Topic: [ANN][NOTE]DNotes - Celebrating DNotes 3rd Birthday - Forum Now Open - page 34. (Read 814545 times)

It will be interesting to find out. It could be just a brief mention:

"Explaining key themes such as API economy, behavioural biometrics, blockchain, digital currencies, financial inclusion, fintech hubs, mobile payments, predictive algorithms, and robo-advisors."

I agree with the author that, “Bitcoin remains by far most useful example of how blockchain can be used.” Granted that the first application of Bitcoin is digital currency, or money, it has fundamentally transformed every aspect of money as we know it. At DNotes, we acknowledge, without any doubt, that neither Bitcoin nor any other digital currency, as of today, has met the full functions of money. However, we believe that it can be done. It will take time and strategic positioning in multiple areas, followed by great execution of those strategies. DNotes has been doing just that.

Our industry has a tendency to make things sound really complicated as if there is an advantage to create confusion to cover up the lack of knowledge or plain ignorance.

Essentially, there are three key components of Bitcoin that led me to the conclusion that it is the greatest technology revolution since the internet – money, global payment system, and immutable bookkeeping blockchain. We are committed to deliver all three. Most challenging and valuable of all is the first – money or digital currency. DNotes will meet and exceed the full functions of money one day. It will be superior to fiat currency. That is our vision and we are sticking to it.

There will be many viable commercial applications using blockchain technology where indisputable time stamped transactions and record keeping are important to the extent that those records can not be altered or removed once confirmed. They may be available for anyone anywhere to verify or limited to the “permissioned” group to do so. There will be a few key players that will reap massive rewards, some less so, but a lot of “me too” will be led down the wrong path. Sadly, that is how it always works. Nothing unusually, the majority or 60% of startups failed within the first five years. It will be nice if 60% of them succeed instead.

I am interested to hear what this new book has to say on digital currencies.


The FINTECH Book: The Financial Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and Visionaries

THE FIRST GLOBALLY CROWDSOURCED BOOK ON FINTECH

The FinTech Book is the leading guide to the financial technology revolution—including the disruption, innovation and lucrative opportunities. Created by two prominent thought leaders in FinTech and the associated investment space, this groundbreaking guide showcases the leading industry influencers in FinTech in a single, informative volume.

Entrepreneurs and investors will find this an invaluable resource to uncovering new opportunities and maximizing their ROI in this growing market. This inspiring book covers every major industry development in depth, complete with firsthand insights and lessons learned by practitioners at the cutting edge. This first comprehensive volume on the global state of FinTech gives you a distinct competitive advantage by:

Illustrating the ins and outs of the industry with the leading figures at the centre of the action
Detailing the unique market dynamics of the FinTech revolution
Illuminating the diverse potential of the sector and the various ways it can impact related industries
Showing you firsthand how other investors and entrepreneurs have risen to the top of this dynamic environment
Explaining key themes such as API economy, behavioural biometrics, blockchain, digital currencies, financial inclusion, fintech hubs, mobile payments, predictive algorithms, and robo-advisors.

Whether you are responding to disruption or wanting to profit from innovation The FinTech Book is for you.

http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-111921887X.html

9 Myths Surrounding Blockchain Smart Contracts

Smart contracts are a key underpinning of blockchain technology, yet they are still misunderstood in many ways.

In the fullness of their deployment, they will be no less revolutionary than the invention of the HTML markup language that allowed information to be openly published and linked on the Web. Smart contracts promise to program our world on the head of blockchains, and potentially replace many functions currently executed by expensive or slow intermediaries.

Historically, the concept was first introduced by Nick Szabo in 1994. Smart contracts then had a long gestation period of inactivity and disinterest, because there was no platform that could enforce them, until the advent of blockchain technology in 2009. Now, smart contracts are entering their prime, especially since Ethereum has popularized them further by making their programming a basic tenet of their blockchain's power.

Like any new buzzword, the more a term gets popular, the more it spreads around. The more it will get used, but also misused and abused. It will mean a lot of different things to different people.

Ran across two great articles on blockchain today that are worth a mention. I'll send the other in a separate post.  Bitcoin Remains The Sole True Use Case For Blockchain Technology

If you talk to a Bitcoiner – or what’s hipper is a blockchainer – you will undoubtedly hear a highly optimistic opinion of the technology behind Bitcoin. And that’s fair enough, as some of the most influential companies in the world entered into a space that not yet a decade old.

There are myriads of ideas thrown around about how the blockchain and Bitcoin can revolutionize how the world operates. Blockchain, it seems, can do anything. If you ask some, its a chaordic system – in the Dee Hock spirit – and if you ask others it can create a new digitized superstructure to prop up the institutions that exist today in the world. Blockchain can literally power finance like oil powers the modern economy.

Yet, despite the scoffing at Bitcoin that takes place among many of the blockchain participants, there is obviously no doubt that Bitcoin remains by far most useful example of how blockchain can be used. You could even say it is, in fact, the only use-case which has succeeded in any meaningful way. This is important. What if nothing else ever comes to be of blockchain technology?

