The Week In Bitcoin - May 30 through June 5 2011

Stephen Gornick

legendary

Activity: 2506

Merit: 1010

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Bitcoin Market Suspends PayPal Trading
The exchange Bitcoin Market has discontinued the ability for trades to be made where PayPal is used for payment.
Bitcoin Money writes:
“fraudulent behavior [by some users] has created a tremendous backlog of ‘Unconfirmed’ trades”.
“[PayPal] can also be considered to be a P2P2P (person-to-person-to-person) payment network as well. A buyer can take advantage of the social network to find a trusted connection who might, in turn, have a connection to a Bitcoin seller. Physical proximity is not required”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6208332487
New Exchange - Bahtcoin (Thailand)
A fixed-rate exchange serving Thailand.
- http://www.bahtcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bahtcoin
The Next Web - Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World
TNW’s readers already know a little about Bitcoin so Joel Falconer (@jfalconer) digs down to the next layer. Some inaccuracies were identified however.
“Bitcoin aims to create a decentralized, anonymous, uncounterfeitable, transaction fee-free currency”. [Anonymous -> pseudonymous, Fee-free -> low-fee. - Editor]
“It’s fairly early on in Bitcoin’s potential timeline and we’re already seeing five to ten minute delays between sending money and receiving it”. [That wouldn’t be because of bandwidth, storage or anything relating to scalability. - Editor]
- http://tnw.co/lzyLJp
Newest Version Of Bitcoin Client Released, v0.3.22
This is largely a bugfix and TX fee schedule release.
- Remove ‘generate coins’ option from GUI and remove 4-way miner. (miners use software from elsewhere now.)
- Add -port option for P2P port.
- Minimum TX fee reduced to 0.0005 BTC (Client will accept and relay the lowered fee. GUI application remains at 0.01 BTC until v0.3.23 though.)
- Bug fixes, source tree reorg and more.
Upgrading to the most recent version of the client is not mandatory. With 0.01 BTC being worth as much at $0.18 USD recently, many individuals have reverted to v0.3.20 which does not impose the minimum fee that was introduced with v0.3.21. That older version has issues which were fixed with the newer releases but for an individual the older version is suitable for use in transacting with others. The minimum transaction fee when using v0.3.23 will be an amount 1 / 20th of the amount that the most current version of the client requires. As such, it is likely that v0.3.23 will follow shortly.
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12269.0
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.22

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Falkvinge.net - Bitcoin’s Four Hurdles: Part One – Usability
A man who recently claimed to have invested all of of his savings and all that he could borrow into bitcoins does what is in his self-interest, he works to make that investment more valuable. He has become a participant in the mass collaborative project called Bitcoin.
Today he starts with part one of a series addressing the hurdles that he sees that Bitcoin must overcome. The first: Usability. He writes:
“A person who is great at making complex logic work flawlessly is never great at making that logic easy to use and understand. This is how you send money. I mean, come on.”
“Why can’t I pay with my phone without risking loss of my money through theft or loss of my phone?” [It’s coming, Webcoin. - Editor]
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability
Bitcoin Money - New Service: Blind Bitcoin Transfers
Consider this service along the lines of being a deposit service where the history of the bitcoins deposited can be unlinked when later withdrawn.
“After receiving depositing bitcoins the service will sign digital tokens for the depositor which can later be redeemed for bitcoins that would not be associated with the ones deposited.”
- http://blindbitcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blind_Bitcoin_Transfers
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6187527905

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

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

All posts:
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Stephen Gornick

legendary

Activity: 2506

Merit: 1010

Friday, June 03, 2011

Bitcoin Money - History of the Cypherpunks (via Cypherpunkd)
Bitcoiners will appreciate this podcast with stories from the Cypherpunks of their fight to get encryption tools into to the open. Digital cash is discussed.
“I can’t think of any way of making it available to everyone without making it available to the bad guys. The effects on society weigh more positively than the advantage it gives to the bad guys.”
”[Digital currencies are always launched by] the banking industry and unfortunately the banking industry has a huge vested interest in not providing anonymous payment mechanisms.”
“The know your customer rules are really just about controlling cash, controlling movement, and collecting taxes.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6136537609
Daily Reckoning - An Emerging Free Market Currency
Though there was no shortage of dissuading voices this past week today the voluminous collection of propaganda can be deemed offset in its entirety with just one word. The Daily Reckoning’s managing editor Joel Bowman concludes his article: “Bravo”.
“The history of centrally controlled monies is a history of theft, inflation and, eventually and invariably, defaults. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that […] the free market would demand – and will eventually provide – a superior alternative.”
“We expect all the usual arguments from all the usual suspects: Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and therefore provide cover for peddlers of child pornography and drug traffickers, they will contend. But the astute reader knows in his gut there is something very wrong with this line of thinking right from the beginning. Cash is anonymous too.”
“The question, however, is not whether the Feds should do something, but whether they could do something, even if they wanted to.”
- http://dailyreckoning.com/an-emerging-free-market-currency

