bitcoinpresscenter.org is done, from an engine and content management perspective. I'm working on the visual layout and design (a CSS designer is working on it for me).

If you can look beyond the very simple and naked "look" , please visit bitcoinpresscenter.org and propose new press contacts directly. Anyone can propose a new contact and provide all the relevant details (which is a lot more information that the current press center).

Feedback is very welcome so that bitcoinpresscenter.org can be improved and launched...

Update: 68 stores completed and online. More every day.

Have an idea? Launch a store to sell it in under a minute. No cost, no credit cards, no technical skills needed.

Instructions: openbitcoinstore.com
Launch here: apply.openbtcshop.com

The book proposal has changed, to be more of a technical book, for developers and integrators, as well as power-users. The proposal was submitted to publishers last week. Several of them expressed interest, most notably one of the "big three" in technical publishing.

Basically, this book is going to be published, now it is only a matter of time and details...

The next stage is market size research for the audience.

Specifically, the publisher wants to get a better idea of the estimated audience, how many developers, integrators, business startups, merchants/retailers are out there.

Any suggestions and assistance would be much appreciated.

Background of this project: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155847.0;all

Tomorrow I will be placing the first order for either 4,000 or 8,000 paper wallet prints, using 75RTUGA's design (my favorite choice and the one I think will sell easily, not for any other reason).



I will be offering re-seller kits at cost, enough materials to prepare and sell 25 paper wallet kits (40 wallets each).

This is the only time that these reseller kits will be available at cost, at about $450 + shipping, as you will be partaking in some of the risk which is inherent with an unsold product before the first print.

I have 2 resellers interested, can support up to 4 resellers in this run. If I get 4 resellers, I will do the larger run and the cost will be reduced by about 15%. If not, I will do the smaller run.

The reseller kits will be priced at either $500 or $550 for 25 kits, immediately after the first print run is complete, the regular re-seller price.

Each wallet kit will retail between $25 and $40 depending on demand and production costs, with a profit of about 10%-45%.

A reseller can buy at $18 and sell for $25 minimum retail, for a profit of $7 per kit, or 38%.

Anyone who pre-orders a paper wallet kit (40 wallets, 10 sheet) in the next 5 days will get it at cost  (~$18) + shipping, no profit for me. Just let me know before the 5 days are up and I will lock in your pre-order price.

Thank you all for making this open project work,

Now, let's make and sell some paper wallets!

Hi everyone!

A quick update.

Tomorrow I will be placing the first order for either 4,000 or 8,000 paper wallet prints, using 75RTUGA's design (my favorite choice and the one I think will sell easily, not for any other reason).

I will be offering re-seller kits at cost, enough materials to prepare and sell 25 paper wallet kits (40 wallets each).

This is the only time that these reseller kits will be available at cost, at about $450 + shipping, as you will be partaking in some of the risk which is inherent with an unsold product before the first print.

I have 2 resellers interested, can support up to 4 resellers in this run. If I get 4 resellers, I will do the larger run and the cost will be reduced by about 15%. If not, I will do the smaller run.

The reseller kits will be priced at either $500 or $550 for 25 kits, immediately after the first print run is complete, the regular re-seller price.

Each wallet kit will retail between $25 and $40 depending on demand and production costs, with a profit of about 10%-45%.

A reseller can buy at $18 and sell for $25 minimum retail, for a profit of $7 per kit, or 38%.

Anyone who pre-orders a paper wallet kit (40 wallets, 10 sheet) in the next 5 days will get it at cost  (~$18) + shipping, no profit for me. Just let me know before the 5 days are up and I will lock in your pre-order price.

Thank you all for making this open project work,

Now, let's make and sell some paper wallets!

Oh well, I retract my previous confidence. If you look on MtGox as anything other than a horrible warning of rank incompetence, you really should re-consider.

MtGox is exactly what we need less. Their business practices are terrible, their communication strategy could be run better by my cat and their clownish attempts to address technical issues they can't begin to understand are a perfect example of why this is not a business for beginners. MtGox thinks architecture is something involving marble columns of the Ionic style.

Well, that's a whole different level of effort than your original message indicated, where you seemed to be trying to find a single dev to build your idea (I'm sure you've seen that a few hundred times here).

I stand corrected, applaud your effort and apologize for reacting with defensive cringe. As many others in this community, I've lost money to bad exchanges, so I am a bit sensitive ;-)

Good luck to you, the converse to my original position is: If you are indeed building a professional exchange, you will get my vocal support and my business.

