Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

• Press:
  Make.Money.Slow : The Bitcoin Experiment by Jon Evans on TechCrunch
  “At best it might eke out an existence as a distributed local currency for hardcore libertarians”.
  - http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/21/the-bitcoin-experiment
  - http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20110521the-bitcoin-experiment (Japanese)
  Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency by Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture
  “How we create and measure value is going through a change that has not been seen in over 600 years”.
  “It is a snowball today, but tomorrow it is an avalanche.  Just watch”.
  - http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/bitcoin-ven-and-the-end-of-currency
• s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (special update)
  Mid term: “DOWN as long as the high of $8.90 remains intact”.
  Short term: “RALLY from the low of $5.57.  $6.50 must hold for the rally to continue”.
  - http://bit.ly/iKxync
• Article / Blog post:
  Bitcoin by Justin of Nine Zero Nine blog
  Justin describes his foray into mining.  He learns about variance (“some days I would go without mining a single BTC and others I would get 3”) and ups the ante (“I impulse bought two more 5830s just yesterday”).
  - http://ninezeronine.net/2011/05/22/bitcoin
• Article / Blog post:
  Why Bitcoin is Smart, and Not a Scam by Brock Tice (@BrockTice)
  Rebuttal by this long-time community member to the many recent criticisms of bitcoin.
  “At one time there was a risk that someone with a botnet could easily overtake the network. That risk is now minimal and getting (exponentially) smaller every day”.
  “What makes bitcoin so cool is the combination of [fixed rate of inflation, blockchain, hashing targets, cryptography, anonymity] in one system”.
  - http://virtuallyshocking.com/2011/05/22/why-bitcoin-is-smart-and-not-a-scam

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

• skipped

Friday, May 20th, 2011

• Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
  1 BTC = $6.55 USD, Size: 6.27M BTC, Last 24h: 0.35M BTC in 4.8K trx, Difficulty: 244K, Forum posts/day: 2,018 Nodes: 1.9K
  - http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
• Article / Blog post:
  Open Source FGPA Bitcoin Miner on Bitcoin Miner
  “The cost of the equipment and not the cost of electricity continues to be the primary concern affecting miner’s decision on whether or not to add capacity.”
  “When power consumption limits are a constraint, then the FPGA with its significantly higher power efficiency might be the only method to increase mining hashing capacity.”
  - http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5672391181

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

• Video / Podcast: Buzz Out Loud 1469 (CNET)
  Hosts Molly Wood and Brian Tong discuss Bitcoin (from about 0:18:50 through 0:25:45)
  “There is no small representation of anarchist philosophy in the Bitcoin forum, but I gotta admit that frankly, I’m pretty mad at the banks and you can understand how this kind of revolution starts to come to pass”.
  “Once it gets to the point that its on this show it’s reaching mass saturation in the geek community and I suspect that we’re not far away from the point that goverments [take notice].”
  - http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-20063349-10.html
• Forum post: Public Relations by Gavin Andresen, technical lead of Bitcoin project
  “Bitcoin as “The People’s Money” is the right way to think about it”.
  “Creating solid technology was just the first step in a long road for bitcoin”.
  “It is international, decentralized, and completely open to innovation, very much like the Internet.”
  - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8940.0
• New software: ToyTrader
  An open source command line trading tool for Mt. Gox.
  - http://github.com/toyotasupra/ToyTrader
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/ToyTrader
• s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
  Long term: “Chances are high that we see at least 2 months of declines or at least sideways action”.
  Short term: “Bitcoins continue the way down. A break of 6.7-6.8$ is needed to start the next leg down”.
  - http://bit.ly/kPhS2s
• New miner: Browser Bitcoin Miner
  A cpu miner that is launched from the browser, requires no installation and runs as a Java application.  The author’s goal was to make it easy for those who are not technical to start mining.
  - http://www.bitcoinplus.com
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Browser_Bitcoin_Miner
• New site: Spend bitcoins
  “A buying service in which purchases through Amazon.com can be made and paid for using bitcoins”.
  - http://spendbitcoins.com
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Spend_bitcoins
• Milestone: What is Bitcoin video passes 100,000 views
  Less than two weeks after reaching 50,000 views the video that introduces Bitcoin has doubled that earlier number and has passed 100,000 views.
  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo
• Article / Blog post:
  The Information Policy Case For Flat Tax And Basic Income by Rick Falkvinge
  “Distributed cryptocurrency is here to stay. Its use case is so hands-down attractive that it beats the legacy banking and transaction systems on walk-over on point after point”.
  “A lot of individuals in government will react with normalcy bias to [not seeing an individual’s wealth] and say ‘but we have to!’. It doesn’t matter if you have to. You can’t. Period”.
  - http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/19/the-information-policy-case-for-flat-tax-and-basic-income/
• New mobile app: btcMobile
  A mobile app for iPhone and iPad used for checking mining pool statistics and for reviewing weighted average market prices.
  - http://btcmobile.jworley.kodingen.com
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BtcMobile

