[homepage.git] / blog / tags / bitcoin / bitcoin.rss

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged bitcoin</title>
                <description>Entries tagged bitcoin</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <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
own 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  It is only available in Sid (and a outdated client from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 contain 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 it 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 blockexploer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
donation.  The blockexploer service demonstrate 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>
        </item>
        
        <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>
        </item>
        
        <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 across 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>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>