencies but with all the resilience of a distributed network. It is designed to be easy to read, cheap to publish, and difficult to censor.

It establishes a free market for permanent publishing on the internet. It also provides the much sought after intrinsic value on to blockchains by giving them a further reason to exist, be secured and distributed in the wallets.

I spoke to @Kevlar on Skype and he told me:

Link is ready for mutation, and we want people to try it out and try it on. It's more than just the website, it's an open standard that people can build on. At the moment it is just Torrent links but it doesn't have to be just that; we want to know 'what would you embed in the blockchain, which blockchain and why?'

I am proud that this grew out of our forum and want this to be just the first of what's to come. Later in the coversation Kevlar came out with this gem:

Bitcoin is a commodity that is a supported by a community, Feathercoin is community that has rallied around a commodity.

Now that's insight! So get thinking about your project and how you can have some impact. Go there now and try it on for yourself. http://blockchain-link.com

North American Bitcoin Conference

@Alessandro will be attending the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, his home town. There is talk of me going as well. In fact @SkullandHeadphones already sent me 300 FTC to help fund the trip. It looks like it will feature some pretty big names.

So what do you think? If there is someone from the US who wants to go and represent then I will gladly hand over to them as I would like to see more people get involved offline. These conferences aren't like other industry gatherings as they are not merely an excuse for employees to take time off work on the company account. They are very productive and inspiring and usually full of great people.

TL;DR

To help you break free simply post your Feathercoin Address along with some feedback on the newsletter and @Chekaz (or money bags as we like to call him) will sort you out (260 FTC to give away).

You can find last week's newsletter here: Feathercoin Christmas Special. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #14]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #14
Tuesday 24^th December 2013

Feathercoin Christmas Special

Feathercoin Key Stats
252 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 27,300,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14.2 days behind target generation rate

Reputation is wealth, it's what's left behind after everything you have is taken away. I would like to thank you all for making this community such a prosperous place to spend my time these past eight months and earning us a reputation as a forum rich in ideas, passion and leadership.

It attracts the most wonderful people who together know well how to get the best from one another. When so many in this space are looking for power and quick money we have seen tremendous loyalty and hard work. What is wealth without the good intentions of the people who posses the virtue to know what to do with it?

Surrounding yourself with the those who can help you achieve your goals is one of the most important decisions you can make in life. I am proud to have spent my time with all of you, thank-you for letting me help.

Now without further ado let's venture in to the final newsletter of 2013...

Merry Christmas

@iawgoM is one person we are all glad to have around. He has brought a creative flare to the place that just wouldn't be the same without him. The other day he brought us our official Feathercoin Christmas e-card.

Just Push It!

"It's been a really exciting year for Feathercoin, with ups and downs. The reason why I really love being part of this all, is the way we manage to react on certain difficulties, get up, dust off and carry on with even more enthusiasm than ever. Thank you all for this!"

We are very fortunate to have you with us @iawgoM. Thank-you for all your hard work.

Songs of Love

If giving were easy it wouldn't be worth very much. As Jason King from Sean's Outpost observered: 'for the first time in history we have the technology to enable one person to help another anywhere in the world'.

I was inspired by John Beltzer last week who reached out to us on Facebook eager to tell us about his non-profit called Songs of Love. John and his team write songs for sick children, taking time to learn about their lives and weaving their personal stories and memories in to the lyrics. Checkout this report on 60 minutes.

John (left) with Julian Lennon (yes, that's the one)

It is gifts like this that money cannot buy. Making yourself so valuable that nobody could ever compensate you.

John's Charity has written over 24,000 thousands of songs for sick children

A great doctor gives life, medicine may know how to cure but it's the healing that John and his team bring to these children. By donating to his charity you are not only helping a worthy cause you are setting an example and paving the way for many others like it.

Make a difference now:
6jaSoTGmfyZiU8F1ydUqwWfssShS3vSe9F

The official Feathercoin Donation page: http://songsoflove.org/feathercoins

Feathercoin 0.8.5 Released

The latest release of 0.8.5 saw the widest participation from the community so far and we'd like to say a big thank-you to all those who participated. Our strength comes from our diversity and one of the ways we differentiate ourselves from other coins is in the way we organise ourselves. Even Kevlar was impressed! (That's Bush's new KPI )

You can download the new Feathercoin Wallet now from the links below.

