Topic: BITCOIN NEWS EVRYDAY! From multiple sources. - page 18. (Read 51244 times)
We're a new bitcoin news aggregator, so we search algorithmically for all the news from around the world, sift it by media authority, give a brief synopsis and link to the original article if you want more info. Also list links to all the related articles, like techmeme. Would like feedback on what you like, don't like and suggestions on how to improve. We have some ideas, but want to make sure we provide a real service, so would enjoy feedback. Feel free to message me. Check us out at www.bitjuice.com
Bitcoin and the issue of Trust
PJ Delaney 05/03/2014
Bitcoin (unlike many other cryptocurrencies) does meet many of the requirements of fiat money but as an institution some of its advocates have been doing it few favours. Many members of the general public see Bitcoin as a scam and in order to sell it to these people we must deal with the thorny issue of trust. In order to establish trust I would contend that we, as advocates, should consider changing our emphases to improve stability and thereby increase acceptance. We will have an immersed society when a citizen can pull up at a shop and order a pizza using bitcoins to pay, not as a once off or novelty purchase but as a normal and common transaction. The question is: How do we get from here to there?
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bitcoin-trust-300x199.jpg
The Gold Problem
In the past gold was chosen as a most suitable metal for coinage and gold coins had the advantage that the value of the coin directly reflected the value of the gold bullion that the coin held. Currency was backed by precious metals and people had confidence. However, crooks arrived and shaved the edges of the coins thereby debasing them. In order to restore and maintain confidence in the currency, many countries deemed that debasement became a capital offence. People that counterfitted these notes and coins were also subject to the rigors of the law. Banknotes were initially backed with gold and each nation would hold stores of bullion to support their currency. These policies ensured that the general public developed confidence over a period in the country’s coins and notes.
Keeping ahead of the crooks
Today, cryptocurrencies are suffering from some problems: Bitcoin has received bad press as a result of people manipulating transactions in order to facilitate double withdrawals. This may have been at least a part of the problem with Mt Gox; if so, it was certainly not the only problem. People cannot be expected to have confidence in crypto when money is being manipulated from within supposedly secure digitally encrypted accounts. People must have confidence that technology will keep their coins secure and not suffer from a gnawing fear that the same technology is being manipulated to undermine the currency and to take their hard earned funds. We must ensure that the people who have committed these criminal acts be pursued for the full money they have stolen; they must be subject to some form of sanction and levels of security on the relevant exchanges, as well as individual wallets, must be improved.
PJ Delaney 05/03/2014
Bitcoin (unlike many other cryptocurrencies) does meet many of the requirements of fiat money but as an institution some of its advocates have been doing it few favours. Many members of the general public see Bitcoin as a scam and in order to sell it to these people we must deal with the thorny issue of trust. In order to establish trust I would contend that we, as advocates, should consider changing our emphases to improve stability and thereby increase acceptance. We will have an immersed society when a citizen can pull up at a shop and order a pizza using bitcoins to pay, not as a once off or novelty purchase but as a normal and common transaction. The question is: How do we get from here to there?
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bitcoin-trust-300x199.jpg
The Gold Problem
In the past gold was chosen as a most suitable metal for coinage and gold coins had the advantage that the value of the coin directly reflected the value of the gold bullion that the coin held. Currency was backed by precious metals and people had confidence. However, crooks arrived and shaved the edges of the coins thereby debasing them. In order to restore and maintain confidence in the currency, many countries deemed that debasement became a capital offence. People that counterfitted these notes and coins were also subject to the rigors of the law. Banknotes were initially backed with gold and each nation would hold stores of bullion to support their currency. These policies ensured that the general public developed confidence over a period in the country’s coins and notes.
Keeping ahead of the crooks
Today, cryptocurrencies are suffering from some problems: Bitcoin has received bad press as a result of people manipulating transactions in order to facilitate double withdrawals. This may have been at least a part of the problem with Mt Gox; if so, it was certainly not the only problem. People cannot be expected to have confidence in crypto when money is being manipulated from within supposedly secure digitally encrypted accounts. People must have confidence that technology will keep their coins secure and not suffer from a gnawing fear that the same technology is being manipulated to undermine the currency and to take their hard earned funds. We must ensure that the people who have committed these criminal acts be pursued for the full money they have stolen; they must be subject to some form of sanction and levels of security on the relevant exchanges, as well as individual wallets, must be improved.
CoinBase Payment URL Handler Support Now Live
Scott Fargo 05/03/2014
With so much negative news about exchanges like MTGox, Flexcoin and Poloniex lately it was refreshing to see something positive, on Feb 28th CoinBase went live with their Bitcoin Payment URL Handler.
So far it has support for both Chrome and Firefox.
I have not been able to find out at this time if Internet Explorer is going to be supported and if so how long it will be until it is.
So what does this do and why is it important?
What it does is makes it much more simple to send a payment in Bitcoin for a transaction. There will be no need to copy/paste followed by switching tabs to go to CoinBase to enter the payment address. Instead with the handler enabled all you have to do is click on the payment address, and it will bring you right to your CoinBase box and enter the information for you. The fussing and multiple clicks are streamlined making it much easier to use.
https://31.media.tumblr.com/78a604736a8127be99c5bf2f196f031f/tumblr_inline_n1q9qtUVNV1qh22ec.gif
Why it’s important is because it will make it much easier for the average user to use Bitcoin to shop with and trade. That will help the adoption of Bitcoin as an alternative currency that much easier for more people to use and help retailers as the process is simplified at the user lever without them having to do anything.
To enable the Payment URL handler log into your CoinBase account and go to advanced settings. From the choices, click the Enable Link Handler button, and you are set to go.
Coinbase URL Handler setup and in action.
Coinbase URL Handler setup and in action.
A quick overview of it in action can be found on CoinBase’s blog. In it, they show how to enable the handler and what it looks like when they use the donation payment button for the Bitcoin Foundation. From there clicking on the payment link brings you right to your send payment page with the payment address already there.
I did find that I needed to be logged into my CoinBase account, or it would ask me to log in and then it would fill in the payment form. This does not bypass your security and login settings to function that is very good. As with any transaction it is always good to have two factor authentication enabled in your CoinBase settings.
Their setup and trouble shooting page is excellent if you have problems installing it or getting it to run. It has quick and simple instructions to get everything going for both Chrome and FireFox.
It is good to see a major exchange as CoinBase keeps raising the bar by being a solid exchange and also by bringing out innovations to make using Bitcoin easy and secure.
Scott Fargo 05/03/2014
With so much negative news about exchanges like MTGox, Flexcoin and Poloniex lately it was refreshing to see something positive, on Feb 28th CoinBase went live with their Bitcoin Payment URL Handler.
So far it has support for both Chrome and Firefox.
I have not been able to find out at this time if Internet Explorer is going to be supported and if so how long it will be until it is.
So what does this do and why is it important?
What it does is makes it much more simple to send a payment in Bitcoin for a transaction. There will be no need to copy/paste followed by switching tabs to go to CoinBase to enter the payment address. Instead with the handler enabled all you have to do is click on the payment address, and it will bring you right to your CoinBase box and enter the information for you. The fussing and multiple clicks are streamlined making it much easier to use.
https://31.media.tumblr.com/78a604736a8127be99c5bf2f196f031f/tumblr_inline_n1q9qtUVNV1qh22ec.gif
Why it’s important is because it will make it much easier for the average user to use Bitcoin to shop with and trade. That will help the adoption of Bitcoin as an alternative currency that much easier for more people to use and help retailers as the process is simplified at the user lever without them having to do anything.
To enable the Payment URL handler log into your CoinBase account and go to advanced settings. From the choices, click the Enable Link Handler button, and you are set to go.
Coinbase URL Handler setup and in action.
Coinbase URL Handler setup and in action.
A quick overview of it in action can be found on CoinBase’s blog. In it, they show how to enable the handler and what it looks like when they use the donation payment button for the Bitcoin Foundation. From there clicking on the payment link brings you right to your send payment page with the payment address already there.
I did find that I needed to be logged into my CoinBase account, or it would ask me to log in and then it would fill in the payment form. This does not bypass your security and login settings to function that is very good. As with any transaction it is always good to have two factor authentication enabled in your CoinBase settings.
Their setup and trouble shooting page is excellent if you have problems installing it or getting it to run. It has quick and simple instructions to get everything going for both Chrome and FireFox.
It is good to see a major exchange as CoinBase keeps raising the bar by being a solid exchange and also by bringing out innovations to make using Bitcoin easy and secure.
Overstock.com Surpasses Expectations With Bitcoin
Tom Boice 05/03/2014
Based in Salt Lake City, Overstock.com surprised retailers and Bitcoin enthusiasts alike when they began accepting Bitcoin for payment on January 9th, roughly five months ahead of their initially stated schedule. Now it seems that their hard work has paid off, as Overstock has now surpassed $1 million in Bitcoin sales, said CEO Patrick Byrne in an interview.
While the $1 million pales in comparison to the $1.3 billion of revenue the company brings in, Byrne has also said that instead of converting the bitcoins to dollars, the company is now keeping 10% of its Bitcoin in storage. When asked why Overstock stores a fraction of its bitcoin, he said it could possibly be used to pay vendors or employees. This, of course, is praised by many Bitcoiners as proof that the company is willing to put faith in the crypto-currency, and not just its user’s enthusiasm for spending.
Initially, Overstock.com had projected $5 million in Bitcoin sales for this year, but the company has had to revise its prediction to $10 million, doubling the first estimate.
Byrne also shared that Bitcoin customers are typically men, spending $230 on average as opposed to the $150 average by non-Bitcoin customers. So far 4,300 customers have paid using Bitcoin, with an estimated 60% of them being new to Overstock. Apparently the most popular items purchased by Bitcoiners are sheets, cell phone cases, socks, and computer accessories.
The companies stock (OSTK) rose nearly 10% today, outperforming the market.
Byrne’s comments were cheered by Bitcoiners, now moving forward after Mt. Gox filing bankruptcy and admitting the loss of 740,000 BTC, in addition to both Poloniex and Flexcoin being hacked. When asked about the trouble plaguing Bitcoin, Byrne said, “Banks get robbed and no one says that something must be wrong with the dollar.”
A Man On a Mission
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/patrick-byrne-americas-nastiest-ceo-300x225.jpg
Overstock Patrick Byrne
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne
Patrick Byrne is known to be an advocate of limited government and has stated that he supports Bitcoin; as it is in his interest “to see a robust parallel monetary institution.” Of course, saving 2% in processing fees on every transaction is a benefit that a shrewd business man like Patrick Byrne can’t ignore.
Byrne started Overstock by buying the inventories of failed dot-com businesses and reselling the items below wholesale prices. In his time as Overstock’s CEO, Byrne has lead a campaign against “naked short-selling,” where traders can essentially bet on a security’s price falling without ever obtaining the security. Byrne feels that the practice encourages corruption in the market, and in 2005, he famously claimed on a conference call that there was a conspiracy headed by a “Sith Lord” to drive Overstock’s share price below $10. Under pressure from Byrne and others, the SEC banned what it called “abusive naked short-selling” in 2008.
Considering Byrne’s opposition to shorting securities without ever having access to those securities, it is easy to see why the commodity aspects of Bitcoin would be attractive to him. Bitcoin has the potential to provide the ease of using credit cards on the internet, without encouraging a credit-based system.
Amazon’s last statement regarding Bitcoin was that it had no interest in accepting cryptocurrency, citing a lack of customer interest.
Source: WSJ
Tom Boice 05/03/2014
Based in Salt Lake City, Overstock.com surprised retailers and Bitcoin enthusiasts alike when they began accepting Bitcoin for payment on January 9th, roughly five months ahead of their initially stated schedule. Now it seems that their hard work has paid off, as Overstock has now surpassed $1 million in Bitcoin sales, said CEO Patrick Byrne in an interview.
