Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Coinbase account deletion is bullshit
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin / by Honeysmax / December 31, 2013 First let me say that general I like Coinbase. But as far as I can tell their “account deletion” does not really do shit. Enable me to explain: Given that I decided to cease speculating on Bitcoin I wanted to remove any attack vectors on my private info. So I tried [...]
The Bitcoin News
Coinbase account deletion is bullshit
How Accepting Bitcoins Could Aid or Hurt Your Organization
marketingpilgrim.com / by CYNTHIA BORIS / DECEMBER 30, 2013 Do you know what Bitcoins are? Before right now, I thought I did but I was wrong. My mission to comprehend this new kind of virtual currency began with an post on Bloomberg named “Bitcoin Buys Burgers to Beer as Shoppers Go Virtual.” I had always assumed that Bitcoin [...]
The Bitcoin News
How Accepting Bitcoins Could Aid or Hurt Your Organization
I sued BFL in Kansas jurisdiction and won.
I sued BFL and won. Since I live in California, I had to hire an attorney in Johnson County KS. I won by default with damages and atty charges awarded, as BFL failed to show at trial. My case is a matter of public record, case 13LA09619 BFL has now failed to respond to their loss of the suit and we are [...]
The Bitcoin News
I sued BFL in Kansas jurisdiction and won.
Walter Block Responds to Wenzel Comments on Bitcoin
economicpolicyjournal.com / TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2013 Dear Bob: Thanks for asking me about this matter. My substantive reactions to your comments are beneath. But, 1st, before I get to that, I just wanted to say that I am in 99.9999… agreement with you on matters of Austro libertarianism. And Really enthusiastically so. I regard your Economic Policy [...]
The Bitcoin News
Walter Block Responds to Wenzel Comments on Bitcoin
Bitcoin ATMs Are Spreading Across the Planet
finance.yahoo.com / Mon, Dec 30, 2013 five:20 PM EST Often the future can sneak up on you. Like when you discover out that a startup incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, whose employees live in New Hampshire and whose merchandise are produced in Portugal, is selling digital-currency ATMs to Saudi [...]
The Bitcoin News
Bitcoin ATMs Are Spreading Across the Planet
Do NOT purchase miners from BFL.
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin / by Astrofide / December 30, 2013 Purchased a 5GH/s miner in August, received it in November. Miner hashed at 1.5GH/s. Requested an RMA to replace the miner. RMA was accepted. I shipped it back, received a package 1 week later. No miner, just a energy supply. So now I have a energy provide for [...]
The Bitcoin News
Do NOT purchase miners from BFL.
Poll: Will the Bitcoin Cost Hit $10,000 in 2014?
2013 saw the cost of bitcoin go from $ 13 to $ 266, then to virtually $ 1,200 on the back of powerful growth in China.
There was a correction, as the Chinese government implemented policies to make bitcoin trading a lot a lot more difficult, but the digital currency has since rallied and shown considerable resilience in the face of adversity.
A lot of think the price tag of bitcoin will improve in 2014, with some Wall Street analysts even predicting it could attain practically $ 100,000 at some point.
But what do you believe will happen to the price tag in the coming year?
Do you think the bitcoin cost will hit $ 10,000 in 2014?
- Yes
- No
- WTF are you smokin ???
Click here to submit your answer
Hat tip to @bitcoin for the poll suggestion.
Price chart image by means of Shutterstock
View Poll: Will the Bitcoin Cost Hit $ ten,000 in 2014? on CoinDesk.
Poll: Will the Bitcoin Cost Hit $10,000 in 2014?
Stacy Herbert: 2014, the year fightback against banksters by way of Bitcoin
maxkeiser.com / December 31, 2013 Source Read a lot more … supply : The Bitcoin Channel
The Bitcoin News
Stacy Herbert: 2014, the year fightback against banksters by way of Bitcoin
Bitcoin Song Commemorates a Year of Bitcoin Fever
Aside from “twerking” the only word that has created each the Oxford and Collins “word of the year” lists is “bitcoin”… and this is small wonder to anybody who has been following the story. In 2013 bitcoin has triggered greed, debate and bafflement in the on the web planet. It has leapt in value, been accepted in an ever rising array of stores… and at the start off of December was at the heart of the greatest on the internet robbery of all time. Have you been caught up in bitcoin fever however?
Click to the left of 00:00 (under) to play the song Bitcoin Fever.
 
Lyrics:
Coin fever,
From Bitcoins gold mined on the internet,
They’ve caused a sweat,
Have you caught coin fever?
Will on the internet gold turn into a pile of tin?
Ought to you get in?
Rates jumped to thousands from practically nothing,
Robbers circle this virtual bling:
On the web banks and brokers get caught up,
Coins are siphoned, industry places shut up shop,
Bitcoins hold value, but it’s the Wild West:
Need to you invest?
Fever drove the world to a Bitcoin craze,
No one’s secure in this confusing haze,
Drug dealers and shoppers chase all kinds of stashes,
It is traded for millions: Forex for the masses,
Bitcoins hold worth, but it’s the Wild West:
Need to you invest?
Properly that is up to you
Up to you
There’s a baffled queue
No one has a clue
If only we knew
Only we knew
Bitcoin in 2013
The rise of Bitcoin in 2013 has been meteoric. This virtual currency based in hardcore mathematics delivers the glittering guarantee of economic liberation from banks. It whispers of vast investment opportunities for significant men and women, and glorious anonymity for those who seek it. But what ever your individual viewpoint, this is more than just a new form of currency simply because it signifies another vital step in the march into life online. And practically nothing reveals this much more than the virtual “great train robbery” at Sheep Marketplace… where for the 1st time balaclavas and crowbars were genuinely replaced by savvy laptop science.
It all began on October 2nd this year when the original Silk Road Market place Location was shut down by the FBI and thousands of (nefarious) on the web buyers and vendors had been forced to track down a viable option. Enter the fledgling Sheep Marketplace, with its slicker interface, decent search function and barely any downtime throughout the Silk Road seizure it seemed the perfect selection over a lot more established sites such as Black Market Reloaded.
From there items took off rapidly, and this website saw some of its more illicit listings (study drugs) enhance by more than 400% in just two weeks following the Silk Road closure. However, this black market place heyday wasn’t destined to final, because following operating a reasonably glitch cost-free service until the commence of December… Sheep Industry suddenly shut up shop vanishing about $ 110 million in Bitcoins in the procedure.
Reddit Rabbit Holes and the Rise of the New Wild West
A posse was swiftly formed, a virtual hunt for the bandits sprang into life – and a couple of savvy Reddit had been apparently just a couple of measures behind the thieves. Meanwhile, rewards had been presented for info scammed victims posted their challenging luck stories online… and desperate shoppers and vendors hunted for a new deep web market spot to conduct their dealings.