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

• Article / Blog post:
  What Happens When Anonymous Gets A Bank? by Dominic Basulto (@DominicBasulto) in Big Think
  “Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency”.
  “Bitcoins are globally transferable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it’s banned by a sovereign government”.
  - http://bigthink.com/ideas/38488
• New IRC channel: #bitcoin-otc-eu
  Complement to the #bitcoin-otc marketplace is a dedicated EU trading channel.
  - http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-otc-eu
  - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8819.0
• Article / Blog post:
  Difficulty adjusts to 244,139, a 55% increase by Bitcoin Miner
  “The mining profitability level is high enough yet that few except for those running the most inefficient hardware will continue mining”.
  “By some estimates, the Bitcoin network now has as much computing power as half of all the Top 500 Supercomputer projects combined”.
  ”’“Too much computational power is being expended to protect too little value’”.
  - http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5622597370
• Press: Slate.com
  My Money Is Cooler Than Yours by Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey)
  Another media reporter who misses a few concepts that are basic to understanding Bitcoin:
  “In the event of such a Bitcoin panic, there would be no FDIC to insure each account and no Fed to stabilize the value of the currency. (That’s another reason to recommend the dollar)”.
  - http://www.slate.com/id/2294980
• Article / Blog post:
  ‘Will Work for Bitcoin’ Coder Says Most People Just Using It as an Investment Vehicle by Adrianne Jeffries in NY Observer’s BetaBeat.
  “[The billable rate for the project] equates to a rate significantly below my normal hourly rate. However, I expect Bitcoins to appreciate significantly in value”.
  “As an average Joe, I plan on using Bitcoin as I would any other currency.”
  - http://bit.ly/mFWeAC
• Article / Blog post:
  Who You Gonna Believe, Them or Your Lying Eyes … by Bitcoin Money
  Tracking feedback from a technical community over the course of nearly one year shows that there are and will continue to be doubters, but the data doesn’t lie.
  “‘They’ either didn’t want this day to come or don’t see how a decentralized currency is such a game changer”.
  - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5612828148

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

• Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
  1 BTC = $7.61 USD, Size: 6.23M BTC, Last 24h: 0.28M BTC in 4.4K trx, Difficulty: 157.4K, Forum posts/day: 1,351 Nodes: 1.7K
  - http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
• Article / Blog post:
  Trading coins for clicks by Charis Palmer in Technology Spectator
  ”Collaborative consumption is a buzzword for the rapid explosion of swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting that has been enabled through new technologies on a scale never possible before, and it’s a trend worth watching if only for the innovative start-ups it’s spawning”.
  - http://technologyspectator.com.au/emerging-tech/social-media/trading-coins-clicks
• Bitcoin Trading Signals Short Term Update:
  “The oscillator it’s oversold but i dont think i’ll see a buying opportunity today”.
  “Once the low is in place […] I expect it to carry the btc up and above the 8 level”.
  - http://btctrading.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/short-term-update
• Article / Blog post:
  Response to question ”Is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin a good idea?“ on Quora.
  This older question on the Q&A site has been seeing a lot of activity, including a follow up by Sean Lynch (@DrPrettyBad) who previously wrote a post titled “Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency”.  He maintains that “there are still potentially serious problems with Bitcoin” however he now acknowledges “none of them seems like an obvious killer to me”.
  - http://bit.ly/j3k7JE
• Article / Blog post:
  Can BitCoin, the First Open Source Currency, Threaten the Dollar? by DJ Pangburn on DeathAndTaxesMag.com
  “It occurred to me that someone must create an alternate currency through which individuals can disengage from their country’s currency, thereby bypassing violent insurrection”.
  “Whatever happens, the invention of the BitCoin is a rather seismic event, and might point to the way of the future, in which the people might finally wrest the power that the state and corporations have held over individuals for far too long”.
  - http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/90660
• Article / Blog post:
  L020: Is Bitcoin the Wikileaks of Monetary Policy? by Robert Tercek on Launch.is
  “In the past, you as a citizen were powerless to stop [currency debasement] until the next election cycle”.
  “The link between money and identity enables the government to monitor your behavior and enforce a range of laws including compliance with tax codes, gambling statutes, drug laws, money laundering laws and more. Bitcoin presents the option to avoid these regulations”.
  - http://launch.is/blog/l020-is-bitcoin-the-wikileaks-of-monetary-policy.html

