This Week in Bitcoin

[CoinLab]

We at Coinlab are producing a weekly round-up of the most interesting Bitcoin news and stories we find.  Thought some of you guys might find it useful as well.

The goal of this publication is to create a single-page summary of what is going on in the Bitcoin community that can be quickly digested in less than half an hour, but with links to sources so readers can also easily dive into stories that are particularly interesting.  I (Chris) am the primary "forum guy" at Coinlab, and the partners asked me to create this so they can keep in touch with the pulse of the Bitcoin community without investing 1+ hours a day on the forums.  I hope I can make a convenient way for "casual" forum members to stay up to date on the most important stories.  

Thank you to everyone about your feedback and story ideas. Keep them coming!

Please PM me, post in this thread, or email me at chris [at] coinlab.com with any stories you think we should include.  I will add your name to a "contributors" section at the bottom of each weeks post if we end up using your submission.  (Let me know if you don't want your name included).

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[phorensic]

So is this going to be like TWiT?  TWiB?  Film it in the new brickhouse studios!

[CoinLab]

Permalink: http://www.coinlab.com/2011/11/the-week-in-bitcoin-butterflylab/

CoinLab pre-orders ButterflyLabs' "The Single" high efficiency Bitcoin Mining hardware

Source: Butterfly Labs Product Page  http://butterflylabs.com/products/
Skeptical Bitcointalk Thread- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48863.0

CoinLab pre-ordered ButterflyLabs' compact, power-efficient SHA-256 hashing hardware last week.  "The Single" is a small "coffee cup-sized" cube which offers 1.05 Ghash/sec at the shockingly low power consumption of 19.8 watts. This represents a decrease to 1/80th the energy consumption of the top performing GPUs from PCPerspective's review of GPU mining efficiency.  This has understandably raised some skepticism from the bitcoin community, with sentiments of ButterflyLabs ranging from amazed to incredulous, some even calling them an outright scam.  The current most active wager on BetsOfBitco.in, a BTC-based prop betting site, is whether the product will live up to what has been promised (122 for, 108 against at time of writing). It appears the first batch of pre-orders is now sold out, as the price has been raised from $499 to $699 in the past few days.  The first deliveries of pre-ordered boxes are anticipated to arrive at consumers' doorsteps in early January of next year.  Expect a review of performance soon after we get ours.  ButterflyLabs plans on releasing another model with 50x hashing power and power consumption sometime in the future.

CoinLab has pledged 1+ BTC per charity to the Bitcoin100 pledge drive

Source: Bitcointalk Forum Thread (CoinLab Pledge on pg7) - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0

The Bitcoin100 is a pledge drive on the Bitcointalk forums to get 100 enthusiasts to pledge 1 BTC (or more) for the first 100 charities to accept Bitcoin donations. In less than a week, it has reached 50 pledges.  The movement is still waiting for the first charitable organization to accept bitcoins.
A service with a similar sentiment at heart is Bitcoin-Charity, which facilitates receiving and converting BTC donations into USD donations.

BitcoinSpinner is an Android wallet service with QR code facilitated transactions and wallet backup

Source: Bitcointalk Forum Thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52674.0

BitcoinSpinner is an Open Source Android application developed by Dutch software company Miracle A/S.  Other notable features include server-side block chain validation (no need to download the whole chain to your phone), easy sharing of bitcoin addresses through Gmail and twitter, and clientside wallet storage and backup (so they can't steal your money even if they tried).  Seems like a promising lightweight Android wallet solution.  I haven't tested it yet though, as I have had trouble downloading it through the Android market.

Using the blockchain as a form of notarization or timestamp?

Source: Bitcointalk Thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52715.0

Bitcointalk forum member "sebastian" proposed a novel use of the block chain last week.  Much like how you can mail a document to yourself as a cheap form of "timestamping", sebastian proposes that you could use a plaintext version of a document as the seed of your SHA hashing to generate a private key.  By posting a transaction from this address, the sender can prove, with about two hour accuracy, what time this document was timestamped.


MtGox UI Redesign Countdown Timer

Source: MtGox - https://mtgox.com/

MtGox plans on launching a new-and-improved UI and site redesign this Thursday at 8AM PST.  They have put a large countdown timer at the top of their homepage.  While MagicalTux claims they are trying to manage people's expectations, the large mysterious countdown timer appears to this observer as attempting to build suspense.  Will the new design live up to the intentional-or-not hype?  We will see this Thursday.


Other Interesting Links:

-Wired Article: "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin" - http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1
-Worldwide Unconfirmed Transactions visualization - http://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions
-Official Client v0.5 Released - http://bitcoin.org/releases/2011/11/21/v0.5.0.html

[evoorhees]

Don't forget FeedZeBirds.com launched!  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52638.0
Also featured interview on The Bitcoin Show 052:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuLAhZsFc1A&feature=youtu.be

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Thank you kindly for the write-up, CoinLab.

