blog/tags/bitcoin/bitcoin.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged bitcoin</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged bitcoin</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
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  10                 <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
  16 a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
  17 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
  18 see how a member of the bitcoin community
  19 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
  20 the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
  21 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
  22 competition.  My thoughts go to the
  23 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
  24 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
  25 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
  26 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
  27 powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;
  28
  29 &lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
  30 that the community already seem to have
  31 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
  32 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
  33 how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
  34 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
  35 wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
  36 </description>
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  39         <item>
  40                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
  41                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
  42                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
  43                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
  44                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
  45 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
  46 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
  47 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
  48
  49 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
  50 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
  51 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
  52 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
  53 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
  54 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
  55 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
  56 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
  57 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
  58 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
  59 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
  60 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
  61 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
  62 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
  63 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
  64 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
  65 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
  66 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
  67 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
  68 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
  69
  70 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
  71 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
  72 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
  73 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
  74 If the Skolelinux foundation
  75 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
  76 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
  77 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
  78 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
  79 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
  80 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
  81 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
  82 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
  83
  84 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
  85 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
  86 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
  87 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
  88 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
  89 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
  90 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
  91 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
  92 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
  93 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
  94 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
  95 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
  96 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
  97 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
  98 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
  99
 100 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
 101 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
 102 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
 103 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
 104 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
 105 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
 106 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
 107 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
 108 BitCoins.  Check out
 109 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
 110 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
 111 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
 112 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
 113 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
 114
 115 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
 116 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
 117 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
 118 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
 119 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
 120 </description>
 121         </item>
 122
 123         <item>
 124                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
 125                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
 126                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
 127                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
 128                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
 129 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
 130 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
 131 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
 132 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
 133 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
 134 A blog post from
 135 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
 136 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
 137 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
 138 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
 139 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
 140 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
 141 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
 142
 143 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
 144 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
 145 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
 146 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
 147 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
 148 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
 149 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
 150 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
 151 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
 152 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
 153
 154 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
 155 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
 156 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
 157 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
 158 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
 159 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
 160 you can even get
 161 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
 162 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
 163 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
 164 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
 165
 166 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
 167 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
 168 donations to the address
 169 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
 170 </description>
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