Windows Wallet
Mac Wallet
Linux Wallets

Important: You must upgrade by 31st January 2014 as this is when the BDB lock limit rule change takes effect... whatever that means   but it sounds pretty serious so I would do it if I were you.

Looking Forward to 2014

It is often said that money goes where it is treated best. @Netnerd is working hard on his cold storage physical Feathercoins with one of the ideas to incorporate Near Field Communication so that the coins could actually be spent like the ones issued by your government.

Physical Feathercoin with built in cold storage

Look, shiny!

The coins look great in any light and I can't wait to get these out there. Our badges have already proved popular with me bumping in to people wearing them at London meet-ups every so often. Next I want to see people spending these in shops and bars everywhere.

In other news @flcph would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas from Copenhagen

Looks cold but festive

He also made us this cool video:

ftc merry

@Kevlar is continuing his work on the Link project aiming for a January release. He is a treasure trove of productivity planning two more Kickstart projects: Enhancements for Link, and a Twitter Tip Bot. More details will be provided closer to the events, like the list of enhancements and how the tip bot will function.

You can stay up to date with the latest on the official thread.

Ruthie and I are very honoured that @SkullandHeadphones has dedicated one of his track to us, check out his wicked tune! I have never had a track dedicated to me before. Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

Try listening to it while watching his avatar, it's really trippy!

On the theme of music @Calem is planning on forming a global crypto band checkout his thought on the Newsletter thread there and give him a shout if you're interested.

We have spoken before about the universality of maths but nothing brings the spirit of the world together quite like music. I hope you spotted this week's theme because music is one of the few art forms that we can't use to hurt one another and one that is never finished in its excessive generosity.

TL;DR

"We long for what we can't give, not what we don't have."

This will be the final Newsletter for 2013. Thank-you for making it such a wonderful year.

Merry Christmas from everyone on the Feathercoin Team  

You can find last week's newsletter here: Consensus Ad Idem. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie & @iawgoM (who did the xmas logo) for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #13]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #13
Tuesday 17^th December 2013

Consensus Ad Idem

Feathercoin Key Stats
245 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 26,500,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.89 days behind target generation rate

Money is a question of confidence. Today we are going to look at that very human capability: the ability to inspire others. The problem with our industrial past is that it relied too much on manipulation and fear to trigger us in to action. One of the insights I have gained from working at Feathercoin is that great leaders create new leaders. It is not my place to tell others what to do or to question what they will do once they have their freedom but rather to believe in them and remove all obstacles to their success.

As noted by Michael Maloney in his video linked above: What's the point of having money if you don't have the freedom to spend it?

A lot is made of the unemployment figures in our 'media'. But this jobless crisis is different to the ones we have seen before because this time I believe we don't even want these jobs. I have noticed more and more people sacking their bosses and living a life of exploration in the search for something meaningful. That's a brave thing to do in an economy that tells you the past predicts the future, one that scrutinises your history and tells you that you are nothing more than your curriculum vitae.

But nobody cares what you did in the past if what you're doing now is so important. And so today we are going to explore the art of persuation and inspiration to create a meeting of minds.

Feathercoin T-Shirts

Mike works in a screen printing shop in Jackson, Michigan. He PM'd me on the forum the other day to tell me that he was selling smarties on our Market Place and that he had received an heart felt message from potential customer who said "Bro, I need this". This inspired him to produce a range of T-Shirts which you can buy on our market place.

Mike has inspired the owner of his shop to get in to Feathercoin and is now producing a range of T-Shirts

While new to our forum Mike says he first got in to Bitcoin back in the beginning but took a 3 year hiatus. When he rejoined the crypto sphere he was amazed at the growth and gravitated to our forum. He told me:

"...when I stumbled into Feathercoin and decided that, long term, community is going to be the most important factor. The community here is great and, as far as I'm concerned, everything else can be patched."

