background preloader

Reporting

Facebook Twitter

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable - Gawker. Bitcoin, the Darknet Economy, and the Low Over-Head Revolution - The Bitcoin Sun. Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World - Industry. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency with no centralized authority, that provides some level of anonymity to its users. How To Start Your Own Private Currency - Derek Thompson - Business.

It's not as complicated as it sounds.

How To Start Your Own Private Currency - Derek Thompson - Business

All you need is a system other people can understand and, most importantly, trust. Here's a nightmare scenario shared by some mainstream investors, goldbugs and Ron Paul devotees: The year is 2013. Inflation has the U.S. economy in a stranglehold. International investors are fleeing to the far corners of the globe. The dollar is in a free fall, and Americans are scurrying to protect their wealth. Start your own currency. It sounds complicated, but really it's as simple as three steps. No gold? Bitcoin: Is the virtual currency for online drug buys doomed. The BitCoin Project.

Every once in a while a new idea comes along that simply stops me in my tracks and makes me think.

The BitCoin Project

I enjoy these moment because they are few, far between and almost always leave me enriched in some way - simply by gaining knowledge of a new concept or idea, having a misconception corrected or, in the rarest of examples, having a total philosophical epiphany. I can't say that the BitCoin Project qualifies as an epiphany, but it comes close. Currency handling professionals inherently understand the effects on our industry caused by recent events in the banking world. One of the more significant implications for us is that there is more currency in circulation than ever before, which places ever increasing demands on the supply chain infrastructure to ensure timely and consistent movement, thereby assuring availability.

We all feel that the demise of cash money will not happen in our lifetimes. Enter the BitCoin Project. Something to think about! And Bitcoin. For several months, EFF has been following the movement around Bitcoin, an electronic payment system that touts itself as "the first decentralized digital currency.

and Bitcoin

" We helped inform our members about this unique project through our blog and we experimented with accepting Bitcoin donations for several months in an account that was started by others. However, we’ve recently removed the Bitcoin donation option from the Other Ways to Help page on the EFF website, and we have decided to not accept Bitcoins. The World's First Bitcoin Conference. Being at the opening of the world’s first Bitcoin conference was like showing up for the first day of camp—a boys’ camp—and finding that everyone already knew one another in an alternate universe.

The World's First Bitcoin Conference

For a couple of days in August, the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City served as a real-world meeting place for about 50 people who had spent months riffing with one another on the phone, in chat rooms, and over Skype. They came to talk about how Bitcoin could change the world—and how it could make them rich. Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency designed to resolve the discord between the way we move money online and the decentralized nature of the Web. The Internet has already eliminated other barriers to communication and trade, such as time and geography. You can browse Moroccan floor tiles in a virtual showroom at 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve if you feel the urge, but paying for your purchase will inevitably require the cooperation of a third party.

Symantec Uncovers Bitcoin-Stealing Trojan. Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency. Editor’s note: Stan Stalnaker is the founding director of Hub Culture, a social network that revolves around a virtual currency called Ven.

Bitcoin, Ven and the End of Currency

In this guest post, he extrapolates where virtual currencies like Ven and Bitcoins may take us. Virtual currencies are in the news again with all the discussion around Bitcoins, which is limited in supply and can be exchanged anonymously. Our own long experience with another digital currency, Ven, has made us think about the logical conclusion of these activities, and what it means for money at large. And what it means is the end of money as we know it. Digital currencies are really just online account books that measure and record transactions of financial value between nodes on the Internet. So in 2008 we assigned Ven a value language—10 VEN = 1 USD—and began to sell it for redemption between members and in Pavilions (retail places developed to accept the currency). Bitcoin theft: half a million dollars gone?

Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks. Late last year, after WikiLeaks began releasing its trove of State Department cables, many individuals sought to show solidarity with the group by making a donation.

Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments, Banks

They found, however, that many payment processors would not remit money to WikiLeaks, some say as a result of U.S. government pressure. PayPal even froze the group’s account so it couldn’t access funds already collected. “Hey, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal: It’s MY money,” media critic Jeff Jarvis tweeted at the time. “How DARE you tell me where I can and can’t spend it?” Intermediaries as Choke Points Whether or not payment processors ought to be telling us how to spend our money online, the fact is they can. Online gambling and sports betting is perfectly legal in countries like the UK, Ireland and Australia, and a resident of the U.S. will have no problem reaching the websites of gaming sites from those countries. True Digital Cash.