BitCoin

[Owen Densmore]

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

Families sending money to family in Africa, avoiding huge transaction fees for pennies of bitcoin fees.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

The third world carries its money in their phones.

WikiLeaks who takes BC as their only payment method, due to US pressure on international banking.

A Market on the lives of political leaders, on the likelihood of assassination, and guys who get a take of the stakes once they prove they done it.

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

And its trading very high against the dollar.

Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin? They interviewed a cupcake business that takes BC and they've made a bundle just on its huge increase in value.

   -- Owen

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[Steve Smith]

Does anyone in this group (including remote/non-SFe folks) own or have had some direct experience with the Oculus Rift pre-consumer models?

Matt and Janire (last year's Artists in Residence at SFx) have one now (in the UK) and I've a collaborator using one for viewing OmniStereo still images captured by the CaveCAM. 

My experience with (even professional grade) HMDs has always been disappointing, especially because of tracking lag/error.

It looks like the consumer model may be a System On a Chip (sorry Owen, not in a browser) running Android, available mid 2014.   Not clear how that plays *with* a computer, but is conceivable that the Android SoC has a "passthrough mode" that just displays whatever is coming in on it's video interface.

I almost pulled the trigger this week and ordered a Dev Kit but there is indication that the next hardware rev will have improved tracking.

  And *then* I discovered there is a new player on the (KickStarter) block...   This Technical Illusions castAR system is a glasses-mounted pair of pico-projectors that project onto a retroreflective screen surface.  It is sortof a proto-AnySurface(tm) system.  A head mounted projector (pair) with tracking, if you will.  A multi-view, shared space.  And *bonus*, a clip-on mini-screen turns these into an HMD very much like the Oculus Rift.

Their KickStarter video has a lot of obfuscating hype (live testimonials of people who have just seen it for the first time) but it looks like a very promising Alpha example of, as I said, AnySurface(tm) experience.

- Steve

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 11/20/13 8:07 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin?
It's pretty much hopeless to make money without an ASIC based system.  
CPUs and GPUs use too much power.

To get an idea how small of a contribution one system makes, the
collaborative mining sites are running in the hundreds of tera hashes a
second.   For a couple hundred bucks, a custom chip (via a USB-connected
box) can do 5 giga hashes a second.   These are just becoming available,
the vendors are backlogged on shipments.  To make more than a few bucks
a day, expect to spend several thousand dollars on card or rig that can
do a few hundred giga hashes a second.   But then you've got to mine
enough bitcoins to pay for it.

The collaborative mining sites make it easy to trade for U.S. dollars, etc.

Marcus

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[Arlo Barnes]

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

 See Comment two paragraphs below.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

 And some legal things. What amuses me about the Silk Road is the nicknames of the once and present kings (so to speak) of the site, the Dread Pirates Robert, being of course a reference to the Princess Bride and anticipating the capture of one and rise of the other in the tradition of the first, if that sentence is parsable..

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

 An undercorrected mistake: Illusive = an illusion. Elusive = it eludes one. But I agree, and the inherent complexity of the underlying cryptography makes it hard to talk about in sound-bite format - just in recent coverage, I have heard so many misconceptions about the computer science and politics involved with Bitcoin. Hopefully the cryptographers should be out in force with their diagrams. The best introduction to Bitcoin is a New Yorker article from a couple years ago, let me find it. [HERE] Doubtless not without imprecisions itself, but not so fearmongering.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

 Still wondering what is going to happen to the millions of bitcoin seized from the first Silk Road. Dump it on the market all at once to drive the price down? Withhold it forever?

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

 I have heard some of those that tend towards suspicion claim that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Their theory relies on Satoshi Nakamura owning a lot of Bitcoins currently. Which brings up the interesting question if we could guess which interactions are his based on inference.

And its trading very high against the dollar. Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin?

A friend gave me about 3μB⃦ if I remember correctly. I got tired of keeping the needy blockchain on my computer, so I sent most of those microcoins to an address with Electrum.

And on the New Mexico GNU/Linux User Group mailing list today (anyone else subscribed?) someone posted about their project https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/.

-Arlo

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[Pietro Terna]

    At http://coinmill.com/BTC_calculator.html#BTC=100 you have the values of 100 BC in ... any money.