Pages and topics have been swiftly devoted to compiling the latest make contact with data for the multitudes of displaced sellers. These practically felt like wartime missing individual bulletin boards from the 40s, such was the urgency. Yet the underlying message is extremely clear: when dealing in the black market place, theft, fraud and unforeseen situations are a way of life and have to be factored into the threat of doing company.
The entire story had the essence of the old west meets cyberspace total with miners, robbers, lawmen operating outdoors the law, gangsters, reputable enterprise folk, investors, black market place racketeers, traders… and people just trying to make a living. 200 years ago, individuals were blowing bank doors open to rob gold, 100 years ago they had been doing the identical point to rob money. Now there are laptop hackers… and on the internet currencies. It is any wonder Bitcoin fever is sweeping the globe?
Robbed by Vendor EBOOK101: Money, Cash… Who’s got the Money?
Sheep Marketplace itself had been operating effectively given that around February 2013. And things only started to go awry for the duration of the last couple of weeks of November when users have been no longer capable to withdraw money from their accounts… but have been nevertheless capable to deposit. At very first people blamed the glitch on an automated tumbler (using a single is a bit like laundering your income as whilst all Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, they are nevertheless public), but following the specified time frame for the return of funds passed, the following message was placed on Sheep:
“Sheep is down. We are sorry to say, but we have been robbed on Saturday 11/21/13 by vendor EBOOK101. This vendor fund bug in system and stole 5400 BTC – your cash, our provisions, all was stolen. We have been trying to resolve this issue, but were not profitable. We are sorry for your issues and inconvenience, all of current BTC will be distributed to users, who have filled right BTC emergency address. I would like to thank to all SheepMarketplace moderators by this, who had been helping with this dilemma. I am very sorry for this circumstance. Thank you all.”
A couple of days later Sheep Market Scam – a plain text page sprang up – with equally horrendous spelling – but with genuine time information about the on-going scam. It appears shortly before the robbery, a quantity of vendors were providing enormous discounts, bulk buys and new items that they’d in no way sold prior to. It all had the air of a giant pyramid scheme, with Sheep Marketplace trying to suck as much cash into their coffers as feasible.
“I owe $ 90K to some quite nasty people…”
It was about this time that the panic set in. One vendor going by the name u/FearingForMyLife wrote “I am a huge vendor on Sheep Marketplace, or I was till lately. I sold challenging drugs in reasonably massive quantities. I have about $ 90k locked up in the internet site. I owe some funds to some very nasty folks. I have until Monday evening. They have currently threatened me with death. I have no doubt that they have killed before…I am 26 and I do not want to die.”
At this point, ‘Internet detectives’ from about the net were hunting for the missing coins anything created achievable by the reality that all transactions are public. Two Reddit users in specific, TheNodManOut and Sheeproadreloaded2 were rapid to identify a big stack of coins that had been transferred out of the Sheep Marketplace.
By attaching tiny fractions of BTC, .00666 onto the pile of coins, Sheeproadreloaded2 was capable to track where these transactions went subsequent. By sending yet another ‘666’ every time the income landed in a diverse wallet he was capable to hold on watching the funds, posting the blockchain data on various sites, along with a selection of colourful quotes:
“I hope you appreciate what i just did for us. I’m not entirely sure, but I do not think anyone has beaten a tumbler before these days. Its like operating a marathon through fog, listening for the footsteps of other runners. It aids if there are 96,000 of them, though! The FBI only got 29,000 of our coins. This guy is very good, but he’s on his final legs. If he can sell a single bitcoin, I’ll be shocked.”
Riding Off Into the Sunset Versus Attempting to Make Sincere Earnings
However for these hoping for some cash back… or at the extremely least, some justice, the most recent Reddit hunt (not for the very first time) was seemingly chasing smoke and mirrors. What they believed was a thief attempting to hide a big stack of money turned out to be a currency exchange… the quite currency exchange that the thief had utilised to money in the booty. Not only that, but it also appears the thief managed to unload his stash – with no fuss whatsoever – and merely disappear into the ether.
On the back of this theft – and with variables ranging from the Chinese government to some considerably necessary market corrections – Bitcoins dropped from a high of around $ 1200 to a low of $ 530 and is at present trading at around $ 710. With plenty of fluctuations among the two extremes over the last couple of weeks, there has been a massive improve of fevered trading for profit… primarily by men and women who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. “Buy the dips, then sell high,” combined with practically nothing but guesswork has bred an abundance of winners and losers. One particular 23-year-old novice claims to have lost $ 410,000 in a fairly brief period of time whilst a glut of lucky traders are happily raking in fast 5 – 10% income on a every day basis… when they manage to get in and out at the proper time of course.
This legitimate trading is all effectively and good… but it sure is not as threat free of charge as very good old fashioned – or rather, new-fangled – theft. In truth the levels of banditry involving Bitcoins considering that their inception has been exceptional, hardly any of the stories make the papers and no one has ever been charged with any Bitcoin related theft.
Historical Bitcoin Crimes: Theft, Profit and Fever
A list of major Bitcoin heists has been compiled by bitcointalk which revealed that hundreds of thousands have been stolen. Some of the a lot more recent highlights incorporate: a Chinese Bitcoin exchange that went down taking $ four.1 million of its customers’ money, the US exchange Bitfloor being hacked out of 24,000 coins. Along with an 18-year-old Australian who ran an exchange service named Tradefortress that was apparently relieved of $ 1 million of its buyers Bitcoins by hackers just a couple of weeks ago.
Theft will always be a difficulty when handling big volumes of money. The spotlight could effectively have increasingly turned on Bitcoin over the last 12 months, but truly this has far significantly less to do with this specific form of currency, and more to do with the way the world is steadily moving on the internet. Nevertheless, with every little thing that has occurred in 2013 who can blame us for our large dose of Bitcoin fever?
Initially published on KathrynandNick.com
View Bitcoin Song Commemorates a Year of Bitcoin Fever on CoinDesk.
Bitcoin Song Commemorates a Year of Bitcoin Fever
Fortress Investment Group to Launch Bitcoin Fund
New York City-based Fortress Investment Group, a publicly traded company, is reportedly arranging to launch a bitcoin investment fund.
It is becoming reported that the investment vehicle could be an unlisted Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).
It appears that there might be some association in between Fortress’s effort and that of San Francisco-based Pantera Capital.
Pantera, which has as customers some Fortress executives, has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) an investment advisor entity named Pantera Bitcoin Advisors, LLC.
The filing shows Pantera Capital as the owner of the LLC, with Pantera principal Dan Morehead as its CEO.
Listed as a hedge fund, it shows that its total worth at the filing date of December four was $ 147m, with 26 investors contributing at least $ 250,000.
That would make the fund significantly larger than that of SecondMarket’s Bitcoin Investment Trust. As CoinDesk has reported, that fund has been able to amass over $ 60m from accredited investors in its initial three months.