Thursday, June 02, 2011

@MtGox - Total @Dwolla transactions in May, 2011: 4,401
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox shared a metric from May: 4,401 transactions.
No disputed payments or chargebacks. No frozen accounts. No rolling reserves. No fees over the fixed $0.25 per-transaction fee.
- http://twitter.com/#!/MtGox/status/75829234349768705
SmartMoney - The Currency That's Up 200,000%
Jack Hough (@JackHough) writes in SmartMoney:
“The finite supply of Bitcoins might help explain the frantic demand for them. Dollars and euros are created at will by central bankers.”
“Dollars can’t be cashed in for anything; rather, we accept them as payment with the belief that others will accept them, too. That’s another reason the price of Bitcoins has rocketed over the past year.”
- http://bit.ly/m4paxN

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

Current week (new posts throughout each day):
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All posts:
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Stephen Gornick

legendary

Activity: 2506

Merit: 1010

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

ReasonTV - Bitcoin & The End of State-Controlled Money: Q&A with Jerry Brito
This video on ReasonTV by Jerry Brito (@JerryBrito) gives a two minute overview of Bitcoin.
“There are two main benefits in Bitcoin that people who like liberty are going to be excited about. One is this idea that a central authority doesn’t control the money supply. And so they can’t just print more money”.
“There’s no Bitcoin corporation, there’s no Bitcoin building”.
“Whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails itself is really neither here nor there. If it’s not Bitcoin it is going to be something else that is going to be a virtual currency that has distributed, that’s anonymous and it doesn’t have a central intermediary”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTqvYqXRbY
The Underground Economist (Sean Lynch) - Replacing Bitcoin
Sean Lynch, (@DrPrettyBad) defends Bitcoin by countering a weak claim.
“If account keys need to be strengthened or ECDSA deprecated, support can be added for new key types, and a date can be agreed to after which ECDSA keys will no longer be allowed to spend Bitcoin”.
“This is an intentional design choice: we trade the ability to have no coordination whatsoever for the network effect advantages of a single digital currency. If people consider this trade-off better than the trade-offs of a fiat currency, they’ll use Bitcoin”.
- http://undergroundeconomist.com/post/6078039278
BVDW.org - BVDW Warns Consumers And Dealers On Using Bitcoins As Payment
BVDW.org is an organisation, according to its website, that “represents the interests of companies in the field of interactive marketing, digital content and interactive added value”.
This German lobbying organization issued an alert that warns how Bitcoin will in the long term harm society [This comes from a translation from German to English by Google Translate so hopefully that is. -Editor]
Fortunately, a Bitcoiner has provided a translation that not only is much less verbose, it infuses the true meanings (with umm … slight interpretation) of the words that emanate from the BVDW release:
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11061.msg158226#msg158226
- http://bit.ly/lPmOlV (BVDW alert, in German)
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607243 (comments on HN)
AstroHacker - The Time is Now for Bitcoin Startups
Ryan make his case for why now is the best time to get started on a Bitcoin startup or to incorporate Bitcoin into your existing business:
1.)“Bitcoin will probably succeed in some form or another”.
2.)“If it succeeds, it will probably be huge. I am not aware of a recent technology so widely useful except for the web, the internet or computing itself”.
3.)“There is almost no competition. You can straightforwardly monopolize any segment of the bitcoin economy by [being the first to create] a really solid business.”
4.)“It has never been easier to start so small and get so big. Businesses that already sell products or services can simply start accepting bitcoin”.
“By next year, all the easiest, obvious businesses will be taken”.
- http://astrohacker.com/ahc/time-is-now-for-bitcoin-entrepreneurship
Bitcoin Money - EFF: Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties
After the EFF removed a Bitcoin address as one of their donation methods a Bitcoiner inquired and received an interesting reply.
”Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties”.
“[We are reviewing] the options and legalities pertinent to bitcoin”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6100385027

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

Current week (new posts throughout each day):
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All posts:
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Stephen Gornick

legendary

Activity: 2506

Merit: 1010

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Monetary Future - Bitcoin: Timing is Everything
Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) writes:
“Money was never intended to track identity and a payment system should not be used to censor and ban certain types of ‘offensive’ transactions”.
“Free individuals should ‘resist digital money unless anonymous’”.
- http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-timing-is-everything.html
Keiser Report: Jon Matonis on BitCoin vs central bankers
Max interviews guest Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) who introduces Bitcoin to the RT audience.
“Overall though, I do think the exchangers are the weakest link in the chain”.
“On the government level I think what this is going to actually lead to is a move and a shift away from the model of taxing income and I think you’re going to start to see governments move towards some type of consumption-based tax or headcount-type tax and the reason is because the income levels of individuals are going to become more and more difficult to ascertain”
“I believe digital cash will do to legal tender what BitTorrents did to copyrights”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GiQEECNcZM
Bitcoin Economy - Daily Snapshot
1 BTC = $8.90 USD, Size: 6.39M BTC, Last 24h: 0.27M BTC in 6.0K trx, Difficulty: 435K, Forum posts/day: 2,361 Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
Bitcoin Money - International USD Wire Option added at Mt. Gox Exchange
“USD funds can now be sent via wire to the exchange’s bank in Japan”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6061806466
AdWeek - Not So Funny Money
Jotham Sederstrom writes on virtual currencies, virtual goods and virtual companies.
“Millions of consumers are growing more comfortable spending real money on virtual goods”.
“Some experts are taking a cue from China, which has set limits on the widespread trade of virtual currency, which in 2008 reached $2 billion in that country.”
“From rules governing gift certificates—perhaps the closest thing to virtual currency—to state money transmitter laws and federal banking and money laundering laws, federal regulators in the U.S. are now wrapping their heads around an industry that only a decade ago hardly existed.”
- http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/not-so-funny-money-132076
Bitcoins are rising fast – but risky too
Philip Salter opines on the Bitcoin:
“People living in countries where their governments are worse than criminals, such [restrictions to using Bitcoin] won’t apply. Indeed, it would offer some a cleaner method of payment than usually open to them. Bitcoins wouldn’t have been a bad option for Zimbabweans”.
“Bitcoins can’t compete with the yellow metal. Buying bitcoins could be a profitable, if risky, short-term speculative bet”.
- http://bit.ly/kM8fEr

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

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

All posts:
  http://www.bitcoinnews.com/archive Follow on Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Stephen Gornick

legendary

Activity: 2506

Merit: 1010

Sunday, June 05, 2011

Bitcoin Market Suspends PayPal Trading
The exchange Bitcoin Market has discontinued the ability for trades to be made where PayPal is used for payment.
Bitcoin Money writes:
“fraudulent behavior [by some users] has created a tremendous backlog of ‘Unconfirmed’ trades”.
“[PayPal] can also be considered to be a P2P2P (person-to-person-to-person) payment network as well. A buyer can take advantage of the social network to find a trusted connection who might, in turn, have a connection to a Bitcoin seller. Physical proximity is not required”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6208332487
New Exchange - Bahtcoin (Thailand)
A fixed-rate exchange serving Thailand.
- http://www.bahtcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bahtcoin
The Next Web - Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World
TNW’s readers already know a little about Bitcoin so Joel Falconer (@jfalconer) digs down to the next layer. Some inaccuracies were identified however.
“Bitcoin aims to create a decentralized, anonymous, uncounterfeitable, transaction fee-free currency”. [Anonymous -> pseudonymous, Fee-free -> low-fee. - Editor]
“It’s fairly early on in Bitcoin’s potential timeline and we’re already seeing five to ten minute delays between sending money and receiving it”. [That wouldn’t be because of bandwidth, storage or anything relating to scalability. - Editor]
- http://tnw.co/lzyLJp
Newest Version Of Bitcoin Client Released, v0.3.22
This is largely a bugfix and TX fee schedule release.
- Remove ‘generate coins’ option from GUI and remove 4-way miner. (miners use software from elsewhere now.)
- Add -port option for P2P port.
- Minimum TX fee reduced to 0.0005 BTC (Client will accept and relay the lowered fee. GUI application remains at 0.01 BTC until v0.3.23 though.)
- Bug fixes, source tree reorg and more.
Upgrading to the most recent version of the client is not mandatory. With 0.01 BTC being worth as much at $0.18 USD recently, many individuals have reverted to v0.3.20 which does not impose the minimum fee that was introduced with v0.3.21. That older version has issues which were fixed with the newer releases but for an individual the older version is suitable for use in transacting with others. The minimum transaction fee when using v0.3.23 will be an amount 1 / 20th of the amount that the most current version of the client requires. As such, it is likely that v0.3.23 will follow shortly.
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12269.0
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.22

