The Bitcoin Blockchain: Following the money
Pick up a free copy of The Bitcoin Blockchain: Following the money by DGC founder Carl Mullan.
Last day today! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OGTLZXC/
SilentVault launches aiming to ‘silence the blockchain’
The new technology was developed to provide peer-to-peer payments and exchanges with anonymity among a growing variety of asset classes. SilentVault is a wallet application which allows the user to bring in Bitcoin or Litecoin, spend them as Silent Bitcoin or Silent Litecoin, and thereby silence the block chain on their original crypto-coin. Other currencies have been developed into SilentVault assets, such as Silent Silver.
SilentVault is a Voucher-Safe based technology. What you hold and trade with your SilentVault wallet are vouchers representing assets, not the assets themselves. While this is obvious for gold or silver, which are not digital assets, the distinction is important for bitcoin. The wallet contains vouchers, which are cryptographically signed digital bearer certificates analogous to coins. It also holds receipts for incoming or outgoing payments, which provide a downloadable (and deletable) transaction history.
The SilentVault website details the important differences between a SilentVault wallet and a regular crypto-currency wallet.
In the Voucher-Safe system, assets are held by trusted voucher Issuers. Some information on backing assets can be found here. However, out of what I imagine is a perceived necessity, there is little information available on Issuers or those behind the technology.
SilentVault is a virtual enterprise operated by technology and business professionals with a total of five decades experience in digital currency systems. The user agreement for all users of SilentVault, including the SilentVault team members, prevents us from disclosing names, addresses, and other particulars.
This technology is aimed at the privacy conscious who want to use crypto-currencies without the public record on the blockchain and those who have been waiting for the next generation of digital gold currencies.
A wealth of information on the functioning of the wallet can be found via the wallet’s website.
Back soon!
As you may have noticed we have been taking an extended break from posting to the site. But we miss it and we can’t stay away for long. We hope to be back in action in the next week or two. See you then!
DGC Founder Discusses His New Book, The Digital Currency Challenge
Carl Mullan is DGC’s founder, former editor and publisher of DGCMagazine with more than 50 past issues online. His new book, The Digital Currency Challenge – Shaping Online Payment Systems through US Financial Regulations, is now available on Amazon.
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Networks will form and needs will be met. The mechanics of Bitcoin adoption.
Bitcoin is fast, secure, nearly free, has a stable supply and has a high level of user control… its just plain better than the banks. You have to wonder why the hell everyone isn’t using it? But the Bitcoin economy is still fragmented and dependent on payment processors and exchangers.
Merchants accept bitcoin only to convert it back into their local fiat currency, and who can blame them? There just aren’t enough bitcoin accepting businesses out there and they have suppliers and landlords to pay. But bitcoin was meant to be a peer-to-peer currency, not a peer to exchanger to bank to bank to exchanger to peer currency.
Crypto will win the currency wars, but it may be a while before it reaches your home town. Bitcoin is better, but change is hard.
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Your bitcoins are good on the Seventh Continent
It’s a business platform, a digital commodity market, a business game and an autonomous economy that may just work its way into the ‘real’ world. Seventh Continent is a 3D virtual world where you can set up and run a business for real profit in Bitcoin or fiat.
“The idea is to offer a new ‘continent’, the ‘Seventh Continent’, to the Bitcoin community where Bitcoin users can do fair and corruption free business,” explains CEO Gregory Harmati. The Seventh Continent is an “independent, free market restricted only by supply and demand”. It aims to create an economy based on freedom, transparency and fair play.
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What a landmark legal case from mid-1700s Scotland tells us about the fungibility and the very nature of money– and why we should care in light of the recent CoinValidation controversy.
As posted to the Bitcoin subreddit by goonsack
Although the case in question (Crawfurd v. The Royal Bank) happened in the mid-1700s, I think it is highly relevant and bears nicely on the recent controversy surrounding Coinvalidation. This post will also be of interest to anyone fascinated by the history and/or theory of money.
While this particular case involved paper banknotes (which arguably are irredeemably flawed) rather than a ‘hard currency’, it still illustrates nicely the rationale behind a decision which impacted a widely used currency at the time. Of primary consideration in this case was how its resolution would affect the usability of the currency (i.e. a facet from which currency largely derives its value).
As we’re probably all aware of by now, CoinValidation’s plan, if successfully implemented, would presumably lead to the blacklisting of some coins based on their past transfer history (e.g. having at some point been sent to/from deep web contraband marketplaces, having been paid as ransom to malware operators like those of CryptoLocker, having been stolen, having been allegedly ‘laundered’, having been associated with scams/ponzis, &c). In effect, this would destroy the fungibility of bitcoins. Some ‘clean’ coins would be easier to spend and transact with, while other ‘less clean’ or downright ‘tainted’ coins would be more difficult to use. Thus we would be left with a difficult-to-navigate and frustrating-to-use system whereby some coins are worth more than others (due to their varying spendability). And this largely defeats the purpose of a currency as a facile medium of exchange in the first place.
900% increase in Bitcoin merchants
BitPay has announced the approval of its 10,000th merchant while at this time last year the company had just reached 1,000 merchants. That’s an increase of 900% for the leading payment processor.
While BitPay is only one option available to merchants it is the largest Bitcoin payment processor and these numbers give a glimpse into the Bitcoin economy.
BitPay’s merchants are still largely ecommerce, 90%+, but they have experienced increased growth in non-US merchants. Earlier this year 40% of BitPays merchants were located outside the US, however these latest numbers show a 10% increase to 50% of customers based outside North America.
In line with the growth in merchants, the volume of Bitcoin sales through the business has also had a dramatic increase. “The month of August was another record month for BitPay, processing over 10,000 merchant transactions worth over $6.4 million. Year-to-date in 2013, over $34 million worth of bitcoins have been spent on goods and services through merchants using BitPay’s platform.”
The Bitcoin economy may be small, but it’s growing rapidly!
eBay flirting with Bitcoin
It seems that the online commerce giant eBay has its eyes on Bitcoin. This is of course a bit surprising as eBay is the owner of PayPal which has a lot to loose from Bitcoin’s success. However, in the past week two indications of eBays interest in Bitcoin have popped up.
First eBay added, and then removed, ‘Virtual Currency’ to its categories of items for sale.
But even more interestingly eBay appears to have produced a video about Bitcoin which they posted to their blog. The post is titled What’s the Deal with Bitcoins anyway? And curiously is presented without a date, seems to be only accessible directly via the URL and with this disclaimer at the top, “*This video was created for informational and educational purposes.”
The video does present Bitcoin in an unbiased and educational fashion.
The post and the video asks “What do you think? Are bitcoins the real deal?” however, comments are not allowed. … What’s the deal with eBay and Bitcoin?
Bits and Pieces 4thSep2013
- Bitcoin exchange TradeHill halts trading after its banking partner experiences “regulatory issues”.
After series of Bitcoin businesses being dropped by their banking partners earlier this year, the Internet Archive Federal Credit Union (IAFCU) came to the rescue. The New Jersey based credit union, run by the Internet Archive, has been very friendly to the Bitcoin industry and has worked with a number of businesses who have had trouble establishing relationships with banks.
One of the businesses the credit union partnered with was the US based TradeHill exchange. Late last week Jered Kenna, Tradehill’s founder and CEO, confirmed via Reddit that the exchange had suspended trading due to “operational and regulatory issues” faced by its bank.
IAFCU posted its own statement on the matter , but was not clear on the nature of the regulatory issues.
- As the rupee continues to struggle, Indian officials continue their attempts to curb demand for gold.
Via Reuters…
India is considering a radical plan to direct commercial banks to buy gold from ordinary citizens and divert it to precious metal refiners in an attempt to curb imports and take some heat off the plunging currency.
The RBI will ask the banks to buy back jewelry, bars and coins for rupees. Lenders will have to offer better rates than pawn shops and jewelers to lure sellers.
“We will start a pilot project among some banks where we will allow them to buy back gold from individual households,” the source, an official familiar with the central bank’s plan, said. “This will start soon, we have discussed (it) with banks.”
- From New York to Germany, check out a timeline of August events affecting the crypto-currency community here.
- For those following the Bitcoin Foundation’s board elections Bitcoin Magazine has posted transcripts from Let’s Talk Bitcoin’s interviews with the Individual Seat Candidates
Two new seats are being added to the Board of Directors. One representing Individual Members and the other is representing Industry (business) Members. In order to be eligible to vote in this election, you must be a current member of the Bitcoin Foundation.