EUROPEAN BITCOIN CONFERENCE 2011, PRAGUE NOV 25-27

[giszmo]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

This guy needs to learn some economics. His take on "free things cause unemployment" was so wrong...

Oh! That was his quote? Guess then I will have to edit my summary a bit as that part I totally disagreed with, too.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Simon Dixon: mostly boring pro-banking stuff.

This guy needs to learn some economics. His take on "free things cause unemployment" was so wrong... He could start reading some Bastiat; http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Yeah, he's a luddite. Though in his defense I do sympathize with a related sentiment - while it's great when people offer free stuff, it's bad when people demand to be given stuff for free. This dries up the incentives to create high-quality products and services, and the people end up with free stuff worth exactly what they paid for them.

I never understood as a kid, why everybody wanted to work so badly. It seemed so much more attractive to just play all day.

Maybe we should, as a global society, rethink some stuff from the ground up, and talk to children in the process, they might have some good ideas

Or just invite me on literally every project in the community. Everyone who works with me pretty much says it's like working with a 12 year old. Wait...

[davout]

I never understood as a kid, why everybody wanted to work so badly. It seemed so much more attractive to just play all day.
Maybe we should, as a global society, rethink some stuff from the ground up, and talk to children in the process, they might have some good ideas

+1 !

[molecular]

I'm allowed to up more teasers.

http://youtu.be/IavQ-Wc8S1U - Clemens Cap about electronic bitcoin wallet at EuroBit

you guys have any wishes for the next one?

[Grouver (BtcBalance)]

I'm allowed to up more teasers.

http://youtu.be/IavQ-Wc8S1U - Clemens Cap about electronic bitcoin wallet at EuroBit

you guys have any wishes for the next one?

A max keiser teaser would be awesome.

[Portnoy]

Cameron Garnham: Open transactions project has a marketing problem. I don't get what it is useful for, and I didn't understand that after the presentation. I unfedstood that with their technology you can currently issue centralized "tokens". The vision is de-centralized, however I don't understand how that could be achieved. And generally I don't really understand what the open-transactions project is practically useful for. More practical examples, please!

If I understood it correctly, it is a common protocol for issuing centralized tokens for anything. The idea is that people can exchange different tokens, from different issuers, digitally, using the same protocol.
I also don't know much about Open Transaction, I would need to learn more. I wonder if with alternative chains and merged mining we couldn't actually completely decentralize the double-spend verification part of the Open Transaction protocol, making it less centralized. It is inherently centralized anyway, since we're talking about token issuers.

Open-Transactions vs. the "typical centralized system"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20425.msg255411#msg255411

I recommend the agorist radio interview.

I think Open Transactions will do a lot for Bitcoin. 

( Is Cameron Garnham fellowtraveler? )
 

[slush]

Cameron Garnham is da2ce7

[Transisto]

One week later and close to nothing released ?

[worldly]

One week later and close to nothing released ?

unfortunately ive been a bit snowed under, hopefully today i should be able to get 1 done.

[molecular]

Stacy, Max and Richard talk in Paris, partly about Bitcoin and the Conference.

Stacy seems genuinly impressed by having actually used bitcoin (thanks to Tony of bit-pay for making that happen!)

Here's a quote from http://ia700801.us.archive.org/5/items/MaxKeiserRadio-TheTruthAboutMarkets-03December2011/TaM-031211.mp3 (start listen at 31:30 for bitcoin):

Now, that's the thing that I really learned at the Bitcoin Conference. Now, I guess I got a little bit confused by a lot of the trolls and propaganda out there who don't understand, because, a lot of shreekers, who actually haven't used bitcoin. Now I assumed, like they, at a certain point, you know, people are like: 'it's a ponzy scheme!'. But what it is: it's a unit of transaction. If you've actually ever used it, you can see the simplicity of using it just to friggin' purchase something, not to speculate and hope to flip it to somebody at a greater price. You just convert your currency that day to whatever... there's some place that'll convert it to gold for you, you can convert it to euros, swiss franks, dollars, whatever you want.