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Falkvinge.net - Bitcoin’s Four Hurdles: Part One – Usability
A man who recently claimed to have invested all of of his savings and all that he could borrow into bitcoins does what is in his self-interest, he works to make that investment more valuable. He has become a participant in the mass collaborative project called Bitcoin.
Today he starts with part one of a series addressing the hurdles that he sees that Bitcoin must overcome. The first: Usability. He writes:
“A person who is great at making complex logic work flawlessly is never great at making that logic easy to use and understand. This is how you send money. I mean, come on.”
“Why can’t I pay with my phone without risking loss of my money through theft or loss of my phone?” [It’s coming, Webcoin. - Editor]
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/04/bitcoins-four-hurdles-part-one-usability
Bitcoin Money - New Service: Blind Bitcoin Transfers
Consider this service along the lines of being a deposit service where the history of the bitcoins deposited can be unlinked when later withdrawn.
“After receiving depositing bitcoins the service will sign digital tokens for the depositor which can later be redeemed for bitcoins that would not be associated with the ones deposited.”
- http://blindbitcoin.com
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blind_Bitcoin_Transfers
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6187527905

Friday, June 03, 2011

Bitcoin Money - History of the Cypherpunks (via Cypherpunkd)
Bitcoiners will appreciate this podcast with stories from the Cypherpunks of their fight to get encryption tools into to the open. Digital cash is discussed.
“I can’t think of any way of making it available to everyone without making it available to the bad guys. The effects on society weigh more positively than the advantage it gives to the bad guys.”
”[Digital currencies are always launched by] the banking industry and unfortunately the banking industry has a huge vested interest in not providing anonymous payment mechanisms.”
“The know your customer rules are really just about controlling cash, controlling movement, and collecting taxes.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6136537609
Daily Reckoning - An Emerging Free Market Currency
Though there was no shortage of dissuading voices this past week today the voluminous collection of propaganda can be deemed offset in its entirety with just one word. The Daily Reckoning’s managing editor Joel Bowman concludes his article: “Bravo”.
“The history of centrally controlled monies is a history of theft, inflation and, eventually and invariably, defaults. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that […] the free market would demand – and will eventually provide – a superior alternative.”
“We expect all the usual arguments from all the usual suspects: Bitcoin transactions are anonymous and therefore provide cover for peddlers of child pornography and drug traffickers, they will contend. But the astute reader knows in his gut there is something very wrong with this line of thinking right from the beginning. Cash is anonymous too.”
“The question, however, is not whether the Feds should do something, but whether they could do something, even if they wanted to.”
- http://dailyreckoning.com/an-emerging-free-market-currency

Thursday, June 02, 2011

@MtGox - Total @Dwolla transactions in May, 2011: 4,401
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox shared a metric from May: 4,401 transactions.
No disputed payments or chargebacks. No frozen accounts. No rolling reserves. No fees over the fixed $0.25 per-transaction fee.
- http://twitter.com/#!/MtGox/status/75829234349768705
SmartMoney - The Currency That's Up 200,000%
Jack Hough (@JackHough) writes in SmartMoney:
“The finite supply of Bitcoins might help explain the frantic demand for them. Dollars and euros are created at will by central bankers.”
“Dollars can’t be cashed in for anything; rather, we accept them as payment with the belief that others will accept them, too. That’s another reason the price of Bitcoins has rocketed over the past year.”
- http://bit.ly/m4paxN

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

ReasonTV - Bitcoin & The End of State-Controlled Money: Q&A with Jerry Brito
This video on ReasonTV by Jerry Brito (@JerryBrito) gives a two minute overview of Bitcoin.
“There are two main benefits in Bitcoin that people who like liberty are going to be excited about. One is this idea that a central authority doesn’t control the money supply. And so they can’t just print more money”.
“There’s no Bitcoin corporation, there’s no Bitcoin building”.
“Whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails itself is really neither here nor there. If it’s not Bitcoin it is going to be something else that is going to be a virtual currency that has distributed, that’s anonymous and it doesn’t have a central intermediary”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTqvYqXRbY
The Underground Economist (Sean Lynch) - Replacing Bitcoin
Sean Lynch, (@DrPrettyBad) defends Bitcoin by countering a weak claim.
“If account keys need to be strengthened or ECDSA deprecated, support can be added for new key types, and a date can be agreed to after which ECDSA keys will no longer be allowed to spend Bitcoin”.
“This is an intentional design choice: we trade the ability to have no coordination whatsoever for the network effect advantages of a single digital currency. If people consider this trade-off better than the trade-offs of a fiat currency, they’ll use Bitcoin”.
- http://undergroundeconomist.com/post/6078039278
BVDW.org - BVDW Warns Consumers And Dealers On Using Bitcoins As Payment
BVDW.org is an organisation, according to its website, that “represents the interests of companies in the field of interactive marketing, digital content and interactive added value”.
This German lobbying organization issued an alert that warns how Bitcoin will in the long term harm society [This comes from a translation from German to English by Google Translate so hopefully that is. -Editor]
Fortunately, a Bitcoiner has provided a translation that not only is much less verbose, it infuses the true meanings (with umm … slight interpretation) of the words that emanate from the BVDW release:
- http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11061.msg158226#msg158226
- http://bit.ly/lPmOlV (BVDW alert, in German)
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607243 (comments on HN)
AstroHacker - The Time is Now for Bitcoin Startups
Ryan make his case for why now is the best time to get started on a Bitcoin startup or to incorporate Bitcoin into your existing business:
1.)“Bitcoin will probably succeed in some form or another”.
2.)“If it succeeds, it will probably be huge. I am not aware of a recent technology so widely useful except for the web, the internet or computing itself”.
3.)“There is almost no competition. You can straightforwardly monopolize any segment of the bitcoin economy by [being the first to create] a really solid business.”
4.)“It has never been easier to start so small and get so big. Businesses that already sell products or services can simply start accepting bitcoin”.
“By next year, all the easiest, obvious businesses will be taken”.
- http://astrohacker.com/ahc/time-is-now-for-bitcoin-entrepreneurship
Bitcoin Money - EFF: Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties
After the EFF removed a Bitcoin address as one of their donation methods a Bitcoiner inquired and received an interesting reply.
”Legal tender is the best way to help EFF support online civil liberties”.
“[We are reviewing] the options and legalities pertinent to bitcoin”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6100385027

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Monetary Future - Bitcoin: Timing is Everything
Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) writes:
“Money was never intended to track identity and a payment system should not be used to censor and ban certain types of ‘offensive’ transactions”.
“Free individuals should ‘resist digital money unless anonymous’”.
- http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-timing-is-everything.html
Keiser Report: Jon Matonis on BitCoin vs central bankers
Max interviews guest Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) who introduces Bitcoin to the RT audience.
“Overall though, I do think the exchangers are the weakest link in the chain”.
“On the government level I think what this is going to actually lead to is a move and a shift away from the model of taxing income and I think you’re going to start to see governments move towards some type of consumption-based tax or headcount-type tax and the reason is because the income levels of individuals are going to become more and more difficult to ascertain”
“I believe digital cash will do to legal tender what BitTorrents did to copyrights”.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GiQEECNcZM
Bitcoin Economy - Daily Snapshot
1 BTC = $8.90 USD, Size: 6.39M BTC, Last 24h: 0.27M BTC in 6.0K trx, Difficulty: 435K, Forum posts/day: 2,361 Nodes: 1.8K
- http://twitter.com/bitcoineconomy
Bitcoin Money - International USD Wire Option added at Mt. Gox Exchange
“USD funds can now be sent via wire to the exchange’s bank in Japan”.
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6061806466
AdWeek - Not So Funny Money
Jotham Sederstrom writes on virtual currencies, virtual goods and virtual companies.
“Millions of consumers are growing more comfortable spending real money on virtual goods”.
“Some experts are taking a cue from China, which has set limits on the widespread trade of virtual currency, which in 2008 reached $2 billion in that country.”
“From rules governing gift certificates—perhaps the closest thing to virtual currency—to state money transmitter laws and federal banking and money laundering laws, federal regulators in the U.S. are now wrapping their heads around an industry that only a decade ago hardly existed.”
- http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/not-so-funny-money-132076
Bitcoins are rising fast – but risky too
Philip Salter opines on the Bitcoin:
“People living in countries where their governments are worse than criminals, such [restrictions to using Bitcoin] won’t apply. Indeed, it would offer some a cleaner method of payment than usually open to them. Bitcoins wouldn’t have been a bad option for Zimbabweans”.
“Bitcoins can’t compete with the yellow metal. Buying bitcoins could be a profitable, if risky, short-term speculative bet”.
- http://bit.ly/kM8fEr

