The Economist: Airtime is Money – pre-paid mobile phone minutes as currency

Julia Dixon on January 21, 2013

In a recent article, The Economist takes a brief look at the continued, and growing, use of mobile air time as money in many African countries.  It would seem that banks everywhere, Africa included, just can’t give people what they want. Mobile air time holds its value and can be transferred in small amounts quickly and anonymously.

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Two Bitcoin Conferences in 2013

Julia Dixon on January 21, 2013

The two conferences will cover different topics and will be held in California and Vienna.

The first, sponsored by the Bitcoin Foundation, will be held in San Jose California on May 17-19 and is titled “The Future of Payments”. Discussion will be on Bitcoin technology, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin business and regulatory issues.

The second, in Vienna November 1-3, is titled “unSYSTEM”. This conference, as Bitcoin Magazine put it, “is pushing even further in the direction of activism.” Many of the speakers  are known activist rather than Bitcoin developers or entrepreneurs.

IEEE: Ripple Credit System Could Help or Harm Bitcoin

Julia Dixon on January 16, 2013

I’ve been hearing a lot about the new version of Ripple, both excitement and criticism. while I have yet to read up on the specifics of the version due to out this month, I am both intrigued by the possibility of decentralized exchange and concerned with developer Ryan Fugger’s original goal for Ripple as ‘debt money without artificially imposed scarcity.’  I can’t imagine unlimited debt money as a serious competitor to Bitcoin, however, the IEEE seems to disagree with me. In the below review they speak with Ripple’s developers and beta testers.

“Within a few weeks, a new option will be available: a system called Ripple, which allows individuals to create credit and disburse it to people within a peer-to-peer social network. The project could be used to implement what many Bitcoiners have been asking for—a decentralized currency exchange. But if the more-ambitious parts of the design pan out, the credit created in Ripple could itself become a new form of digital currency and the first formidable competition for Bitcoin.”

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Jim Sinclair sees German gold repatriation as ‘beginning of the end’ for US dollar

Julia Dixon on January 16, 2013

The Silver Doctors have posted an email from Jim Sinclair sent to his subscribers. In the email he compares the reports of Bundesbank’s repatriation of its gold holdings from the Fed to Charles De Gaulle ‘calling the hand’ of the US its obligation to convert French held dollars into gold.

“History will look back on this salvo fired across US war financing as being the beginning of the end of the US dollar as the reserve currency of choice.”

“Today’s report, if true, is a salvo fired at the concept that the USA has all the gold it claims and all the gold it stores for others. If true, this event is the most important gold development since Charles De Gaulle called the US hand that it would stand by convertibility which many then assumed it could not because even then the amount of gold held was publicly questioned.”

Read the email here.

GATA Fundraiser and Sovereign Social Jan 19th in Vancouver

Julia Dixon on January 11, 2013

The members and shareholders of The Sovereign Exchange will be in Vancouver on Saturday afternoon, January 19th, at 4:00 PM, for a private networking event with Chris Powell and Bill Murphy, Secretary and Chairman of The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, who will speak about their most recent efforts to influence transparency in the metal’s markets.

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Introducing the DGC Digital Currency Wiki

Julia Dixon on January 9, 2013

In keeping with our goal of being the best source for news and information on monetary alternatives, we have created the DGC Digital Currency Wiki.

We plan for this wiki to be a source of information on different digital currencies, currency providers, supporting technology, terminology, digital currency structures and business models, etc.

The plan had been for the Wiki to contain a large amount of content prior to announcing it. However, it seems that I have a chronic problem with dramatically over estimating the amount of time in the day. As such, we are introducing it now and will continue to add content when we can.

Editing can only be done after registration for spam avoidance purposes.

-Julia

Can’t keep Indians from their gold

Julia Dixon on January 5, 2013

In 2011 Indian’s imported a record 969 tons of gold.  Imports have more than doubled since 2008.

In India gold is still seen as money and is commonly purchased for savings. According to the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation  “In a country like India, there is no scheme for social security, and investment in gold is like social security.”

As the rupee weakens and the country’s current account deficit grows, 80% is attributed to gold imports, the Indian government is trying a number of methods to reduce demand. But try as they might, they can’t seem to keep Indians from their gold.

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