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Stacy, Max and Richard talk in Paris, partly about Bitcoin and the Conference.

Stacy seems genuinly impressed by having actually used bitcoin (thanks to Tony of bit-pay for making that happen!)

Here's a quote from http://ia700801.us.archive.org/5/items/MaxKeiserRadio-TheTruthAboutMarkets-03December2011/TaM-031211.mp3 (start listen at 31:30 for bitcoin):

Now, that's the thing that I really learned at the Bitcoin Conference. Now, I guess I got a little bit confused by a lot of the trolls and propaganda out there who don't understand, because, a lot of shreekers, who actually haven't used bitcoin. Now I assumed, like they, at a certain point, you know, people are like: 'it's a ponzy scheme!'. But what it is: it's a unit of transaction. If you've actually ever used it, you can see the simplicity of using it just to friggin' purchase something, not to speculate and hope to flip it to somebody at a greater price. You just convert your currency that day to whatever... there's some place that'll convert it to gold for you, you can convert it to euros, swiss franks, dollars, whatever you want.

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

exactly.  forget trying to explain what it is or how it works.  just show someone how to use it!  ask what kind of phone they have, and then set them up with a wallet.  send them one bitcoin, and show them how to send it back to you.  

[BitPay Business Solutions]

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

very true.  Bitcoin is not a threat to the dollar.  Bitcoin is a threat to the Banks and their stupid fees!

[Steve]

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

very true.  Bitcoin is not a threat to the dollar.  Bitcoin is a threat to the Banks and their stupid fees!

Yes…and it's the foolishness of politicians and bureaucrats that are a threat to the dollar.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

very true.  Bitcoin is not a threat to the dollar.  Bitcoin is a threat to the Banks and their stupid fees!

<sarcasm>
The bank is dead. Long live the new bank!
</sarcasm>

As I've said before, Bitcoin can only be a threat to banks if it is a threat to the dollar. If not, then whatever service is used to store a dollar balance and convert it to bitcoins and back for every transaction, is in fact the new bank and will suffer from all the problems of existing banks.

I don't disagree with the principle though, widespread adoption of Bitcoin will probably start with using it as a payment mechanism while only holding a small amount of it at any given time.

[molecular]

(I sense the marketing direction will be less about bitcoin as money (enemy: USD) and more about bitcoin as a payment system (enemy: paypal))

very true.  Bitcoin is not a threat to the dollar.  Bitcoin is a threat to the Banks and their stupid fees!

I agree with your second statement.

So let's go with that for a year or two, it's powerfull enough.

[molecular]

good news, everyone!

Max Keisers film project 291 on piratemyfilm.com "European Bitcoin - Prague" is now >100% funded.

The funds needed for this project have been reduced from $1.500 to $300, probably due to bit-pay.com paying the flights.

Awesome!

[Grouver (BtcBalance)]

edit: Never mind.

[molecular]

A max keiser teaser would be awesome.

Max Keiser introduces himself and talks shortly about why he likes bitcoin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFSbj-MidPw ("I like challenging authority")

[worldly]

Tony is a big asset to what we are all trying to achieve.
A real entrepreneur in bitcoin creating practical applications for businesses to adopt bitcoin.

He helped fund the conference, he helped fund Max and his (small) entourage and now we have a real profile involved in pushing bitcoin to the masses.

It's hard to coordinate everyone to focus on a goal from what ive seen but i think tonys idea of going for a million bitcoin users is something the whole community should get behind.

Thanks to moleccular for posting some tasters of the conference, ive set aside time tomorrow to get some production done.

[molecular]

Here's something funny:

My mtgox account had withdrawals disabled due to "suspicious activity".

The "suspicious activity" was using the wifi at the conference center . Many people logged in from that IP and that's seen as hacker-like behaviour.

<MagicalTux> I'll check logs for other people using the same ip and unblock them

So if you've been to the conference, logged in to mtgox from there and you encounter problems. This might be it. There might be more IPs flagged suspicious: starbucks, hotel, brmlab hackerspace,...

Just thought I'd let you know so you don't panik when you can't withdraw.