Lifeboat Foundation

Joon Ian Wong — CoinDesk

Bitcoin is now available at 874 self-service payment terminals across Romania, thanks to a partnership between ATM operator Bitcoin Romania and terminal network operator ZebraPay.

The ZebraPay terminals will allow customers to buy bitcoin at a 4% commission on prices taken from the Cointrader exchange. The terminals are one-way, so customers can only trade their Romanian leu for bitcoin.

Continue reading “Over 800 Payment Terminals in Romania Now Sell Bitcoin” »

Andrew Barisser — Assembly Coins, Crytocoins News

Andrew Barisser of Assembly Coins makes strong arguments for building on top of the pure Bitcoin blockchain, rather than creating alternatives.

Recently he wrote an open letter to Reddit, where he argued that Reddit should stick to a pure Bitcoin blockchain approach to building their planned cryptocurrency initiative, rather than going sidewise with alternative approaches. Now, probably prompted from the recent news about the Medici stock exchange that is being developed with Counterparty technology, Barisser wrote a post to criticize Counterparty.

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Tom Sharkey — Coindesk

South African payments provider Wallettec has partnered with BitPay to integrate bitcoin with its point-of-sale (POS) payment platform.

The company worked with South African BitPay affiliate Bitcoin Payments to allow merchants using its platform to accept bitcoin payments via in-store POS devices.

Continue reading “Wallettec Brings Bitcoin Point-of-Sale Solution to South Africa” »

Written By: Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

Bitcoin is a decentralized, digital currency. It was invented by a mysterious individual known by the handle, Satoshi Nakamoto. A bitcoin is volatile but is currently worth about $380; regulators are increasingly interested; retailers too—true believers believe.

These headlines you’ve likely read. But where the hell do bitcoins come from anyway? They’re mined by computers making calculations lightning fast—or in this case, by a man with sixteen minutes’ free time, a pencil, and pad of paper.

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Quoted: “Ethereum will also be a decentralised exchange system, but with one big distinction. While Bitcoin allows transactions, Ethereum aims to offer a system by which arbitrary messages can be passed to the blockchain. More to the point, these messages can contain code, written in a Turing-complete scripting language native to Ethereum. In simple terms, Ethereum claims to allow users to write entire programs and have the blockchain execute them on the creator’s behalf. Crucially, Turing-completeness means that in theory any program that could be made to run on a computer should run in Ethereum.” And, quoted: “As a more concrete use-case, Ethereum could be utilised to create smart contracts, pieces of code that once deployed become autonomous agents in their own right, executing pre-programmed instructions. An example could be escrow services, which automatically release funds to a seller once a buyer verifies that they have received the agreed products.”

Read Part One of this Series here » Ethereum — Bitcoin 2.0? And, What Is Ethereum.

Read Part Two of this Series here » Ethereum — Opportunities and Challenges.

Read Part Three of this Series here » Ethereum — A Summary.

Quoted: “Bitcoin technology offers a fundamentally different approach to vote collection with its decentralized and automated secure protocol. It solves the problems of both paper ballot and electronic voting machines, enabling a cost effective, efficient, open system that is easily audited by both individual voters and the entire community. Bitcoin technology can enable a system where every voter can verify that their vote was counted, see votes for different candidates/issues cast in real time, and be sure that there is no fraud or manipulation by election workers.”

Read the article here » http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239809?hootPostID=ba473f…aacc8412c7

Quoted: “The Factom team suggested that its proposal could be leveraged to execute some of the crypto 2.0 functionalities that are beginning to take shape on the market today. These include creating trustless audit chains, property title chains, record keeping for sensitive personal, medical and corporate materials, and public accountability mechanisms.

During the AMA, the Factom president was asked how the technology could be leveraged to shape the average person’s daily life.”

Kirby responded:

“Factom creates permanent records that can’t be changed later. In a Factom world, there’s no more robo-signing scandals. In a Factom world, there are no more missing voting records. In a Factom world, you know where every dollar of government money was spent. Basically, the whole world is made up of record keeping and, as a consumer, you’re at the mercy of the fragmented systems that run these records.”

Continue reading “BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology — FACTOM” »

Preamble: Bitcoin 1.0 is currency — the deployment of cryptocurrencies in applications related to cash such as currency transfer, remittance, and digital payment systems. Bitcoin 2.0 is contracts — the whole slate of economic, market, and financial applications using the blockchain that are more extensive than simple cash transactions like stocks, bonds, futures, loans, mortgages, titles, smart property, and smart contracts

Bitcoin 3.0 is blockchain applications beyond currency, finance, and markets, particularly in the areas of government, health, science, literacy, culture, and art.

Read the article here » http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/swan20141110

My Brief Q&A session with Christoffer De Geer, about BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology.

This Q&A was first published by Mr. Geir Solem, Director of Cryptor Trust Inc., on the Cryptor Primary Investor Blog (Date: October 31, 2014).

Quote: “BitCoin was the first small step in what I believe will be a truly transformational journey, for each and every one of us. In 10 Years Cryptocurrency and Blockchains have every chance to have the same, or greater, impact on our lives, society, and civiliation, as the creation of Email had to the Postal Service, and the Fax Machine as compared to the Internet; in 25 Years Monetary Systems, Systems of Trade and Exchange, Systems of Transaction of Goods, Ledger and Recordation Systems, Everything You Know – Will – Be – Different – and, Unrecognizable relative to what we know today at the end of the year 2014.”

See the Q&A article here » [Article: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency, and Blockchain Technology] (more…)