Bitcoin News
Daily diary of what's happening with Bitcoin.
Forbes contributor and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis)’s latest blog post makes an argument defending the need for cash to remain as a way to pay. Excerpts:
“Let’s not kid ourselves, because the end of money, as we know it, really means the beginning of the transactional surveillance State, which makes this a serious debate about the boundaries of State power and the dignity of an individual.”
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“With ultimate tracking capabilities, how does Wolman decide when a government’s ‘right’ becomes a wrong?”
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“Privacy, especially user-defined privacy, sits on a sliding scale that is defined by the individual. One person’s idea of privacy may be anonymity from all and another person’s idea of sufficient privacy may be privacy from aggressive marketing companies and governments but perhaps not from banks. The point being that it is the prerogative of the individual, not book authors or digital money consultants, to determine where one sits on that personal sliding scale.”
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“As Web anthropologist Stowe Boyd proclaims, anonymous cash equals freedom and we should rejoice in that.”
- http://onforb.es/YoqjgY
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146661.0 (Further discussion of the post.)
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Forbes contributor and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) wrote a post on the announcement that WordPress now accepts bitcoin payments. Excerpts:
“Leading web publishing service WordPress.com announced that they will begin accepting the nonpolitical cryptographic money Bitcoin as a payment method for various upgrades.”
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“WordPress spokesperson Andy Skelton said, ‘Unlike credit cards and PayPal, Bitcoin has no central authority and no way to lock entire countries out of the network. Merchants who accept Bitcoin payments can do business with anyone.’ And thus the planet becomes immediately open to their products and services.”
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”’[Credit cards and PayPal are] unusable for those bloggers [under restrictive regimes] because they expose the payer’s physical identity.’ With user-defined anonymity and identity privacy, bitcoin offers unparalleled safety to dissident bloggers and free speech advocates.”
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“WordPress may not stand as the lone giant for very long since Reddit CEO Yishan Wong hinted last week at the social news site’s willingness to begin transacting in Bitcoin for Reddit Gold subscriptions.”
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“[Considering this move by WordPress, other] merchants will increasingly be asked: ‘What’s your Bitcoin strategy?’”
- http://onforb.es/Xgv0Nv
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124482.0 (Further discussion of this WordPress development)
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ShadowLife, a community focused on the protection of privacy, has a post describing what Bitcoin needs to succeed in the long-run. Excerpts:
“If you combine all black markets of the world together you’ll get a 10 trillion US$ economy, second only to the United States of America. In many developing countries it already comprises large parts of the economy and it is growing faster than the officially recognized gross domestic product (GDP).”
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“One has to note that Crypto-Anarchy is not a philosophical utopia, but the attempt to shape life and society in the presence of disruptive technologies. The corresponding technologies have already arrived and we are facing a great divide: we will either live in the total surveillance state or in a Crypto-Anarchist libertopia.”
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“A free society needs a free market and a free market needs sound money. […] The use of Bitcoin is a huge advantage compared to a barter or cash-only economy, because developed economies need money transfer, at the very least for B2B transactions.”
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“So what does Bitcoin need to succeed in the long-run? In short, it needs no state, no banks, and OTC. The three hypotheses in more detail:
1.) The Bitcoin community should not try to get legality for Bitcoin, we should not ask the state to resolve conflicts in the community.
2.) The Bitcoin community should not focus on interoperability with the traditional banking system.
3.) Widespread availability of over-the-counter (OTC) Bitcoin exchangers is crucial for Bitcoin to succeed in the long-run and give us more freedom.”
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“If the Bitcoin economy depends on the traditional banking system it is doomed to fail. Just imagine what would happen to the Bitcoin economy if Mt.Gox, which currently is responsible for about 80% of all Bitcoin exchanges, suddenly would have to close down.
In my opinion, this shows the second hypothesis: The Bitcoin community should not focus on interoperability with the traditional banking system.”
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“A widespread network of OTC exchangers is the system most resilient against state attacks, because it is heavily distributed and the banking system is skipped entirely.”