And so now thanks to Mike Countdownzed, a website selling his company's zombie themed T-Shirts, now accepts Feathercoin as payment. We are very grateful for this and we are currently working on some ideas right now and look forward to showing you those in the coming months. Thanks so much Mike.

Paying Rent in Feathercoin

@Ruthie and I had the pleasure last night of speaking on Skype to another new member on the forum @SkullandHeadphones who we just had to tell you about because this guy has such passion. He came to our forum a couple of weeks ago to tell us that he had got the owner of his music studio to accept rent payment in Feathercoins. This is the first time we have seen this category of payment and I would urge any of you currently renting commercial office space to speak to the owner and see if it is possible.

This could be the way in for private landlords too. Imagine how powerful that would be if people could literally pay one of their most important outgoings in Feathercoins.

Netherlands Info

A month or so ago we held a conference in Amsterdam and found that there was a lively crypto community in the Netherlands. Well quite by coincidence another new member on our forum stepped up to tell us he had produced a Feathercoin News site for the Netherlands, Feathercoin Info.

Michael has brought us the CoinDesk of Feathercoin and his site is still under construction and is already available in a range of languages

The site was made by 23 year old Michael Smits @msmits. He is from Zwijndrecht, south Holland. He wrote to me enthusiastically to say that he has been with us for about 5 weeks on the forum and that he would like to contribute to the success of Feathercoin. He runs his own IT business and says he wants to make it easier for people to buy crypto-currencies especially Feathercoin. In his own words:

"In my opinion the cryptocurrencies are at the beginning of a beautiful journey, and they will grow & grow. We're all early adopters!"

And that is a beautiful quote, veel plezier!

32,837 Feathercoins sold on Bittylicious so far

When you enter crypto you enter a time warp. It seems like an age ago now that @Bushstar announced on our forum that Feathercoin on Bittylicious had been launched.
 

Marc has put in many hours of coding to make this possible, say thank-you by disposing your fiat on his website if you are in the UK

Shortly after this Marc was featured on ITV News in the UK...

Marc is no longer just internet famous now that he has made his first appearance on the legacy broadcasting network

In case you have forgotten Televisions were those big boxes you used to have in your living room and the media owners used to dictate to you what you could watch and when, how cute.

MadBitcoins & More

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
~Aristotle

Thanks to our rising popularity I now live on a global timezone. It's like I live outside of time itself. It was my privilege to stay up in the early hours of the morning last week to feature on one of my favourite Internet TV Shows, Mad Bitcoins. Boy does that guy know how to host a good show.

He looks so different without the hat and goggles but this does not deprive him of his super powers (the picture is a link)

I also had the pleasure of talking to Ryan from Digital Disruption and Micah from Adsactly. My goal for early next year is to get more members on our Youtube channel and let the community steer it in the direction it wants.

Charting the Growth

@wrapper0feather brought us the news that there is new charting site that lets you see the price of crypto currencies in dollars rather than having to go via BTC conversion.

Check it out

The site also lets you chart difficulty and profitability. This information forms an important part of the dialogue.

And remember to trade cautiously, a lot of people are just trading noise right now. Don't take a risk, take responsibility.

Proof of Existence

What is genius without the wisdom to remember it? Indeed it is often the wise man who understands the genius better than he understood himself. One of the core tenets of the Blockchain is its ability to achieve a global consensus using the universal language of mathematics. For the first time in history we have a global dialogue with a memory.

Enter stage left one of our most prominant members on the forum who has been with us since the beginning. Mr Travis Savo aka @kevlar who a few weeks ago kickstarted a project to establish a new protocol that would enable people to publish data in a blockchain. This would mean that the information could not be censored or destroyed without insurmountable resources.

This has turned in to one of the biggest threads a single user project has had in our history. So I read the whole thing and spoke to Kevlar last night so that you didn't have to!

Now it all started when @TuckFheman said "where's the music blockchain?". People were like "Yeah! YEAH!". From here Kevlar started to write the spec and he realised he could use this for more than just a store of data and could in fact encode any set of arbitrary instructions.

