Bitcoin News

Guardian’ s Kate Connolly (@ConnollyBerlin) and Guy Grandjean (@guygrandjean) cover the story happening in Kreuzberg, which is becoming a the world’s largest Bitcoin local economy.  Excerpts:

”’[Bitcoin is] an easier way of digital payment than credit cards, which cost me a lot of money as a business and to which I’m forced to sign up for years,’ [says Florentina Martens owner of Parisian-style cafe Floor’s].”
-
“Graefekiez, a cosy neighbourhood established in the 19th century in the southern Berlin district of Kreuzberg, currently boasts the highest density of businesses accepting the currency in the world.”
-
“‘Kreuzberg is traditionally an area in which people are very politically aware, critical towards existing systems and are constantly discussing and looking for alternatives to them, which makes it the perfect breeding ground for Bitcoin,’ says Joerg Patze [owner of Room 77].”
-
“[Law student Jeff Gallas] taps the amount he owes Room 77 into the virtual Bitcoin wallet on his Android phone and, aligning it with a code on the bar’s device, presses a button to process the payment. A theatrical ‘kerching’ sound follows and Gallas is grinning from ear to ear. ‘It could hardly be easier,’ he insisted.”
-
“[Wilko Bereit] likes the fact that Bitcoin scares people in suits, ‘because if this thing were to really take off, it would bankrupt a lot of bankers.’”

 - http://bit.ly/12rZ73O
 - http://bit.ly/17m9pER (Video)
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=188269.0 (Further discussion of the article and video)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) describes upcoming presentations at the Bitcoin 2013 Conference (May 17-19) in San Jose, CA.  Excerpts:

“The conference is attracting technologists, venture capitalists, bankers, traders, payments specialists, and financial regulators.”
-
“The agenda will be particularly interesting to those in the banking and payments fields.”
-
“BitPay co-founder and CEO, Anthony Gallippi, will explain how he’s been driving business adoption of Bitcoin.”
-
“Paymium’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Pierre Noizat, will talk about bridging the gab [between bitcoin and the traditional regulated banking infrastructure].”
-
“Rainey Reitman, the activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm and advocacy center, will hold forth on the liberating aspects of Bitcoin.”
-
“Tuur Demeester, author of the financial newsletter MacroTrends, will talk about bitcoin’s emerging role as a separate asset class alongside precious metals, equities, and bonds.”
-
“Online payments industry veteran Peter Šurda about how nonpolitical cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could alter the future of fractional reserve banking.”

[Note: Though registration for the event continues online through May 15th, the deadline for the conference rates is April 26th.]

 - http://bit.ly/17IYUcR
 - http://www.Bitcoin2013.com
 - http://www.bitcoin2013.com/topics—schedule.html (PDF)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Reporter Gwynn Guilford ‏(@sinoceros) writes on Quartz.com reasons why China could drive a further bit-boom.  Excerpts:

“They’ve already done the whole virtual currency thing—with Q Coin.”
-
“Property, stocks, art, tea—speculation dominates in every major asset market you can think of in China. The Chinese are a people used to high risk-reward investments.”
-
“As the online gamer source tells Quartz, ‘the currency’s system is so decentralized’ that it would be extremely difficult for the Chinese government to do anything about bitcoin.[…] And unlike with Tencent, there’s no company or entity to target for regulation. ‘To China’s conservative regulators,’ he adds, “Bitcoin is a game [that’s] way more dangerous.”