The movement is still waiting for the first charitable organization to accept bitcoins.

Charitable organizations will not be approached until Step 3.

Step 1: Building a pledge list of at least 100 pledgers.
Step 2. Just prior to approaching the charitable organization (CO), pledgers will be asked to honor their pledges of which at that time they will be notified as to which CO(s) is planned on being approached. That pledge pool will be held by some other member here because, like I've previously stated, I would spend it on old musty lumber.

[Coinabul]

Thank you kindly for the write-up, CoinLab.

The movement is still waiting for the first charitable organization to accept bitcoins.

Charitable organizations will not be approached until Step 3.

Step 1: Building a pledge list of at least 100 pledgers.
Step 2. Just prior to approaching the charitable organization (CO), pledgers will be asked to honor their pledges of which at that time they will be notified as to which CO(s) is planned on being approached. That pledge pool will be held by some other member here because, like I've previously stated, I would spend it on old musty lumber.

Which member?

[BTCurious]

Which member?

Gavin was suggested, but is probably busy. MemoryDealers was suggested by some users, but he didn't seem to respond to that/didn't seem interested. Basically anyone who is generally agreed upon to be trustworthy. As far as I can tell, you yourself would qualify. You have a long history, and a business that depends on your reputation.

More on topic: This is actually pretty nice! Please keep this up I didn't know about the notary trick. That's pretty neat!

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Which member?

Gavin was suggested, but is probably busy. MemoryDealers was suggested by some users, but he didn't seem to respond to that/didn't seem interested. Basically anyone who is generally agreed upon to be trustworthy. As far as I can tell, you yourself would qualify. You have a long history, and a business that depends on your reputation.

More on topic: This is actually pretty nice! Please keep this up I didn't know about the notary trick. That's pretty neat!

You are correct, BT. At the moment, nobody has stepped forward stating that they would do it, even temperately. I was going to draft (ask) someone(s) to do it, or suggest someone. This is just as good of a time as any. Going to do it on now on the appropriate thread.

What notary trick are you in reference to, BT? I've reread the post and it still eludes me. Call me Ishmael dumb!

[Vod]

That pledge pool will be held by some other member here because, like I've previously stated, I would spend it on old musty lumber.

Which member?

Better question - why have one member hold onto it?

Have each person that pledged send their donation directly to the CO.   I feel one hundred transactions of 1 bitcoin would look better in a wallet than a single transaction of 100 coins. 

[sadpandatech]

That pledge pool will be held by some other member here because, like I've previously stated, I would spend it on old musty lumber.

Which member?

Better question - why have one member hold onto it?

Have each person that pledged send their donation directly to the CO.   I feel one hundred transactions of 1 bitcoin would look better in a wallet than a single transaction of 100 coins. 

  I'm way overdue to go read the whole thread. Sadly, I overlooked it assuming the title was in reference to 100 websites, or some such and did not note the author at the time..

  That said, I am assuming the concept is to be able to present to the organization(s) in a more structered manner. With the donations going through a figurehead, if you will, it allows them the controlled situation to be able to discuss with the entitities on what exactly the goal is. Verses a bunch of people randomly 'spamming' emails to them to accept bitcoin. It's just a more professional approach, imho.

  On topic, very awesome list of news. I had not seen much of any of them at all!

  Cheers

[julz]

We at Coinlab are producing a weekly round-up of the most interesting Bitcoin news and stories we find.  Thought some of you guys might find it useful as well.  Did we miss something good? Email your most interesting stories to chris [at] coinlab.com

Gosh.. not only do you pimp your own boring interest in a controversial(scam?) hardware investment, you don't even mention the Bitcoin conference in Prague?

No mention of the Fox News TV story?

Also - Rick Falkvinge named in 'Top 100 Global Thinkers' list by ForeignPolicy magazine - partly because of his Bitcoin evangelism


Yes - you are missing the interesting stuff about Bitcoin. Perhaps because you're being too self-important?

First 2 entries start..
"Coinlabs..."

Really?   You dare call it "A round-up of the most interesting Bitcoin news and stories"
Interesting to you - the self absorbed.

Nevertheless - in the interests of helping out - let me point you to a thread that's been in front of your nose the whole time:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1958.1640

Edit: You guys even made that thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1958.msg542340;topicseen#msg542340

[BTCurious]

What notary trick are you in reference to, BT? I've reread the post and it still eludes me. Call me Ishmael dumb!

The one where the blockchain can be used to unambiguously timestamp documents, up to about 2 hour precision, without really bloating the blockchain. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52715.0

[CoinLab]

Thanks for you feedback and story ideas everyone!