Now this was followed by many omgs, lulz and animated giffs before entering in to Phase 2.

The animated Giffs, the only way to express emotion on teh internets

It's important to note that this is project is not necessarily going to be implemented in to Feathercoin. What's so remarkable about what has happened is the response to the project from the community in spite of the fact there may be no direct benefit to the Feathercoin and the people themselves.

As Kevlar said to me himself: "A win for any coin is a win for all coins"

So far the project has raised $300 worth of Feathercoins and most of it has been blown on pizza used for testing and given back to efforts from the community like this logo from @mnstrcck:

Look, it's a crypto project without the word 'coin' in the title!

In 2 weeks the project went from concept to proof of concept to full library, and now the interface is rapidly coming together. @Kevlar says will have something for the beta testers by next week.

The code is on github at http://github.com/TSavo/Link, or you can install the library directly with 'npm install blockchain-link'.

TL;DR

To understand the mind of a genius is in some way to take on the mind of the genius herself.

A meeting of minds is not only achieved by mathematics, minds can be joined by what people hope for and want to achieve.

Next week we will have a Christmas special in store for you, until then please have your say in the comments below and tell us what we can do to help you get to where you want to go.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Busy Is The New Brave. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie, @Kevlar, @Wrapper0feather for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #12]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #12
Tuesday 10^th December 2013

Busy Is The New Brave

Feathercoin Key Stats
237 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 25,700,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.84 days behind target generation rate

The title of today's news is a quote from Seth Godin.

It has been another busy week, so we're going to skip the philosophy (I know, I know) and begin today with a quote from one of my favourite shows in this space, Let's Talk Bitcoin in a piece entitled Beggers Can Be Choosers:

"You'll never go broke giving to people… You only go broke when you selfishly try to make too much too quickly with too little research or effort."
~The Bitcoin Monger from Let's Talk Bitcoin E63 Seek 39mins

That has nothing to do with this week's topics but I loved it so much I just had to share. Now let's dive in...

Bank To The Future

The highlight of my week was meeting Stacy and Max at the Bank to the Future meetup in London. I saw Simon Dixon talk at the Bitcoin Expo the previous week and just had to come along.

These two make a great duo and I hope to see them again at an event like this

I was a little concerned after Max Keiser's recent tweets with price targets and what seemed like a pump of alt coins and someone indeed asked the question "what is the next coin you will be promoting" to which Max reassured everyone that the only crypto currency he owned was Bitcoin and that he would not be doing anymore announcements as it was a distraction. Although he added that competition was healthy and he welcomed it.

I really love what Simon and Max are doing in the crowd funding space and anything that removes the barriers to success of the person on the street instead of leaching of her productivity gets a thumbs up from us.

VAT on Bitcoin?

Following the meetup I spoke to Michael Parsons about his plans to visit HMRC and getting them to reconsider their position on charging VAT on Bitcoin sales in the UK. I offered to come along to the meeting and take a photo of the group to help publicise the effort.

Left to right Tom from Bitprice, Michael Parsons, Marc Warne from Bittylicious and Eitan Jankelewitz from Sheridans Law firm

The result from the meeting is not completely clear as we are still awaiting something more official from HMRC but the guys said that the feeling they got was that HMRC did not think VAT should be levied on Bitcoin. You can read more on this in the CoinDesk Article.

llocans' App

It's a well known fact in crypto that miners only break down right after you have left the house in the morning, only to be discovered when you finally arrive home after a long day. But now thanks to @llocan you can from your Android Device.

llocan has been a Feathercoin fan since May and has already helped us with French translation of our video back in the summer
and now he has made this nifty tool to solve his own problem and help fellow miners

This is going to leave you with one of those dilemmas like when you leave your wallet at home and you have to work out whether it's worth turning round or if you should give up some dignity and bum a twenty off of someone at work.

This is @llocans' first project and he has been working hard on fixing bugs and would welcome any feedback. He plans to introduce more features too like data from the different exchanges like btc-e or bter and profitability calculation. If you have any suggestions go visit his thread and let him know.