    We are currently in a bubble, see the graphic (euros for 100 BC).

    Best, Pietro

Il 21/11/13 05:49, Arlo Barnes ha scritto:

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

 See Comment two paragraphs below.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

 And some legal things. What amuses me about the Silk Road is the nicknames of the once and present kings (so to speak) of the site, the Dread Pirates Robert, being of course a reference to the Princess Bride and anticipating the capture of one and rise of the other in the tradition of the first, if that sentence is parsable..

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

 An undercorrected mistake: Illusive = an illusion. Elusive = it eludes one. But I agree, and the inherent complexity of the underlying cryptography makes it hard to talk about in sound-bite format - just in recent coverage, I have heard so many misconceptions about the computer science and politics involved with Bitcoin. Hopefully the cryptographers should be out in force with their diagrams. The best introduction to Bitcoin is a New Yorker article from a couple years ago, let me find it. [HERE] Doubtless not without imprecisions itself, but not so fearmongering.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

 Still wondering what is going to happen to the millions of bitcoin seized from the first Silk Road. Dump it on the market all at once to drive the price down? Withhold it forever?

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

 I have heard some of those that tend towards suspicion claim that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Their theory relies on Satoshi Nakamura owning a lot of Bitcoins currently. Which brings up the interesting question if we could guess which interactions are his based on inference.

And its trading very high against the dollar. Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin?

A friend gave me about 3μB⃦ if I remember correctly. I got tired of keeping the needy blockchain on my computer, so I sent most of those microcoins to an address with Electrum.

And on the New Mexico GNU/Linux User Group mailing list today (anyone else subscribed?) someone posted about their project https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/.

-Arlo

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[scaganoff]

Just today I was in a usually locked room in our building and noticed someone's laptop connected to about a dozen bitcoin chips (FPGAs??). The control panel was open on the laptop and indicated a mining rate of 0.0036 bitcoins per day. That's one bitcoin per year. Seems like an awful lot of effort for a couple hundred bucks.

On 21 November 2013 19:23, Pietro Terna <[hidden email]> wrote:

    At http://coinmill.com/BTC_calculator.html#BTC=100 you have the values of 100 BC in ... any money.

    We are currently in a bubble, see the graphic (euros for 100 BC).

    Best, Pietro

Il 21/11/13 05:49, Arlo Barnes ha scritto:

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

 See Comment two paragraphs below.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

 And some legal things. What amuses me about the Silk Road is the nicknames of the once and present kings (so to speak) of the site, the Dread Pirates Robert, being of course a reference to the Princess Bride and anticipating the capture of one and rise of the other in the tradition of the first, if that sentence is parsable..

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

 An undercorrected mistake: Illusive = an illusion. Elusive = it eludes one. But I agree, and the inherent complexity of the underlying cryptography makes it hard to talk about in sound-bite format - just in recent coverage, I have heard so many misconceptions about the computer science and politics involved with Bitcoin. Hopefully the cryptographers should be out in force with their diagrams. The best introduction to Bitcoin is a New Yorker article from a couple years ago, let me find it. [HERE] Doubtless not without imprecisions itself, but not so fearmongering.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

 Still wondering what is going to happen to the millions of bitcoin seized from the first Silk Road. Dump it on the market all at once to drive the price down? Withhold it forever?

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

 I have heard some of those that tend towards suspicion claim that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Their theory relies on Satoshi Nakamura owning a lot of Bitcoins currently. Which brings up the interesting question if we could guess which interactions are his based on inference.

And its trading very high against the dollar. Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin?

A friend gave me about 3μB⃦ if I remember correctly. I got tired of keeping the needy blockchain on my computer, so I sent most of those microcoins to an address with Electrum.

And on the New Mexico GNU/Linux User Group mailing list today (anyone else subscribed?) someone posted about their project https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/.

-Arlo

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-- 
The world is full of interesting problems to be solved!
Home page http://web.econ.unito.it/terna or http://goo.gl/y0zbx

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--
Saul Caganoff
Enterprise IT Architect
Mobile: [phone]
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scaganoff

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 11/21/13 3:28 AM, Saul Caganoff wrote:
> The control panel was open on the laptop and indicated a mining rate
> of 0.0036 bitcoins per day.
A $150 ASIC miner runs at about 0.0039 per day.