While the $1 million pales in comparison to the $1.3 billion of revenue the company brings in, Byrne has also said that instead of converting the bitcoins to dollars, the company is now keeping 10% of its Bitcoin in storage. When asked why Overstock stores a fraction of its bitcoin, he said it could possibly be used to pay vendors or employees. This, of course, is praised by many Bitcoiners as proof that the company is willing to put faith in the crypto-currency, and not just its user’s enthusiasm for spending.
Initially, Overstock.com had projected $5 million in Bitcoin sales for this year, but the company has had to revise its prediction to $10 million, doubling the first estimate.
Byrne also shared that Bitcoin customers are typically men, spending $230 on average as opposed to the $150 average by non-Bitcoin customers. So far 4,300 customers have paid using Bitcoin, with an estimated 60% of them being new to Overstock. Apparently the most popular items purchased by Bitcoiners are sheets, cell phone cases, socks, and computer accessories.
The companies stock (OSTK) rose nearly 10% today, outperforming the market.
Byrne’s comments were cheered by Bitcoiners, now moving forward after Mt. Gox filing bankruptcy and admitting the loss of 740,000 BTC, in addition to both Poloniex and Flexcoin being hacked. When asked about the trouble plaguing Bitcoin, Byrne said, “Banks get robbed and no one says that something must be wrong with the dollar.”
A Man On a Mission
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/patrick-byrne-americas-nastiest-ceo-300x225.jpg
Overstock Patrick Byrne
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne
Patrick Byrne is known to be an advocate of limited government and has stated that he supports Bitcoin; as it is in his interest “to see a robust parallel monetary institution.” Of course, saving 2% in processing fees on every transaction is a benefit that a shrewd business man like Patrick Byrne can’t ignore.
Byrne started Overstock by buying the inventories of failed dot-com businesses and reselling the items below wholesale prices. In his time as Overstock’s CEO, Byrne has lead a campaign against “naked short-selling,” where traders can essentially bet on a security’s price falling without ever obtaining the security. Byrne feels that the practice encourages corruption in the market, and in 2005, he famously claimed on a conference call that there was a conspiracy headed by a “Sith Lord” to drive Overstock’s share price below $10. Under pressure from Byrne and others, the SEC banned what it called “abusive naked short-selling” in 2008.
Considering Byrne’s opposition to shorting securities without ever having access to those securities, it is easy to see why the commodity aspects of Bitcoin would be attractive to him. Bitcoin has the potential to provide the ease of using credit cards on the internet, without encouraging a credit-based system.
Amazon’s last statement regarding Bitcoin was that it had no interest in accepting cryptocurrency, citing a lack of customer interest.
Source: WSJ
Sponsored Story: Build a Scrypt Coin and Receive 10 BTC
David Parker 05/03/2014
Bitcoin AltcoinsThis is a sponsored story.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoinlitecoin.jpg
We have received a request from “Xeladories” that wants a new customized Scrypt coin with all its functions. He is willing to pay 10 bitcoins for:
1. A customized 100% premined Scrypt Coin with transaction fees and a fully working network
2. A blockchain explorer
3. Wallets for Mac, Windows and Linux
4. A paper wallet service
5. Live support
Including this “Xeladories” will pay 2 BTC a month for support and a working network. Other addons might appear.
Send your work and CV to: xeladories (at) gmail.com. He does not accept anonymous requests.
David Parker 05/03/2014
Bitcoin AltcoinsThis is a sponsored story.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoinlitecoin.jpg
We have received a request from “Xeladories” that wants a new customized Scrypt coin with all its functions. He is willing to pay 10 bitcoins for:
1. A customized 100% premined Scrypt Coin with transaction fees and a fully working network
2. A blockchain explorer
3. Wallets for Mac, Windows and Linux
4. A paper wallet service
5. Live support
Including this “Xeladories” will pay 2 BTC a month for support and a working network. Other addons might appear.
Send your work and CV to: xeladories (at) gmail.com. He does not accept anonymous requests.
AMD + HBM to Turbo Charge Scrypt Mining
William Blackwell 05/03/2014
AMD Pirate Islands
AMD will use HBM in their upcoming Pirate Islands GPUs
The gaming industry is doing cryptocoin mining a lot of favours. A joint development project by AMD and SK Hynix promises to boost the capacity of commercially available memory later this year. The chip manufacturer plans to use it’s new generation of memory module called High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) in it’s GPUs and indications are that target delivery may be the highly anticipated ‘Pirate Islands’ series of GPUs.
Thousand Island Park
The island themed code names are by now familiar to miners, who discovered the unparalleled hashing power of the Southern Island chip series when, before the introduction of ASICs, Bitcoin mining was ramped up in early 2012 by the hashing power of AMD’s popular HD 7000 cards.
October 2013 saw the release of the Volcanic Islands chip series as part of a strategic AMD campaign to dominate the Gaming GPU market. However, AMD underestimated the miner demand for these cards and the Volcanic Island Rx series was effectively sold out before it hit the retail shelves – leaving both gamers and AMD stockholders looking for answers. Nvidia found itself alone in the race for a few lucky months. Usurped from its Gaming destiny, the R9 290 is of course the undisputed GPU heavy weight champion of scrypt mining, but – grab the rails – because that could loop-the-loop later this year when AMD introduces HBM 3D to it’s GPU arsenal. HBM promises to give scrypt mining the heavy artillery that everyone perhaps expected would be delivered via hybrid ASICs.
AMD Treasure and Pirate Islands
“One more step, Mr. Hands” (from Treasure Island)
The target for HBM 3D technology is likely to be either of the Pirate Islands flagship GPUs, code named ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Bermuda’, with a third chip, ‘Fiji’, positioned as an entry-level model.
Says Bryan Black, Senior Fellow and 3D Program Manager at AMD:
“Getting 3D going will take a BOLD move and AMD is ready to make that move.”
High Bandwidth Memory
The quest for faster memory had hit a ceiling with DDR5 RAM where neither design nor material changes can accomplish significant speed enhancement – and, mind you, it’s really fast. However, if we must go faster – and we do – enter 2.5 and 3D “Stacked” memory. As with CPU design and manufacture, this level of component design makes rocket science seem self-evident. We’re talking nanotechnology and electronic switching that occurs at voltages and speeds smaller than most of us can comprehend. The design concept of HBM can be comprehended, because it is a logical progression from the flat memory banks of DDR.
Think of conventional RAM as a flat, single storey warehouse with aisles and shelves. When the CPU requests stored data, the memory module determines the location (memory address) of that data on the warehouse map and retrieves it from the relevant aisle and shelf. To increase the size of memory, the warehouse’s floor space must be extended and, as a result, the process of retrieving data stored near the outer edges of the map takes longer. Until recently manufacturers ignored this ‘slow edges’ caveat, in favor of finding ways to speed-up memory by making the shelves and aisles smaller – thereby effectively decreasing floor space. As mentioned, the current technological limit of miniaturization was achieved in DDR5 RAM.
Hynix HBM comparison
Hynix promises memory module improvements with HBM
Instead of attempting to decrease the nanosize of aisles and shelves, HBM revolutionizes the memory storage model by, instead, extending the warehouse in the vertical plane. Memory storage is stacked in layers and so our warehouse now has more storeys with multiple elevators interconnecting them. This 3 dimensional memory array makes data storage and retrieval more compact and efficient. Although the primary benefit is a boost to memory module speed, a knock-on effect is that the module consumes less energy than a conventional 2D memory map. Smart.
Commercial Availability
The concept of “die stacking” is not new and is currently used in some FPGAs and image sensors. Cost has, so far, prevented manufacturers from including stacked memory in commercial products. However, Samsung released the first generation of 3D solid state storage in 2013 and thereby ushered in a new era. AMD and Hynix aim to extend the concept of memory stacking to an interconnected 3D array. Obvious targets for their HBM offering include GPU, networking devices and high availability computing architectures.
65% Speed Improvement
The question remains: “How fast?” Hynix promotional material suggests they can achieve 40% power reduction and an incredible 65% speed improvement. Whilst these figures are “promised” and not confirmed, whatever the exact speed increase, miners can look forward to greater hashing power and, important for bottom line, power savings.
There are also questions regarding AMD’s commitment to the cryptocoin mining market. Are they even interested? Will AMD develop products aimed specifically at mining application, as opposed to gaming? We have already explored how mining derailed AMD marketing strategy surrounding the Pirate Islands series and it is unsure how they will address mining demand in the future.
William Blackwell 05/03/2014
AMD Pirate Islands
AMD will use HBM in their upcoming Pirate Islands GPUs
The gaming industry is doing cryptocoin mining a lot of favours. A joint development project by AMD and SK Hynix promises to boost the capacity of commercially available memory later this year. The chip manufacturer plans to use it’s new generation of memory module called High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) in it’s GPUs and indications are that target delivery may be the highly anticipated ‘Pirate Islands’ series of GPUs.
Thousand Island Park
The island themed code names are by now familiar to miners, who discovered the unparalleled hashing power of the Southern Island chip series when, before the introduction of ASICs, Bitcoin mining was ramped up in early 2012 by the hashing power of AMD’s popular HD 7000 cards.
October 2013 saw the release of the Volcanic Islands chip series as part of a strategic AMD campaign to dominate the Gaming GPU market. However, AMD underestimated the miner demand for these cards and the Volcanic Island Rx series was effectively sold out before it hit the retail shelves – leaving both gamers and AMD stockholders looking for answers. Nvidia found itself alone in the race for a few lucky months. Usurped from its Gaming destiny, the R9 290 is of course the undisputed GPU heavy weight champion of scrypt mining, but – grab the rails – because that could loop-the-loop later this year when AMD introduces HBM 3D to it’s GPU arsenal. HBM promises to give scrypt mining the heavy artillery that everyone perhaps expected would be delivered via hybrid ASICs.
AMD Treasure and Pirate Islands
“One more step, Mr. Hands” (from Treasure Island)
The target for HBM 3D technology is likely to be either of the Pirate Islands flagship GPUs, code named ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Bermuda’, with a third chip, ‘Fiji’, positioned as an entry-level model.
Says Bryan Black, Senior Fellow and 3D Program Manager at AMD:
“Getting 3D going will take a BOLD move and AMD is ready to make that move.”
High Bandwidth Memory
The quest for faster memory had hit a ceiling with DDR5 RAM where neither design nor material changes can accomplish significant speed enhancement – and, mind you, it’s really fast. However, if we must go faster – and we do – enter 2.5 and 3D “Stacked” memory. As with CPU design and manufacture, this level of component design makes rocket science seem self-evident. We’re talking nanotechnology and electronic switching that occurs at voltages and speeds smaller than most of us can comprehend. The design concept of HBM can be comprehended, because it is a logical progression from the flat memory banks of DDR.
Think of conventional RAM as a flat, single storey warehouse with aisles and shelves. When the CPU requests stored data, the memory module determines the location (memory address) of that data on the warehouse map and retrieves it from the relevant aisle and shelf. To increase the size of memory, the warehouse’s floor space must be extended and, as a result, the process of retrieving data stored near the outer edges of the map takes longer. Until recently manufacturers ignored this ‘slow edges’ caveat, in favor of finding ways to speed-up memory by making the shelves and aisles smaller – thereby effectively decreasing floor space. As mentioned, the current technological limit of miniaturization was achieved in DDR5 RAM.
Hynix HBM comparison
Hynix promises memory module improvements with HBM
Instead of attempting to decrease the nanosize of aisles and shelves, HBM revolutionizes the memory storage model by, instead, extending the warehouse in the vertical plane. Memory storage is stacked in layers and so our warehouse now has more storeys with multiple elevators interconnecting them. This 3 dimensional memory array makes data storage and retrieval more compact and efficient. Although the primary benefit is a boost to memory module speed, a knock-on effect is that the module consumes less energy than a conventional 2D memory map. Smart.
Commercial Availability
The concept of “die stacking” is not new and is currently used in some FPGAs and image sensors. Cost has, so far, prevented manufacturers from including stacked memory in commercial products. However, Samsung released the first generation of 3D solid state storage in 2013 and thereby ushered in a new era. AMD and Hynix aim to extend the concept of memory stacking to an interconnected 3D array. Obvious targets for their HBM offering include GPU, networking devices and high availability computing architectures.