 - http://bit.ly/ZgOoc6
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176010.0 (Further discussion of the article)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

E-money researcher and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) describes how financial privacy of individuals is being trampled upon.  Excerpts:

“‘Private individuals should have more privacy [than politicians would be afforded], as they have not placed themselves into the political arena. They have not agreed to give up their privacy,’ [says Attorney Jenice Malecki (@SecuritiesLawUS)]. However, she also concedes that when it comes to offshore numbered accounts, ‘it does seem that banking secrecy is eroding. Slowly, but surely, banks are releasing information for governmental investigations.’”
-
“Decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin arrived on the scene in early 2009 and now provide an outlet for personal wealth that is beyond restriction and confiscation. The exchange rate for government fiat currencies may be volatile now, but as the market price eventually finds equilibrium and stabilizes, bitcoin will become an important store of value.”
-
“Think of bitcoin as your own personal financial safe haven or offshore bank.”
-
“Future regulatory and confiscatory attacks on safe havens and banking secrecy will become irrelevant, because bitcoin provides for a personal ‘offshore center’ under direct and sole control of the individual.”
-
“Legitimacy is a politically charged term. One person’s legitimacy may be another person’s aggressive and unjustifiable overreach. Also, what a certain government sees as legitimate may be viewed in other parts of the world as a violation of fundamental human rights. This is clearest in authoritarian regimes that impoverish and imprison their political opponents for so-called crimes against the state.”

 - http://bit.ly/150p0Ly
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174567.0 (Further discussion of the article)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) describes some lessons re-learned with Bitcoin’s recent exchange rate correct.  Excerpts:

“An exchange [Mt. Gox] that has a ten-minute lag in trading orders at best, and is completely unreachable at worst, can barely be taken seriously as a hobby project – and certainly not as the main hub of a next-generation billion-dollar trading system. MtGox shutting down trading mid-correction was just the icing on the cake that confirmed this.”
-
This was not the second peak, but something like the fourth or fifth similar event. We can be certain it is not the last.”
-
“Most importantly, failure or success of short-term speculation is irrelevant to bitcoin’s eventual success as a decentralized, resilient currency.”
-
“The good news, as said, is that we may expect a lot of [the exchanges] to be fixed by the next time this happens. Maybe in the spring of 2015, maybe sooner, maybe later.”

 - http://bit.ly/10ZdzyK
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174514.0

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Reporters Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) and Peter Lattman (@peterlattman) share some new investments made both in Bitcoin and Bitcoin startups.  Excerpts of their NY Times Dealbook article:

“Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been many things in a short time: Olympic rowers. Nemeses of Mark Zuckerberg. Characters on ‘The Simpsons.’ Now they can add a new label: bitcoin moguls.”
-
“The Winklevii — as they are popularly known — say they own nearly 1 percent of that, or some $11 million.”
-
“Now mainstream investments in the digital money are starting to emerge. On Thursday, a group of venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz, announced that they were funding a bitcoin-related company, OpenCoin.”
-
“But the 6-foot-5 Winklevii were unfazed by the latest tumult. Indeed, the brothers said they used the low prices to buy more. They argue that bitcoin will have much further to soar once a broader audience sees its virtues: a unit of exchange that can be moved around the world at the click of a button without requiring any payments to Western Union or American Express.”
-
“‘People say it’s a Ponzi scheme, it’s a bubble,’ said Cameron Winklevoss. ‘People really don’t want to take it seriously. At some point that narrative will shift to [how] virtual currencies are here to stay.’ We’re in the early days.”
-
“For their part, the Winklevoss twins have used some of their bitcoin to pay for the services of a Ukrainian computer programmer who has worked on the site of their venture capital firm.”
-
“In addition to the purchase of bitcoins, they also say they have invested in a bitcoin-related company, but declined to disclose which one.”
-
“’It has been four years and it has yet to be discredited as a viable alternative to fiat currency,’ said Tyler Winklevoss. ‘We could be totally wrong, but we are curious to see this play out a lot more.’”

