[ANN] Just Fork It - Feathercoin Weekly News #8

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #8
Tuesday 12^th November 2013

Just Fork It

Feathercoin Key Stats
209 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 22,400,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 13.95 days behind target generation rate

Due to the hectic nature of the last 7 days we are going to dive straight in...

Feathercoin Coming to Bittylicious

Before we go in to the Amsterdam meetup I would like to announce that Bittylicious have now begun testing Feathercoin transactions ready for a Christmas rollout. You may remember from Weekly News #2 that we met with the founder Marc Warne at the London Bitcoin Meetup.

Bittylicious gives people a delightful way to buy Bitcoins in a simple step by step process

I cannot stress enough the importance of design driven products in this space. It's not just what you do it's the way you do it and if crypto currencies are going to reach mainstream adoption then this is vital to their success. I think you will agree that Marc has done a great job at keeping the process of buying Bitcoins not just simple but delightful and that's the experience we want for our first time adopters.

There will be an opportunity for you to become a seller of your Feathercoins using Marc's site so please contact me or Ruth on the forum if you want to get involved.

More than 600 Attend and View Our #BTCAmsterdam Conference - Special Report

If you don't like the way things are being done all you have to do is pick up a spade and do it yourself. Just Fork It! Last week we had a real blast in Amsterdam at our own Conference. That's right, Feathercoin forked the Amsterdam Bitcoin Conference after the previous arrangement fell through which led to many disappointed speakers and attendees who were left out of pocket.

Team Feathercoin on the tarmac at Amsterdam Airport welcomed by ~~adoring fans~~ EasyJet customers awaiting the next flight

The conference was arranged by only a handful of people at the last minute with barely three days to go. Thanks must be paid to Richard at PikaPay and Knowmads Business School who were the real heroes and Yes experts. We asked "Can we have food?" they said "Yes!". We asked "can we have a live webstream, with pro sound recording, PA system and some HD video?" they said "oh, Yes!".

Over 600 people attended either virtually on livestream or in person over the course of 3 days

We plan to make good use of the recordings from the event so watch this space!

This is Appa, our sound man who went around the audience taking their comments for the recording.

Appa was brought in last minute and showed up each day to make sure the sound was working and the mics recorded in top quality audio.

Paloma selling her healthy Energy Balls to our guests at the event.
Next to her one of our Yes Doctors from Knowmads Johannes who was a superb host and we couldn't have done it without him

Knowmads also laid on food and drink available for Bitcoins... and fiat as well.

Educating merchant about the virtues of crypto currencies outside Amsterdam Central, a tourist hotspot

We also did plenty of merchant patrol, visiting both Bitcoin friendly shops as well as those we thought would be perfect for a global currency such as a restaurant who service tourists.

And then this happened:

BIPS.me to Introduce Alt Coin Support

Kris Henriksen from Bitcoin payment processor BIPS.me announces on stage that they will be implementing alt coin support in the coming months

We were pleasantly surprised to hear an announcement, live on stage, by Kris Henriksen who flew in from Denmark and told us that BIPS.me were planning on implementing Feathercoin and other popular crypto currencies on to their platform. This means soon merchants will be able to accept Feathercoins and convert them directly in to fiat making smaller alt currencies like ours a much more attractive proposition for merchants.

When I asked Kris if BIPS were planning on accepting Feathercoin (seek 40 mins approx) I really wasn't expecting him to say 'yes'. I just asked it as a kind of cheeky question. We spoke during the break and he told me that their plans are to roll out in the next few months so I wouldn't expect it this side of Christmas but we are staying in contact with the guys over in Denmark and they can expect the same 5 star treatment we give to all our 3rd party developers and merchants.

TL;DR - Communities Always Win

Not everyone is going to make it. The next few months threatens to reveal a sharp rise in the Bitcoin price which could result in many alts dying out through lack of enthusiasm on the part of their communities. But yet again, we received recognition from a big player in this space Jon Matonis head of the Bitcoin Foundation.

That's not down to luck, that's down to hard work.

Because we're not a community that likes to sit back waiting to get rich. As more people sign up to our map, more products are sold on the market place and as we grow our merchant adoption widely our hope is to create a virtuous spiral where people want Feathercoins so that they can spend them and merchants accept Feathercoins so that they can earn them.

As Richard from Pikapay said during the conference "Communities always win".

You can find last week's newsletter here: Hopium for the Masses. 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.