From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 14:05:11 +0000 (+0000) Subject: New post. X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/3222bf49ee1e7cbc38c41fcff94c1e324a69aeec?ds=inline New post. --- diff --git a/blog/data/2010-12-11-bitcoin.txt b/blog/data/2010-12-11-bitcoin.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..64b07257df --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/data/2010-12-11-bitcoin.txt @@ -0,0 +1,70 @@ +Title: Some thoughts on bitcoins +Tags: english, debian, bitcoin, personvern, sikkerhet +Date: 2010-12-11 15:00 + +

As I continue to explore +BitCoin, I'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.

+ +

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 +15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b +have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the +1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3 +address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address +1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt +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'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.

+ +

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 +(SLX +Debian Labs) were to accept donations in BitCoin like EFF is +doing, how should this be accounted? 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.

+ +

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 show 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'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.

+ +

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 "winner" 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 +BitCoin Pool +if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a +machine to participate there yet.