Monday, May 16th, 2011

• Discussion forums affected by traffic levels
  The immense amount of traffic to the Bitcoin.org website and then to the discussion forums caused performance issues for several hours on Monday.  The buzz occurred as the result of @Launch’s newsletter followed by the attention on Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, etc.
  - http://bit.ly/h2JuOF Bitcoin.org web site performance monitoring
  - http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&date=2011 (The spike shown by Google Trends)
• Site update: YouTipIt.org
  Youtipit got a whole new look and a few new features, including the term Junket being replaced by the more intuitive name — a tipit.
  An upcoming feature not yet released will be Escrow Tipits.  These allow tipping to any Facebook user regardless of whether or not the user has already registered with YouTipIt.
  - http://www.youtipit.org
• Article / Blog post:
  Bitcoin - The Tool For Topping Up by Bitcoin Money
  “Recently there have been many innovative payment systems introduced to make it easier to move money among us, person-to-person”.
  “But each of these innovations is flawed in that a delay is introduced by the banking systems they rely on”.
  ”Enter Bitcoin and the #bitcoin-otc marketplace”.
  - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5548223879
• s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis
  Analysis: “As long as 5$ holds, much higher levels are possible”.
  Long term: “BTC/USD seem to behave much as SILVER”. “4.7 is the 50% retracement”.
  Short term: “Prices still seem to be just before the next wave down [though] bitcoins often surprise on the upside”.
  - http://bit.ly/l8VWwk
• Press: Wired UK
  Peer-to-peer currency Bitcoin sidesteps financial institutions by Duncan Geere
  “Subscribers to the cypherpunk mailing list were discussing the idea of a “cryptocurrency”. Wei Dei crystallised this into a proposal — one that doesn’t rely on trusting one central issuer, who can flood the market with more currency”.
  “[How is Bitcoin used?] A programmer named Nicholas Carlson recently accepted a job offer in which he’ll be paid in Bitcoins”.
  - http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/16/bitcoin-p2p-currency
• Article / Blog post:
  Lords of a new economy by Alaric Snell-Pym (@Alaric)
  “It’s not often that you get to see anarcho-capitalism and enlightened self interest having such free reign of expression; and it will be interesting to see how it pans out”.
  “At worst [an attempt to regulate using new rules would]  just cause a fork of the chain, as people who want an unregulated economy will just go off on their own separate way with the old rules.”
  - http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/2011/05/16/lords-of-a-new-economy
• Article / Blog post:
  Bitcoin, Wikileaks, and the Rise of In-Spite-of-Archy by Kenneth Myers
  “Bitcoin changes everything. If you want an alternate currency, you buy in. If you don’t, you don’t”.
  “It’s encroaching on the sort of grand scale project space that first gave governments their legitimacy. I think this is significant.”
  - http://bit.ly/lgjjQu

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Each day I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