You can download the app here:

Escrow Services

We have seen overwhelming demand for Feathercoins in the past few weeks following the media attention on Crypto Currencies as a whole. As a result we are keeping a close eye on the security of our citizens on the forum to make sure they are protected against any frauds.

We have published a list of long time members offering Escrow Services. If you would like to become an Escrower it is important that you have built up a reputation on the forum and we're happy to help you achieve that. There are many opportunities to get involved right now including modding the Facebook page, helping with the website redesign and the doing data entry on the Local Feathercoin Map.

By earning your stripes you will gain trust in the community which in itself could help you grow your future Escrow business.

Feathercoin Market Now Features Pin to Fiat

As you have come to expect from us we have been asking for feedback from merchants and one of the hardest challenges they tell us they face is cash flow. A lot of business operate on tight margins and while they are happy to accept Feathercoins as payment they cannot yet pay their staff or their taxes in anything other than government issued money.

Sellers and Merchants can now peg the price of their products to old fashioned money such as British Pounds and Dollars

@Kevlar on our forum has mentioned a few times that one of the measures of success for Feathercoin will be how it is valued against a range of products and services especially life essentials such as food, hygiene products (soap) or any other daily items that most people need to get by. However before we can get there we needed to help integrate existing merchants who are having a hard enough time selling their products in fiat let alone a new digital currency.

You can read more in the forum announcement.

Feathercoin will be LIVE on MadBitcoins Tonight 7pm PST

I will have the pleasure of appearing on the MadBitcoins show. I am nervous because I am a big fan of Mad and have been watching his show since episode one. I think he's made a great contribution to the movement as a whole.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity and Mad here likes to stomp all over it

The introduction of this kind of personality helps adds another aspect with which people can approach digital currencies. It gives people a new way of understanding the technology and the news within.

@wrapper0feather Joins The Team

One of my favourite duties at Feathercoin is Welcoming new members to the team. Today we leave you with the news that @wrapper0feather also known as Tony is now part of the core Feathercoin Team.

Tony has PhD in Physics and 20 years experience as an engineering consultant. He has contributed a lot to the Feathercoin project, his charts and analysis knowledge have been particularly useful.

Tony also has good experience in software development management, fault finding and data analysis. He has also supervised numerous PHD projects at Manchester University and UMIST on application of artificial intelligence techniques such as Data Fusion.

But you don't need a PhD to join our team, all that qualified Tony was his hard work and commitment to the cause. So as always if you know someone you would like to see join the team or think you should please give us a shout.

TL;DR - Thank-you

If you read the whole news today I am very grateful to you

You can find last week's newsletter here: Transformation. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie, @spynappels & @wrapper0feather for theirr contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.


EDIT: The time of the MadBitcoins show will be 7PM PST and not EST as previously shown. Sorry everyone I got confused.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #11]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #11
Tuesday 3^rd December 2013

Transformation

Feathercoin Key Stats
230 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 25,000,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.87 days behind target generation rate

"If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, then the end is near."
~Jack Welch.

Crypto Currency is not an investment it is a transition. When you move in to crypto you're not just taking a risk, you're taking responsibility. You're moving in to the post debt era. You're backing an idea not a horse.

There's plenty of awareness right now but not a lot of understanding. If we don't want this to be a bubble it's up to us to educate those entering the market for the first time. Bubbles have occurred in commodities and stocks and yet Bitcoin is neither. It will only become a bubble if too many people buy-in wanting more dollars at the end rather than because they understand and believe in the asset class itself.

Again, it's up to us. So if you are new here please congratulate yourself on your curiosity and for having the good sense to belong to where you are. You're an important part of what's about to happen. Now sign up and volunteer for action.

We have seen nearly 3,000 people sign up to our forum over the past two weeks, over 500 in the last 2 days alone. Many people want to know how on earth to buy crypto, I have written this handy guide.

Now without further ado, let's cover the mania that was Saturday 30th November in London, UK.

London Bitcoin Expo

I have never seen so many people get together this early on a Saturday morning! But these are not ordinary times, and hundreds of people have decended on to the back streets of East London, many to learn what all the fuss is about. The Expo gained mainstream coverage on the front page of the Financial Times and even Chanel Four News (UK) had a film team there.