Marcus

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[Owen Densmore]

The devkit is $300 .. does that also include the HW?  If so thats quite a deal!

   -- Owen

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Does anyone in this group (including remote/non-SFe folks) own or have had some direct experience with the Oculus Rift pre-consumer models?

Matt and Janire (last year's Artists in Residence at SFx) have one now (in the UK) and I've a collaborator using one for viewing OmniStereo still images captured by the CaveCAM. 

My experience with (even professional grade) HMDs has always been disappointing, especially because of tracking lag/error.

It looks like the consumer model may be a System On a Chip (sorry Owen, not in a browser) running Android, available mid 2014.   Not clear how that plays *with* a computer, but is conceivable that the Android SoC has a "passthrough mode" that just displays whatever is coming in on it's video interface.

I almost pulled the trigger this week and ordered a Dev Kit but there is indication that the next hardware rev will have improved tracking.

  And *then* I discovered there is a new player on the (KickStarter) block...   This Technical Illusions castAR system is a glasses-mounted pair of pico-projectors that project onto a retroreflective screen surface.  It is sortof a proto-AnySurface(tm) system.  A head mounted projector (pair) with tracking, if you will.  A multi-view, shared space.  And *bonus*, a clip-on mini-screen turns these into an HMD very much like the Oculus Rift.

Their KickStarter video has a lot of obfuscating hype (live testimonials of people who have just seen it for the first time) but it looks like a very promising Alpha example of, as I said, AnySurface(tm) experience.

- Steve

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[cody dooderson]

What do you think the first country to adopt bitcoins as it's official currency will be? Has it happened yet? Will that make the value go up?

Cody Smith

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:23 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 11/21/13 3:28 AM, Saul Caganoff wrote:

The control panel was open on the laptop and indicated a mining rate of 0.0036 bitcoins per day.

A $150 ASIC miner runs at about 0.0039 per day.

Marcus

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[Steve Smith]

The devkit is $300 .. does that also include the HW?  If so thats quite a deal!

Yes it is...   beats my pair of iPhone3's wedged into a Victorian StereOpticon

   -- Owen

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Does anyone in this group (including remote/non-SFe folks) own or have had some direct experience with the Oculus Rift pre-consumer models?

Matt and Janire (last year's Artists in Residence at SFx) have one now (in the UK) and I've a collaborator using one for viewing OmniStereo still images captured by the CaveCAM. 

My experience with (even professional grade) HMDs has always been disappointing, especially because of tracking lag/error.

It looks like the consumer model may be a System On a Chip (sorry Owen, not in a browser) running Android, available mid 2014.   Not clear how that plays *with* a computer, but is conceivable that the Android SoC has a "passthrough mode" that just displays whatever is coming in on it's video interface.

I almost pulled the trigger this week and ordered a Dev Kit but there is indication that the next hardware rev will have improved tracking.

  And *then* I discovered there is a new player on the (KickStarter) block...   This Technical Illusions castAR system is a glasses-mounted pair of pico-projectors that project onto a retroreflective screen surface.  It is sortof a proto-AnySurface(tm) system.  A head mounted projector (pair) with tracking, if you will.  A multi-view, shared space.  And *bonus*, a clip-on mini-screen turns these into an HMD very much like the Oculus Rift.

Their KickStarter video has a lot of obfuscating hype (live testimonials of people who have just seen it for the first time) but it looks like a very promising Alpha example of, as I said, AnySurface(tm) experience.

- Steve

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[glen ep ropella]

On 11/21/2013 08:44 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
> What do you think the first country to adopt bitcoins as it's official
> currency will be? Has it happened yet? Will that make the value go up?

I think it'll be one of these:

   http://www.seasteading.org/

--
glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847

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[Owen Densmore]

Whew, pretty Neil Stevenson!

One aspect that may be missed by us new to BC is the "SETI@home" approach: You basically "rent" access to your computer to gain BCs.

I had an idea once that maybe we should give computers away, but with the provision that you give 30%, say, of its resources to us.  You do the care and feeding (updates, power, internet) but have free computing.

We on the other hand gain a vast computational facility, a Computer@home.

   -- Owen

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:17 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 11/21/2013 08:44 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
> What do you think the first country to adopt bitcoins as it's official
> currency will be? Has it happened yet? Will that make the value go up?

