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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged bitcoin</title>
                <description>Entries tagged bitcoin</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
investigated in
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;USENIX ;login:&lt;/a&gt;
from December 2013, in the article
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf&quot;&gt;A
Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
Names&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
present) seem to be particularly attractive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
transaction log.  The 2011 paper
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524&quot;&gt;An Analysis of Anonymity in
the Bitcoin System&lt;/A&gt;&quot; by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
summarized like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&quot;Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
a user to his or her public-keys on that user&#39;s node only and by
allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
derived from Bitcoin&#39;s public transaction history. We show that the
two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars.&quot;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
is anonymous.  It isn&#39;t really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Bitcoin er ikke anonymt - føres Stortinget bak lyset av finansministeren?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_er_ikke_anonymt___f_res_Stortinget_bak_lyset_av_finansministeren_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_er_ikke_anonymt___f_res_Stortinget_bak_lyset_av_finansministeren_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; er mye i mediene for
tiden.  Jeg følger med via Mylder for å finne
&lt;a href=&quot;http://mylder.no/?drill=bitcoin&quot;&gt;artikler som omtaler
temaet&lt;/a&gt;, og takket være dette oppdaget jeg at stortingsrepresentant
Ketil Solvik-Olsen fra FrP nylig har spurt finansminister Sigbjørn
Johnsen om hans syn på Bitcoin, og
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Sporsmal/Skriftlige-sporsmal-og-svar/Skriftlig-sporsmal/?qid=57052&quot;&gt;fått
svar for noen dager siden&lt;/a&gt;.  Jeg bet meg spesielt merke til
følgende formulering fra finansministeren:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
«Det er også utfordringer ved at handel med Bitcoins er uregulert og
at transaksjonene er anonyme.»
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At Bitcoin er anonymt er en myte som spres av både journalister og
andre, så det er ikke veldig overraskende at også finansministeren har
gått på limpinnen.  Det er dog litt rart, da jeg håper at
finansdepartementet ikke baserer seg på rykter og myter når de
besvarer Stortinget.  Men du trenger ikke bare tro på meg som kilde
til påstanden om at Bitcoin ikke er anonymt.  Sondre Rønjom har
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogg.nsm.stat.no/archives/3241&quot;&gt;via Sikkerhetsbloggen
hos Nasjonal Sikkerhetsmyndighet&lt;/a&gt; uttalt følgende:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
«At [bitcoin] i utgangspunktet
&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;ikke&lt;/em&gt; er anonymt&lt;/a&gt;,
kommer kanskje som en overraskelse på mange.»
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Enhver bevegelse av Bitcoin er offentlig tilgjengelig for alle på
Internet, og en må legge svært mye innsats inn hvis en skal hindre at
nettverksanalyse av transaksjonsloggene kan brukes til å identifisere
brukerne.  F.eks. kan en enkelt se hva jeg har mottatt til min
offentliggjorte mottaksadresse ved å besøke blockexplorer og slå opp
adressen
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;.
Det virker dermed på meg ganske klart at å påstå at
Bitcoin-transaksjoner er anonyme strengt tatt er å føre Stortinget bak
lyset.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Finansministeren er ikke den eneste som har latt seg forlede av
medieomtalen.  I spørsmålet fra Hr. Solvik-Olsen skriver han at «For
noen dager siden kom den første bitcoin-minibanken på Kypros», hvilket
så vidt jeg har klart å finne ut ikke er riktig.  Det er annonsert
planer om en slik minibank (fra
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinatm.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinATM&lt;/a&gt;), men jeg finner
intet tegn til at en slik minibank er utplassert noe sted.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
mine aktiviteter, så setter jeg pris på Bitcoin-donasjoner til min
adresse
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;My
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
version too.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
#696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
it. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
name.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
cd bitcoin
DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
is now maintained by a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
Corallo in a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
new version to unstable.

&lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
that the major credit card companies can block legal money
transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
years ago, as can be
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
the same address as last time,
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
see how a member of the bitcoin community
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
competition.  My thoughts go to the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
that the community already seem to have
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
all transactions.  There I can see that my address
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
If the Skolelinux foundation
(&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
currencies.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
BitCoins.  Check out
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
yet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
not be trusted to handle money transactions.
A blog post from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
you can even get
&lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
donations to the address
&lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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