Today the Christian Science Monitor published an profile of Homero "Josh" Garza featuring selection from an interview they conducted before the North American Bitcoin conference. Most of the information in the profile is not going to be new to anyone who has been following the GAW saga, but the profile covers Garza's history of serial entrepreneurship from Optima Technology and Great Awk Wireless to GAW Miners. Continue reading
Category Archives: Bitcoin
Group Proposes Bitcoin Wallet Privacy Ratings Criteria
A group referring to itself as the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project has recently released a draft set of criteria for comment that they would like to use for evaluating and rating different Bitcoin wallets from a privacy perspective. The criteria include a number of points about wallet behavior alongside a number of other factors. The heading under which their proposed criteria fall include: Continue reading
Bitcoin Finance in 2014
Bitcoin had a tumultuous year in 2014. The headline news all year was the greatest collapse in the exchange rate since 2013 (remember in April '13 when Bitcoin went from $260 to $50?). There were also scams enacted on a massive scale – the size of which had not been seen since 2012. Very few businesses flourished, and many floundered. All in all, just another year in the single most fun and exciting phenomenon of our lifetime. Continue reading
Gavin Andresen On Future Blockchain Security: I Dunno LOL!
Undeterred in his attempt to fork the Bitcoin network, Gavin Andresen today posted an update to his blog in which he attempts to spread fear by implying users will switch to "substitute goods" or in other words an altcoin unless an increase to the blocksize is made. That portion of his update, bolding by USGavin himself, reads: Continue reading
Prosecutors Seek to Bar DPR Interview From Jury – Updated
In Wired Andy Greenberg writes that the Preet Bharara's team prosecuting the Silk Road case wants to bar the Jury from being exposed to the only interview done with the Dread Pirate Roberts of the Silk Road. The interview done by Andy Greenberg for Forbes is notable for sounding to Department of Homeland Security agents a lot like Mark Karpelès and containing a number of answers from the Dread Pirate Roberts which supports the argument presently being advanced by the defense that in spite of founding the Silk Road and being caught holding the bad for the Silk Road Ulbricht had little to do with the Silk Road for most of its history. Continue reading
Assbot Gains Web of Trust Functionality
Recent downtime for nanotube's gribble bot on Freenode demonstrated a critical single point of failure in Bitcoin infrastructure. Today as a remedy to the problem Kakobrekla unveiled asswot functionality in assbot greatly increasing the robustness of the infrastructure Bitcoin business builds on top of. In an important improvement in the authentication model, all Web of Trust operations are now authenticated by decrypting one time passwords. The one time passwords expire within 15 minutes of being invoked, but assbot supports receiving decrypted passwords out of order.
Roger Ver and America's Emigration Dilemma
Last week Roger Ver revealed that the United States Embassy in Barbados has denied his requests for a visa to attend some Bitcoin related conferences in the United States. As reported by Ver his requests for a visa are denied because in the Embassy's determination he lacks sufficient connections to his new homeland of St Kitts and Nevis to prevent him from overstaying his visa and essentially immigrating back into the United States illegally. This incident highlights a number of ways in which the United States acts on the international stage not as a peer state with others, but as a rogue state. Continue reading
Transaction Fees and the Future of Bitcoin
An interesting side effect of the recent Bitcoin price crash as reported by exchanges has been the drop in hashrate which has created a glimpse into the future of Bitcoin. A future where transaction fees serve their intended purpose as both an antispam measure and valuable component of the miner reward. Continue reading
Pierre Omidyar also started a Qntra back in October. His failed.
We find via Conde Nast's1 Wired that something something Racket something something soft launch something something closed. Their glee is hardly concealed, but it will be short lived. Everyone in your school failing the same exam you marginally passed once does not really mean all that much ; there's other schools out there. The better parts : Continue reading
Also owners of Reddit, and generally a stronghold of all that is evil in the world. Check out The Awl's recent leak of their upcoming three-rule-binder for office drones to get an idea. Golden bits in there like
Please. WIRED is no longer a pirate ship. It's the home of world-changing journalism.
and
And it's increasingly a place where we, and our New York colleagues and owners, host artists, founders, CEOs, and advertisers.
Obama's "close down the world, mulatto in chief's coming for a visit" is slowly but surely trickling down through the entire stack of utterly corrupt, government-sponsored, government-backed, QE-fed leeches and aparatchicks. It's arrived to the point where Conde Nast is actually kicking out the last remaining workhorses in the stables to make room for Barnum. ↩
BitPay Lays Off 9 Employees Today
According to social media postings and sources familiar with BitPay the company has laid off 9 employees today. These layoffs come not long after BitPay has finished spending on the first of three Bitcoin Bowls they have committed to sponsor in an obligation that runs through December 2016. Continue reading