I am going to tell the story using one of my favourite mediums.

It was packed out on stage one from 9:30am when the doors opened

It wasn't always easy to hear the speakers unless you got close to the stage but the lineup was impressive. Including Stacy Herbert from the Keiser Report, a very popular show among Crypto enthusiasts.

I had the pleasure to talk to Cody Wilson (right) after his inspirational talk in the morning.
Image by Rachel Megawhat @megawhatdesign

I was keen to speak to Cody about his philosophy and about his new project Dark Wallet which at the time of writing is still $3,000 (Government issued money) short of it's goal on Indie Gogo. It is based on these very simple premises:

Bitcoin as a web technology and privacy by default.

We have had a lot of support for Zerocoin on our forum in the past and this project promises to be an important cornerstone for this movement.

There is much more that I want to say about the work of Cody and his partners at unSYSTEM and Defense Distributed but I will leave it until I have had a chance to sit with him and have more of an exchange.

Marc was there to talk about Bittylicious where we are soon to be featured

Marc said he hasn't talked so much in his life. I know just what he means. If you know about crypto or have been in to it for any length of time everyone gravitates to you seeking information. Even if they are skeptical, they still want to know what it's all about. "Why are all these people putting their hard earned money in to something as intangible as Bitcoin and alternative crypto currencies?"

After a long day the Alt Coin panel featuring left to right Aidan from PPC, Johnny from WDC and yours truly
Image by Rachel Megawhat @megawhatdesign

We included the audience as much as possible in the discussion rather than have it be top down.

I told everyone to give themselves a round of applause for having front row seats to one of the most important events in history. And I meant it when I said the best personality to feature at the event was the audience themselves. I was slightly overwhelmed with the number of people approaching me throughout the day and after the talk wanting to know more about Feathercoin.

The most humbling moment for me was when I asked the audience:

"How many of you are in Crypto just for the money?"

About 3 people put their hands up with a few boos from the audience.

Then I asked:

"How many of you think currency is driven by community?"

This was met with a large cheer. I couldn't believe it! After all the stick we have taken on the forums and the Trollbox these last few months and the whole time it turns out we were in tune with the general consensus.

So I have many meetings with various people who approached me after, and if I haven't got back to you yet, don't worry I will throughout the course of this week.

Svenn and his wife Hege made it all the way over from Norway to be with us in the evening

We had to move on to the Feather in the City event. Our first outside of our home town of Oxford. We had a group of people follow us from the Expo over drinks where we talked about the underlying technology and the opportunities it presented.

ChekaZ (Oli) and his friend Sven joined us from Germany

@ChekaZ and @svennand have been real heroes on the forum since our beginnings back in April. They are still setting an example to the rest of us, getting out from behind the comfort of the computer screen and taking action on the ground.

Around the table

Outside of our thoughts and memories all we really have are our relationships. A monetary supply independent of human intervention frees us up to contract and relate with one another in a way that the current system tries to regulate and stifle. It restricts our creativity and tries to take the future for itself.

In other news...

My Smarties Arrived!

Sure I could have got them in the UK for a few £s but where's the fun in that?

You may remember from Week #4 that @mnstrcck sold me some Smarties, well they arrived somewhat overshadowing the week's events 

He was even kind enough to refund me 50 FTC to take the edge of the price rise. Now that's service!

TL;DR - Being free means taking responsibility

Birth begins with negation, it begins with a prosecution of the past. This is not just the beginning of a new era, it's the end of an old one and it begins with you taking the time to work on what matters to you the most.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Expontiality. Today special thanks go to Rachel Megawhat @megawhatdesign & @Ruthie for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #10]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #10
Tuesday 26^th November 2013

Expontiality

Feathercoin Key Stats
223 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 24,100,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14.23 days behind target generation rate

People tend to think linearly not exponentially and this often leads to shock and confusion. There is no such thing as revolutions, only evolutions that the majority were not paying attention to in its early stages. When people come together to bring about a sequence of activities we call it a business. Each new mind which joins builds up a grid of parallel thinking until eventually a critical mass is reached, what sociologists describe as the Tipping Point.