An additional ETF, filed with the SEC earlier this year, was the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, started by the Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame, who have been massive investors in bitcoin to the point of appearing boisterous. However the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust has been stuck in regulatory limbo given that its initial filing.
Institutional interest in bitcoin has been heating up. Wedbush Securities not too long ago released a report that was very bullish about bitcoin’s prospects. The firm proclaimed that the value of a single bitcoin could attain $ 98,500.
And Bank of America released its personal report about bitcoin not long ago, saying that the distributed virtual currency has “clear possible for growth”.
Fortress, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is reportedly arranging to announce the fund at the Bitcoin New Years Eve Bash becoming held tonight at 40 Broad Street in New York City.
That location is next to the NYSE. In fact, it homes anything referred to as the NYC Bitcoin Center, an effort that has been launched to educate investors about BTC.
It’s not clear no matter whether Fortress is funding the NYC Bitcoin Center. On a Craiglist job posting for the center, it claims to be “New York’s premier digital currency center”.
It’s anticipated that elevated Wall Street interest will continue in 2014. Barry Silbert, CEO of SecondMarket, which produced the Bitcoin Investment Trust, not too long ago mentioned as a lot to Entreprenuer Magazine.
“We’re three to six months away from Wall Street dollars moving into Bitcoin in a large way,” he said.
Charting image via Shutterstock
View Fortress Investment Group to Launch Bitcoin Fund on CoinDesk.
Fortress Investment Group to Launch Bitcoin Fund
Cost Discovery in the Absence of Bitcoin Exchanges
Recently, authorities in India, China, Korea, Denmark, France, and Norway have issued stern warnings concerning the use and trade of bitcoin and other digital currencies.
As a consequence, crucial exchange outlets for price tag discovery have been slowed or shuttered following the government advisories. Additionally, India and China represent almost half of the globe’s total population.
The planet has mainly underestimated the latent demand for a free and nonpolitical currency unit. In the face of this percolating demand, the arrogance of our monetary overlords is startling.
Envision if we have been forced to use a particular brand of toothpaste in the same way that we are coerced into utilizing the prevailing unit of legal tender. The response may well not be so submissive. Contrary to the misinformation in this article, bitcoin is not illegal in any country in the planet.
In two separate incidents following the Reserve Bank of India advisory warning, trading operators’ premises had been raided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) citing a clear violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) rules. A top ED official mentioned:
“We have discovered that through the site 400 persons have recorded 1,000 transactions that quantity to a handful of crores of rupees. We are gathering the data of the transactions, name of the folks who have transacted in the virtual currency from Gupta’s server that is hired in the US.
At present, we think that this is a violation of foreign exchange regulations of the nation. If we are capable to establish cash laundering aspect then he can be arrested.”
In the days ahead, the ED will be challenged either to define bitcoin as a currency or to clarify the nature of bitcoin as an asset under Indian law.
Also, the South China Morning Post reported that China’s central bank met with payment processors on 16th December, ordering them to “stop giving clearing services to bitcoin, litecoin, and other cryptocurrency exchanges”. The payment processors had been ordered to sever their relationships with bitcoin exchanges by the finish of January.
This action had a substantial influence on bitcoin exchanges in China, such as BTC China.
In Korea, economic authorities announced that “the virtual currency does not have ‘intrinsic value’ due to its lack of stability while there is concern at the absence of structure and indicators to measure it.” Participating government agencies discussing the effect of bitcoin incorporated the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, the Bank of Korea, the Economic Services Commission, and the Economic Supervisory Service.
In Denmark, Michael Landberg, chief legal adviser at the Economic Supervisory Authority in Denmark, said the most likely outcome for bitcoin exchangers would be an “amendment to existing monetary legislation so that we have regulation covering it.”
Landberg added:
“It is also essential to have this integrated in income laundering acts. We’ll seek to follow the mainstream. Bitcoins are not forbidden in the US and the UK It is out there and will continue to be out there. It just needs to be regulated. The challenge for us is how to do that.”
Currently, Denmark’s FSA doesn’t have the legal authority to avoid trade in bitcoin rendering it unable to cease a firm that exchanges real currencies for bitcoin.
A report from the Bank of France mentioned: “Even if bitcoin does not today meet the circumstances to turn into a credible implies for investment that could consequently threaten monetary stability, it represents a clear economic risk for these that hold it.”
Warning that the use of bitcoins as an investment tool is restricted since there is no underlying asset and the virtual currency is subject to high volatility, the central bank stated speculators are at threat, as they would have no legal recourse if there is a loss of self-confidence in the cryptocurrency or if they are victims of theft from hackers.
According to the Bank of France report:
“The program can collapse at any moment if investors want to unwind their positions but discover themselves holding portfolios that have turn out to be illiquid.”
In Norway, the director basic of taxation, Hans Christian Holte, mentioned the currency “doesn’t fall beneath the usual definition of money.” Instead, the Norwegian government decreed bitcoin to be an asset upon which capital gains tax can be charged.
Even the European Banking Authority (EBA) weighed in with its personal report on virtual currencies warning shoppers that they are not protected by way of regulation when utilizing virtual currencies as a indicates of payment and may be at threat of losing their cash.
These numerous warnings from about the globe have not however impacted the larger price tag discovery mechanism for bitcoin which nevertheless occurs in specific jurisdictions. But, what if exchange-primarily based price tag discovery for bitcoin was impeded in the future. What would be the value setting mechanism for conversion in and out of national currencies?
&ldquoAuthorities fear bitcoin simply because it threatens the adherence to their fabricated monetary illusion.&rdquo
Just as with other restricted or ‘banned’ goods about the planet, bitcoin trade would react by going nearby and going to a particular person-to-person model, such as LocalBitcoins.com. Additionally, modest exchanges in certain countries would still cater to a nearby population in jurisdictions exactly where crackdowns were not prevalent.
It may well not be simple to chart aggregated price tag quotes from hundreds of tiny operators, but cost discovery finds a way like water finds a way to flow downhill.
These international authorities are genuinely afraid of some thing like bitcoin with its limited issuance model and distributed trust architecture not requiring intermediaries.
Nonetheless, they don’t fear it due to the fact of the possible for income laundering, terrorist financing, or harm to unsuspecting customers. Authorities fear bitcoin since it threatens the adherence to their fabricated monetary illusion.
The genie is out of the bottle and centralized banking institutions are no longer noticed as essential for the provision of an exchangeable monetary unit. This cuts to the core of government’s power and prerogative of issuance, producing bitcoin primarily a central bank concern – not a income laundering concern.
Some might try to harness the genie in the name of innovation and customer protection, nonetheless the energy of bitcoin will prove also hard to contain. The very best remedy from authorities will be to accept the modifications and to modify political behavior about a forthcoming model of decentralized currencies.
Adhere to author on Twitter.
Discovery image via Shutterstock.