65% Speed Improvement
The question remains: “How fast?” Hynix promotional material suggests they can achieve 40% power reduction and an incredible 65% speed improvement. Whilst these figures are “promised” and not confirmed, whatever the exact speed increase, miners can look forward to greater hashing power and, important for bottom line, power savings.
There are also questions regarding AMD’s commitment to the cryptocoin mining market. Are they even interested? Will AMD develop products aimed specifically at mining application, as opposed to gaming? We have already explored how mining derailed AMD marketing strategy surrounding the Pirate Islands series and it is unsure how they will address mining demand in the future.
The price of Bitcoin is increased by 15% despite the tragedy of Mt. Gox
George Krasadakis 04/03/2014
Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger
The famous phrase seems to apply in Bitcoin
It is certain that the past weeks have been adventurous for virtual currency . After the big wave of sales followed by the series bad news from the Mt. Gox price starts to get rising. In the last three days the price BTC / EURO had gains +15 % to the current price to be close to 500 €.
The price of Bitcoin is increased by 15% despite the tragedy of Mt. Gox
Price Chart EUR / BTC the last three days and the rise immediately after the application of bankruptcy Mt. Gox.
Pressure by the formula
Significant threat to the reputation of digital currencies were the media . Many were those who after application bankruptcy exchanger Mt. Gox talked about the " end " of Bitcoin. On March 3, 2014 in fact billionaire investor Warren Buffet revealed his negative view on the currency , " and do not qualify to be considered normal currency " he said in a televised interview. " I would not be surprised if in some 10 years no longer existed ," added the 83 -year investor . These statements swelled after the negative comments of Finance Minister of Japan last week . All this negative publicity , however , seems to have had the reverse effect on Bitcoin and popularity.
Mass markets again
The value of the currency came back to the levels it was before the beginning of the tragedy of Mt. Gox and transactions made over a massive pace after the markets had remained relatively stagnant . This unexpected result leaves them speechless " opponents " of Bitcoin. But also highlights how sturdy is the currency in any kind attack. With decentralized basis , the virtual currency is almost impossible to stop working. The recent events are just another proof.
The Bitcoin bulletproof against the crisis ?
The crisis caused by the recent events in reality not only hurt the Bitcoin but as we had a positive twist in value. The attention the media show , even negative attracts more and more attention to Bitcoin bringing one step closer to widespread acceptance.
George Krasadakis 04/03/2014
Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger
The famous phrase seems to apply in Bitcoin
It is certain that the past weeks have been adventurous for virtual currency . After the big wave of sales followed by the series bad news from the Mt. Gox price starts to get rising. In the last three days the price BTC / EURO had gains +15 % to the current price to be close to 500 €.
The price of Bitcoin is increased by 15% despite the tragedy of Mt. Gox
Price Chart EUR / BTC the last three days and the rise immediately after the application of bankruptcy Mt. Gox.
Pressure by the formula
Significant threat to the reputation of digital currencies were the media . Many were those who after application bankruptcy exchanger Mt. Gox talked about the " end " of Bitcoin. On March 3, 2014 in fact billionaire investor Warren Buffet revealed his negative view on the currency , " and do not qualify to be considered normal currency " he said in a televised interview. " I would not be surprised if in some 10 years no longer existed ," added the 83 -year investor . These statements swelled after the negative comments of Finance Minister of Japan last week . All this negative publicity , however , seems to have had the reverse effect on Bitcoin and popularity.
Mass markets again
The value of the currency came back to the levels it was before the beginning of the tragedy of Mt. Gox and transactions made over a massive pace after the markets had remained relatively stagnant . This unexpected result leaves them speechless " opponents " of Bitcoin. But also highlights how sturdy is the currency in any kind attack. With decentralized basis , the virtual currency is almost impossible to stop working. The recent events are just another proof.
The Bitcoin bulletproof against the crisis ?
The crisis caused by the recent events in reality not only hurt the Bitcoin but as we had a positive twist in value. The attention the media show , even negative attracts more and more attention to Bitcoin bringing one step closer to widespread acceptance.
Flexcoin and Poloniex; Security Holes Exploited in Another Hack Attack
Calvin Tran 04/03/2014
Flexcoin ‘the Bitcoin Bank’ Exchange shuts down after they lost 896 bitcoins from their hot wallet by hackers on Tuesday. After suffering such a huge loss, Flexcoin announced that they will be shutting their doors. All users who held accounts there are urged to contact them to extract bitcoins from their cold storage free of charge.
Users who put their coins into cold storage will be contacted by Flexcoin and asked to verify their identity. Once identified, cold storage coins will be transferred out free of charge. Cold storage coins were held offline and not within reach of the attacker. All other users will be directed to Flexcoin’s “Terms of service” located at “Flexcoin.com/118.html” a document which was agreed on, upon signing up with Flexcoin.
The coin-thief or thieves were traced to two wallets: 1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu & 1QFcC5JitGwpFKqRDd9QNH3eGN56dCNgy6 and Flexcoin will continue to work with law enforcement to see what can be done. All bitcoins stolen were only off of their hot wallet and not of their cold storage. Unlike Mt. Gox, they hold reserves that can still be claimed by users.
For all Flexcoin customers, keep checking the Flexcoin Twitter for more updates.
Additionally, another exchange was attacked; Poloniex lost 12.3% of their holdings in another hacker was able to exploit a hole in their withdrawal process. Their system was able to recognize the threat and has since frozen all accounts until they can be certain about moving forward. Due to the inability to fulfill all possible withdrawals, they have cut 12.3% of all Bitcoin accounts until the shortcomings of their balances can be met by exchange fees and donations. Furthermore, they will refine their processing daemons to fix the exploited hole in the system.
It is unlikely to have a deep effect on the market as the recent Mt. Gox episode was largely shrugged off by the Bitcoin community and is seen as a sign to push for higher security and sophistication.
After Mt. Gox fell, the price of Bitcoin recovered over $250: from a low of $425 last Tuesday to a high of $700 last night.
Remember to be smart
After all these happenings and fallouts in the Bitcoin industry, CryptoCoinsNews would like to remind all crypto-currency users to be safe and be smart.
We suggest to any third-party wallet users to contact your exchange and urge for greater transparency. Also, read our article reminding users to consider safer alternatives such as decentralized exchanges and hardware wallets.
For mac users, a new trojan called CoinThief may be disguising as popular apps.
Continue checking CryptoCoinsNews for further developments in security and safety issues.
Calvin Tran 04/03/2014
Flexcoin ‘the Bitcoin Bank’ Exchange shuts down after they lost 896 bitcoins from their hot wallet by hackers on Tuesday. After suffering such a huge loss, Flexcoin announced that they will be shutting their doors. All users who held accounts there are urged to contact them to extract bitcoins from their cold storage free of charge.
Users who put their coins into cold storage will be contacted by Flexcoin and asked to verify their identity. Once identified, cold storage coins will be transferred out free of charge. Cold storage coins were held offline and not within reach of the attacker. All other users will be directed to Flexcoin’s “Terms of service” located at “Flexcoin.com/118.html” a document which was agreed on, upon signing up with Flexcoin.
The coin-thief or thieves were traced to two wallets: 1NDkevapt4SWYFEmquCDBSf7DLMTNVggdu & 1QFcC5JitGwpFKqRDd9QNH3eGN56dCNgy6 and Flexcoin will continue to work with law enforcement to see what can be done. All bitcoins stolen were only off of their hot wallet and not of their cold storage. Unlike Mt. Gox, they hold reserves that can still be claimed by users.
For all Flexcoin customers, keep checking the Flexcoin Twitter for more updates.
Additionally, another exchange was attacked; Poloniex lost 12.3% of their holdings in another hacker was able to exploit a hole in their withdrawal process. Their system was able to recognize the threat and has since frozen all accounts until they can be certain about moving forward. Due to the inability to fulfill all possible withdrawals, they have cut 12.3% of all Bitcoin accounts until the shortcomings of their balances can be met by exchange fees and donations. Furthermore, they will refine their processing daemons to fix the exploited hole in the system.
It is unlikely to have a deep effect on the market as the recent Mt. Gox episode was largely shrugged off by the Bitcoin community and is seen as a sign to push for higher security and sophistication.
After Mt. Gox fell, the price of Bitcoin recovered over $250: from a low of $425 last Tuesday to a high of $700 last night.
Remember to be smart
After all these happenings and fallouts in the Bitcoin industry, CryptoCoinsNews would like to remind all crypto-currency users to be safe and be smart.
We suggest to any third-party wallet users to contact your exchange and urge for greater transparency. Also, read our article reminding users to consider safer alternatives such as decentralized exchanges and hardware wallets.
For mac users, a new trojan called CoinThief may be disguising as popular apps.
Continue checking CryptoCoinsNews for further developments in security and safety issues.
Auroracoin’s Market Cap is Highly Inflated
Kyle Torpey 04/03/2014
Many people are pointing to Auroracoin’s position at third place on CoinMarketCap.com as proof of this new coin’s success, but the reality is that it could be setting itself up for disaster. The coin made headlines when it surpassed Litecoin’s market cap, but Auroracoin is not actually closing in on a $1 billion market cap. In fact, the real value of all the auroracoins currently on the market could be lower than $10 million. This would still put it in the top 25, but we could see it drop even lower after the airdrop begins. Let’s take a look at some of the facts behind this cryptocurrency and whether or not it will be able to achieve long-term success.
Auroracoin’s Selling Point
The main idea behind Auroracoin is that half of the coins will be premined for all of the citizens of Iceland. If you’re an Icelandic citizen, then you’ll be able to claim your share of the Auroracoin premine during the airdrop process. This is actually a rather unique idea, and it could have implications for new premined coins in the future. Most people scoff at the idea of any coin being premined, but this coin has shown that it can still be a completely democratic process. With each Icelander gaining access to their “fair share” of the auroracoins, people will be less likely to complain about a certain group of people gaining early access to a new cryptocurrency.
The Problems with Auroracoin’s Current Value
The reason that this coin’s market cap is so overvalued right now is that CoinMarketCap.com is already counting the premined coins, which have not yet been released. In reality, there are roughly 100,000 auroracoins in circulation right now. At a price of $92.78 per coin, the total market cap is still under $10 million at this time. This is roughly 1/100th of the value that has been touted in various reports. By counting the coins that will eventually be handed out to Icelanders, the total market cap of Auroracoin seems to be much higher than reality.
Setting Itself Up for a Collapse?
As Icelanders gain access to their premined coins, it will be interesting to see what they do with their new found wealth. Each Icelander is supposed to get 31.8 auroracoins over the next year, which would be roughly $3000 at today’s price. When an Icelander has the choice between receiving $3000 or 31.8 auroracoins, it’s likely that they’ll decide to go with the fiat currency. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is still a niche subject, and speculating on the value of any kind of altcoin is a highly risky proposition. Auroracoin definitely offered a new perspective on a way to fairly distribute a new cryptocurrency, but it would make sense for most Icelanders to simply take the money and run. If I were a citizen of Iceland, I would probably do one better and just exchange the auroracoins for bitcoins. This would eventually bring the coin’s market cap down to its true value, perhaps even lower.
Kyle Torpey 04/03/2014
Many people are pointing to Auroracoin’s position at third place on CoinMarketCap.com as proof of this new coin’s success, but the reality is that it could be setting itself up for disaster. The coin made headlines when it surpassed Litecoin’s market cap, but Auroracoin is not actually closing in on a $1 billion market cap. In fact, the real value of all the auroracoins currently on the market could be lower than $10 million. This would still put it in the top 25, but we could see it drop even lower after the airdrop begins. Let’s take a look at some of the facts behind this cryptocurrency and whether or not it will be able to achieve long-term success.
Auroracoin’s Selling Point
The main idea behind Auroracoin is that half of the coins will be premined for all of the citizens of Iceland. If you’re an Icelandic citizen, then you’ll be able to claim your share of the Auroracoin premine during the airdrop process. This is actually a rather unique idea, and it could have implications for new premined coins in the future. Most people scoff at the idea of any coin being premined, but this coin has shown that it can still be a completely democratic process. With each Icelander gaining access to their “fair share” of the auroracoins, people will be less likely to complain about a certain group of people gaining early access to a new cryptocurrency.