• Article / Blog post:
  What Happens When Anonymous Gets A Bank? by Dominic Basulto (@DominicBasulto) in Big Think
  “Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency”.
  “Bitcoins are globally transferable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it’s banned by a sovereign government”.
  - http://bigthink.com/ideas/38488
• New IRC channel: #bitcoin-otc-eu
  Complement to the #bitcoin-otc marketplace is a dedicated EU trading channel.
  - http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-otc-eu
  - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8819.0
• Article / Blog post:
  Difficulty adjusts to 244,139, a 55% increase by Bitcoin Miner
  “The mining profitability level is high enough yet that few except for those running the most inefficient hardware will continue mining”.
  “By some estimates, the Bitcoin network now has as much computing power as half of all the Top 500 Supercomputer projects combined”.
  ”’“Too much computational power is being expended to protect too little value’”.
  - http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5622597370
• Press: Slate.com
  My Money Is Cooler Than Yours by Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey)
  Another media reporter who misses a few concepts that are basic to understanding Bitcoin:
  “In the event of such a Bitcoin panic, there would be no FDIC to insure each account and no Fed to stabilize the value of the currency. (That’s another reason to recommend the dollar)”.
  - http://www.slate.com/id/2294980
• Article / Blog post:
  ‘Will Work for Bitcoin’ Coder Says Most People Just Using It as an Investment Vehicle by Adrianne Jeffries in NY Observer’s BetaBeat.
  “[The billable rate for the project] equates to a rate significantly below my normal hourly rate. However, I expect Bitcoins to appreciate significantly in value”.
  “As an average Joe, I plan on using Bitcoin as I would any other currency.”
  - http://bit.ly/mFWeAC
• Article / Blog post:
  Who You Gonna Believe, Them or Your Lying Eyes … by Bitcoin Money
  Tracking feedback from a technical community over the course of nearly one year shows that there are and will continue to be doubters, but the data doesn’t lie.
  “‘They’ either didn’t want this day to come or don’t see how a decentralized currency is such a game changer”.
  - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/5612828148

Have a news tip, suggestion or comment?
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submit

Current week (updated throughout each day):
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Previous summaries:
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Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

• Press:
  Make.Money.Slow : The Bitcoin Experiment by Jon Evans on TechCrunch
  “At best it might eke out an existence as a distributed local currency for hardcore libertarians”.
  - http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/21/the-bitcoin-experiment
  - http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20110521the-bitcoin-experiment (Japanese)
  Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency by Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture
  “How we create and measure value is going through a change that has not been seen in over 600 years”.
  “It is a snowball today, but tomorrow it is an avalanche.  Just watch”.
  - http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/20/bitcoin-ven-and-the-end-of-currency
• s3052’s Bitcoin Market Technical Analysis (special update)
  Mid term: “DOWN as long as the high of $8.90 remains intact”.
  Short term: “RALLY from the low of $5.57.  $6.50 must hold for the rally to continue”.
  - http://bit.ly/iKxync
• Article / Blog post:
  Bitcoin by Justin of Nine Zero Nine blog
  Justin describes his foray into mining.  He learns about variance (“some days I would go without mining a single BTC and others I would get 3”) and ups the ante (“I impulse bought two more 5830s just yesterday”).
  - http://ninezeronine.net/2011/05/22/bitcoin
• Article / Blog post:
  Why Bitcoin is Smart, and Not a Scam by Brock Tice (@BrockTice)
  Rebuttal by this long-time community member to the many recent criticisms of bitcoin.
  “At one time there was a risk that someone with a botnet could easily overtake the network. That risk is now minimal and getting (exponentially) smaller every day”.
  “What makes bitcoin so cool is the combination of [fixed rate of inflation, blockchain, hashing targets, cryptography, anonymity] in one system”.
  - http://virtuallyshocking.com/2011/05/22/why-bitcoin-is-smart-and-not-a-scam

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

• skipped

Friday, May 20th, 2011

• Bitcoin Economy Snapshot:
  1 BTC = $6.55 USD, Size: 6.27M BTC, Last 24h: 0.35M BTC in 4.8K trx, Difficulty: 244K, Forum posts/day: 2,018 Nodes: 1.9K
  - http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
• Article / Blog post:
  Open Source FGPA Bitcoin Miner on Bitcoin Miner
  “The cost of the equipment and not the cost of electricity continues to be the primary concern affecting miner’s decision on whether or not to add capacity.”
  “When power consumption limits are a constraint, then the FPGA with its significantly higher power efficiency might be the only method to increase mining hashing capacity.”
  - http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5672391181

Have a news tip, suggestion or comment?
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com/submit

Current week (updated throughout each day):
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com   (RSS) (mobile) (email)

Previous summaries:
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive  Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNews