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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Bitcoin Foundation board member and Forbes contributor Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) in a post on the Bitcoin Foundation’s forum gives reasons for individuals and organizations to support the Bitcoin Foundation (@BTCFoundation). Excerpts:
“The Bitcoin Foundation is an educational and software research organization offering annual memberships and a standard donation program.”
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“Some of the significant initiative areas where we are already having a measurable impact:
- Human Rights and Social Justice
- Privacy
- Sound Public Policy
- Math and Science”
- https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=41
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126763.0 (Further discussion of this 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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Kit Dotson (@oxidizingangel) of SiliconANGLE writes on the potential for Bitcoin to become the alternative to PayPal and U.S. credit cards for online cyberlockers. Excerpts:
“As we all know, the MPAA and RIAA have gone to credit transaction companies and gotten them to withdraw their support from sites that may be capable of supporting piracy (which means any and every cyberlocker out there.”
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“If Bitcoin were to become the alternative to PayPal and U.S.-based credit cards for getting cyberlocker services it would mean that there would be money flowing into outfits that exchanged and traded in bitcoins. This means that they’d have a reason to make their systems more stable, the currency itself would find a happy medium with a larger critical mass of trading going on”.
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“If Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) uses his celebrity to bring attention to the use of Bitcoins for cyberlocker access, welding the two together will most likely bring both out with a much bigger market than before and make both of them much more resilient to economic siege by the copyright industry.”
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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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Cryptographer Matthew Green (@Matthew_D_Green) provides a brief background into e-cash and an overview of the problems that e-cash must solve once money goes digital. Excerpts:
“The combination of easy-to-search electronic records and big data seems like a death-knell for our individual privacy. Cryptography holds the promise to get some of that privacy back, if we want it.”
“Funds transfer systems offer none of the privacy advantages of real cash. This is probably by (government) preference: untraceable cash lends itself to unsavory activities, stuff like drug dealing, arms purchases and tax evasion. Our modern banking system doesn’t necessarily stop these activities, but it’s a godsend for law enforcement: just about every transaction can be traced down to the $0.01.”
“Chaum’s original solution dealt with double-spenders by requiring the bank to be online, so users could immediately deposit their coins — and make sure they were fresh. This works great, but it’s damn hard to handle in a system that works offline.”
“While the Bitcoin block-chain is essential to security, it’s also Bitcoin’s privacy achilles heel. Since every transaction is public — and widely disseminated — there’s no hiding that it took place.”
“As our society moves away from dirty, messy cash and into clean — and traceable — electronic transactions, I really do worry that we’re losing something important. Something fundamental.”
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
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
Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) describes in a post an incident of an Internet service deceptively tracking customer’s information and, in this instance, handing that information over to law enforcement. He makes the point that Bitcoin is a better payment system when privacy is desired. Excerpts:
“This was the exact thing that was supposed to not happen. It was supposed to be physically impossible; the log files were not supposed to exist”.
“It goes back to the basic information advantage game: who has what information, and in particular, is there anybody who knows what I do online and who I am? If so, that is a weak link that needs to be addressed”.
“So how to you separate the good from the bad tunnel providers without risking to become the case that uncovers the bad apple? […] The obvious conclusion is that nobody should trust a VPN or tunnel provider with their identity”.