The Problems with Auroracoin’s Current Value
The reason that this coin’s market cap is so overvalued right now is that CoinMarketCap.com is already counting the premined coins, which have not yet been released. In reality, there are roughly 100,000 auroracoins in circulation right now. At a price of $92.78 per coin, the total market cap is still under $10 million at this time. This is roughly 1/100th of the value that has been touted in various reports. By counting the coins that will eventually be handed out to Icelanders, the total market cap of Auroracoin seems to be much higher than reality.
Setting Itself Up for a Collapse?
As Icelanders gain access to their premined coins, it will be interesting to see what they do with their new found wealth. Each Icelander is supposed to get 31.8 auroracoins over the next year, which would be roughly $3000 at today’s price. When an Icelander has the choice between receiving $3000 or 31.8 auroracoins, it’s likely that they’ll decide to go with the fiat currency. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is still a niche subject, and speculating on the value of any kind of altcoin is a highly risky proposition. Auroracoin definitely offered a new perspective on a way to fairly distribute a new cryptocurrency, but it would make sense for most Icelanders to simply take the money and run. If I were a citizen of Iceland, I would probably do one better and just exchange the auroracoins for bitcoins. This would eventually bring the coin’s market cap down to its true value, perhaps even lower.
KnCMiner Finalizes Design For World’s First 20nm Bitcoin ASIC Miner
Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on March 5, 2014 at 19:01 GMT | KnCMiner, Mining
KnCMiner has announced the tape-out of the world’s first 20nm bitcoin ASIC.
The company is still not saying much about the upcoming ASIC or the rollout schedule, it merely states that the tape-out was achieved only three months after starting the project. The actual tape-out happened sometime in February.
In electronics, a tape-out is the finalization of the design cycle for a circuit board.
KnCMiner teamed up with Alchip and Advanced Semiconductors Technology (AST) to design and produce the chip. The company points out that its first generation ASICs were delivered in three to five months.
Power friendly
KnC has not revealed any performance estimates yet, but the company is saying that the new ASIC should cut power consumption by 43%.
This sounds like a realistic estimate, as we have been hearing similar claims from chipmakers who are planning to transition from 28nm to 20nm later this year.
In addition to the new node, KnC has also optimised the design of on-die circuitry, which allowed it to stick 1440 cores in a relatively big 55 x 55mm package.
Back in November KnC said the Neptune 20nm chip would deliver at least 3TH of power, operating at 0.7 watts per GH/sec. The company was expecting a 30% reduction in power consumption and now it appears that it might beat its initial estimate.
This would not be the first time. When KnC announced the Jupiter ASIC, it promised 400GH/sec, but the chip actually operated north of 550GH/sec. However, it will be a while before we know whether Neptune can over-deliver like its predecessor.
Tricky transition
Marcus Erlandson, KnC’s CTO said he is proud of the team’s performance.
“The combined efforts of KnC and our partners Alchip means that once again we are bringing to market a world first silicon design and in record time,” he said.
President of Alchip Johnny Shen said KnC and Alchip have been working together on bitcoin ASIC design for less than a year and they have already delivered “two world-first projects”.
It is still unclear when the new ASIC will be ready for production. It usually takes several weeks between tape-out and full-scale production, but only if everything goes according to plan.
In the world of silicon chips, things can go wrong in an instant, and even big manufacturers have trouble transitioning to new manufacturing processes like TSMC’s 20nm node.
Link: http://www.coindesk.com/kncminer-finalizes-design-worlds-first-20nm-bitcoin-asic-miner/
Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on March 5, 2014 at 19:01 GMT | KnCMiner, Mining
KnCMiner has announced the tape-out of the world’s first 20nm bitcoin ASIC.
The company is still not saying much about the upcoming ASIC or the rollout schedule, it merely states that the tape-out was achieved only three months after starting the project. The actual tape-out happened sometime in February.
In electronics, a tape-out is the finalization of the design cycle for a circuit board.
KnCMiner teamed up with Alchip and Advanced Semiconductors Technology (AST) to design and produce the chip. The company points out that its first generation ASICs were delivered in three to five months.
Power friendly
KnC has not revealed any performance estimates yet, but the company is saying that the new ASIC should cut power consumption by 43%.
This sounds like a realistic estimate, as we have been hearing similar claims from chipmakers who are planning to transition from 28nm to 20nm later this year.
In addition to the new node, KnC has also optimised the design of on-die circuitry, which allowed it to stick 1440 cores in a relatively big 55 x 55mm package.
Back in November KnC said the Neptune 20nm chip would deliver at least 3TH of power, operating at 0.7 watts per GH/sec. The company was expecting a 30% reduction in power consumption and now it appears that it might beat its initial estimate.
This would not be the first time. When KnC announced the Jupiter ASIC, it promised 400GH/sec, but the chip actually operated north of 550GH/sec. However, it will be a while before we know whether Neptune can over-deliver like its predecessor.
Tricky transition
Marcus Erlandson, KnC’s CTO said he is proud of the team’s performance.
“The combined efforts of KnC and our partners Alchip means that once again we are bringing to market a world first silicon design and in record time,” he said.
President of Alchip Johnny Shen said KnC and Alchip have been working together on bitcoin ASIC design for less than a year and they have already delivered “two world-first projects”.
It is still unclear when the new ASIC will be ready for production. It usually takes several weeks between tape-out and full-scale production, but only if everything goes according to plan.
In the world of silicon chips, things can go wrong in an instant, and even big manufacturers have trouble transitioning to new manufacturing processes like TSMC’s 20nm node.
Link: http://www.coindesk.com/kncminer-finalizes-design-worlds-first-20nm-bitcoin-asic-miner/
I really think you should be including a link to the source of your articles.
Good suggestion will do from now on.
I really think you should be including a link to the source of your articles.
Bitcoin’s Biggest Challenge is Educational, Not Technical
Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 16:20 GMT | News
Erik Voorhees is among the top-recognised serial entrepreneurs in Bitcoin, which he views as one of the most important inventions ever created. Erik has been at the centre of the Bitcoin movement since April 2011. He is well known for his vocal advocacy of the “separation of Money and State”.
It seems one of the greatest challenges facing Bitcoin is not technical, but educational.
The world is having a hard time coping with its new discovery. Economist and professor Peter Morici, writing for Fox News on 3rd March, has written one of the worst bitcoin articles of the year, and it must be addressed.
Gleefully simmering in our fabricated despair, Morici betrays his agenda immediately:
“Bitcoin believers were shaken to their digital souls when Mt. Gox, the world’s largest exchange, defaulted… and closed.”
In his very first sentence, facts are disregarded. Mt. Gox was barely the third largest by the time of its demise. But it’s not facts upon which Morici’s argument fails, it’s theory and philosophy.
Quantifying value
“Money,” Morici says, “provides a secure place to keep your wealth.”
Incorrect, sir. Money is a measurement of value. It is not a place, and it is not in itself “secure” any more than inches and yards are a secure location to store one’s measurements, or than minutes themselves might be entrusted to secure one’s time. He continues:
“Bitcoin traded for $1,117 on December 4, and now commands only about half that amount.”
Morici’s willingness to ignore bitcoin’s long-term track record (one of appreciation unmatched by any other asset class, anywhere) reveals the extent to which he has blinded himself.
dollars
“[Bitcoin is no place for your children’s college fund or retirement savings.” With this I must agree, but then neither is fiat, which in its best case, over a period of twenty years will scarcely measure half of its original.
“The earliest currencies were coins …” he says (wrong again, professor, but that’s not my true gripe), “often with the face of the sovereign stamped on gold or silver to instill confidence.”
Here is where petty disagreement changes to serious contention. Gold and silver needed no sovereigns stamped on them to “instill confidence.” It was the metal itself, valuable as a commodity, which made the coins desirable. Caesar’s visage was little more than marketing for the tyrant.
The fraud of fiat
Morici writes, “The Chinese issued paper money more than 2,000 years ago.”
Yes, and the vast majority of them collapsed in hyperinflation, as have over two dozen fiat currencies in only the past hundred years. That the fraud of fiat is as old as time does not mean we should continue falling victim.
“Bitcoin may fail for a great many reasons. But if it does, it will not be for want of a tyrant’s face behind it.”
And to matters of inflation, “Bitcoin advocates are riveted by the temptation of government to print too much and destroy its value through inflation.”
True, we tend to prefer money without perpetual debasement, which seems to put us at odds with professors (who, upon achieving tenure, have difficulty determining why their raise feels inadequate).
“However, inflation is hardly a problem in the United States, Europe and Japan, and central banks in other countries hold dollars, euro, and yen to back up their currencies.”
Okay professor, just as it would be hardly a problem if I took but a few percent of your assets each year for my own, indeed you may not even notice.
Morisi laments that “There is no ‘Bitland’ where a government has declared the Bitcoin legal tender to buy goods and pay taxes.” Are we in such a dismal state that even trade itself must be ordained by a king for legitimacy, professor?
Might I be permitted to breathe without a license or speak without permission of your preferred politicians? Why not then may I trade without their approval?
What anointed property is bestowed upon “dollars” which, being absent from bitcoins, precludes their usefulness? If you would not even eat your supper without the government first giving you its blessing, then I feel sad for you, for you are truly under a dismal spell and, and suffer a strange kind of man-in-the-sky worship.
Issues of privacy
Here though I must admire Morici, at least briefly, for not condemning the privacy of Bitcoin as a sign of reclusive and improper behaviour. But, it seems he resists the temptation to vilify privacy by claiming that Bitcoin simply offers none of it.
“Transactions can be spied by hackers or government security agencies through its fairly open payments system, the government can subpoena your Bitcoin records or those of your exchange when it needs.”
Professor, is it not a welcome improvement in human decency that a government must now subpoena for records, instead of calling upon its Orwellian spy arsenal – the NSA?
And while an individual, once named, can certainly have guns drawn upon him by Government, have you ever tried obtaining the name belonging to a Bitcoin account? Such a feat is not so easy, and thank goodness that at least several more barriers have been placed between the people and their rulers.
Though this is so far shallow, for the above is Morici’s basic pretense for his real thesis, displayed so eloquently at the end.
roman coin
“Detractors of paper money have always been fixated by the absence of gold to back it up, but they fail to recognize what really makes a currency accepted and secure – the government guarantee and the good sense of the sovereign not to abuse its franchise.”
And he finishes with grand vision, “It’s not the gold but the face of Caesar – the promise his image carries – that makes a coin money.”
With this final beautiful prose, despite my stubborn resistance, Morici may have ultimately convinced me of his opinion.
And this is why, from this day forward, I shall with diligence stamp the face of Caesar into each slice of my bread, and carve it delicately upon my door, so that my food may always be rich and sustaining, and my home may be guaranteed its utility forever.
Bitcoin may fail for a great many reasons, Mr Morici. But if it does, it will not be for want of a tyrant’s face behind it.
Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 16:20 GMT | News
Erik Voorhees is among the top-recognised serial entrepreneurs in Bitcoin, which he views as one of the most important inventions ever created. Erik has been at the centre of the Bitcoin movement since April 2011. He is well known for his vocal advocacy of the “separation of Money and State”.
It seems one of the greatest challenges facing Bitcoin is not technical, but educational.
The world is having a hard time coping with its new discovery. Economist and professor Peter Morici, writing for Fox News on 3rd March, has written one of the worst bitcoin articles of the year, and it must be addressed.
Gleefully simmering in our fabricated despair, Morici betrays his agenda immediately:
“Bitcoin believers were shaken to their digital souls when Mt. Gox, the world’s largest exchange, defaulted… and closed.”
In his very first sentence, facts are disregarded. Mt. Gox was barely the third largest by the time of its demise. But it’s not facts upon which Morici’s argument fails, it’s theory and philosophy.
Quantifying value
“Money,” Morici says, “provides a secure place to keep your wealth.”
