Tag Archives: Bitcoin

Who Is Building the Private, Peer-to-Peer Marketplace?

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“Online commerce today is mostly centralized; companies own websites where users visit to buy and sell things. Those companies charge fees, monitor their users’ data, and censor their transactions based on their own rules and on behalf of the government.  OpenBazaar is different. Instead of relying on a centralized third party, trades occur directly between buyers and sellers. Users install peer-to-peer software on their computers, similar to bitcoin or BitTorrent, and this connects them to other users running the same software. They transact in bitcoin. Since there’s no middleman, there are no fees, no collection of data, and no censorship of trade.”

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/who-is-building-the-private-peer-to-peer-marketplace

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Argentine small businesses turning to bitcoin

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“The prolonged use of capital controls in Argentina since 2011 has wreaked havoc for businesses operating in South America’s second-largest economy.  Under the leftist government of President Cristina Fernández, no immediate change is expected in Argentina’s complicated economic conditions, which have seen the use of bitcoin more than double over the past year, mainly among small businesses.  Recent raids on currency trading houses and new powers for the national spy agency to prevent speculative attacks pushed the peso’s black market value this week to its lowest levels since Argentina defaulted last year on its foreign debt for the second time this century.”

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b2a8cca4-2c11-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html#axzz3h7Y4tmqB

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Greece’s New Finance Minister: Bitcoin ‘Highly Problematic Currency’

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“The Finance Minister of Greece’s new radical left-wing government, while at the center of anti-austerity financial policy, is in no way optimistic about Bitcoin, it has emerged.  In an article on his website blog from April 2013, Yanis Varoufakis discusses the ‘impossibility’ of a decentralized currency being controlled ‘apolitically,’ and describes this as a ‘dangerous fantasy.’  He stated: ‘[T]here can be no de-politicized currency capable of ‘powering’ an advanced, industrial society.’  Varoufakis has inherited Europe’s worst-performing economy, and will seek to end the austerity measures put in place by the previous Greek government following the 2008 financial crisis.”

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113380/greeces-new-finance-minister-bitcoin-highly-problematic-currency

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Greek Perspective at Freedom Fest 2015

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“Did you know about 70% of Greeks own their own home? Hear more on how this financially distraught country is made up of some of the best savers in the world. Alex of the NYC Bitcoin Center at Freedom Fest 2015.”

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Paypal Shuts Down in Greece; Bitcoin Still Operates

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“Capital controls imposed by the Greek government mean that Greek citizens can only withdraw 60 euros (effectively 50 euros after ATMs have run out of 20 euro notes) and online payment service, PayPal, has been left crippled, as a result. PayPal relies on the traditional banking sector and credit card industry for all its transactions to flow.   Fact is, there is an old-style bank that underpins nearly every finance tech start-up that purports to threaten and disrupt the old guard.  Examples are peer-to-peer lending platforms such as Prosper and Lending Club.  Neither company holds the loans they award on their own balance sheets, but, instead, acquire the funds from WebBank, Salt Lake City, Utah.”

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/paypal-shuts-greece-bitcoin-still-operates/

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Visa CEO Charlie Scharf: Moving at the speed of money

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“West Coast venture capitalists see Visa as an oligopolistic dinosaur and are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into rivals that use bitcoin. Meanwhile, banks, which collect the bulk of the fees from merchants, are warily eyeing Visa’s efforts to bypass them and forge direct relationships with retailers by offering one-click internet transactions and providing data on consumer behaviour that only Visa possesses.  None of which seems to faze Visa’s chief executive, Charlie Scharf. In time, he says, would-be Visa disruptors all discover—just as internet upstarts PayPal, Square and Uber did—that it is simply easier and more economical to work with his leviathan than fight it.”

http://india.forbes.com/article/forbes-global-2000/visa-ceo-charlie-scharf-moving-at-the-speed-of-money/40423/0

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Ex-Reddit Engineer Is Building a Decentralized Reddit

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“Days after the proposal of billionaire venture capitalist Fred Wilson to create a decentralized social media platform, Ryan X. Charles, ex-Reddit cryptocurrency engineer, has announced in a blog post that he wants to collaborate with others to create a decentralized Reddit.  Charles and the Reddit development team planned to get rid of third-party services and institutions like banks and payment processors by integrating bitcoin as the only payment option for the platform. However, after taking US$50 million in funding, Reddit replaced their management, and Yishan resigned ‘due to exhaustion.’ Reddit shelved Charles’ project and fired him soon after.”

http://cointelegraph.com/news/114785/ryan-x-charles-is-building-a-decentralized-reddit-and-would-love-collaborators

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The Turing Phone Is Built to Be Unhackable and Unbreakable

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“The Turing Phone is a 5.5-inch smartphone, running Android 5.1, but it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. The phone is designed with security very much in mind. End-to-end encryption is built into most of the core apps on the phone. It even has a ‘Turing coin’ inside, a cryptocurrency Chao hopes will catch on—if he does, he laughs, your phone could literally appreciate in value after you buy it. It’s all activated through a fingerprint reader on the side of the phone, and is made to keep servers and third parties out of your business as much as possible. In short: The Turing Phone is meant to be completely and utterly unhackable.  Unbreakable, too. It’s made of a material called liquidmorphium.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/turing-robotics-phone/

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The Future of the Web Looks a Lot Like Bitcoin

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“More and more, it seems, the priorities of these institutions do not align with those of the people they serve. Remember when Facebook toggled the digital levers in its social network to run massive psychology experiments on its users?  When confronted with an intractable problem, we’ve settled for the least egregious option by placing responsibility for our digital data in as few hands as possible. Because, really, the only thing sillier than trusting some central authority with our most precious digital records would be trusting a bunch of strangers with them.  And yet, this is precisely what Bitcoin achieves: a public database that everyone can see, anyone can add to, and no one can destroy.”

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-future-of-the-web-looks-a-lot-like-bitcoin

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New York ‘BitLicense’ Forces Mining Pool BTCGuild To Shut Down

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“The most famous form of Bitcoin regulation around the world is New York’s BitLicense, a regulatory framework developed by the New York Department of Financial Services.  The way BitLicense works is that any Bitcoin-related company offering any service to their customers – with or without touching any of their funds – would be forced to keep a record of personal information for each user. For example, if you run a Bitcoin mining pool that is used by at least one person in New York, you will need to obtain that person’s name, address and email address. Furthermore, you will be required to turn over this information if the state of New York ever asks for it.”

http://digitalmoneytimes.com/crypto-news/bitlicense-forces-mining-pool-btcguild-to-shut-down/

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