The market only has 5-6 poorly implemented exchanges, developed in secret by people without financial services or security knowledge.

Let's make ANOTHER one! YAY!

Have a look at the buttercoin effort to build a scalable exchange. Or look at commercial exchange trading engines, order management engines, market data engines etc.

Please don't reinvent another square wheel, we have several already, they only serve to hurt bitcoin.

It takes a lot more to secure a hosted wallet than what you suggest here. Is this intended to be an open source project, kinda like blockchain, only open?

If so, that's a good idea.

If you want to do this as a business, you will need a lot more experienced security people to help you or this will quickly become a capture-the-flag platform for hackers.

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/

The Let's Talk Bitcoin show has more than 15,000 listeners and doubling every week.

Do an interview and talk about the program on the show.

The Bitcoin Press Center (bitcoinpresscenter.org) is now in open beta.

The site is still "naked", has no styling, that's in progress. However the site mechanics are working and fairly well tested. For those who can see past the lack of CSS, the content is already useful and growing...

Check out the left hand side faceted navigation, which dynamically filters the results:


Languages Spoken
English
German

Country
Canada
Germany
United Kingdom
United States of America

Expertise
Business
Cryptography
Hardware
Media
Software

BitcoinRole
Developer
Entrepreneur
Merchant
Writer

The site will now be "styled" and tested thoroughly for a promised Monday delivery

There is no formatting yet. This is still raw information display. The layout will be skinned by CSS as soon as the information content is setup.

Great suggestion on the links

The choice of people in the list is purely for testing, just so I don't have random names (which would lead people to howl "WHO'S THAT?!"). Since the goal is a list of 500, not 8, everyone on the existing press center will obviously be included - they have fulfilled the one and only requirement - they want to be press contacts.

Anyone who wants to help out with content testing can register and create a new "Pundit" record adding the rest of the people on the press center, or other people. The list will be wiped before the site goes live and reset to contain only the people on the existing press center. We will build from there.

For now: Ignore styling, it has not been done. Ignore the people who are in the list (or not in the list), I just need data for testing and Lorem Ipsum names are annoying ;-)..

The URL feedback and what should be in the metadata is great advice!

I have done no design or UX yet. I will leave that to Alexander, a very capable CSS skinner I employ. You can see btcprice.info and apply.openbtcshop.com for example of Alexander's work.

For now, I am concentrating on the data model, mechanics and producing relatively clean views for templating.

I expect to have the "look" done by Monday. Alex can turn each press contact profile into a pretty "contact card" that can be printed (journalists use paper! another thing geeks forget). Alex will also make the list of contacts functional, informative, and pretty.

Sure, but the functionality is pretty limited, the user side has not been developed and the site gets wiped on almost hourly basis, so... it may not do much for you.

But please go ahead. All testing is absolutely welcome!

The bitcoinpresscenter.org beta is 90% complete. I will be calling on those who volunteered to help to test run some of the functionality.

I would like to explain what I have been doing for the past three days. I have been building a platform, using a CMS (drupal, but the tech choice is not important) in order to implement a press center, the Internet way:

- Inclusive - the barrier to nominations is very low - if the person is interested in being on the list, and their information is filled in, they are on the list

- Highlighting, not filtering: A mechanism for positive endorsements, with qualitative comments allows the best to bubble to the top of the list.

- A minimal amount of moderation is applied only to the content of the endorsements to filter ad-hominem. Positive endorsements push people up the list. If people feel negatively, they can *not endorse*. That keeps less endorsed candidates at the bottom of the list - BUT they're on the list.

- A lot of metadata to help press choose: Languages spoken, timezone, area of expertise (HW, SW, crypto, economics, business etc.), Role in bitcoin community (miner, user, dev, media, author, merchant etc).

- A lot of press-relevant information that is missing from current efforts: Attribution, Large-res photos, one line bio, short bio, long bio, etc.

- A faceted search and filtering system (like the sidebar on Amazon.com). You want to see just Spanish speakers who are developers and in your own timezone? Easy!

All of the above is geared towards a press center with 500 contacts, not 8.

Beta testing starts late tonight or tomorrow, for functionality. First public preview with content by end of Monday as promised.

