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   5   <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged bitcoin</title>
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  11  <div class="title">
  12   <h1>
  13        <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15   </h1>
  16
  17  </div>
  18
  19  <p>Entries tagged "bitcoin".</p>
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  23
  24 <div class="entry">
  25  <div class="title">
  26  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
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  28  <div class="date">
  29   2010-12-10 08:20
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  32  <div class="body">
  33
  34 <p>With this weeks lawless
  35 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
  36 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
  37 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
  38 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
  39 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
  40 A blog post from
  41 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
  42 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
  43 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
  44 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
  45 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
  46 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
  47 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
  48
  49 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
  50 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
  51 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
  52 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
  53 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
  54 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
  55 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
  56 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
  57 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
  58 Debian</a> soon.</p>
  59
  60 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
  61 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
  62 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
  63 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
  64 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
  65 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
  66 you can even get
  67 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
  68 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
  69 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
  70 on the current exchange rates.</p>
  71
  72 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
  73 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
  74 donations to the address
  75 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
  76
  77  </div>
  78  <div class="tags">
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  80
  81
  82   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
  83
  84  </div>
  85 </div>
  86 <div class="padding"></div>
  87
  88 <div class="entry">
  89  <div class="title">
  90  <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
  91  </div>
  92  <div class="date">
  93   2010-12-11 15:10
  94  </div>
  95
  96  <div class="body">
  97
  98 <p>As I continue to explore
  99 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
 100 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
 101 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
 102
 103 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
 104 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
 105 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
 106 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
 107 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
 108 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
 109 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
 110 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
 111 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
 112 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
 113 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
 114 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
 115 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
 116 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
 117 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
 118 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
 119 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
 120 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
 121 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
 122 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
 123
 124 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
 125 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
 126 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
 127 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
 128 If the Skolelinux foundation
 129 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
 130 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
 131 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
 132 Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
 133 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
 134 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
 135 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
 136 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
 137
 138 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
 139 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
 140 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
 141 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
 142 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
 143 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
 144 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
 145 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
 146 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
 147 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
 148 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
 149 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
 150 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
 151 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
 152 currencies.</p>
 153
 154 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
 155 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
 156 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
 157 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
 158 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
 159 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
 160 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
 161 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
 162 BitCoins.  Check out
 163 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
 164 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
 165 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
 166 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
 167 yet.</p>
 168
 169 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
 170 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
 171 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
 172 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
 173 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
 174
 175  </div>
 176  <div class="tags">
 177
 178
 179
 180   Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
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