Bitcoin Weekly Recap 3-25-2016

Bitcoin.com Owner Ver Challenges Socialist Sanders to Debate
PEY Partners with BitPay to Introduce Bitcoin Payroll to Germany
Coinsource Installs Bitcoin ATM in San Francisco
FISCO Plans New Bitcoin Exchange
New Code Valley Platform Makes it Easier for Developers to Earn Bitcoin

http://dcebrief.com/bitcoin-weekly-recap-3-25-2016/

I've heard kangaroo steak is quite tasty...

Outstanding! Kudos to all!

And just as quickly another member raises to take Mark's place and rally the membership.... 

Personally, I'd take the Kangaroo troubles over city life any day....

Congratulations to CryptoMoms! We just blew through 20,000 Registered members.

20,077 Registered members as of March 24, 2016 10:30 pm CST.

Here is a good article on smart contract worth reading:

9 Myths Surrounding Blockchain Smart Contracts

William Mougayar (@wmougayar) | Published on March 23, 2016

William Mougayar is a Toronto-based entrepreneur, Ethereum Foundation advisor and advisor to Consensus 2016, CoinDesk's flagship conference. He is also the author of the upcoming book, The Business Blockchain.

In this feature, Mougayar explores and attempts to debunk some of the biggest misconceptions related to blockchain-based smart contracts.

Smart contracts are a key underpinning of blockchain technology, yet they are still misunderstood in many ways.

In the fullness of their deployment, they will be no less revolutionary than the invention of the HTML markup language that allowed information to be openly published and linked on the Web. Smart contracts promise to program our world on the head of blockchains, and potentially replace many functions currently executed by expensive or slow intermediaries.

Historically, the concept was first introduced by Nick Szabo in 1994. Smart contracts then had a long gestation period of inactivity and disinterest, because there was no platform that could enforce them, until the advent of blockchain technology in 2009. Now, smart contracts are entering their prime, especially since Ethereum has popularized them further by making their programming a basic tenet of their blockchain's power.

Like any new buzzword, the more a term gets popular, the more it spreads around. The more it will get used, but also misused and abused. It will mean a lot of different things to different people.

Here’s a list of 9 misconceptions about smart contracts, and my efforts to debunk and explain away those misconceptions:

1. Smart contracts are the same as a contractual agreement

No. If we stick to Nick Szabo’s original idea, smart contracts help make the breach of an agreement expensive because they control a real-world valuable property via "digital means".

So, a smart contract can enforce a functional implementation of a particular requirement, and can show proof that certain conditions were met or not met.

These can be fairly strict implementations, eg if a car payment is not made on-time, the car gets digital locked until the payment is received.

2. Smart contracts are like Ricardian contracts

No. Ricardian contracts, popularized by Ian Grigg, are semantic representations that can track the liability of an actual agreement between parties.

These can also be implemented on a blockchain, with or without a smart contract. Typically, multiple signatures are part of a Ricardian contract's execution.

3. Smart contracts are legally enforceable

Smart contracts are not law (yet), but they could represent pieces of a legal agreement. The legalities around smart contracts are a work in progress.

A smart contract outcome could be used as an audit trail to prove that terms of legal agreement were followed or not.

4. Smart contracts include Artificial Intelligence

Smart contracts aren’t really that smart on their own.

Smart contracts are really software code that runs on a blockchain, and they are triggered by some external data, that lets them modify some other data.

So, they are closer to an event-driven construct, more than artificial intelligence.

5. Smart contracts are blockchain applications

Smart contracts are usually part of a decentralized (blockchain) application. There could be several contracts to a specific application.

For example, if certain conditions in a smart contract are met, then the program is allowed to update a database.

6. Smart contracts are easy to program.

Yes and no. Writing a simple contract is fairly easy, especially if you are using a specific smart contract language (eg Ethereum’s Solidity), which lets you write complex processes in a few lines of code.

But there are more advanced implementations of smart contracts that use "oracles". Oracles are data sources that send actionable information to smart contracts.

7. Smart contracts are for developers only

True today, but we will soon see more user-friendly entry points that will allow any business user to configure them via a graphical user interface, or perhaps a text-based language input.

Ethereum's Mist browser is a step in that direction.

8. Smart contracts are not safe.

Not true. Even in the Ethereum implementation, smart contracts run as quasi-Turing complete programs, which means there is finality in their execution, and they don’t risk looping infinitely.

9. Smart contracts have limited applications.

Not true. Like HTML, the applications are limited by whoever writes them. Smart contracts are ideal for interacting with real-world assets, smart property, IoT, and financial services instruments.

They apply to almost anything that changes its state over time, and could have a value attached to it

Source:  http://www.coindesk.com/smart-contract-myths-blockchain/

Scene: 1965 Prudent Citizens Club, Smallville, Western World. The Club President has thrown the meeting open for discussion. Mark jumps up:

“Look, what we really need to do is just forget all this hokey nonsense about ‘savings’ and ‘interest on loans.’ The Government should just print enormous amounts of bank notes – literally mountains of them – and just give them to everyone. This can all be done by issuing debt – but a special type of debt, debt-that-we-all-know-will-never-be-paid-back.