Incorrect, sir. Money is a measurement of value. It is not a place, and it is not in itself “secure” any more than inches and yards are a secure location to store one’s measurements, or than minutes themselves might be entrusted to secure one’s time. He continues:
“Bitcoin traded for $1,117 on December 4, and now commands only about half that amount.”
Morici’s willingness to ignore bitcoin’s long-term track record (one of appreciation unmatched by any other asset class, anywhere) reveals the extent to which he has blinded himself.
dollars
“[Bitcoin is no place for your children’s college fund or retirement savings.” With this I must agree, but then neither is fiat, which in its best case, over a period of twenty years will scarcely measure half of its original.
“The earliest currencies were coins …” he says (wrong again, professor, but that’s not my true gripe), “often with the face of the sovereign stamped on gold or silver to instill confidence.”
Here is where petty disagreement changes to serious contention. Gold and silver needed no sovereigns stamped on them to “instill confidence.” It was the metal itself, valuable as a commodity, which made the coins desirable. Caesar’s visage was little more than marketing for the tyrant.
The fraud of fiat
Morici writes, “The Chinese issued paper money more than 2,000 years ago.”
Yes, and the vast majority of them collapsed in hyperinflation, as have over two dozen fiat currencies in only the past hundred years. That the fraud of fiat is as old as time does not mean we should continue falling victim.
“Bitcoin may fail for a great many reasons. But if it does, it will not be for want of a tyrant’s face behind it.”
And to matters of inflation, “Bitcoin advocates are riveted by the temptation of government to print too much and destroy its value through inflation.”
True, we tend to prefer money without perpetual debasement, which seems to put us at odds with professors (who, upon achieving tenure, have difficulty determining why their raise feels inadequate).
“However, inflation is hardly a problem in the United States, Europe and Japan, and central banks in other countries hold dollars, euro, and yen to back up their currencies.”
Okay professor, just as it would be hardly a problem if I took but a few percent of your assets each year for my own, indeed you may not even notice.
Morisi laments that “There is no ‘Bitland’ where a government has declared the Bitcoin legal tender to buy goods and pay taxes.” Are we in such a dismal state that even trade itself must be ordained by a king for legitimacy, professor?
Might I be permitted to breathe without a license or speak without permission of your preferred politicians? Why not then may I trade without their approval?
What anointed property is bestowed upon “dollars” which, being absent from bitcoins, precludes their usefulness? If you would not even eat your supper without the government first giving you its blessing, then I feel sad for you, for you are truly under a dismal spell and, and suffer a strange kind of man-in-the-sky worship.
Issues of privacy
Here though I must admire Morici, at least briefly, for not condemning the privacy of Bitcoin as a sign of reclusive and improper behaviour. But, it seems he resists the temptation to vilify privacy by claiming that Bitcoin simply offers none of it.
“Transactions can be spied by hackers or government security agencies through its fairly open payments system, the government can subpoena your Bitcoin records or those of your exchange when it needs.”
Professor, is it not a welcome improvement in human decency that a government must now subpoena for records, instead of calling upon its Orwellian spy arsenal – the NSA?
And while an individual, once named, can certainly have guns drawn upon him by Government, have you ever tried obtaining the name belonging to a Bitcoin account? Such a feat is not so easy, and thank goodness that at least several more barriers have been placed between the people and their rulers.
Though this is so far shallow, for the above is Morici’s basic pretense for his real thesis, displayed so eloquently at the end.
roman coin
“Detractors of paper money have always been fixated by the absence of gold to back it up, but they fail to recognize what really makes a currency accepted and secure – the government guarantee and the good sense of the sovereign not to abuse its franchise.”
And he finishes with grand vision, “It’s not the gold but the face of Caesar – the promise his image carries – that makes a coin money.”
With this final beautiful prose, despite my stubborn resistance, Morici may have ultimately convinced me of his opinion.
And this is why, from this day forward, I shall with diligence stamp the face of Caesar into each slice of my bread, and carve it delicately upon my door, so that my food may always be rich and sustaining, and my home may be guaranteed its utility forever.
Bitcoin may fail for a great many reasons, Mr Morici. But if it does, it will not be for want of a tyrant’s face behind it.
Ireland’s First Bitcoin ATM Will Launch in a Dublin Cafe This Week
Kadhim Shubber (@kadhimshubber) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 12:30 GMT | Bitcoin ATM, News
A Lamassu bitcoin ATM machine, from Irish provider BitVendo, is to be launched at Hippety’s Cafe in the Temple Bar area of Dublin in the next few days.
With the new ATM just a stone’s throw from the Central Bank of Ireland, “there’s no way the Irish banks can ignore bitcoin now”, BitVendo, told CoinDesk.
Coming hot on the heels of the installation of the UK’s first bitcoin ATM in London, BitVendo say that it intends to roll out ATMs across Ireland and the UK, with three more expected this year.
Bank bitterness
The 2008 financial crisis hit Ireland particularly hard. Although the worst has now passed, the country had to go cap in hand to the EU and IMF for billions of euros in bailout money, which came with harsh strings attached.
At the end of 2013, it finally left the bailout programme, but distrust in the banking system has remained, says Giles Byrne, head of marketing at BitVendo:
“Initially people think the banks are behind bitcoin and are instantly turned off. There is huge hatred towards the banking system here, and some people want to support us purely to spite the banks.”
Bitcoin growth
As in other countries, bitcoin services and groups have begun to pop-up in Ireland.
These include bitcoin broker Eircoin.net and the Irish Bitcoin Foundation, which in January called for the Irish Central Bank to regulate bitcoin. Irish companies accepting bitcoin include a CCTV provider, a farmhouse B&B and a mobile phone store.
BitVendo was founded in July 2013 and was born out of frustration at the difficulty of buying bitcoin in Ireland, says Byrne:
“We were shocked to see how difficult it was. In Ireland the only people selling it were charging twice the going rate, so at that point we decided something should be done.”
The group then spent $5,000 on an ATM, an investment that could have netted them a $115,000 profit if it had been invested directly in bitcoin, Byrne notes. That discrepancy motivates the team, he says.
Image problem
As well as providing ATMs, BitVendo intends to offer a brokerage service in future, as well as “very personal cold storage for VIP clients”.
As well as trying to run a profitable business, Byrne says, BitVendo will have to keep fending off loaded media reports associating bitcoin with crime:
“We still haven’t seen our business mentioned in Irish media without the drugs on Silk Road, the Mt. Gox crash or general money laundering being mentioned too. More drugs are bought with cash than bitcoin, but the Irish media enjoys the glamour of crime.”
Bitcoin for Guinness
Meanwhile, the Baggot Inn in central Dublin has revealed on Twitter that it received its first bitcoin payment for a pint of Guinness yesterday. The pub claims this is the first pint of Guinness to be paid for in bitcoin in Ireland.
Another post on Twitter said a bitcoin ATM is to be installed in the pub over the next few days.
Kadhim Shubber (@kadhimshubber) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 12:30 GMT | Bitcoin ATM, News
A Lamassu bitcoin ATM machine, from Irish provider BitVendo, is to be launched at Hippety’s Cafe in the Temple Bar area of Dublin in the next few days.
With the new ATM just a stone’s throw from the Central Bank of Ireland, “there’s no way the Irish banks can ignore bitcoin now”, BitVendo, told CoinDesk.
Coming hot on the heels of the installation of the UK’s first bitcoin ATM in London, BitVendo say that it intends to roll out ATMs across Ireland and the UK, with three more expected this year.
Bank bitterness
The 2008 financial crisis hit Ireland particularly hard. Although the worst has now passed, the country had to go cap in hand to the EU and IMF for billions of euros in bailout money, which came with harsh strings attached.
At the end of 2013, it finally left the bailout programme, but distrust in the banking system has remained, says Giles Byrne, head of marketing at BitVendo:
“Initially people think the banks are behind bitcoin and are instantly turned off. There is huge hatred towards the banking system here, and some people want to support us purely to spite the banks.”
Bitcoin growth
As in other countries, bitcoin services and groups have begun to pop-up in Ireland.
These include bitcoin broker Eircoin.net and the Irish Bitcoin Foundation, which in January called for the Irish Central Bank to regulate bitcoin. Irish companies accepting bitcoin include a CCTV provider, a farmhouse B&B and a mobile phone store.
BitVendo was founded in July 2013 and was born out of frustration at the difficulty of buying bitcoin in Ireland, says Byrne:
“We were shocked to see how difficult it was. In Ireland the only people selling it were charging twice the going rate, so at that point we decided something should be done.”
The group then spent $5,000 on an ATM, an investment that could have netted them a $115,000 profit if it had been invested directly in bitcoin, Byrne notes. That discrepancy motivates the team, he says.
Image problem
As well as providing ATMs, BitVendo intends to offer a brokerage service in future, as well as “very personal cold storage for VIP clients”.
As well as trying to run a profitable business, Byrne says, BitVendo will have to keep fending off loaded media reports associating bitcoin with crime:
“We still haven’t seen our business mentioned in Irish media without the drugs on Silk Road, the Mt. Gox crash or general money laundering being mentioned too. More drugs are bought with cash than bitcoin, but the Irish media enjoys the glamour of crime.”
Bitcoin for Guinness
Meanwhile, the Baggot Inn in central Dublin has revealed on Twitter that it received its first bitcoin payment for a pint of Guinness yesterday. The pub claims this is the first pint of Guinness to be paid for in bitcoin in Ireland.
Another post on Twitter said a bitcoin ATM is to be installed in the pub over the next few days.
Mobile Bitcoin ATM Debuts at Berlin Payments Hackathon
Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on March 5, 2014 at 10:13 GMT | Bitcoin ATM, Events, News, Technology
An interesting hackers’ event held in Berlin last month saw the development of a pocket-friendly bitcoin ATM.
The mPOS (mobile point of sale) Hackathon was held at the sidelines of the Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2014 event on 18th – 30th February, and attracted a number of German developers, including Meinhard Benn.
Benn came up with a simple Android app that can turn most Android devices into rudimentary bitcoin ATMs. Of course, the mobile ATM cannot dispense or accept cash, and it doesn’t look like a typical ATM, but it does work.
DIY technology
The Pocket Bitcoin ATM app can be used with a PIN card reader and that’s about all the hardware you’ll need to make a transaction – apart from an Android device running 4.2.2 Jelly Bean or higher.
In the demo, Benn used a Miura Shuttle chip-and-PIN card reader and a proprietary Payworks mPOS software developers’ kit, which allowed in-app payments and payment processing at the back-end.
An open-source bitcoin wallet and the bitcoinj library were used to initiate BTC transactions.
Once the system is set up, the process is straightforward, as outlined in the Payworks blog:
Merchant opens Bitcoin ATM app on their phone
Customer enters desired amount and destination bitcoin address
Customer inserts credit or debit card in reader, confirms and pays
Bitcoins are sent from merchant’s wallet to customer’s bitcoin address
Merchant collects funds from their account with payment provider
Payworks points out that the portable system would be easy to set up in small meet-ups, conferences and other events that might benefit from bitcoin microtransactions.
Teething troubles
Of course, apps developed at hackathons don’t tend to look or operate like mature products. There are a number of limitations to consider, as explained on the ATM GitHub page.
Benn’s app features execute transactions that are registered only locally. In a real-world application, the back-end would have to look them up using the SDK.
There are a few minor glitches too: the app can hang during a firmware update, and it exhibits “unexpected behaviour” when confronted with screen rotations.
However, we have to admit we have a thing for DIY ATMs made using off-the-shelf components. Last month, a team of Canadian enthusiasts created the first dogecoin ATM using a Nexus 7 tablet glued to a briefcase.
Fast-paced industry
The other thing to consider is the mind-boggling pace of development in the gadget industry.
Apple introduced Touch ID on the iPhone 5S last year and just last week Samsung entered the fray with the Galaxy S5, which also features a fingerprint sensor. Biometric authentication can now be performed by consumer gear, including Robocoin’s trademark bitcoin ATM.
Technologies built on top of Bluetooth 4.0 LE, including Apple’s iBeacon and Qualcomm’s Gimbal beacon, are designed for interactive POS use in a retail setting, or in the hospitality industry – and they’re coming to more and more mobile devices.