Yes - you are missing the interesting stuff about Bitcoin. Perhaps because you're being too self-important?

You are right, we did miss a lot of interesting stuff.  FeedZeBirds, Falkvinge, FOX business news story, and the conference will definitely make it into next week's post.  

We are not trying to be self-important, this was the first week and I am still learning where to find the best stories.  Press hits thread is great, I am sure I will get lots of use out of it.  Please continue to post or PM stories to be included in next week's post.  

[CoinLab]

LoveBitcoins.org BTC Intro site announces 1,000,000 new users in 2012 goal

Sources: http://lovebitcoins.org/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53680.0

This week, LoveBitcoins.org was announced as a new partnership between Bit-Pay, a POS merchant services provider, and Max Keiser, of RT's Keiser Report.  It is a well designed introduction to Bitcoin focusing on helping new users choosing the right wallet services for their technical abilities.  Might be a good first place to send your friends when they ask where to learn more about Bitcoin.

Twitter Astroturfing with Bitcoin - FeedZeBirds.com

Sources: http://feedzebirds.com/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52638.0

FeedZeBirds is a service where advertisers can set a price and deposit funds to start a "campaign". Twitter users can register an account and get paid, in bitcoin, for each campaign they retweet.  Tweeters are paid proportionally to the number of followers they have. So far 22 tweets have been made by 11 different users.  The top paying campaign currently offers 0.09BTC per tweet per 1000 followers. Today, you can earn about 0.5 BTC per 1000 followers if you tweet all of the offered campaigns, including countercultural messages, bitcoin services, and a chance to win a free AK-47.

Falkvinge named 98 in ForeignPolicy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers, citing Bitcoin Evangelism

Sources: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,51#thinker98
http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

Congratulations! When Bitcoin prices surged up to $30, Richard Falkvinge wrote a series of eloquent posts describing the opportunities and advantages of Bitcoin.  Falkvinge founded of the Swedish Pirate Party movement in 2006 and maintains an active news and editorial blog discussing information policy, technology, and piracy. Foreign Policy magazine's credibility is among the highest rated by influential leaders across government, corporate, and academic sectors.

 New Services:

-Operation Fabulous is a Bitcoin denominated web-advertising platform -http://operationfabulous.com/

-CoinConnect is a Bitcoin Social Network for making friends and sharing links -http://www.coinconnect.org/

-BitcoinsForChristmas emails Bitcoin at a future date, Christmas-themed - http://bitcoinsforchristmas.com/

-TheBitcoinList is a directory of bitcoin services in a variety of categories - http://www.thebitcoinlist.com/

- BTCinstant lets you pay for virtual credit cards with Bitcoin - http://www.btcinstant.com/

 

Note: Coinlab has not tested all of the above services, and noting them does not imply endorsement
 
Special thanks to bitcointalk members julz and evoorhees for suggesting stories.

Permalink: http://www.coinlab.com/2011/12/this-week-in-bitcoin-lovebitcoins-feedzebirds-falkvinge/

[CoinLab]

Internet Archive is accepting BitCoin donations!

Source: http://www.archive.org/donate/index.php

Internet Archive looks like the first non-profit organization to accept Bitcoin donations.  If you want to donate, click the link, "Our Bitcoin Address" on their donate page.   It is a likely candidate to be the first charity to receive donations from the Bitcoin100, which we mentioned two weeks ago.  CoinLab team members have together donated 11BTC so far.

Bitcoin Gifter: Send gifts worldwide with BTC

Source: http://www.bitcoingifter.com/become-an-agent

Do you want to send gifts to friends or family is a foreign country? Bitcoin Gifter is a service which lets you order gifts in many countries around the world and pay with Bitcoin.  BG currently has agents in 14 different countries around the world, who will place an order with their credit card in exchange for your Bitcoin. They are currently seeking agents in new countries and US states, who are reimbursed by 105% of their credit card purchase price.

People's Bank of China Staffer blogs about Bitcoin

Source: http://bitebi.cc/?p=1112

The author makes three "recommendations." (Editor's Note: this information was google-translated). First, the government should contribute enough computing resources to take the majority of mined Bitcoins into the future, concentrating the majority of Bitcoins in the state's coffers.  Second, establish bitcoin banks to prevent anonymous use of the currency and allow it to be regulated by the government.   Finally, encourage adoption of an international bitcoin-based non-sovereign monetary system, in order to challenge US hegemony over the international financial system.  Could the Chinese government soon become the largest miner on the Bitcoin network?