View Price tag Discovery in the Absence of Bitcoin Exchanges on CoinDesk.
Cost Discovery in the Absence of Bitcoin Exchanges
Clipperz Password Manager Only Accepts Bitcoin
The open supply Clipperz password manager focuses on comprehensive user privacy and only accepts bitcoin as a kind of payment.
“Bitcoin pseudonymity gives any user the selection to make it very difficult for everyone to produce a link in between his/her bitcoin payment and his/her information stored on Clipperz servers,” says Marco Barulli, who is one particular of the co-founders.
“It gives any user the choice to make it quite tough for every person to develop a link amongst his/her bitcoin payment and his/her data stored on Clipperz servers.”
Clipperz is different to other password managers on the market today because it doesn’t want to know something about its customers. Barulli said:
“Clipperz doesn’t call for any individual data to setup an account, not even your email address. In fact not even the username you select is known. We want to understand absolutely nothing about our users.”
Barulli says that eschewing the collection of any shred of personally identifiable information by Clipperz signifies much less possibility of a safety vulnerability.
“Anonymity of information is not an ideological position. Anonymity is really crucial from a safety point of view. Linking your encrypted information stored with Clipperz to your real identity widens the variety of potential attacks,” he said.
And while some safety-minded software program can be difficult to use, Clipperz is built upon open net requirements, creating it straightforward for the masses to utilize.
“Clipperz is purely web primarily based. It runs on most browsers and on all platforms, each desktop and mobile,” Barulli said.
“We believe that convenience and ease of use is an important part of security. And the browser is … an best spot to run crypto-based services.”
The company produced the headlines lately by moving its hosting servers more than to Iceland right after running into some issues with Italian authorities, which claimed some suspicious wire transfers had taken location. The full story is posted on its official blog.
The concept is that Iceland has amenable laws that defend the existence of privacy-minded software such as Clipperz. The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, or IMMI, is legislation that has been passed in that nation to aid safeguard specific media freedoms that may prove helpful to Clipperz.
“Our understanding is that IMMI will require a foreign court to prove ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that a particular server is storing data or offering solutions that are component of a criminal conduct,” said Barulli.
Bitcoin is the only payment selection users have to support the Clipperz effort, which has been solely through donations. Barulli says that Clipperz could also accept other pseudonymous cryptocurrencies as a type of payment at some point. But it is not in the works correct now.
“This is not in our current plans. Let’s start off with bitcoin and see what happens. We are definitely open to alternatives.”
Barulli himself 1st found bitcoin a couple of years ago. He has found it 1 of the very best innovations for serving those without access to economic tools such as banks.
“I was initial intrigued by bitcoin for the duration of winter 2010. I even installed the client on my old Pc and did some mining for a handful of months.”
“I was, and nevertheless am, mostly excited by the prospective of bringing payment services to the unbanked of the globe,” he mentioned.
Donations have supported Clipperz up to this point, but the organization is implementing a paid model quickly. Users will still be capable to try the software for cost-free during a trial period.
This report must not be viewed as an endorsement of Clipperz, please do your own research prior to utilizing this service.
Username and password image via Shutterstock
View Clipperz Password Manager Only Accepts Bitcoin on CoinDesk.
Clipperz Password Manager Only Accepts Bitcoin
The Prime Altcoins of 2013
Bitcoin has dominated the headlines this year, with massive value fluctuations, regulatory developments, and even Senate hearings by the US government. All these variables indicate that people are starting to take the young currency seriously.
But let’s not neglect about the option coins out there. 2013 has been a busy year for them, also. How have they fared? Even though CoinDesk has covered some of these alternative coins in depth already, it is fascinating to note which currencies have stood out from a market place capitalization point of view this year.
Right here are the six leading altcoins of 2013, primarily based on industry capitalization figures from Dustcoin.
Litecoin
Market cap (BTC): 788,023
Much like bitcoin, litecoin’s worth has fluctuated wildly over the last couple of months. The altcoin spike in March and April, in the course of the bitcoin bubble, demonstrated how closely linked litecoin is to the price tag of the incumbent top virtual currency. At the time, its value rocketed from around $ .05 to $ five.00.
In November, rates spiked again – but far greater this time, reaching around $ 48 for a brief period, just before gradually falling once far more. Now, following bitcoin’s fall in worth following China’s policy shifts on virtual currency, litecoin is hovering around the $ 22 mark.
All this interest in the currency has caused its difficulty to enhance, tripling in the final two months. Litecoin’s marketplace capitalization has also skyrocketed. On 16th November, its marketplace cap stood at around $ 95m. It might be on the identical roller coaster ride as bitcoin, but as of now, it nevertheless stands at a extremely respectable $ 573.9m or so.
Peercoin (PPCoin)
Marketplace cap (BTC): 126,411
Peercoin, the currency launched by the mysterious ‘Sunny King’, presently rests at just below one particular sixth the market place cap of litecoin, making it the third-largest coin in existence.
Peercoin makes use of proof-of-stake, an option to the conventional proof-of-operate mechanism utilised by bitcoin. It is developed to produce far more coins automatically, primarily based on the number of coins that a person currently has in their possession.
John Manglaviti, previously the neighborhood relations leader for feathercoin, came on board earlier this year to try and breathe life into peercoin’s community. Functioning with King (who focuses on technology improvement), he has recruited 120 volunteers for the currency. Most not too long ago, Canadian exchange Vault of Satoshi announced that it would help peercoin, lending more credibility to the currency.
Namecoin
Industry cap (BTC): 51,911
Namecoin is bouncing back from a nasty technical flaw it suffered late in 2013, which allowed any individual to take benefit of its domain naming system. The coin was made to allow folks to cryptographically shop and transmit pairs of keys and values, in a system that enabled it to develop a domain name program that was totally decentralized. Its best-level domain is ‘.bit’, and it is successfully a type of dark web.
The currency operates on a merged mining basis with bitcoin, which means that clients can be configured to verify both the bitcoin and the namecoin block chains when solving proof-of-work troubles.
Namecoin’s market place capitalization stands at a tiny under half that of peercoin.
Worldcoin
Market cap (BTC): 31,370
Worldcoin’s largest claim to fame this year may have been its involvement with phenixcoin and feathercoin in UNOCS, the abortive attempt to create a bridge in between these altcoins. Whilst phenixcoin subsequently imploded right after a prominent developer absconded with numerous peoples’ coins, worldcoin continues to forge ahead.
Its ambitions are also very clear, with a stated claim to turn out to be the “cryptocurrency of selection for merchants and consumers”, with a 60-second confirmation time.
Feathercoin
Market cap (BTC): 13,045
Feathercoin, itself a relative newcomer to the market place, was founded in April, and gained heavy traction as several people started mining and trading the currency.
With a industry cap of just over 13,000 BTC, feathercoin is still a relative featherweight compared to bitcoin, but there’s no denying that founder Peter Bushnell has done a excellent job of creating the coin. In turn, the community has gone from strength to strength.
Really, that’s not very accurate. It went from strength to relative weakness after UNOCS collapsed, but has because gone back to strength again, regaining some of its former enthusiasm below the new community leadership of Chris Ellis.
In addition to a weekly newsletter to preserve everybody abreast of events, there was also an Amsterdam conference. That itself was an fascinating story, simply because the Amsterdam bitcoin-based event conference that feathercoin members had been supposed to attend was reportedly canceled. So they just organized one more one particular, with both physical and virtual attendees. And it did so in just a couple of days.
This appears to be the story of feathercoin. It is a plucky little currency, with a really dedicated following, and in a position to climate apparently any storm, which includes the 51% attack that a person threw at it earlier in the year (Bushnell just purchased peercoin’s Sunny King on board and had him aid secure the block chain with a feature named sophisticated checkpointing, which was constructed into the client’s code).
Considering that it was launched, feathercoin has also established its personal nascent eBay-style marketplace, and there is now a Regional Feathercoins site, enabling individuals to trade coins directly with each other. A person is developing a physical version of feathercoin, potentially with an NFC reader embedded in it, and an additional enthusiastic developer is functioning on a proposal to place metadata in the block chain, to help with the transmission of files. There’s lots going on here.
Dogecoin
Industry cap (BTC): 10,421
Industry capitalization figures at Dustcoin show dogecoin in seventh location, just behind feathercoin. It’s a currency based around a meme, it’s been about for about five minutes, and has already been accepted by Cryptsy, which is now trading it. The price spiked at least 400% in mid-late December, and what’s exciting is how this bizarre phenomenon bucked the trend and continued to rise even following bitcoin’s value fell in the wake of the China fiasco. There are few other altcoins that can make that claim. Dogecoin’s worth and spot in this list did, however, slip after a Christmas holiday “hacking incident” that saw a total of 21m dogecoins disappear from customers’ wallets.
Dogecoins are becoming traded for bitcoins, which means they have a market cap which currently stands at ten,421 BTC, or a tiny over $ 7.8m at the time of writing. That’s partly due to the fact, whilst the value of the coins is nevertheless relatively low, there are a lot of them. At least an eighth of the coins (which a total limit of 100 billion), have already been mined. Not poor, for a currency primarily based on a dog joke.
 
Bitcoin may be the incumbent best virtual currency, but there is no doubt that there are a lot of option coins with a lot to provide, if nothing at all other than inspiring communities committed to their survival. It’s been a busy 2013. What will the subsequent year bring?
*All market place capitalization figures precise as of time of writing
View The Top Altcoins of 2013 on CoinDesk.
The Prime Altcoins of 2013
Taiwan Welcomes New Year with Bitcoin Warning
The Economic Supervisory Commission of the Republic of China and the Central Bank of the ROC have issued a joint statement warning against the use of bitcoin in Taiwan. The regulators mentioned bitcoin remains volatile, that it does not have any legal protection, and that it is not issued by a monetary authority.
The regulators noted that bitcoin trading is hugely speculative and that investors must be wary of volatility, cyber attacks, malicious defaults, theft and other risks. Apart from the now more-or-much less common list of warnings and issues, the regulators also announced that they might take “necessary steps” if financial institutions engage in bitcoin operations, reported Taipei Occasions.
The reference starts to make sense when we think about that SinoPac Monetary Holding Co. was an early supporter of bitcoin, permitting investments in bitcoins and trying to increase its reputation and use in e-commerce.
The regulators also warned that there is no assure of conversion:
“Bitcoin holders are on their own, as the currency is not issued by any monetary authority and is as a result not entitled to legal claims or guarantee of conversion.”
The warning comes as no surprise, as related warnings have currently been issued by regulators across the world. Final month Central Bank Governor Perng Fai-nan hinted at possible regulatory moves, saying that the bank is keeping a close eye on bitcoin improvement. At the time he compared bitcoin transactions to bargains in precious metals.
Another interesting trend emerged over the last couple of weeks and it could have motivated Taiwanese regulators to react. Right after the Chinese central bank clamped down on nearby exchanges, 1 Taiwanese e-tailer decided to cash in, pledging to support bitcoin transactions as of early 2014. Wayi International Digital Entertainment hoped the China ban would merely drive shoppers to its new e-commerce internet site. This may be a shot across the bow to other merchants who were hoping to make some fast income following the ban in mainland China.
View Taiwan Welcomes New Year with Bitcoin Warning on CoinDesk.
Taiwan Welcomes New Year with Bitcoin Warning
John Carmack gets involved.
Finally read http://t.co/IKrCkQztRE . Reading the source code goes on the pile of wish-I-had-time-for projects. — John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) December 30, 2013 reddit.com/r/Bitcoin / by LaCanner / December 30, 2013 John Carmack gets involved. Study COMMENTS Study a lot more … source : The Bitcoin Channel
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John Carmack gets involved.
PSA: Fake Bitcoin Customers
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin / by TH3xR34P3R / December 29, 2013 Please use http://bitcoin.org/en/decide on-your-wallet to make confident you steer clear of fake client downloads and by only employing the hyperlinks supplied: http://bitcoin.org/en/download https://multibit.org/ https://bitcoinarmory.com/ https://electrum.org/download.html https://play.google.com/store/apps/particulars?id=de.schildbach.wallet https://play.google.com/retailer/apps/particulars?id=com.mycelium.wallethl=en https://blockchain.info/wallet/ https://coinbase.com https://kipochi.com/ https://play.google.com/retailer/apps/information?id=com.bridgewalkerapp.androidclienthl=en https://coinkite.com https://www.kryptokit.com/ https://coinpunk.com If any of these links variate do not download the clientele and do not use on the web wallets or unsecure offline backups as your savings wallets for constent storage of funds, move funds into [...]
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PSA: Fake Bitcoin Customers
Monday, December 30, 2013
From China to Cyberspace: Bitcoin’s Year in Evaluation
Welcome to CoinDesk’s Yearly Review 2013 – a appear at the 5 hottest, most controversial and thought-provoking events in the globe of digital currency through the eyes of skepticism and wonder. Your host … John Law.
It is a legal requirement for journalists to write an finish-of-year roundup, and John Law is nothing at all if not law-abiding. One valid set of stories would read along the lines of:
January – collapse of bitcoin predicted!
March – value goes up.
May – collapse of bitcoin predicted!
July – value shoots up!
October – collapse of bitcoin predicted!
December – bitcoin collapses … oh no, wait a moment, it is nevertheless here!
But it’s true. The most significant single story in 2013, bitcoin’s most tumultuous year to date, is just that: it’s nonetheless right here. And much more than just ‘still right here’. For these who feel that the most crucial aspect of the cryptocurrency is its dollar price tag, it is right here with nearly sixty occasions its $ 13 valuation at the end of 2012.
Not that it’s all been great news: it is at around half its peak price tag of about $ 1,one hundred at the finish of November. So, how did that occur – and what exciting did we have along the way? Right here are bitcoin’s 5 most significant moments.
1. China
Bitcoin began 2013 as a four-year-old curiosity, albeit 1 that was starting to be taken seriously by the sane. It ended the year as a prime-level item on the agenda of the world’s greatest economies: nowhere a lot more significantly than in China.
Whilst it is also soon to write the definitive story of bitcoin’s annus mirabilis, the evidence is robust that a lot of its rising heft was through widescale adoption by men and women and businesses in China.
There are lots of possible drivers behind this, such as the difficulty of trading yuan and that currency’s over-valuation, which tends to make it an unattractive automobile for speculators and savers – particularly those within the republic.
Other possibilities are restricted: China remains, lest we neglect, the world’s biggest authoritarian non-democratic state. It is not a free country. The introduction of the libertarian-scented, government-goosing bitcoin is thus a history-grade experiment in immovable objects and irresistible forces.
It is an experiment that has been gratefully adopted by the Chinese, who became the majority traders in bitcoin mid-year – fuelled, interestingly, by state Television running short programmes explaining what it was and how it worked. Someone someplace wanted that to happen.
Although it’s tough to say just how considerably this movement pushed bitcoin up, it’s effortless to locate the trigger of the end-of-year crash: the Chinese government told its banking systems not to assistance yuan-bitcoin trades. A person somewhere wanted that to stop.
A single cannot plumb the ‘who’ or ‘why’ of Chinese state fiscal policy, only – fitfully – the ‘what’. This remains one particular of the core paradoxes in the rise of the Chinese economy as a international force: dealing with an individual who not only hides their cards but the rules by which they’re playing is not, in the lengthy term, a excellent bet.
But the energy of the bitcoin mosquito to sting the hide of the Communist elephant (and to survive the slap of the trunk) is not only the cryptocurrency’s very best story of 2013, it’s a single of the most intriguing developments this year by any measure.
2. Newport
Newport resident and hapless tech fiddler James Howells idly mined more than 7000 btc in 2009, then forgot all about them till 2013 – sadly, a couple of weeks soon after he’d thrown away the most costly challenging drive in history.
At best, the storage device with millions of dollars hidden in its megabytes was most likely still intact, just below six feet of Welsh household waste in his regional tip. Nevertheless, the council wouldn’t let him in to appear.
This story caught the imagination of the basic public a lot more than any other, at least by the lopsided metric of how numerous folks wanted to talk to John Law about it.
It had everything – incomprehensible tech matched to human fallibility, with the tantalising prospect of redemption nevertheless up for grabs. Had the challenging drive gone into an incinerator, the tale wouldn’t have had almost so a lot traction.
It’s a bit more than just an amusing tale of someone else’s misfortune, even though. It raised the profile of bitcoin nonetheless further, slipping in the concept that it was anything that ordinary people could be a part of and that it had a specific durability – the expectation that it would have survived the garbage of Gwent won’t have been lost on readers.
From the sublime reaches of geopolitical fiscal intrigue, to the corporation rubbish dumps of South Wales: bitcoin bestrides the globe.
three. Vancouver
Another little story – man installs ATM machine in Canadian coffee shop – is considerably, considerably bigger than it seems. The man is Robocoin CEO Jordan Kelley, and the machine is the world’s first bidirectional bitcoin ATM (which means it can sell you bitcoins for cash, or give you cash for bitcoins).
It went on to take more than $ 1,000,000 in its very first month, not undesirable trade for a coffee shop, even in Vancouver. What makes this an October revolution, though, isn’t that it demonstrates a thirst for bitcoin that exceeds even that of hipsters for caffeine, but that it bypasses the only powerful tool native states have for controlling cybercurrencies.
The Canadian government (or the Chinese, or the International Illuminati Conspiracy) can inform banks to refuse to accept payments that are connected to bitcoin. Nevertheless, they cannot ask them not to take cash.
So, if you want your bitcoin, you can pop into your regional espressery and get some: the ATM owner gets a bunch of cash. Job done.
Can ATMs be controlled? They can, if they’re connected to the global banking program. These are not.
Can they be banned? Certain, but since they’re quite effortless to build and set up without having telling any individual, and can be created really transportable, and do not of themselves break any laws, that is not a easy approach to put in place with out banning bitcoin itself – and near-impossible to enforce.
What makes John Law specifically keen on this method is that it does not scale to speculator level. It is wonderful for bitcoin as an insanely low-expense, individual way of purchasing stuff over the Net or across borders, which is where its future lies when the shouting dies down, but not if you want to manage a multimillion bitcoin fund.
Sorry, Winklevii. Have a good cup of coffee.
four. New York
Not that there was a lack of large stories that looked just as essential as they actually have been.
There is a technical term for markets, capitulation, which signifies what it sounds like: after fighting a particular outcome for a while, the market offers in, lets it occur and requires its lumps.
Capitulation is the very best way to describe what occurred in New York in November, when a Senate hearing into this entire darn bitcoin factor was preceded by the head of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, saying that it (bitcoin, not the Senate) had legitimate makes use of.
There have been warnings aplenty about the dark side of the bitcoin force, and a lot discussion about what regulation will appear like: there’s each chance that bitcoin will be larded about with as much statutory baggage as the regulators consider it can carry with out encouraging standard people to turn into scofflaws.
But the message from the world’s most important individuals when it comes to funds: “Yeah, it’s right here. It won’t go away, it operates, and we’ll have to make the very best of it.”
Which, for a young invention implicated in blackmail, drug running and folks who study Ayn Rand, is as good as it gets.
This was the largest regulatory news of the year for bitcoin, whose sensible future will be all about the regulations – poor point. But John Law recommends you take a couple of minutes to read the very same sort of news coming in from across the globe. China may well be big, and America may be bigger, but the world is bigger – and for a stateless currency, that’s its true house.
five. Cyberspace
Lest you feel all is bright and shiny in bitcoinland, now that the Silk Road has been rendered impassable and you can purchase a nice wine to go along with your steak rather of some LSD, the last of John Law’s prime stories is an ongoing report from the front line of cybercrime.
In October, a new piece of World wide web-carried malware named CryptoLocker was found. By November it had hit the radars of best crime fighters. By the end of 2013, it had infected an estimated quarter of a million PCs and bilked its victims for millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of dollars.
It operates by surreptitiously encrypting your pc files, then popping up and demanding a ransom paid in bitcoin. Three months soon after it started, it’s nonetheless going powerful and no one appears a lot closer to catching these responsible.
If there is some great news, it is that the bitcoin transfer system has shown that the evildoers are most likely operating from Russia. As opposed to the Dread Pirate Roberts, they’re great at covering their tracks.