Lastly, wearables like the Nymi smart wristband (which scans the user’s heartwave for biometric authentication) could offer ‘always on’ authentication, making mobile payments or mobile ATMs even more attractive.
Nermin Hajdarbegovic | Published on March 5, 2014 at 10:13 GMT | Bitcoin ATM, Events, News, Technology
An interesting hackers’ event held in Berlin last month saw the development of a pocket-friendly bitcoin ATM.
The mPOS (mobile point of sale) Hackathon was held at the sidelines of the Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2014 event on 18th – 30th February, and attracted a number of German developers, including Meinhard Benn.
Benn came up with a simple Android app that can turn most Android devices into rudimentary bitcoin ATMs. Of course, the mobile ATM cannot dispense or accept cash, and it doesn’t look like a typical ATM, but it does work.
DIY technology
The Pocket Bitcoin ATM app can be used with a PIN card reader and that’s about all the hardware you’ll need to make a transaction – apart from an Android device running 4.2.2 Jelly Bean or higher.
In the demo, Benn used a Miura Shuttle chip-and-PIN card reader and a proprietary Payworks mPOS software developers’ kit, which allowed in-app payments and payment processing at the back-end.
An open-source bitcoin wallet and the bitcoinj library were used to initiate BTC transactions.
Once the system is set up, the process is straightforward, as outlined in the Payworks blog:
Merchant opens Bitcoin ATM app on their phone
Customer enters desired amount and destination bitcoin address
Customer inserts credit or debit card in reader, confirms and pays
Bitcoins are sent from merchant’s wallet to customer’s bitcoin address
Merchant collects funds from their account with payment provider
Payworks points out that the portable system would be easy to set up in small meet-ups, conferences and other events that might benefit from bitcoin microtransactions.
Teething troubles
Of course, apps developed at hackathons don’t tend to look or operate like mature products. There are a number of limitations to consider, as explained on the ATM GitHub page.
Benn’s app features execute transactions that are registered only locally. In a real-world application, the back-end would have to look them up using the SDK.
There are a few minor glitches too: the app can hang during a firmware update, and it exhibits “unexpected behaviour” when confronted with screen rotations.
However, we have to admit we have a thing for DIY ATMs made using off-the-shelf components. Last month, a team of Canadian enthusiasts created the first dogecoin ATM using a Nexus 7 tablet glued to a briefcase.
Fast-paced industry
The other thing to consider is the mind-boggling pace of development in the gadget industry.
Apple introduced Touch ID on the iPhone 5S last year and just last week Samsung entered the fray with the Galaxy S5, which also features a fingerprint sensor. Biometric authentication can now be performed by consumer gear, including Robocoin’s trademark bitcoin ATM.
Technologies built on top of Bluetooth 4.0 LE, including Apple’s iBeacon and Qualcomm’s Gimbal beacon, are designed for interactive POS use in a retail setting, or in the hospitality industry – and they’re coming to more and more mobile devices.
Lastly, wearables like the Nymi smart wristband (which scans the user’s heartwave for biometric authentication) could offer ‘always on’ authentication, making mobile payments or mobile ATMs even more attractive.
Ripple Courts Developers, Entrepreneurs With New Initiatives
Danny Bradbury (@dannybradbury) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 11:25 GMT | Companies, News, Ripple Labs News
Ripple Labs is on the lookout for developers and entrepreneurs alike this week.
The Ripple Accelerator, an incubator designed to help companies using the Ripple protocol, opened in San Francisco. And Ripple Labs, the firm behind the open-source digital payment protocol, has launched a developer offensive to encourage third-party apps and services to support it.
The Ripple Accelerator is designed as an independent entity, not influenced by Ripple Labs. It is operated by CrossCoin Ventures, a separate group of four partners, two of whom run the Menlo Incubator. However, it is located in the same building as Ripple Labs, which is providing office space and funding.
At arms length
Ripple Labs CEO Chris Larsen and CrossCoin Ventures partner Adam Marsh nevertheless maintain that there is an arms length relationship between the companies, to avoid any conflict of interest.
To that end, while Ripple provides funding in the form or XRP, it won’t take an equity stake in any companies that it funds. Neither does it get any input into what companies are chosen, says Marsh. He stated:
“I’d like to see a dozen companies launched over the next twelve months or so at a minimum. I’d like to see quite a few of those go onto the next stage of the market and get some adoption. The areas we’re looking at are pretty diverse,”
Marsh added that CrossCoin Ventures is offering up to $50,000 in funding to new firms. Companies already on its radar are tackling business services including remittance, microtransactions, wallets, merchant solutions, and analytics products.
About Ripple
Ripple is a payment system that also has its own currency, called ripple (also known as XRP). The currency is designed as a vehicle to send other currencies across the network. It supports any currency, but requires gateways to transfer them in and out of the network. Larsen describes it as “SWIFT 2.0″, referring to the incumbent international payment system.
Ripple, formally known as OpenCoin, has launched a developer portal designed to bring together tools and resources for the developer community. These include an API for its payment network, based on the popular REST API standard.
ripple
The firm has also developed a bounty program for third-party developers, to encourage them to create services for its combined protocol and payment network.
The first one has already been claimed, said Larsen; developer Mathijs Koenraadt developed a Ripple extension to e-commerce platform Magento, which enables it to read the Ripple public ledger and create an invoice.
The initial claim on the bounty was 400,000 XRP, which is about $6,000. European luxury jewellery outlet Rita Zachari has adopted it, and is one of the first merchants to offer a Ripple Wallet payment option at checkout, said the company. Larsen said:
“There is no firm limit or timeline on future bounties, if something is adding to the overall utility of the protocol, then it’s a good thing to do, and we should support that.”
This is the latest in a growing developer push for Ripple Labs. The firm finally open sourced its formerly proprietary server code in September, at its first developer conference.
It is also developing its own concept apps to show developers how it’s done. It created an iOS client (without the ability to send currency), and published it in Apple’s App store, publishing a lengthy blog post about it. Such posts will appear in the dev blog in the future, said spokespeople.
Ripple Labs received its initial funding in a round including Andreessen Horowitz almost a year ago, and has been adding to that ever since, having amassed around $9m so far from firms including Google Ventures.
Cranking the handle
Why is the firm launching its developer initiative almost one year, one name change, and after the departure of the CTO who created the protocol in the first place? Is it trying to turn the crank harder to bolster slow Ripple adoption?
Over the last 24 hours at the time of writing, the Ripple network had processed around $42,000 in XRP/USD trades, and around 90 bitcoins in XRP/BTC. Conversely, BitStamp (Ripple’s primary bitcoin gateway), traded 21,000 bitcoins for USD overall during the last 24 hours.
Gateway support is also slow to emerge. The firm has support from several: the main one is Bitstamp, but it also has RippleChina, rippleCN, RippleIsrael, The Rock Trading, WisePass, Dividend Rippler, TTBit, RippleUnion, Justcoin, XRPChina, Peercover, Ripple Singapore, and NoFiatCoin.
It also signed with SnapSwap and ZipZap for cash payments, but ZipZap was forced to back away from its relationship after losing support from partner SoftGate.
Many of these gateways seem set up purely to serve Ripple, though, and the lack of support from large financial service providers is notable. If you want to move a few thousand pounds in sterling from the UK’s Barclays Bank to Canada’s RBC, for example, you’re out of luck. Larsen says he has support from three large Wall Street institutions, but can’t say who they are.
Nevertheless, he is happy with the network’s growth. Developer initiatives simply take a long time, he protested. “It’s a lot of work. Being open source was a prerequisite,” he said, adding that the company has tripled its development team to 40 people since then.
“To do a developer portal right takes a while. REST is the gold standard in APIs, and it takes a while to do that effectively, and document it,” he added. “It may not have been visible from the outside, but inside, there was a ton of hard, foundational stuff, and now we’re ready to bring that out.”
Danny Bradbury (@dannybradbury) | Published on March 5, 2014 at 11:25 GMT | Companies, News, Ripple Labs News
Ripple Labs is on the lookout for developers and entrepreneurs alike this week.
The Ripple Accelerator, an incubator designed to help companies using the Ripple protocol, opened in San Francisco. And Ripple Labs, the firm behind the open-source digital payment protocol, has launched a developer offensive to encourage third-party apps and services to support it.
The Ripple Accelerator is designed as an independent entity, not influenced by Ripple Labs. It is operated by CrossCoin Ventures, a separate group of four partners, two of whom run the Menlo Incubator. However, it is located in the same building as Ripple Labs, which is providing office space and funding.
At arms length
Ripple Labs CEO Chris Larsen and CrossCoin Ventures partner Adam Marsh nevertheless maintain that there is an arms length relationship between the companies, to avoid any conflict of interest.
To that end, while Ripple provides funding in the form or XRP, it won’t take an equity stake in any companies that it funds. Neither does it get any input into what companies are chosen, says Marsh. He stated:
“I’d like to see a dozen companies launched over the next twelve months or so at a minimum. I’d like to see quite a few of those go onto the next stage of the market and get some adoption. The areas we’re looking at are pretty diverse,”
Marsh added that CrossCoin Ventures is offering up to $50,000 in funding to new firms. Companies already on its radar are tackling business services including remittance, microtransactions, wallets, merchant solutions, and analytics products.
About Ripple
Ripple is a payment system that also has its own currency, called ripple (also known as XRP). The currency is designed as a vehicle to send other currencies across the network. It supports any currency, but requires gateways to transfer them in and out of the network. Larsen describes it as “SWIFT 2.0″, referring to the incumbent international payment system.
Ripple, formally known as OpenCoin, has launched a developer portal designed to bring together tools and resources for the developer community. These include an API for its payment network, based on the popular REST API standard.
ripple
The firm has also developed a bounty program for third-party developers, to encourage them to create services for its combined protocol and payment network.
The first one has already been claimed, said Larsen; developer Mathijs Koenraadt developed a Ripple extension to e-commerce platform Magento, which enables it to read the Ripple public ledger and create an invoice.
The initial claim on the bounty was 400,000 XRP, which is about $6,000. European luxury jewellery outlet Rita Zachari has adopted it, and is one of the first merchants to offer a Ripple Wallet payment option at checkout, said the company. Larsen said:
“There is no firm limit or timeline on future bounties, if something is adding to the overall utility of the protocol, then it’s a good thing to do, and we should support that.”
This is the latest in a growing developer push for Ripple Labs. The firm finally open sourced its formerly proprietary server code in September, at its first developer conference.
It is also developing its own concept apps to show developers how it’s done. It created an iOS client (without the ability to send currency), and published it in Apple’s App store, publishing a lengthy blog post about it. Such posts will appear in the dev blog in the future, said spokespeople.
Ripple Labs received its initial funding in a round including Andreessen Horowitz almost a year ago, and has been adding to that ever since, having amassed around $9m so far from firms including Google Ventures.
Cranking the handle
Why is the firm launching its developer initiative almost one year, one name change, and after the departure of the CTO who created the protocol in the first place? Is it trying to turn the crank harder to bolster slow Ripple adoption?
Over the last 24 hours at the time of writing, the Ripple network had processed around $42,000 in XRP/USD trades, and around 90 bitcoins in XRP/BTC. Conversely, BitStamp (Ripple’s primary bitcoin gateway), traded 21,000 bitcoins for USD overall during the last 24 hours.
Gateway support is also slow to emerge. The firm has support from several: the main one is Bitstamp, but it also has RippleChina, rippleCN, RippleIsrael, The Rock Trading, WisePass, Dividend Rippler, TTBit, RippleUnion, Justcoin, XRPChina, Peercover, Ripple Singapore, and NoFiatCoin.
It also signed with SnapSwap and ZipZap for cash payments, but ZipZap was forced to back away from its relationship after losing support from partner SoftGate.
Many of these gateways seem set up purely to serve Ripple, though, and the lack of support from large financial service providers is notable. If you want to move a few thousand pounds in sterling from the UK’s Barclays Bank to Canada’s RBC, for example, you’re out of luck. Larsen says he has support from three large Wall Street institutions, but can’t say who they are.
