The new underbelly Eileen Omsby 2012-06-01 http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-new-underbelly-20120531-1zktt.html... The black markets and services almost exclusively use the virtual online currency Bitcoin. An April 2012 report apparently by America's FBI (marked for official use only but leaked to the internet in early May) claims that the unique features of Bitcoin present distinct challenges for deterring illicit online activity. While Bitcoin has legitimate uses, it is likely to continue to attract cyber criminals due to the ability to transact anonymously. "Since Bitcoin does not have a centralised authority, law enforcement faces difficulties detecting suspicious activity, identifying users and obtaining transaction records," the report says. It estimates the Bitcoin economy to be worth between $35 million and $40 million. ... |
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This article is part of the June 2012 ieee 'Special report on the future of money' The Last Days of Cash How E-Money Technology is Plugging us into the Digital Economy Bitcoin: The Cryptoanarchists’ Answer to Cash How Bitcoin brought privacy to electronic transactions Morgen E. Peck June 2012 (published 2012-05-30) http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/bitcoin-the-cryptoanarchists-answer-to-cash... The dream of an anonymous, independent digital currency—one where privacy is maintained for buyers and sellers—long predates Bitcoin. Despite obituaries in magazine articles from Forbes, Wired, and The Atlantic, the dream is far from dead.
... If Bitcoin does fail, it may die in an act of cannibalism. Nakamoto introduced the block chain, but cryptographers are now already working on improvements. The minting rate is only one of many things that could be tweaked. “Bitcoin is the first of a new breed,” says Garzik. “People will learn from Bitcoin and build something better, or Bitcoin’s critical mass will force it to evolve and learn from its own mistakes.”
Bitcoin is also briefly mentioned in other sections of this special : The Beginning of The End of Cash Cash’s role is waning, as mobile, encryption, and other technologies let us plug directly into the digital economy Glenn Zorpette 2012-06 http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-cash... More interesting and much more ambitious are the cryptocurrencies, chiefly Bitcoin, which is backed by no government and has a fluctuating value linked in part to a scarcity that is mathematically predetermined. Unlike other forms of digital cash, Bitcoin is truly untraceable and therefore, like cash, cannot be recovered if lost or destroyed.
... Don’t Write Off Checks Like the paperless office, a check-free society is still far off Mark Anderson 2012-06 http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/tools-toys/dont-write-off-checks... Despite the emergence of online payment systems like PayPal and Bitcoin, swipeable payment chips, and smartphone money apps—as well as plain old debit, credit card, and online bill pay schemes—paper checks don’t seem to be disappearing. ... |
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Tech Deep Dive: Bitcoin is not for the faint of heart Jillian Mackintosh 2012-05-30 http://www.bitecommunications.com/tech-deep-dive-bitcoin-is-not-for-the-faint-of-heart/... Without further ado, first up is Bitcoin– a new technology being adopted by liberals, geeky ITs, financiers and soon you? Due to the very complex and tech savvy nature of Bitcoin, it has remained somewhat underground. Let’s take a minute to look more closely. ... So, do you have the desire to experiment? The payoffs and losses are real, but who really knows how Bitcoin will eventually operate in the future. Will it spark a new beginning to a global digital currency? We’ve witnessed a horizontal shift towards a peer-to-peer centered government from hacktavists, Pirate Party, Occupy Movement and so on who fight for privacy, decentralization from banks, governments and corporations, while remaining completely anonymous. This might be Bitcoin’s demographic at the moment but will it eventually grasp the larger population? |
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Just a summary of the Bitcoinica hack in siliconangle.com Kristina Farrah writes surprisingly sloppily for a site which often covers bitcoin topics: " Bitcoin assured, however, that the amount isn’t all of their currency and that they will not inhibit withdrawals" & "We can recall Bitcoin suffering a number of serious compromises..." Like so many journalists new to covering Bitcoin issues - she doesn't appear to make the distinction between the Bitcoin ecosystem itself,Bitcoinica and other Bitcoin service providers. (Usually the siliconangle journalist covering Bitcoin is Kit Dotson) |
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So besides this video being TOTALLY AWESOME for bitpay and more importantly bitcoin in general, you've decided to pick on the patent? There were 4 VC groups and over 200 attendees at this conference. All with investment $$$ and hearing about the potential opportunities bitcoin brings to the payments space. I would rather like to thanks Tony for taking the time to submit his business and win a spot to present at this conference. Your bitcoins may be just a little bit more valuable tomorrow. Yeah, I did neglect to heap praise on the awesomeness that is a Bitcoin startup approaching VC groups... probably because the ****ing cancer of anticompetitive patents really puts a bitter taste on it. But you know.. realistically - there's bugger all I can do about it... a solid patent arsenal will make a business more attractive to those handy bitcoin-price-pumping VC types.... and it's all about the price after all, not freedoms and principles and all that guff.. right!? (In fairness - there's probably not much choice for a serious bitcoin startup. Patents probably need to be held at least for defensive purposes) |