This announcement is posted in its own thread, for comments and discussion

The bitcoinpresscenter.org beta is 90% complete. I will be calling on those who volunteered to help to test run some of the functionality.

I would like to explain what I have been doing for the past three days. I have been building a platform, using a CMS (drupal, but the tech choice is not important) in order to implement a press center, the Internet way:

- Inclusive - the barrier to nominations is very low - if the person is interested in being on the list, and their information is filled in, they are on the list

- Highlighting, not filtering: A mechanism for positive endorsements, with qualitative comments allows the best to bubble to the top of the list.

- A minimal amount of moderation is applied only to the content of the endorsements to filter ad-hominem. Positive endorsements push people up the list. If people feel negatively, they can *not endorse*. That keeps less endorsed candidates at the bottom of the list - BUT they're on the list.

- A lot of metadata to help press choose: Languages spoken, timezone, area of expertise (HW, SW, crypto, economics, business etc.), Role in bitcoin community (miner, user, dev, media, author, merchant etc).

- A lot of press-relevant information that is missing from current efforts: Attribution, Large-res photos, one line bio, short bio, long bio, etc.

- A faceted search and filtering system (like the sidebar on Amazon.com). You want to see just Spanish speakers who are developers and in your own timezone? Easy!

All of the above is geared towards a press center with 500 contacts, not 8.

Beta testing starts late tonight or tomorrow, for functionality. First public preview with content by end of Monday as promised.


NOTE: I welcome constructive suggestions. Tell me how to fix the problems, not what they are. I already know what the weaknesses of the above scheme are (sure there are more too), but it is better than existing solutions and I'm building more and taking feedback. So, if you disagree, suggest a SOLUTION that I can implement and see if others support you. I will ignore those who only point out problems without solutions, sorry.

you keep creating a strawman for the people who offer reasonable opposition to your political litmus test.

I'm a lefty liberal who grew up in Europe. I find anti-government AnCap philosophy to be very far from my experience or political leanings.

I still think Matonis is more mainstream that people on the press list, that the attempt to exclude him is odious, the criteria inconsistent and the desire to limit opinions misguided. That's even though I disagree 100% with anti-government libertarians.

You are not a moderate, sorry. Censorship by exclusion is a radical position, despite all the rationalizations we have heard.

That's my opinion, and I am non-anarchist, mainstream, tax-paying, business person who sees bitcoin as a mainstream, yet also radically disruptive technology, just like the Internet. I disagree with your attempt to exclude.

I would appreciate help and beta testers for the bitcoinpresscenter.org which I am building as the inclusive alternative to the existing site. It will have only one purpose: to provide a comprehensive list of resources, packaged for press consumption (short bios, multi-res photos, attribution text, etc).

There is a way to fix this constructively and put the mess behind us. The press center I envision will have dozens of spokespeople with varying areas of expertise, a variety of roles in the community, a variety of spoken languages and a broad array of opinions. Nominations will be open and public. Votes and endorsements will be open and public.

I will have the prototype ready by Friday or Saturday this week. I could use help in testing the UX and also proposals on how to manage the registration, nomination and voting process.

Hear Hear!

Bitcoin is neutral. The attempts to force certain agendas on it, through exclusion are well-meant but misguided. We've done this before for the Internet and for crypto. We didn't win the arguments against broad-based availability of crypto by hiding the fringe voices, we did it by adding more, and more and more voices ,until you couldn't but see it as a mainstream activity. Once 128-bit crypto was anarchist and terrorist anathema. Now it is weak protection for grandma's pot-pourri purchase. We did that through addition, not subtraction.

Don't bother asking for rational and consistent rules. That's the problem. It's not about "anarchists" soiling the good name of bitcoin. It's about a misguided effort to control access, based on a naive and selectively applied litmus test. For all the reasons Mike Hearn covered above, I'd suggest that jgarzik doesn't belong on the list. However, that would be applying the rule consistently.

There is no solution here other than a fork.

I'm building bitcoinpresscenter.org to be inclusive and dedicated only to press contacts.

This debate ran its course because there is no recourse, no rules, no consistency. At the end of the day, this was an effort to dictate policy to the community, based on what Hearn and Garzik and a few other believe is "moderate" while they can't even meet the standard themselves. It's arbitrary and capricious, and that's what people object to, not the specific individuals.

Game's up. bitcoin.org is not your private playground where you can pretend to speak for others or to take "the high road" which happens to coincide with your beliefs and opinions.