We have tried to create an atmosphere within our forum that fosters ideas and friendship. We have had an unprecedented number of people join the forum in the past week as we have seen new people enter the crypto community at large. We are going to respond to this by taking a look at one member who has been with us a little while and is already benefiting from the community...

Sweetems

@kris_davison and his wife Emma run a small business selling fragrances while juggling full time jobs up in the sunny english city of Newcastle, with the Vikings and that.

Kris has been an active forum member since the beginning of August taking the time to welcome new members and offer support to those having trouble.

Kris has listed many items on the Market at very competitive prices, if there is something you don't see please PM him and he will add it.

Gift Wrapping isn't available due to it messing up during the shipping and Sweetems is a UK business only but we are keen to see what interest we get from overseas.

Kris told me:

We believe that by accepting alternate currencies such as Feathercoin we will be able to reach a whole new market and also help reduce our overheads as we currently have to pay a considerable margin to paypal for payment processing. We should then be able to pass these savings onto our customers making the products we offer even better value.

The duty of creating a crypto currency isn't just the technical development it's also the business development. I think we owe it to our merchants to give them all the support they need especially since the banks don't seem to be too interested. You can show your support right now by checking out their products on the market and if you find something you like buy it for a loved one.

Feathercoinvine

Say you're going to do something and then just do it. In fact @ChekaZ just skips the first bit and likes to go straight the money shot.

You may remember ChekaZ from his work back in issue #6 of this newsletter when he persuaded a local Winery to start accepting Feathercoin. But he didn't stop there. He then decided to get special limited edition Bottles made up.

ChekaZ is selling this limited edition Wine with exclusive Feathercoin Label

Impressive!

The Feathercoin Label Designed by @iawgoM

And a real team effort. The first 23 sold really fast but due to the how busy the forum has got the post got pushed down so I am going to try and bump it here. I can't wait to get mine on the 30th when ChekaZ is flying in from Germany to pay us a visit at our next meetup.

The Town Hall & our first London Meetup this Saturday

Don't forget that this Saturday following the Bitcoin Expo where we will be speaking, there is Feathercoin's first London Meetup.

Also following the success of the Amsterdam Conference we held a few weeks ago we are now holding Town Hall meetings

@Entimp and I free styled it last week as soon as Youtube activated our Google Live account

The purpose here is to take our collaboration to the next level now that the resources are here. Please visit the thread and have your say so that you can help steer our progress and be part of the dialogue.

Welcome @Lizhi to the Feathercoin Team

@Lizhi first joined us from China back in late September and since then has been very hard working and dedicated Citizen of the forum. We had numerous requests to have him promoted to the Feathercoin Team and so I am delighted to tell you all that he is now our official representative to China.

Please show your appreciation by visiting the official forum thread if you haven't already and if you feel your country or culture is underepresented on our team then step up or nominate someone. The only barrier to entry is your commitment and hard work.

TL;DR - Don't Get Mad, Get Organised

We aren't constrained around the family ties we were born in to or the friends we went to school with. We also also brought together around common interests or social objects be they sporting events, internet forums or even an idea as powerful as the distributed time stamp.

A new category of person has entered the crypto community and they are not asking "how does it work?", they are asking "what can it do?" And the best possible answer we can give is to show them with our actions.

If you are in the UK you can demonstrate some action and receive a special free gift courtesy of Sweetems, simply PM me on our forum with the code phrase "Give me the bounty!". Only one available but if it proves to be successful we shall look in to doing more 



You can find last week's newsletter here: The Price of Survival. Today special thanks go to @Kris_Davison & @Ruthie for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

[Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #9]

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #9
Tuesday 19^th November 2013

The Price of Survival

Feathercoin Key Stats
217 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 23,200,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14.7 days behind target generation rate

The abundance of open source has met with the scarcity of money. If money were not scarce it would not force us to make the sacrifices necessary to reveal our true preferences to the group. That mechanism cannot work without consensus across a broad range of people. In order to be money everyone must agree all the time that your currency has value. It is not good enough that the butcher only believes dollars are worth something 3 days a week. The relative value may fluctuate against various commodities but he must be willing to exchange his money at all times.