And the misapprehension of savings? First, we’ll implement negative interest rates. At the end of every year, your statement will tell you how much less money you have in the bank.

And if that doesn’t work – if people still refuse to spend their money on deep-fried pork chops in butter sauce ordered by smartphone from Pork Chop Hut -- we’ll beat them on the back of the legs with a wire coat-hanger!”

[Men in white coats appear at stage left; push a soothing hyperdermic into Mark’s arm; and drag him away.]

Ooooh aaaaah! Crypto Broker is a ZH reader! I wondered if this cartoon would turn up anywhere. It's priceless.

Woo hoo! Half holiday!

[Last night, hungry kangaroos formed a flying-wedge formation, and stormed under the netting over the peas, driving the frame a full metre back in the process, to get at some (yummy yummy) straw lying there. City life seems a million miles away.]

Mark

Interesting article. The world needs long term economic solutions and forward thinking leaders. I hope that one day, if a country falls into a economic spiral in which they can't recover, as the result of a mistake or bad planning or whatever the cause, that DNotes will be able to help those people.

Flawed Economic Stimulus Plan for Canada Helps Bitcoin

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/03/24/flawed-economic-stimulus-plan-canada-helps-bitcoin/

Unlike the flawed banking system, Bitcoin and digital currency put the end user in full control of their money, wherever they are, at any given time. There is no central oversight, which some people see as a weakness. But stories such as what is going on in Canada goes to show how central oversight is not always preferable when the wrong people are in charge.

Regardless of where one looks in the world, financial turmoil is brewing everywhere around us. Canada is no exception to this statement, unfortunately, even though the new Liberal government is planning to invest in people and the economy over the next few years. That being said, this economic stimulus will come at a great cost, and could end up hurting the Canadian economy even more. All of this is indirectly working for Bitcoin and other forms of alternative finance.

Boosting Canada Economy Comes at a Risk

Nearly every economy around the world is facing a problem right now, and government officials are trying to figure out various ways to focus on this issue. The old tried and tested tactic seems to be the most logical way to address these concerns, although injecting a lot of money at infrastructure spending is quite a significant concern.

People have to understand that the money required for an economic stimulus has to come from somewhere. In Canada, that means there will be a government deficit three times what was originally predicted during the election last year. As this deficit grows larger and larger, it becomes much harder for Canada to return to a balanced budget.

While the numbers on their own might not mean much to some people, there is the topic of how the Liberal government broke just about every promise they made to the citizens before the election. Although it is nothing new to see lies and broken promises in the world of politics, people have the right to be upset and make their voice be heard about as well.

To make matters even worse, the Liberal government will be taking virtual control of the Bank of Canada infrastructure, as a new quantitative easing will have to be introduced in the coming months, only adding to the financial instability in the country. Moreover, there will be very little opposition to this stimulus budget proposal as the Liberals hold a majority in the Canadian Parliament’s House of Commons.

Although boosting the economy and infrastructure sounds magnificent, the Canadian Dollar will take a beating across the markets as well. While the CAD might not follow the same path as what is happening to the Chinese Yuan, things are not looking overly confident either. But there is more, as bank deposits will be “bailed-in” the next time a Canadian bank needs financial aid. Not something anyone is looking forward to by any means.

Bitcoin as an Eye Opener

All of these economic woes in Canada – and other countries – are only helping the Bitcoin cause, albeit inadvertently. Consumers and enterprises are no longer in a position to put their trust in banks or any other financial institution, as none of them have their best interests at heart. Solving a problem in the short term by creating a new long-term issue is not the right approach, and banks will learn that the very hard way at this rate.

Unlike the flawed banking system, Bitcoin and digital currency put the end user in full control of their money, wherever they are, at any given time. There is no central oversight, which some people see as a weakness. But stories such as what is going on in Canada goes to show how central control is not always preferable when the wrong people are in charge.

A free market lets consumers and businesses set the price, rather than traditional finance where prices are kept artificially afloat by banks. These same banks require consumers and businesses to bail them out when they are facing financial trouble. Everyone is perfectly capable of managing their own financial future, and Bitcoin lets users do exactly that.


Image source http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-22/its-official-canadian-bank-depositors-are-now-risk-bail-ins

Thanks Kanus, as much as I hate to see increasing sell pressure, it is a good opportunity for an investor. There haven't been many times that I remember a pretty big amount being available for sale.

Noticed a large chuck of DNotes at a good price on Polo. Wish I have a few btc in reserve or I would pick some up.

Oh weird, I was just there not too long ago. Let me shoot off an email to the owner.

*Edit: Before I could send the email it was back up.

www.dnotespool.com

This site can’t be reached, dnotespool.com’s server DNS address could not be found.

ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED


Issues? Anyone else seeing this?