More Links:

-Forbes article about Regretsy's toy drive funds frozen by Paypal, Bitcoin mention - http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/12/06/on-the-anniversary-of-cutting-off-wikileaks-paypal-slaps-christmas-charity/

-Convergence is a distributed SSL-replacement project, accepts bitcoin - http://convergence.io/ (Watch the video for deeper info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Wl2FW2TcA)

-North Dakota Libertarian Congressional candidate accepting bitcoin for campaign (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51631.0;topicseen)

Note: Coinlab has not tested all of the above services, and noting them does not imply endorsement

[Coinabul]

People's Bank of China Staffer blogs about Bitcoin

Source: http://bitebi.cc/?p=1112

The author makes three "recommendations." (Editor's Note: this information was google-translated). First, the government should contribute enough computing resources to take the majority of mined Bitcoins into the future, concentrating the majority of Bitcoins in the state's coffers.  Second, establish bitcoin banks to prevent anonymous use of the currency and allow it to be regulated by the government.   Finally, encourage adoption of an international bitcoin-based non-sovereign monetary system, in order to challenge US hegemony over the international financial system.  Could the Chinese government soon become the largest miner on the Bitcoin network?

My understanding is that it was published in a magazine then republished online.

[coin_toss]

very useful thread, deserves a sticky imo

[CoinLab]

http://coinlab.com/2012/01/deposit-cards-the-good-wife-vending-machine/

Bit-Pay Announces Deposit Cards

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UmynaPg8hw, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57303.0;topicseen

Bit-Pay's new service, Deposit Cards, allow non-technical BitCoin beginners to accept BTC without ever handling it themselves.  Bit-Pay is offering wallet or key-chain sized cards which include your name, a picture, and a QR-code for a bitcoin address.  Whenever Bitcoins are sent to this address, Bit-Pay automatically changes them into USD and sends a text message to the recipient with the USD value that was just deposited.  The following day, the funds are directly deposited into the recipient's bank account.  They have also launched PimpCoin.com, an identical service, branded as a way for strippers to accept bitcoin tips.  Bit-Pay is also selling Bitcoins from their booth at CES this week.

BitcoinBeta's 2011 Bitcoin Awards Results In

Source: http://bitcoinawards.bitcoinbetas.com/

Bitcoin Betas recently announced the winners of their community-voted awards for the year.  Special congratulations to Gavin Andresen (won Person, Developer of the Year), Bit-Pay (Company, Start-Up, Merchant Services of the year) and Casascius (Most Interesting Bitcoin Project)!

Armory - A Seriously Promising Client

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56424.0

Armory is a new alternative to the official client that incorporates a huge number of feature requests from the community.  Features include: Multiple wallets, deterministic wallets, paper wallets, Read-only wallets, stronger encryption, corruption and error correction, batch importing of addresses, offline transaction creation, zero-confirmtion transactions, private key accessibility and more.  Currently for Windows and Linux.  The project is still young however, so it may not be stable, and it still has some bugs, such as needing to load the entire blockchain into memory and needing to run the Satoshi client simultaneously.  Could Armory overtake the Official client?

Bitcoins to be featured in CBS's The Good Wife on Jan 15th

Source: http://bitcoinmedia.com/the-good-wife-bitcoin-for-dummies-promo/

The show synopsis indicates that this episode will be about the protagonist legal team defending the lawyer representing the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.  Though it seems the show will likely be alarmist, making Bitcoins seem shady, the general consensus of the Bitcoin community is, "All PR is good PR", for now.  Tune in this Sunday to see it for yourself.

Bitcoin Vending Machine Developed

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDOcLros-w0

Stuart W. Card of Critical Technologies Inc. announced the first ever Bitcoin Vending Machine transaction.  While leaving plenty of room for improvement, Card has made a functional vending machine which lets customers buy snacks using a wallet on a smartphone which can read QR-codes.  The process is still somewhat cumbersome, but we look forward further innovation in this space.

A Visual History of Bitcoin Development

Source: http://codinginmysleep.com/2012/01/bitcoin-development-history-visually/

Using Gource, a development history visualizer, the Coding In My Sleep blog has created a video which shows how the Bitcoin codebase has grown and changed over the past three years.  Very cool!

Pay to Script is up for vote

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016

Bitcoin Core Developer Gavin Andresen implemented a pay-to-script-hash solution this week, and put it out for vote to BitCoin miners. The proposal is named "BIP0016". It adds significant functionality to the Bitcoin block chain by allowing users to send coins to a script, the script to be executed later.
In a simple form, the script might validate any two out of three possible signatures on a 'send' request to a new address, providing an escrow service enforced by the blockchain. UI for functionality like this is some time out; many months at the least.
Especially of note  is that Gavin asked miners who agreed with the proposal to add the string "P2SH" in blocks they mine; he will count blocks mined during January to determine how the BitCoin mining community 'votes' on this issue. This is an interesting and novel development in BitCoin governance, and we look forward to seeing how this 'voting' mechanism evolves.