Indeed, with the chutzpah of true gangsters, they even provide buyer help, and have been interacting with victims by way of public bitcoin forums, Early rumours that files wouldn’t be decrypted proved false – these chaps care about customer satisfaction.
Bitcoin’s function in this is not essential: the villains offer you an option way to spend, and related bits of undesirable computer software have been made properly just before the advent of the cryptocurrency. What it does supply is a fast, efficient route to payment – and as a result multiplied their take. It made the work significantly a lot more worthwhile. This won’t have gone unnoticed by their pals.
Still, the loot hasn’t been disposed of yet – and that will expose the gang to more scrutiny. The feds didn’t need to have to break bitcoin to squelch the Silk Road: they used excellent old-fashioned gumshoe work, with a bit of aid from their spook friends.
That’s the all round picture from 2013: bitcoin can modify the rules but doesn’t have to break them – and it is not going away anytime soon. Here’s to 2014. Just do not expect an additional 55x jump in value.
China, Rubbish Dump, Coffee Beans, New York and Hostage Images through Shutterstock
View From China to Cyberspace: Bitcoin’s Year in Evaluation on CoinDesk.
From China to Cyberspace: Bitcoin’s Year in Evaluation
VIDEO: Iceland – a ‘hot’ location for Bitcoin mining
mining.com / By Ana Komnenic / December 30, 2013 Iceland is becoming well-known for a really diverse kind of mining: Bitcoin mining. The Bitcoin mines of Iceland are the topic of a new Dealbook feature which appears at exactly how and why bitcoins are produced out of this remote island nation. Usually, mining for bitcoins is a approach that calls for sturdy, expensive computers and a lot of power. Study [...]
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VIDEO: Iceland – a ‘hot’ location for Bitcoin mining
Bitcoin: a digital puzzle with currency
smh.com.au / By Andrew Tangel and Chris O’Brien / December 30, 2013 – 10:25AM Donald Duhaney brought a wallet full of money to a Entire Foods in Manhattan’s trendy Lower East Side one current evening. But he wasn’t in search of kale, quinoa or cage-totally free eggs. Duhaney, 37, was in the market place for Bitcoins, the hot digital currency [...]
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Bitcoin: a digital puzzle with currency
Guerrilla Mail – Disposable Temporary E-Mail Address (ACCEPTS BITCOIN DONATIONS)
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin / by r0nj0hn3 / December 30, 2013 Guerrilla Mail – Disposable Temporary E-Mail Address (ACCEPTS BITCOIN DONATIONS) Read COMMENTS Study more … source : The Bitcoin Channel
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Guerrilla Mail – Disposable Temporary E-Mail Address (ACCEPTS BITCOIN DONATIONS)
eBay Files Patent Application for Programmable Cash
Gift giving during the holidays just took on a whole new meaning. eBay, the parent company of PayPal, filed patent application 20130339188, “Gift Token” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on June 18, 2012. The USPTO published the application on December 19, 2013. The technology was invented by its engineers from Tamilnadu, India and assigned to eBay Inc. of San Jose, California.
The innocuous sounding application “Gift Token” was probably written in such a way as to shield trade secrets from competitive intelligence gathering. It is common for companies to obfuscate their filings to make them harder to decipher. Just like Subway’s Footlong doesn’t have to be a “foot long,” buried in the patent application eBay states that “Gift Token” does not have to be a gift:
“…Systems and method are disclosed for giving gifts or payment instruments in the form of security or payment tokens…The token can be a gift token. The token does not have to be a gift… the token can be a payment made by the user to the recipient, such as for goods received or services rendered…”
the application abstract is more general in nature:
“…Systems and methods are disclosed for giving gifts in the form of secure tokens. A gift can be given from a user of a payment provider to a gift recipient. The recipient can be a member of the user’s family, a friend, or any other person or entity. The recipient can use the token to purchase a product using a checkout though the payment provider. The purchase can be made without requiring the user to create the user’s own payment provider account…”
Before I delve into the application itself I would like to describe what it is I believe eBay is trying to do with this technology. While the application makes no mention of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies for that matter they appear to be after “programable money.” While this technology is not a digital currency, it is a wrapper around a currency….any currency.
eBay appears to be creating a cross between “colored coin” (more on this later) and a whitelist for a currency. Examples of a whitelist include Payment Pathways’ “Greenlist”, IBM’s “e-Currency Validation Authorization Services Platform” and Coin Validation.
Interest in programmable money has taken off since this introduction of the popular Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin itself has been called programmable money because it is a protocol like HTTP or “Hypertext Transfer Protocol.” More specifically Bitcoin (capital case) is the protocol while bitcoins (lower case) are the units of currency that move across this protocol. The movement of bitcoins across the Bitcoin network was just the initial use for the protocol (hat tip to Richard Brown and Andreas M. Antonopoulos [YouTube] for explaining this). Additional applications being developed include certification such as Proof of Existence and escrow and multisignature authorization found on Bitrated arbitration.
On June 16, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, stated in the BitcoinTalk Bitcoin Forum that this type of functionality was native to Bitcoin and was essentially dormant until developers begin integrating it:
“…The design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago. Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc. If Bitcoin catches on in a big way, these are things we’ll want to explore in the future, but they all had to be designed at the beginning to make sure they would be possible later…”
Mastercoin Executive Director Ron Gross (YouTube) may have very well conceived of the colored coin analogy in a BitcoinTalk discussion on November 11, 2011:
“…the special “asset tokens” satoshis are colored, and don’t relate at all to normal satoshis. The one who owns the colored satoshi owns the asset.”
BitcoinX, now known as Colored Coin group, explains that it is a “a colored bitcoin minting and exchange protocol that works on top of an existing blockchain infrastructure” and further explains what a colored coin is in its Colored Coins – BitcoinX Whitepaper (which is also co-authored by Bitcoin Magazine’s very own Vitalik Buterin):
“… by carefully tracking the origin of a given bitcoin, it is possible to “color” a set of bitcoins to distinguish it from the rest. These bitcoins can then have special properties supported by either an issuing agent or by public agreement, and have value independent of the face value of the underlying bitcoins…”
Back to eBay’s Patent:
“…Systems and method are disclosed for giving gifts or payment instruments in the form of security or payment tokens, according to an embodiment. A gift or payment instrument can be given from a user of a payment provider, such as PayPal, Inc., to a gift recipient. The recipient can be a member of the user’s family, a friend, a sub-contractor, or any other person or entity. The recipient can use the token to purchase a product using the payment provider. The purchase can be made from a brick and mortar store or an online store. The purchase can be made without requiring the user to create the user’s own payment provider account…”
While being able to send a payment to someone who is not already a pre-existing account holder within the payment platform may sound like an innovation it must be stated that Paypal already has this functionality. As a Paypal Employee explains in the PayPal Community Help Forum:
“You can send money to anyone with an email address but in order to claim the funds they would have to open a PayPal account. What happens is that you send the money to their email address, they get an email letting them know they have received funds. They are then instructed to follow the directions to open an account to receive the funds into their PayPal balance.”
and similar to PayPal, “The token can be given without the user sharing the user’s credential with the recipient.“
Blockchain.info also has similar functionality with their Send To Anyone:
“Send Via Send Bitcoins using Email, Facebook & SMS…Send To Anyone Send Bitcoins to anyone via Email, SMS or Facebook even if they don’t have a bitcoin address or a My Wallet account.”