Nevertheless, he is happy with the network’s growth. Developer initiatives simply take a long time, he protested. “It’s a lot of work. Being open source was a prerequisite,” he said, adding that the company has tripled its development team to 40 people since then.
“To do a developer portal right takes a while. REST is the gold standard in APIs, and it takes a while to do that effectively, and document it,” he added. “It may not have been visible from the outside, but inside, there was a ton of hard, foundational stuff, and now we’re ready to bring that out.”
Overstock Tops $1m in Bitcoin Sales, Projects Up to $20m By Year’s End
Tom Sharkey | Published on March 4, 2014 at 23:27 GMT | Coinbase, Merchants, News
It has been less than two months since e-commerce giant Overstock.com began accepting bitcoin payments on their website, and the online retailer has already surpassed $1m in total sales.
Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne confirmed the company’s plans to embrace bitcoin back in December, and bitcoin payment processing officially went live on Overstock.com on 9th January.
Byrne spoke with CoinDesk about its $1m milestone, asserting that while the initial surge of bitcoin sales did subside, there has since been steady growth in bitcoin payments:
“In the first day there was an enormous surge of bitcoin sales, but we’ve also seen a gradual building of bitcoin sales in a week-by-week basis.”
The initial projections for sales processed with bitcoin on Overstock.com this year was set at $3-5m, but this figure has since increased dramatically, according to Byrne.
The CEO now predicts that Overstock will see a total of $10-15m in bitcoin sales this year, and suggested that this number could reach as high as $20m if bitcoin sales maintain their current growth rate.
New data
Overstock partnered with Coinbase to process bitcoin payments, and together the two companies have compiled and released data that shows the spending habits of bitcoin users on Overstock, notably comparing them to credit card users.
The findings show that customers who use bitcoin as a payment method spend on average $58 (34%) more on their orders than customers using credit cards.
Qd1APWQ
Byrne says that Overstock has reaped the benefits of accepting bitcoin as a payment method, most notably in regards to eliminating chargeback fraud from credit card payments and reducing payment processing fees:
“Bitcoin payments have helped us avoid fraud in the form of chargebacks with credit cards, and we’re also able to get paid faster than when payments are processed with credit cards.
It takes three days for payments to finalize with credit cards, and with bitcoin we can get paid immediately.”
Market effects
While Overstock is credited as the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin payments, they’re not alone when it comes to reputable companies embracing bitcoin. TigerDirect began accepting bitcoin payments in late January, and companies like Virgin Atlantic and Reddit have helped further legitimize the digital currency as a convenient and secure payment method.
Speaking on the recent news of Overstock’s $1m bitcoin sales milestone, Coinbase noted that while they’re excited about the growing number of transactions being processed with bitcoin, they’re certainly not surprised:
“We are more gratified than surprised with these recent milestones, as they illustrate our belief that we are near a tipping point for broad merchant and consumer adoption of Bitcoin.”
Byrne hopes that the news of Overstock surpassing $1m in bitcoin payments will continue to build the currency’s credibility and adoption rates, noting that many customers are switching from competing commerce sites to shop with bitcoin on Overstock:
“I’ve seen the bitcoin community really embrace Overstock and I’ve read about many cases of our customers coming over from Amazon specifically to shop using bitcoin.
I think that bitcoin payments will account for several percent of all online transactions in the next year or two, and when this happens, Amazon will be forced to start accepting bitcoin on their website.”
With the amount of sales being processed with bitcoin steadily growing on Overstock, Byrne noted that the company has recently changed its business model and will start to hold “5-10% of [their] processed bitcoins in reserves.”
Given the option that Coinbase offers its merchants to immediately convert bitcoins to fiat currency, this move is a symbol of Overstock’s confidence in the principles of bitcoin and its utility as a means for buying goods and services online.
Tom Sharkey | Published on March 4, 2014 at 23:27 GMT | Coinbase, Merchants, News
It has been less than two months since e-commerce giant Overstock.com began accepting bitcoin payments on their website, and the online retailer has already surpassed $1m in total sales.
Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne confirmed the company’s plans to embrace bitcoin back in December, and bitcoin payment processing officially went live on Overstock.com on 9th January.
Byrne spoke with CoinDesk about its $1m milestone, asserting that while the initial surge of bitcoin sales did subside, there has since been steady growth in bitcoin payments:
“In the first day there was an enormous surge of bitcoin sales, but we’ve also seen a gradual building of bitcoin sales in a week-by-week basis.”
The initial projections for sales processed with bitcoin on Overstock.com this year was set at $3-5m, but this figure has since increased dramatically, according to Byrne.
The CEO now predicts that Overstock will see a total of $10-15m in bitcoin sales this year, and suggested that this number could reach as high as $20m if bitcoin sales maintain their current growth rate.
New data
Overstock partnered with Coinbase to process bitcoin payments, and together the two companies have compiled and released data that shows the spending habits of bitcoin users on Overstock, notably comparing them to credit card users.
The findings show that customers who use bitcoin as a payment method spend on average $58 (34%) more on their orders than customers using credit cards.
Qd1APWQ
Byrne says that Overstock has reaped the benefits of accepting bitcoin as a payment method, most notably in regards to eliminating chargeback fraud from credit card payments and reducing payment processing fees:
“Bitcoin payments have helped us avoid fraud in the form of chargebacks with credit cards, and we’re also able to get paid faster than when payments are processed with credit cards.
It takes three days for payments to finalize with credit cards, and with bitcoin we can get paid immediately.”
Market effects
While Overstock is credited as the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin payments, they’re not alone when it comes to reputable companies embracing bitcoin. TigerDirect began accepting bitcoin payments in late January, and companies like Virgin Atlantic and Reddit have helped further legitimize the digital currency as a convenient and secure payment method.
Speaking on the recent news of Overstock’s $1m bitcoin sales milestone, Coinbase noted that while they’re excited about the growing number of transactions being processed with bitcoin, they’re certainly not surprised:
“We are more gratified than surprised with these recent milestones, as they illustrate our belief that we are near a tipping point for broad merchant and consumer adoption of Bitcoin.”
Byrne hopes that the news of Overstock surpassing $1m in bitcoin payments will continue to build the currency’s credibility and adoption rates, noting that many customers are switching from competing commerce sites to shop with bitcoin on Overstock:
“I’ve seen the bitcoin community really embrace Overstock and I’ve read about many cases of our customers coming over from Amazon specifically to shop using bitcoin.
I think that bitcoin payments will account for several percent of all online transactions in the next year or two, and when this happens, Amazon will be forced to start accepting bitcoin on their website.”
With the amount of sales being processed with bitcoin steadily growing on Overstock, Byrne noted that the company has recently changed its business model and will start to hold “5-10% of [their] processed bitcoins in reserves.”
Given the option that Coinbase offers its merchants to immediately convert bitcoins to fiat currency, this move is a symbol of Overstock’s confidence in the principles of bitcoin and its utility as a means for buying goods and services online.
Bitcoin Careers Represent Hope For Many
Tom Boice 04/03/2014 Bitcoin, Business, Interviews, News
An Image Problem
statue of bitcoin liberty
Bitcoin represents a hope of salvation for many who are disillusioned with their current employment.
Anyone introduced to Bitcoin for the first time today would know two things: that even the largest exchange can inexplicably lose 6% of all bitcoins in existence, and apparently all Bitcoiners are speculators just waiting to get rich.
But if you ask Brad Vaivoda, a former mechanical engineer who is now working with Neo & Bee, why he got involved with Bitcoin, he will tell you that after initially ignoring the protocol in 2012, he was presented with it again after a while. Brad eventually read Satoshi’s white-paper and saw the possibilities of Bitcoin, reading everything he could about it after that. He told me,
“I was interested in what people were building and seeing all the different ways the distributed time-stamp database could improve upon existing systems. [...] The more I researched, the more I realized that my potential to help change the world was far brighter with bitcoin than where I was at currently.”
Re-Energizing Labor
Brad’s passion to “help change the world” is common in the Bitcoin economy. In fact, it’s difficult to find someone in our community who isn’t impassioned about Bitcoin’s potential to change the world. Even here at CryptoCoinsNews, many of us are working full-time day jobs to pay the bills, in addition to tracking down sources, stories, and content for the website. That is the real face of Bitcoin – not a sweaty CEO bowing in apology after vanishing $460 million – but a bright-eyed ‘anybody’ re-energized by the prospect of being part of something that can give them purpose, and maybe even make the world better.
Continuing Brad Vaivoda’s story, he eventually was introduced to Danny Brewster of LMB Holings/Neo & Bee. Despite Brad’s lucrative and secure position as a Test and Evaluation Engineer at Boeing, he had this to say about first meeting the team at Neo & Bee:
I was so excited by what I saw, the ideas being talked about, and the collective drive of the people involved, that I actually had a hard time sleeping – my mind was racing. I think I left a positive impression because a week or so after I returned from Cyprus, I conveyed to Danny my interest in becoming part of the team, and was offered me a job as the head of Neo’s ATM division.
He continued, saying he feels that “nothing progresses without a chance of failure,” but, “standing idly by knowing I have the skills and capacity to help make this technology a part of our future just wouldn’t sit well.”
Brad is not alone in his sentiment. People everywhere are facing lower wages, higher prices, and longer hours. According to various Pew Research polls, it is standard for those lucky enough to be employed in the U.S. to feel over-qualified and under-paid. On the other hand, Bitcoin is growing, and offers new, more flexible business models for developers and those of us doing non-dev work also. (Check out Coinality or Jobs4Bitcoins to see some of these opportunities.)
So many are passionate about Bitcoin, but few get opportunities like Brad did. One man I spoke to, Mourad M., just gave his resignation to his company, Goodyear, despite not having a job lined up yet. Being an IT Operations engineer, he is confident in his prospects for a career working with Bitcoin;
I was thinking about leaving my job for some time now. I knew I had to do it, each morning I woke up thinking only about bitcoin related projects. I wasn’t so passionate about my job here anymore and I knew it was time to move on to something to bring the passion back. Simply, Bitcoin.
Two Economies
All of us interested in Bitcoin came from somewhere else, the technology is too new for anyone to have worked exclusively on it. What binds the community together is a passion to see decentralized trust built into the systems of the world, to make it a slightly fairer and more secure place to live. However, there seems to be a disconnect between the Bitcoin community and the traditional economy, caused in part by media only covering the scandals and crime dramas. So many only see the ugly side and the few bad-actors that the rest of us get lost in the noise, or written off as “speculators.”
I feel that the disconnect between the “traditional” economy and the world of Bitcoin is best exemplified by Mourad’s HR department asking him, “how much were you offered at Bitcoin?” Not only do many misunderstand the protocol, but the idea that someone may simply be driven by something other than money is not considered.
The popular media will continue to focus on price fluctuations and fraudsters, because it fits the narrative they are used to. There is no incentive for the media to understand the full Bitcoin economy yet, and simply hoping to change the world doesn’t generate the page-views that mass fraud does. Regardless of what is reported, the blockchain will continue confirming trust in a decentralized manner, and inspiring the rest of us to build on that trust.
Tom Boice 04/03/2014 Bitcoin, Business, Interviews, News
An Image Problem
statue of bitcoin liberty
Bitcoin represents a hope of salvation for many who are disillusioned with their current employment.
Anyone introduced to Bitcoin for the first time today would know two things: that even the largest exchange can inexplicably lose 6% of all bitcoins in existence, and apparently all Bitcoiners are speculators just waiting to get rich.
But if you ask Brad Vaivoda, a former mechanical engineer who is now working with Neo & Bee, why he got involved with Bitcoin, he will tell you that after initially ignoring the protocol in 2012, he was presented with it again after a while. Brad eventually read Satoshi’s white-paper and saw the possibilities of Bitcoin, reading everything he could about it after that. He told me,
“I was interested in what people were building and seeing all the different ways the distributed time-stamp database could improve upon existing systems. [...] The more I researched, the more I realized that my potential to help change the world was far brighter with bitcoin than where I was at currently.”
