Bitcoin Doesn't Need a Dongle. The real Wall Street occupation is online - Ideas@Innovations. Protestors at Occupy Wall Street's media area coordinate news updates on laptop computers. (John Minchillo - AP) The Occupy Wall Street movement, now that it has broadened in scope beyond the financial district of Manhattan to attain a truly national — even global — scale has the potential to lay the groundwork for a new generation of start-ups capable of reshaping the financial system in radically new ways.
These tech start-ups, while officially unaffiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, are nonetheless responding to the unmet needs of these protesters, individuals who feel abandoned by the current financial system. The breakout company of the Occupy Wall Street movement thus far has been Palo Alto-based WePay, a start-up largely unknown until the protest movement began September 17. Over the past 45 days, WePay has become the de facto official way to send money to the “Occupy” protesters while simultaneously bypassing the largest financial institutions.
Brainwallet: The Ultimate in Mobile Money. Utilities. The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin | Magazine. In November 1, 2008, a man named Satoshi Nakamoto posted a research paper to an obscure cryptography listserv describing his design for a new digital currency that he called bitcoin. None of the list’s veterans had heard of him, and what little information could be gleaned was murky and contradictory. In an online profile, he said he lived in Japan. His email address was from a free German service.
Google searches for his name turned up no relevant information; it was clearly a pseudonym. One of the core challenges of designing a digital currency involves something called the double-spending problem. Bitcoin did away with the third party by publicly distributing the ledger, what Nakamoto called the “block chain.” When Nakamoto’s paper came out in 2008, trust in the ability of governments and banks to manage the economy and the money supply was at its nadir. Nakamoto himself mined the first 50 bitcoins—which came to be called the genesis block—on January 3, 2009.
Bitcoin 101 Play Dough. 'Devastating' protocol flaw could paralyze Bitcoin system. Computer scientists say they've identified a fundamental flaw in the Bitcoin electronic currency system that could eventually stunt its development unless developers change the way users are rewarded for their participation. With about 7.5 million Bitcoins in circulation, the highly decentralized system relies on public-key cryptography and a peer-to-peer network to record who is the rightful owner of each individual piece of currency.
When Alice wants to pay Bob 50 coins, she signs the transaction with her private key and broadcasts the details to other nodes. Other participants then receive a small fee in return for verifying the payment, which is done by inverting the cryptographic hashes generated by in the transaction record. As the currency grows into maturity and an ancillary scheme that allows Bitcoins to be created out of thin air is phased out, the verification of other transactions will be Bitcoin's sole reward scheme.
Explanatory Articles. Following a 1,000,000% Gain, a Slow-Motion Crash (^DJI, ABX, NEM) No, there's not the slightest touch of hyperbole to that headline. Rather, it's the completely accurate, if exceedingly brief, tale of Bitcoin's short life. Far from dead, however, the digital currency continues to hold promise, and its trajectory bears more than a passing glance. When I first wrote about Bitcoin in June, it had recently gone parabolic, first crossing the $1 mark, and then rapidly shooting up to the $9 range (if you don't know a Bitcoin from a Malaysian ringgit, see my previous article). The ascent, however, was still in the middle innings. Then, of course, the inevitable occurred. Was a bubble phenomenon in the cards for Bitcoin from the get-go? Rendering Bitcoin susceptible to bubble dynamics is its immediate appeal as a genuine, if fledgling, fiat money alternative; its relatively illiquid trading market acts as a double whammy. But what about the long-term prospects?
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