- http://bit.ly/RKV7WV
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123143.0 (Further discussion of this article)
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Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) writes about TORwallet. Excerpts:
“The same anonymity and untraceability of that crumpled paper money in your pocket is now available in electronic form.”
“Obviously, the cashless society people do not want this because full transaction traceability is the unstated motivation behind eliminating cash. Don’t fall into this complacent attitude of a ‘cashless society represents the future’ because if we lose the monetary privacy features that we already have, it is a grim future indeed!”
“Properly mixing bitcoin with other users’ bitcoin will cause a chain of custody to break down and thereby provide plausible deniability for any transactions.”
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The Guardian describes the battle for the Internet and references how hacktivists are using Bitcoin to do so.
John Perry Barlow (@JPBarlow), co-founder of the EFF (@EFF), was quoted as saying:
What unites [Occupy movement, Pirate Party and other online activists] is the belief that the future is not about vertical, hierarchical government, but horizontal [peer-to-peer] government”.
Amir Taaki (@AmirTaaki) of Bitcoin exchange Intersango is quoted:
“The battle between pirates and the music or film industries is really nothing, it’s a warm-up. When this technology matures, manufacturers, agriculture businesses, technology firms, any of this could be easily replicated by almost anyone, anywhere. That’s when we’ll see the real fight”.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/20/hacktivists-battle-internet
Forbes columnist Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) describes how Bitcoin transactions are traceable by showing the trail of the coins stolen during the Linode hack last month. Excerpts:
“The public and transparent nature of the bitcoin transaction ledger ensures that all transactions are known by date, time, amount, and block number although not necessarily by the who or the where”.
“The slow motion heist of bitcoin stored at Linode can be viewed by methodically clicking through web-based block chain information in a weird voyeuristic game of ‘follow-the-money’”.
“Has the thief been apprehended yet? Not exactly, but that is because public traceability does not always equate to real-world identity and therefore the transactions themselves are still reasonably anonymous”.
“Clearly, it’s a whole new world for electronic money especially when that money comes with the powerful irreversibility of cash”.
Hack This Zine (#13) includes an article on Bitcoin (starting on page 33 of the PDF). Excerpts:
“The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other organizations in charge of repressing dissent know the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of people who we call activists, dissidents and revolutionaries. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the social network”.
“The lack of intermediaries also makes BitCoin extremely resistant to censorship and the ups and downs of many national economies”.
“Keep in mind that your BitCoin exchanger may record your IP address and your BitCoin address, removing much of the anonymity BitCoin provides”.
- https://hackbloc.org/svn/htz/HTZ13_DRAFT_READ.pdf
- https://hackbloc.org/HTZ13_DRAFT_PRINT.pdf
- https://hackbloc.org/zine
A blog post on the Bitcoin Money blog describes a new law in the State of Louisiana that, taken literally, makes it illegal to purchase used goods using cash. Excerpts:
“The government’s assault on economic freedom have been expanding further with new laws including a new one from the bought and paid-for politicians from the State of Louisiana.”
“[Applies to those who] buy, sell, trade in or otherwise acquire used or secondhand property more frequently than once per month from any other person.”
- http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/11656504219
- http://bit.ly/njSG6s (Louisiana HB 195 / Act 389)
- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/696520/2011act389.pdf (Act 389 pdf)
- http://ackelandassociates.com/cash-transactions-banned-by-louisiana
Joshua Davis (@JoshuaDavisNow)’s article in The New Yorker (subscription required) investigates the story of Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The article is for subscribers only. From the abstract:
“In April, 2011, [Satoshi] sent a note to a developer saying that he had ‘moved on to other things.’ He has not been heard from since”.
“Two possible candidates, Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta, both of whom deny that they are Nakamoto”.
Michael Hendricks (@mndrix), a Bitcoin pioneer (who still has the arrows to prove it), writes on how Bitcoins can indeed be acquired and used anonymously. Excerpts:
“Sentiment has swung the other direction toward thinking that Bitcoin anonymity is very difficult to attain. […] we should think about security and anonymity practically”.
“[Even with these steps though] high power forensics and digital surveillance might be able to pierce the anonymity veil”.