However, “Gift Token” has an additional feature that makes it particularly flexible:
“..a person who does not have an account with the payment provider can use the token…Whether the recipient has a payment provider account or does not have a payment provider account has no impact upon the recipient’s ability to use the token.”
This is extremely important feature and the reason why I determined that this particular patent application even merits discussion (not to mention that eBay had a monumental year for the sheer number of patent applications submitted to the patent office).
If this technology were to become ubiquitous, it could very well change our relationship with money.
The Colored Coin white paper explains how “A company may wish to create a corporate currency, such as Air Miles rewards points, or even plain coupons.”
The eBay patent application further explains:
“…the token can be limited to use at a specified store, a specified group of stores, or a specified chain of stores. The token can be limited to use in purchasing a specified product. The token can be limited to use geographically. For example, the token can be limited to use within a specified city or group of cities, within a specified state or group of states, within a specified country or group of countries, and/or at any location or group of locations. The token can be limited to use temporally. For example, the token can be limited to use on weekdays, on weekends, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM on weekdays, and/or at any other time…”
“Open Money”
The technology behind this patent is reminiscent of Ericsson’s Open Money patent application 20130166398 “System And Method For Implementing A Context Based Payment System.” which includes LDC$ or Location Dependent Currency which I previously discussed on Let’s Talk Bitcoin. Those with a dystopian eye will be just as alarmed. While this technology can be used for good …as Ericsson put it… for the “good of society”…it can also be used for evil…to control society. There are very serious ramifications behind manipulating the fungibility of money.
An innocuous illustration that eBay provided was that a parent can issue the Gift Token to their children with restrictions.
An example I can think of is that a child is given an allowance and that the technology would allow the parent to determine how it is used. For instance Gift Token can be programmed to allow the child to purchase anything that is legal for a minor to purchase with the exception of no more than one sugary drink per day.
eBay’s filing further explains how it can be used to restrict and prohibit certain vices such as cigarette and alcohol consumption:
“…Products can be specified for which the token cannot be used to purchase. For example, a limitation upon the use of the token can specify that the token cannot be used for the purchase of alcohol or cigarettes. Rather than not allowing such items altogether, a limit can be placed on the amount of such purchases in a given time period. For example, $ 20 worth of beer and $ 10 worth of cigarettes can be purchased in one week…”
and further it explains how this technology can be changed based on local laws and ordinances:
“… the recipient’s ability to purchase alcohol or cigarettes with the token can change automatically due to a change in the legal age for purchasing alcohol or cigarettes when the change in the law goes into effect…”
However it isn’t hard to imagine a scenario where a company could use this to make restrictions on the salaries of their employees. For example if a organization wanted to cut down on healthcare costs, they could program their employee’s paycheck so that their salary cannot be used to purchase cigarettes. Though this sounds far fetched, remember that eBay’s goal is for this (or any) technology to become ubiquitous and that anyone (even non-account holders) can send, receive and spend this “Gift Token.”
“Whether the recipient has a payment provider account or does not have a payment provider account has no impact upon the recipient’s ability to use the token”
Similar to Bitcoin an algorithm is used to secure the Gift Token. Bitcoin uses sha-256 (a.k.a Secure Hash Algorithm) while the Bitcoin-Qt client uses AES-256-CBC to encrypt the private keys in the bitcoin wallet. eBay suggests using AES-256:
“…the token can be encrypted. The token can be encrypted using any cryptographic algorithm, such as AES 256 for example… The payment server or an administrator can determine the strength of the encryption…”
“Merit”
I spoke with David Birch, Global Ambassador and founding Director of Consult Hyperion. Mr. Birch is an internationally-recognized thought leader in digital identity and digital money.
For those of you concerned about the patentability of this technology Mr. Birch stated that, “The patent is trivial and obvious” and “I am baffled as to why the US Patent Office allows companies to patent this sort of thing.”
While Bitcoin is a technological achievement, the same probably cannot be said for eBay’s Gift Token. However, whether or not this technology has any merit is up to USPTO and perhaps the legal system to figure out. Even if it is determined that Gift Token is not worthy of a patent being granted doesn’t mean the technology is vaporware nor does it mean that eBay would not try to pursue it.
Mr. Birch did question my comparison of Gift Token to Bitcoin and said that:
“The patent is about pre-paid “e-gift cards” (and is unrelated to Bitcoin). It is, essentially, tokenized Visa Buxx…The idea of programmable coins in Bitcoin is new and interesting. The idea of sending “restricted” funds is very different.”
Gift cards typically exist in walled gardens that restrict spending within an ecosystem. For example one cannot spend a Target gift card at Walmart. Prepaid access cards such as “Visa Buxx” allow more flexibility but require the cardholder to use the card within a particular payment network. However, eBay’s gift token is special because it can be used virtually anywhere because anyone can accept it. While the spirit of the patent application may indeed be that of an e-gift card, its versatile nature permits it to be used for so much more. The difference between eBay’s Gift Token being a simple payment instrument and means to program money is not so black and white.
A Tangled Web We Weave
Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post “WikiLeaks, Press Freedom and Free Expression in the Digital Age” which revisited PayPal’s cutting off of WikiLeak’s PayPal account. Mr. Omidyar referred to the severance of services as a “suspension…for a period of several months” which baffled WikiLeaks (Twitter) who considers the ban to be indefinite. However, WikiLeaks was able to circumvent the financial blockade using Bitcoin.
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks has still not been charged with any crime in the United States…and yet PayPal cut off WikiLeak’s services. One has to wonder how a so called “enemy of the internet“ might use Gift Token much less the United States.
The US government supports freedom on the internet through grants to the Tor Project. Examples include the US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the National Science Foundation. Tor was originally a U.S. Naval Research Laboratory project and states that it is used “every day by a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others.” One has to wonder if the Dark Wallet “Your keys. Your privacy. Your sovereignty” to “…preserve Bitcoin’s principles of privacy and freedom of financial speech” will be held in the same regard as the Tor project. With proposals like “Gift Token” I hope they are.
Note, Vitalik Buterin and Mihai Alisie of Bitcoin Magazine both are contributors to the Dark Wallet project.
Bow portion of Graphic via Vector Free
The post eBay Files Patent Application for Programmable Money appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
eBay Files Patent Application for Programmable Cash
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