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See at about 06:30 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7BfjsCAZyQShouldn't be surprising I guess... but patenting such trivial ideas is quite irksome to me, and not a really good development for the bitcoin economy. Also - it strikes me that there is some precedent in that you can use a 'bitbill' as a deposit card. Perhaps the patent is specific to the situation where the deposit is converted to fiat currency and sent to the owner's bank account - but still - gluing things together like that to perform a service shouldn't be patentable IMO. I'm curious to know the extent of this patent. |
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The currency of protest People declare economic independence by establishing alternative currencies. 2012-05-23 http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/currency-protest-0022217... In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the BitCoin as an alternative form of currency traded and spent solely among the online community. It is one of the world's largest micro-currency markets which is backed by peer-to-peer computing instead of a central bank or government body. This is supposed to insure financial security without the threat of a monopoly. ... original bitcointalk discussion thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83323.0 |
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Employee "Disciplined" For Installing Bitcoin Software On Federal Webservers 2012-05-21 http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/05/21/1144244/employee-disciplined-for-installing-bitcoin-software-on-federal-webservers"Around a year ago, a person working for the ABC in Australia with the highest levels of access to systems got caught caught with his fingers on the CPU cycles. The staffer had installed Bitcoin mining software on the systems used by the Australian broadcaster. While the story made a bit of a splash at the time, it was finally announced today that the staffer hadn't been sacked, but was merely being disciplined by his manager and having his access to systems restricted. All the stories seem a little vague as to what he actually installed however — on one side he installed the software on a public facing websever, and the ABC itself admits 'As this software was for a short time embedded within pages on the ABC website, visitors to these pages may have been exposed to the Bitcoin software' and 'the Coalition (current Opposition Parties) was planning on quizzing the ABC further about the issue, including filing a request for the code that would have been downloaded to users' machines,' but on the other side there is no mention of the staffer trying to seed a Bitcoin mining botnet through the site, just that mining software had been installed." |
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Who Coined It First? The Advent of Digital Currency Byron Tse 2012-05-20 http://www.iposgoode.ca/2012/05/who-coined-it-first-the-advent-of-digital-currency/When the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) announced that it would be creating a digital representation of the Canadian Dollar in the form of MintChip, the digital currency sphere lit up with comparisons to numerous previous attempted forms of digital currencies – most notably Bitcoin, a decentralized electronic cash system developed by Satoshi Nakamoto. ... However, stated within the rules of the Developer Challenge – any submission must be the original work of the developer, and cannot violate any intellectual property, proprietary, privacy, or moral rights or another person/entity (for the complete rules click here). And this is where the question arises of whether such a submission would be copying the idea of Bitcoin. ... About IP Osgoode: IP Osgoode at Osgoode Hall Law School is a new, independent and authoritative voice which explores legal governance issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and technology.
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ABC's Bitcoin miner tackled in minutes The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) looked set to become a haven for Bitcoin virtual currency mining last year, after a so-called "miner" placed a piece of code in the production environment, which could have potentially netted to thousands of dollars. The ABC's security systems, however, had other plans. Luke Hopewell 2012-05-21 http://www.zdnet.com.au/abcs-bitcoin-miner-tackled-in-minutes-339338279.htm... The situation caught the attention of Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, who, in Senate Estimates, quizzed the ABC on how this might have happened, how it was rectified and what happened to the staffer. ... "An ABC staff member, with high level IT access privileges, placed the Bitcoin mining code on the ABC website. The placement of the code was detected by internal ABC checks within 30 minutes and was removed immediately," the ABC told Senate Estimates. ... |
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