 - http://nyti.ms/151cJqg
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173772.0

All News -Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Jeffrey Tucker (@JeffreyATucker), editor of Lassez-Faire Books and past editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, posts how deflationary currency brings a change to what we know about money.  Excerpts:

“None of us in living memory has had experience with a currency that rises in value. The emergence of Bitcoin — a digital currency that has grown in purchasing power over time — has changed that experience dramatically.”
-
“The 20th-century experience flipped our expectations for what money should do. Especially in the postwar period, the falling value of the dollar punished savings and rewarded spending. This is exactly what the Keynesian economists hoped for. They wanted money always circulating and never ‘hoarded.’ ‘Deflation’ was to be avoided no matter what.”
-
“Bitcoin is often described as a ‘deflationary’ currency. This is exactly why Paul Krugman hates it so much.”
-
“Here’s what beautiful about this experience: It doesn’t matter in the slightest what Paul Krugman thinks. It doesn’t matter how many economic experts Paul Krugman lines up to oppose Bitcoin. It doesn’t matter how many Nobel Prize winners denounce it and oppose it. That’s because Bitcoin is not a “policy” invented by elite and privileged intellectuals. It is a market-based currency, one created by an entrepreneur and chosen by market players.”
-
“That is an essential postulate of the free society. When government gets hold of the money, freedom is in peril. When the market makes and manages money, freedom has a built-in reinforcement in half of every transaction. In short, just based on our experience with Bitcoin so far, we see the conventional wisdom of a century completely turned on its head. Fantastic!”

 - http://lfb.org/today/what-bitcoin-is-teaching-us
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171577.0 (Further discussion of the article)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Forbes contributor Timothy B. Lee (@BinaryBits) writes again on Bitcoin. Excerpts:

“Even if you think the current value of of more than $140 is a bubble, it’s clear that Bitcoin has some genuine applications. The number of daily Bitcoin transactions has soared from around 1000 at the beginning of 2011 to about 50,000 today. Figuring out the “fundamentals” that drive the currency’s long-term value seems like an interesting theoretical puzzle.”
-
“A core part of Bitcoin’s appeal is that it’s not under anyone’s control. Supposedly, nobody has the authority to change the Bitcoin money supply, cancel or reverse transactions, or otherwise change the attributes of the protocol. But in practice that’s not really true. In the wake of last month’s fork, the elites in the Bitcoin community effectively changed the rules in a matter of hours. In principle, there’s no reason those same elites couldn’t make other changes to the Bitcoin protocol.”
-
“In principle, these two pools might be able to join forces and execute a 51 percent (or 53 percent) attack on the rest of the network. But doing so might prove foolish in the long run, since that kind of power grab might undermine public confidence in the currency’s long-term viability, since a mining cartel might have the power to change the rules of the Bitcoin protocol in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of ordinary users.”

 - http://onforb.es/10yeRSe
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170270.0 (Further discussion of this article)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

David Meyer (@superglaze)’s post on Gigaom offers a current introduction to Bitcoin for any of its readers who haven’t yet brought themselves up to speed.  Excerpts:

“No one’s really sure where [Bitcoin] will end up, because no one has really done this distributed, borderless digital currency thing for real before – yes, there are Facebook Credits and Linden dollars, but these are still centralized and controlled as such.”
-
“There have also been multiple previous attempts at creating non-digital alternative currencies, such as the Liberty Dollar, which earned its creator Bernard von NotHaus a counterfeiting conviction. Bitcoin may share the anti-statist motivation behind that wannabe currency, but it’s hard to see how it could constitute counterfeiting.”
-
“If you lose your Bitcoin wallet, the money is lost forever, to everyone. If you lose your bankcard, it doesn’t wipe out the money in your account, and your bank will issue you a new one. There is no such mechanism in place here; losing Bitcoins is effectively like burning banknotes.”
-
“From where I’m sitting, Bitcoin is already proving its worth as a disruptor and as a test-case for how technology could divorce currency from certain external factors.”

[Note, the same article was syndicated on CNN Money]

 - http://bit.ly/XfAVAz
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167472.0 (Further discussion of the article)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews

Trace Mayer (@RunToGold) helps Fox Business News’ Melissa Francis understand Bitcoin.

Duration: 5 minutes

 - http://bit.ly/ZbyDiJ
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167267.0 (Further discussion of the interview)

All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews