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