The responses to Bitcoin from different camps that encounter it have been fascinating to read. Bitcoin, like the Internet, is a mirror reflecting the philosophy of the person who is talking about it. Libertarians see it as a way out. Statists see it as a way of receiving the blessings of the state. and so […]
There is another interesting article over at Lew Rockwell about Bitcoin, which is a transcript of a conversation with Doug Casey, who we have blogged about before. This man is a truly great speaker and thinker, and as proof of this, I direct you to watch Mr. Casey in action. In the interview, Doug Casey […]
It is now clear where the lines dividing freedom minded people on the issue of Bitcoin are drawn. On the one side, you have mostly older computer illiterates who are out of their comfort zone, and on the other, you have younger computer literate people who are comfortable with both free market ideas, sound economics […]
MTGox, we discover, was the victim of an internal leak of their database. They were not hacked, and they are the victims of a criminal act of theft. The facts in this matter do not concern the people who are gloating over this event. There are a group of people who are violent in nature, […]
Some people believe that the design of Bitcoin is flawed, and that it cannot work. David Kramer is one of them and has made an interesting post over at Lew Rockwell, about Bitcoin. Lets take a look. I’m sure by now many of you have heard about Bitcoin. The fact that it’s called “virtual currency” […]
If you have been paying attention at all, you will have read about the mass manifestation, the acephalous Anonymous and their successful attacks on MasterCard, Visa and PayPal: What is interesting about all this is not that the sites of these large organisations have been bumped offline, but the slick consumer grade tools that are […]
There is much talk about the arbitrary imposition of a nonsensical “Bitlicense” on businesses based in New York that use Bitcoin to make a profit. Apart from the nauseating and unimaginative use of the prefix “Bit” in yet another context, this idea is of course, completely absurd and unethical. It’s also guaranteed that this bad […]
We just received notification that The Conet Project: TCP / 1111, the five disc edition, has successfully reached its funding goal, over by one percent. Thank you to everyone who blogged, tweeted, emailed, encouraged, and put their money where their mouths are. The further in to the twenty first century we go, the better it […]
Jon Matonis has another great article up at Forbes which replies to Fred Wilson the venture capitalist and principal of Union Square Ventures question about Bitcoin. Below is the text of our comment on this post, spurred on by a man asking people to essentially “sit down and shut up with the Anarchism jive”. Before […]
The Financial Services Club Blog has an interesting piece on Barclays Pingit: http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2012/05/case-study-barclays-pingit-for-consumers-and-corporates.html Pingit is the new service from Barclays that runs on iPhones and Android. In order to use it, you need to be a Barclays customer. Barclays Pingit is growing fast. They have over seven hundred thousand users. They are using the PayPal […]
TransferWise may or not be the next big thing, but as far as I can see their appeal is limited both in terms of who needs it, can use it, and the time it will take for them to be completely outflanked by superior services. The VentureBeat press release: http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/18/transferwise-undercuts-the-banks-with-crowdsourced-currency-exchange/ says “Banking is broken”; this […]
Mint Chip, the Canadian Royal Mint’s attempt to enter the digital money market, is doomed to fail. It is being thoroughly attacked from all sides, the technical, the philosophical and economic. Via a post on Slashdot, we are reminded of Bruce Schneier’s warning signs of Snake Oil, which the Mint Chip suffers from. What is […]
John Matonis has a new and excellent post on his ‘Monetary Future’ blog. In it, he logically goes through some of the issues surrounding Bitcoin. It is well worth reading. One section however, spurred this BLOGDIAL post. It’s the part about Vili Lehdonvirta’s ideas on ‘virtual goods’… […] I am worried that Bitcoin is a […]
The Satoshi Gate is a new way for Bloggers to monetize their writing. It is a WordPress plugin that allows you to collect very small, easy to make payments from your loyal readers. It works like this. When a user comes to your Blog, she is presented with a fresh Bitcoin address to which she […]
The US Dollar, the first pure fiat world reserve currency, has lost almost all of its value against gold, falling from $1 to around $1680 per ounce. It’s now looking increasingly likely that the record-high price of $1680 on June 8 represented the peak of a financial fraud that is now slowly unravelling. The interesting […]
THe title of this blog post is the number of seconds it took for the hive mind of Anonymous to reach the next iteration that we wrote about in December 2010. Here is the tweet posted around the time of the light bulb moment: If @LulzSec called for a #Paypal boycott it would make way […]
Oh dear me. It looks like the French are facing the New Labour disease of super Orwellian ID Cards to supplant their existing ID Card system. Did you know that you cannot buy a SIM card in France without presenting State ID? Appalling! It seems to me that they need to have a little Stonor […]