When someone sees something in you that scares them they face a choice. They can either attack you or they can be humble and curious. This crypto currency space can be hostile at times because while the code may be open source and shared the money it creates is not and that terrifies us. We all believe we have unique access to the truth, sometimes we need so desperately to be right that we distract ourselves from what is important. I have found the best way to respond to hostility is to keep working and with that we now turn to some of the hardest workers in our community...

CryptoKnox

I don't know how many times I can say this but UKMark, Nutnut and Svenn have done it again. UKMark is the guy who has put in countless hours in to SMS Wallet and now another 350 hours in to CryptoKnox the new online wallet with Merchant API exclusive to Feathercoin. The lads have committed some serious energy and commitment in to the project.

I don't know where they get their energy from but what I do know is that I will always support someone willing to put in this kind of time and effort and do my best to remove any obstacles to their success.

CryptoKnox is and online wallet with Merchant API currently in alpha testing

I spoke to them last night on skype and they told me:

Security is paramount especially since the inputs.io scandal so fresh in our minds. All wallets are stored off host, all servers are hardened to the latest standards, all interserver traffic is encrypted AND on private networks, and everything is behind cloudflares CDN.

The Reason behind Knox is to make FTC more accessible to the new people. To find, download and setup a wallet when you first start your journey in to crypto is somewhat daunting. Cryptoknox aims to offer an easy and secure way to get your first Feathercoin wallet address.

This is just an alpha at the moment, security is the most important feature which is why we are asking for some keen beta testers. The lads are getting help from some security experts and I will be helping them with UX and usability feedback.

EDIT: UKMark asked me to point out that the CryptoKnox wallet is not just an online wallet but also includes a secure Merchant API to help merchants integrate Feathercoin payments in to their existing shopping carts. There is more info on their home page.

Local Feathercoin Progress Report

Since its launch back in early October our Feathercoin Map has been growing faster and faster. The main motivation behind the project was to highlight the need for localism. We like to think of Feathercoin as a local currency and you don't get to the very big without paying attention to the very small.

From our humble beginnings back in early October...


...to the present day

Now due to the rising demand on this page we are slowing down the entries in order to verify all the accounts before we move on to the next stage. If you have put your name forward but don't see yourself on there it's because we need some time to verify you on the forum.

Plans now include putting on crypto related events, could be a Bitcoin Conference or a local Litecoin meetup, we don't care as long as it involves a blockchain. So we welcome all submissions, I will try and get a new form put up there in the next week but in the mean time you can PM me personally like Smoothie on our forum who will be selling his physical Bitcoins and Litecoins at the Inside Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in December.

The London Bitcoin Expo

Speaking of communities and events here's a good one. We first heard about the London Bitcoin Expo back in July when we attended the BTC London conference. We try to attend as many of these as possible to make sure we get to meet face to face and away from our computer screens.


This free event welcomes all people and the organisers are working very hard at making this a success

Ruth spoke to Alex who is leading the organisation of the Expo the other day and it sounds like these guys are working incredibly hard. We know just how they feel after the mission we faced in Amsterdam. There will be a stall where people can donate their goods to be sold for Crypto, a virtual treasure hunt where people can venture out in to London to unlock bounties and a fantastic lineup of Speakers.

You can register for the event on the London Bitcoin Meetup page which is run by our friend Iain Cresswell. The impact of crypto on the ground is what it's all about.

TL;DR - Genius and the Wisdom to Remember It

Everyone wants to be the genius, the one who makes that breakthrough discovery with the razor sharp insight but what's harder is working on the task right in front of you, the one you can work on right now. Surrounding yourself with the people who want to support you and appreciate you for what you do is one of the most important steps you can take. What is genius without the wisdom to remember it? It's often the wisdom that can understand the genius better than the genius understood herself.

You don't need to be the best qualified to undertake a task you simply need the determination to carry on even while everyone around you is telling you to stop.

You can find last week's newsletter here: Just Fork It. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

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Thank-you for your time.