Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #6 - Halloween Special
Tuesday 28th October 2013
Lean in to your Fear
Feathercoin Key Stats195 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 20,920,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.75 days behind target generation rateIt's terrifying at just how much we are at the mercy of the dead who leave behind tools, language, cultural practices over which we have no control. In a spooky kind of way innovators are like dictators forcing the future generations in to a world over which they have no choice.
As well as looking back on our ancestors and the legacy they have left us with we should focus on the future and to the kind of world we do want to leave behind for the people who have not yet been born. Instead of denying to ourselves that our grizzly death could come at any moment we should remember our mortality and ask "what is the most important thing I could be doing right now to help build the legacy the future deserves?"
Now to find our way out of hell we must move in to this week's news...
The Creepy Bitcoin Conference Amsterdam
Come on, work with me here
- We are happy to announce that we will be attending the
Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam. I am scheduled to give a talk on Wednesday the 6
th Nov, which is the first day. Arrangements are being made to have the talk recorded and anyone in the Feathercoin team is welcome to approach me with suggestions of what themes they would like me to cover in the talk.
Nightmare on Sheep Street
One of the topics that will undoubtably come up is the impact the dusty old banking system with all its cobwebs is having on small businesses. Last Friday @Ruthie, @Bushstar and I visited Sheep Street in the small town of Bicester (pronounced Bister) in the UK to talk to merchants about their businesses and to learn more about any horrific challenges they are facing from the blood thirsty banks.
Ed told us that 60% of his customers do not carry cash and he is losing business - link to tweetThe real horror story here is the digitisation of money and the control of wealth. Money has been slowly being digitised now for the last few decades. One of the side effects of this digitisation is the control it gives to the person or people who have root access to that central ledger.
One merchant in Bicester told us on Friday that his bank wanted 10-15% of his sales before they would consider giving him full banking services with payment processing. This means he sees customers turning away from his stall and going to the big retail chains which in turn leads to a lack of competition in the marketplace.
This is completely unnecessary since the creation of the Blockchain by Satoshi Nakamoto 4 years ago. The Blockchain could be the biggest innovation in Accounting since the
Double-entry bookkeeping system first introduced by Luca Pacioli during the Italian Renaissance. But the underlying assumption all those centuries ago was that only one person could control the ledger at a time. And that kind of centralisation offers an incentive to whomever has control to do evil deeds.
Honesty must pay more than fraud.
The Blockchain on the other hand assumes that many people can all speak at the same time and control the ledger while maintaining consensus and accuracy in a trustless environment. The task now is to listen to the needs of regular people like Ed and work hard to make this technology relevant to his life and integrate it in to his business at marginal cost to help him stay competitive.
Drunk are the Dahmed
From the small English markets stalls to the wineries of Germany. Many treats must be given to
@ChekaZ who helped
Dahms Winery adopt both Feathercoin and Bitcoin. Here is a link to their shop,
checkout the confectionary!
Dahms winery is a 3rd generation family business located in Schweinfurt in the hearth of Franconia, Germany.
Jürgen Dahms left, Alexander Dahms right.Bringing the past to the future and weaving a present moment. This is exactly the kind of initiative we have come to expect from the Feathercoin community. Responding to uniqueness of the situation by showing a can-do attitude is what it is all about to help small business find their way out of this hellish economy.
Halloween Bounty Blood Bath
To help celebrate Halloween we
ran a Bounty to see who could come up with the best logo and artwork. This turned in to one of the best threads we have had since our beginnings so a big thank-you to all those who took part, everyone was rewarded with 10 Feathercoins.
With entries like this from Svenn picking a winner and finding consensus was a devilish task to overcomeCongratulations to the wicked:
@iawgoM for the winning logo
@Entimp for the artwork used as the background on
Facebook and
Twitter@FrankoIsFreedom@svennand@pr9me@lizhiTL;DR - Belong to where you are
We are born in to a world full of tools, language, rules and meaning. The only thing we can do with history is listen to it, understand it and respond in a way unique and appropriate to our age. Being reminded of the dead reminds us of our own mortality and urgency with which we must act.
We should stop relying on being in the right place at the right time and just belong to where we are. Bringing the past in to the future means creating opportunities where apparently none existed before. Don't look for a door to find a way out, make your own door.
Believing in someone and removing all barriers to their success is one of the most powerful ways to help them out of their nightmare. You do not need a reason to help someone so who will you help today?
Happy Halloween from the Feathercoin Team - whoever spots the most the ghoulish Halloween references in this week's news will sure be in for a digital treat.
You can find last week's newsletter here:
How will you measure your success?. Today special thanks go to @ChekaZ, @Svennand and @Ruthie for their contributions to this newsletter.
You can follow us on Twitter
@Feathercoin to stay up to date.
Thank-you for your time.
