The Royal Canadian Mint just announced a new alternative to BitCoin

[FreeMoney]

If they know who and where you bought your bitcoins from does it matter if bitcoin itself is anonymous? Once bitcoin leaves the closed ecosytem they can track it at the exit and entry points like they can do with tor.

Huh, I wonder if that will be enough incentive to grow a huge ass internal Bitcoin economy. I'm thinking... yes.

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[FreeMoney]

does anyone else think it's funny that mintchip keeps comparing their presently non-existent product to bitcoin? If I knew nothing of bitcoin I might assume from the mintchip press releases that bitcoin is the gold standard in the digital currency and electronic payment game. It almost seems like they are aspiring to be 'as good as bitcoin!'. Are trying a fight with what they believe to be the dominant digital payment system? And they are talking a whole lot of smack right now. Why do they keep referencing bitcoin? Does the centrally controlled mintchip have an inferiority complex? bitcoin has achieved some great things, mintchip has done nothing more than spreading it's propaganda via a few press releases. From my perspective mintchip has positioned itself in such a way that if it does not achieve full spectrum dominance of bitcoin in every way, shape and form, then their efforts will only serve to legitimize decentralized payment systems (bitcoin) it a really big way.

I was also thinking thoughts like this.

Can you imagine if Bitcoin had this much press months BEFORE Satoshi dropped the code?

It's not a fair fight, but we're gunna crush it.

[bitlizard]

Can you imagine if Bitcoin had this much press months BEFORE Satoshi dropped the code?

It's not a fair fight, but we're gunna crush it.

mintchip seems very confident, and they must know that what they are proposing is vastly inferior to bitcoin. Do you thing they might play the 'regulatory agency' card? As in 'bitcoin is now illegal and thus worthless to most people so we win by default'? previous to all the recent bitcoin publicity there was doubt as to whether or not bitcoin was even on the big banking, government and financial regulator radar. With all the recent coverage, I think any doubt has been erased. The question now is how will they respond to what could be perceived as a threat to their hegemony? and is mintchip their response? and if it is.... rotflmao!

[FreeMoney]

Here's the thing: just because Bitcoin is decentralized like bittorrent, it's not a network like that. A bitcoin transaction is not like downloading files. Normally you can trace file transfers by their origin and who is connected to the file by their IP address. With Bitcoin, there is only one file. It is the block chain, and nearly every bitcoin user has a copy.

To create a transaction requires only the sender to connect to the internet. The recipient of the transaction is merely a bitcoin address that gets added to the block chain by the sender. The recipient only needs to go online when he becomes a sender.

I'm oversimplifying this statement for clarity. The point being that Bitcoin can be very private and even anonymous, though I am advocating neither.

This is an important distinction.

You don't NEED to use the bitcoin network directly either. I wonder how long it would take to get in a block if I posted a tx with a nice fee right here in the forum.

But beyond that, all the interesting stuff isn't in the chain anyway.

[cbeast]

i doubt this mintchip thing is really going to get anywhere or remotely widely adopted by people

Physical bitcoin checks, cards, coins, and whatever-comes-next will be superior in every way. It would be better for a country to acquire new blocks and build a technology around green addresses.

[World]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

This doesn't look very professional to me.

[rjk]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

This does not look very professional to me.

And your highness would like what kind of changes to make the kit "professional"? It looks rather good to me.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

This does not look very professional to me.

And your highness would like what kind of changes to make the kit "professional"? It looks rather good to me.

Oh, I'm just trying to be pessimistic here. You are not helping out.

OK, it you want some arguments - it looks shiny and beautiful on the outside, but from the looks of it inside will be far far worse. Still, i might be wrong.

[rjk]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

This does not look very professional to me.

And your highness would like what kind of changes to make the kit "professional"? It looks rather good to me.

Oh, I'm just trying to be pessimistic here. You are not helping out.

I like to think of it as complementary, not competition, so I am optimistic.

[marcus_of_augustus]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

Heh, heh .. looks like an ideal trojan vector to get root-kits onto lots of bitcoin dev machines .... just saying.

Royal Canadian mint USB stick ... just trust us, uh-huh.

In the US the Secret Service is still a branch of the US Treasury I believe.

[rjk]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

Heh, heh .. looks like an ideal trojan vector to get root-kits onto lots of bitcoin dev machines .... just saying.

Royal Canadian mint USB stick ... just trust us, uh-huh.

In the US the Secret Service is still a branch of the US Treasury I believe.

zomg gonna hax0r my BSD system 11!!!1!

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I get that my arguments against it currently aren't very good. I just get a feeling (a "vibe") from this developer kit, that it's shiny and wonderful on the outside, but they spent much less time making it professional inside.

We have a saying in my country - "Krowa, która dużo muczy, mało mleka daje", which directly translates to "A cow which does a lot of noise, gives little milk". Wisdom of the ages. Still current, after all these years.

[marcus_of_augustus]

the development kit for the Royal Canadian Mint MintChip some pics and details
http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

Heh, heh .. looks like an ideal trojan vector to get root-kits onto lots of bitcoin dev machines .... just saying.

Royal Canadian mint USB stick ... just trust us, uh-huh.

In the US the Secret Service is still a branch of the US Treasury I believe.

zomg gonna hax0r my BSD system 11!!!1!

Well, all joking aside it does serve to demonstrate the first big drawback with MintChip, it is not even attempting a "trust no-one" currency, as bitcoin is attempting.

How do you know that the package of unknown (and advertised as unknowable) hardware that you got sent in the mail was from the RCM? How did you verify with them definitively that is a bona-fide RCM dev. kit?

The proprietary chip is a closed box and you want to stick it into your machine?

If you want to fornicate with hardware you better be wearing hardware protection. Stakes are pretty high, maybe best left to the professionals?

[R-]

I am not liking mint chip for one simple reason.