Monday, May 30, 2011

New format - Individual Posts - RSS Friendly
Going forward, BitcoinNews.com will now include a single post per news item.
- http://www.bitcoinnews.com/post/5996881047
Falkvinge.net - Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin
Rick Falkvinge, founder of Sweden’s Pirate Party, describes his decision to go all-in with bitcoin.
“[After comparing a bitcoin transaction versus one through a bank, for sending money internationally] it’s not hard to see how this will replace the current financial systems, is it?”
“I can bet a good deal of money that banks and credit card companies will lobby to have bitcoin outlawed, using whatever reasons they can dream up, as this technology makes them obsolete”.
- http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin
Handelsblatt - Shadowy Digital Currency Gaining Massive Appeal
“Facebook has its own currency for virtual goods. But unlike Facebook’s credits or the Linden dollar there is no company that can create Bitcoin currency at will”.
“Since Bitcoins also be converted into dollars at any time, the number of supporters is growing and the use of Bitcoins as an alternative currency for the Web is an idea becoming mainstream”.
- http://bit.ly/ikvtTa (article on Handelsblatt.com)
- http://www.golem.de/1105/83829.html (same article, on Golem.de)
Bitcoin Money - The Bitcoin Faucet (Free Bitcoins) Has Run Dry
A plea is made to help re-establish a balance with The Bitcoin Faucet:
“Should you have benefitted by receiving free bitcoins from the faucet in the past and are willing to return to the faucet the funds that you received, or should you wish to donate to the faucet an additional amount so that others can experience Bitcoin first-hand as well, please do so.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6014648637
Bitcoin Miner - Miner Pr0n
“Photos submitted by miners of their rigs range from those that are a whole lot of ugly to […]”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5998282328

Bitcoin Miner - Price / (true) difficult
A new mining profitability chart identifies why a miner might feel that mining’s best days are now behind us.
“Mining today is producing less than half the revenue that mining was earning earlier in the month”.
“At the same time mining currently brings in, per-day, about twice the revenue it did in mid-April”.
- http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/6031094127
Spiegel Online - Money from your power outlet
“‘This could be stable,’ says Gerhard Rösler professor at the University of Regensburg. ‘I can not see obvious problems’.”
“[Bitcoin community member] Molecular comments ‘Bitcoin is a huge transaction database that functions as an accounting ledger spread over thousands of computers’. He says he is ‘almost one hundred percent convinced that this is technically watertight’”.
- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,765382,00.html
Nick Szabo - Bitcoin, what took ye so long?
Nick responds to Bitcoin Weekly writer gwern following gwern’s recent article.
“The ideas behind Bitcoin were very far from obvious”.
”Hardly anybody actually understands money”.
“[Satoshi] Nakamoto [innovated] by requiring a proof-of-work to be a node in the peer-to-peer system to lessen the threat of an untrustworthy party controlling the majority of nodes. Yet another feature obvious in hindsight, quite non-obvious in foresight.”
- http://bit.ly/j6Azuc (article)
- http://bit.ly/jYLaDS (comments)
- http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html (Nick’s Origins of Money paper)

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

Current week (new posts throughout each day):
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Each day of the week I will post a reply with the previous day's summary, and will update this specific post to include each daily summary as well.

Topic: The Week In Bitcoin - May 30 through June 5 2011 (Read 1768 times)