Re-Energizing Labor
Brad’s passion to “help change the world” is common in the Bitcoin economy. In fact, it’s difficult to find someone in our community who isn’t impassioned about Bitcoin’s potential to change the world. Even here at CryptoCoinsNews, many of us are working full-time day jobs to pay the bills, in addition to tracking down sources, stories, and content for the website. That is the real face of Bitcoin – not a sweaty CEO bowing in apology after vanishing $460 million – but a bright-eyed ‘anybody’ re-energized by the prospect of being part of something that can give them purpose, and maybe even make the world better.
Continuing Brad Vaivoda’s story, he eventually was introduced to Danny Brewster of LMB Holings/Neo & Bee. Despite Brad’s lucrative and secure position as a Test and Evaluation Engineer at Boeing, he had this to say about first meeting the team at Neo & Bee:
I was so excited by what I saw, the ideas being talked about, and the collective drive of the people involved, that I actually had a hard time sleeping – my mind was racing. I think I left a positive impression because a week or so after I returned from Cyprus, I conveyed to Danny my interest in becoming part of the team, and was offered me a job as the head of Neo’s ATM division.
He continued, saying he feels that “nothing progresses without a chance of failure,” but, “standing idly by knowing I have the skills and capacity to help make this technology a part of our future just wouldn’t sit well.”
Brad is not alone in his sentiment. People everywhere are facing lower wages, higher prices, and longer hours. According to various Pew Research polls, it is standard for those lucky enough to be employed in the U.S. to feel over-qualified and under-paid. On the other hand, Bitcoin is growing, and offers new, more flexible business models for developers and those of us doing non-dev work also. (Check out Coinality or Jobs4Bitcoins to see some of these opportunities.)
So many are passionate about Bitcoin, but few get opportunities like Brad did. One man I spoke to, Mourad M., just gave his resignation to his company, Goodyear, despite not having a job lined up yet. Being an IT Operations engineer, he is confident in his prospects for a career working with Bitcoin;
I was thinking about leaving my job for some time now. I knew I had to do it, each morning I woke up thinking only about bitcoin related projects. I wasn’t so passionate about my job here anymore and I knew it was time to move on to something to bring the passion back. Simply, Bitcoin.
Two Economies
All of us interested in Bitcoin came from somewhere else, the technology is too new for anyone to have worked exclusively on it. What binds the community together is a passion to see decentralized trust built into the systems of the world, to make it a slightly fairer and more secure place to live. However, there seems to be a disconnect between the Bitcoin community and the traditional economy, caused in part by media only covering the scandals and crime dramas. So many only see the ugly side and the few bad-actors that the rest of us get lost in the noise, or written off as “speculators.”
I feel that the disconnect between the “traditional” economy and the world of Bitcoin is best exemplified by Mourad’s HR department asking him, “how much were you offered at Bitcoin?” Not only do many misunderstand the protocol, but the idea that someone may simply be driven by something other than money is not considered.
The popular media will continue to focus on price fluctuations and fraudsters, because it fits the narrative they are used to. There is no incentive for the media to understand the full Bitcoin economy yet, and simply hoping to change the world doesn’t generate the page-views that mass fraud does. Regardless of what is reported, the blockchain will continue confirming trust in a decentralized manner, and inspiring the rest of us to build on that trust.
Bitcoin Bank Flexcoin to Close After $600,000 Bitcoin Theft
Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on March 4, 2014
Alberta-based bitcoin storage specialist Flexcoin has announced that it will shut down following an attack and subsequent robbery that saw cybercriminals abscond with 896 BTC (roughly $600,000 at press time) stored in the company’s hot wallets.
Flexcoin, which styled itself as the “first bitcoin bank”, though it was not legally such an entity, took to its homepage to announce the theft and closure.
The statement reads:
“As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.”
Flexcoin also provided the wallet addresses of the alleged hackers. The largest wallet of which received 592.1 BTC from the breach, while the smaller of the two held at one point 304 BTC supposedly taken from the website.
The entirety of the two accounts have since been withdrawn in other transactions. Neither wallet seems to have any recorded transactions prior to 2nd March.
Remaining funds
Following the announcement of the closure, customers who held bitcoins in Flexcoin’s cold storage accounts were assured that they would be able to retrieve the funds. Individuals who contact Flexcoin will be asked to provide identification, and will have their coins transferred from the bank free of charge.
The company had last week posted a tweet regarding the safety of their bitcoin storage practices.
Notably, the wording provided indicated that the attack differed from the Mt. Gox assault, which alleged its cold storage was “wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet”.
About Flexcoin
Flexcoin aimed to differentiate itself from other electronic wallet providers by incentivizing users for keeping their bitcoin balances on the site.
The company monetized by charging employees 0.02 BTC or 1% of transaction amounts for funds transferred out of cold storage, and 0.01 BTC or one half of 1% for funds transferred to cold storage.
Flexcoin to bitcoin transactions were also subject to charges.
The announcement confirms fears that many in the bitcoin community have long harbored toward Flexcoin and other bitcoin wallet storage services.
As early as two years ago, Flexcoin was singled out as a service that many argued would not be able to protect consumer investments due to limitations in its design.
Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_) | Published on March 4, 2014
Alberta-based bitcoin storage specialist Flexcoin has announced that it will shut down following an attack and subsequent robbery that saw cybercriminals abscond with 896 BTC (roughly $600,000 at press time) stored in the company’s hot wallets.
Flexcoin, which styled itself as the “first bitcoin bank”, though it was not legally such an entity, took to its homepage to announce the theft and closure.
The statement reads:
“As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately.”
Flexcoin also provided the wallet addresses of the alleged hackers. The largest wallet of which received 592.1 BTC from the breach, while the smaller of the two held at one point 304 BTC supposedly taken from the website.
The entirety of the two accounts have since been withdrawn in other transactions. Neither wallet seems to have any recorded transactions prior to 2nd March.
Remaining funds
Following the announcement of the closure, customers who held bitcoins in Flexcoin’s cold storage accounts were assured that they would be able to retrieve the funds. Individuals who contact Flexcoin will be asked to provide identification, and will have their coins transferred from the bank free of charge.
The company had last week posted a tweet regarding the safety of their bitcoin storage practices.
Notably, the wording provided indicated that the attack differed from the Mt. Gox assault, which alleged its cold storage was “wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet”.
About Flexcoin
Flexcoin aimed to differentiate itself from other electronic wallet providers by incentivizing users for keeping their bitcoin balances on the site.
The company monetized by charging employees 0.02 BTC or 1% of transaction amounts for funds transferred out of cold storage, and 0.01 BTC or one half of 1% for funds transferred to cold storage.
Flexcoin to bitcoin transactions were also subject to charges.
The announcement confirms fears that many in the bitcoin community have long harbored toward Flexcoin and other bitcoin wallet storage services.
As early as two years ago, Flexcoin was singled out as a service that many argued would not be able to protect consumer investments due to limitations in its design.
Breaking: Litecoin Now Tradeable at BTC China at 0% Fee
Gordon Hall 04/03/2014
Major Chinese exchange BTC China just enabled Litecoin trading at an unbeatable 0% fee!
BTC China’s official announcement reads as follows:
Dear Customers,
We are very excited to introduce BTC China’s new member – Litecoin!
Bitcoin grew tremendously in 2013, while another virtual currency has also made considerable progress – Litecoin. It gradually gained recognition from the Bitcoin enthusiasts. By popular request, we have now added Litecoin trading to BTC China’s trading platform.
In addition, Litecoin trading will have 0% trading commission!
As a responsible trading platform and a Bitcoin industry leader, BTC China is committed to providing a safe and secure platform. We always focus on the safety of customer’s funds.
We will strive to continue to offer the best service to our customers, so we appreciate any suggestions, comments and feedback.
Thank you for your support, and we wish you a happy and prosperous Year of the Horse!
BTC China Team
March 4, 2014
-
It is expected this surprise good news will provide a real boost to Litecoin, which has recently been eclipsed by Auroracoin for the coveted position of most valuable altcoin in the rankings of mineable cryptocurrencies.
There has long been speculation that Litecoin would appear on BTC China, given the creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, is the brother of BTC China’s owner, Bobby Lee.
12 hour chart showing Bitcoin (gold) and Litecoin (silver) in percentage terms.
Although cryptocurrency prices are green almost across the board as the Bitcoin market finally looks past the Mt. Gox fiasco to its bright future, Litecoin is outperforming. Barring Auroracoin and Mazacoin, both new breeds of pre-mined national coins, Litecoin is up the most of the next 23 most valuable coins.
Surely the BTC China news is contributing to its relative outperformance. Bitcoiners will remember the massive supporting volume BTC China’s 0% fees lent to the Bitcoin price in late 2013.
BTC China's "LTC China" trading chart and depth - early days yet.
BTC China’s “LTC China” trading chart and depth – early days yet.
The Litecoin / Chinese Yuan data feed will likely be coming to Bitcoin Wisdom shortly. Assuming you have access to these multiple exchanges, look out for arbitrage opportunities between BTC China, as price finds its level there, and established prices on OKCoin, Bter and BTC-e.
Hypron, creator of the 4-way split window for watching the Bitcoin price across several exchanges, is going to release a similar 4-way split view for the above-mentioned Litecoin exchanges. Watch his Twitter for the announcement, Litecoin traders.
2000 LTC to Fund Further Litecoin Development
In celebration of this historic event in Litecoin’s history, the Lee brothers have pledged a combined 2000 LTC to the Litecoin Development Fund, as announced by Charlie Lee in this Reddit thread.
Gordon Hall 04/03/2014
Major Chinese exchange BTC China just enabled Litecoin trading at an unbeatable 0% fee!
BTC China’s official announcement reads as follows:
Dear Customers,
We are very excited to introduce BTC China’s new member – Litecoin!
Bitcoin grew tremendously in 2013, while another virtual currency has also made considerable progress – Litecoin. It gradually gained recognition from the Bitcoin enthusiasts. By popular request, we have now added Litecoin trading to BTC China’s trading platform.
In addition, Litecoin trading will have 0% trading commission!
As a responsible trading platform and a Bitcoin industry leader, BTC China is committed to providing a safe and secure platform. We always focus on the safety of customer’s funds.
We will strive to continue to offer the best service to our customers, so we appreciate any suggestions, comments and feedback.
Thank you for your support, and we wish you a happy and prosperous Year of the Horse!
BTC China Team
March 4, 2014
-
It is expected this surprise good news will provide a real boost to Litecoin, which has recently been eclipsed by Auroracoin for the coveted position of most valuable altcoin in the rankings of mineable cryptocurrencies.
There has long been speculation that Litecoin would appear on BTC China, given the creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, is the brother of BTC China’s owner, Bobby Lee.
12 hour chart showing Bitcoin (gold) and Litecoin (silver) in percentage terms.
Although cryptocurrency prices are green almost across the board as the Bitcoin market finally looks past the Mt. Gox fiasco to its bright future, Litecoin is outperforming. Barring Auroracoin and Mazacoin, both new breeds of pre-mined national coins, Litecoin is up the most of the next 23 most valuable coins.
Surely the BTC China news is contributing to its relative outperformance. Bitcoiners will remember the massive supporting volume BTC China’s 0% fees lent to the Bitcoin price in late 2013.
BTC China's "LTC China" trading chart and depth - early days yet.
BTC China’s “LTC China” trading chart and depth – early days yet.
The Litecoin / Chinese Yuan data feed will likely be coming to Bitcoin Wisdom shortly. Assuming you have access to these multiple exchanges, look out for arbitrage opportunities between BTC China, as price finds its level there, and established prices on OKCoin, Bter and BTC-e.
Hypron, creator of the 4-way split window for watching the Bitcoin price across several exchanges, is going to release a similar 4-way split view for the above-mentioned Litecoin exchanges. Watch his Twitter for the announcement, Litecoin traders.
2000 LTC to Fund Further Litecoin Development
In celebration of this historic event in Litecoin’s history, the Lee brothers have pledged a combined 2000 LTC to the Litecoin Development Fund, as announced by Charlie Lee in this Reddit thread.
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