I think it'll be one of these:

   http://www.seasteading.org/

--
glen ep ropella -- <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]">971-255-2847

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[Steve Smith]

Glen sed:

I think it'll be one of these:

   http://www.seasteading.org/

Why does this make me think of that Kevin Costner Post Apocalyptic movie?

Dances with Jet Skis?

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[Gillian Densmore]

Greetings:

Hmm. Interesting. I know at one point the OculusRift was going for some kickstarter funding. Some of those were game publishers for online gaming. Names that surfaced included ID Software, Activison, and Sony. I wouldn't be to suprised if one of the things they're devs could help lower development cost. Real time response being a big thing for game publishers I wouldn't be suprised if they could bring that to the table as well.

Android though isn't known for being consistant with realtime response.

Can google get android right on the phone? Dodgy at that.

This makes me skeptical that android would pan out well for the Rift stuff.

Steve you may know the name, and have some insight. At a some dev confrence,  A MS Dev had said that it's on the table for the Kinect to have some sort of imersive environment doodad- that didn't require having a tv screen on your face. I bring it up because that kind of thing may have more longevity in terms of extended use. I'd love to here your insight and experience with either one.

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Does anyone in this group (including remote/non-SFe folks) own or have had some direct experience with the Oculus Rift pre-consumer models?

Matt and Janire (last year's Artists in Residence at SFx) have one now (in the UK) and I've a collaborator using one for viewing OmniStereo still images captured by the CaveCAM. 

My experience with (even professional grade) HMDs has always been disappointing, especially because of tracking lag/error.

It looks like the consumer model may be a System On a Chip (sorry Owen, not in a browser) running Android, available mid 2014.   Not clear how that plays *with* a computer, but is conceivable that the Android SoC has a "passthrough mode" that just displays whatever is coming in on it's video interface.

I almost pulled the trigger this week and ordered a Dev Kit but there is indication that the next hardware rev will have improved tracking.

  And *then* I discovered there is a new player on the (KickStarter) block...   This Technical Illusions castAR system is a glasses-mounted pair of pico-projectors that project onto a retroreflective screen surface.  It is sortof a proto-AnySurface(tm) system.  A head mounted projector (pair) with tracking, if you will.  A multi-view, shared space.  And *bonus*, a clip-on mini-screen turns these into an HMD very much like the Oculus Rift.

Their KickStarter video has a lot of obfuscating hype (live testimonials of people who have just seen it for the first time) but it looks like a very promising Alpha example of, as I said, AnySurface(tm) experience.

- Steve

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[glen ropella]

On 11/21/2013 09:50 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Why does this make me think of that Kevin Costner Post Apocalyptic movie?

Damnit.  Renee's been watching movies on my mind-control machine again.
 Sorry about that.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Arlo Barnes]

Ah, like Sealand, except that they already use the SX$.

I would volunteer my nation, except we already "use" the ƺ and the Monetary Unit ᶆ.

However, I wonder if a physical currency can be backed by Bitcoins, just as most physical currencies today are backed by fiat and used to be backed by the value of the metal in them (or for paper, metal stored en masse elsewhere).

-Arlo

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 10:17 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 11/21/2013 08:44 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
> What do you think the first country to adopt bitcoins as it's official
> currency will be? Has it happened yet? Will that make the value go up?

I think it'll be one of these:
   http://www.seasteading.org/
--glen ep ropella -- <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]">971-255-2847

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[David Eric Smith]

However, I wonder if a physical currency can be backed by Bitcoins, just as most physical currencies today are backed by fiat and used to be backed by the value of the metal in them (or for paper, metal stored en masse elsewhere).

It's a neat question Arlo. I would add along-side it the question whether credit markets denominated in bitcoins can be introduced and made stable.  I know that all positions on what I am about to say have wide divergences in opinion, but I think an argument can be made -- most particularly for a national currency that is the only legally recognized medium of exchange -- that problems of supply and distribution can cause the exchange economy to either impose unwanted shocks on the real-goods sector, or transmit them between real-goods sectors in ways that one would consider non-ideal.  It is surely hard, and may be impossible, for a central bank to regulate total money supply with the flexibility needed to respond to the constant demand fluctuations in the real-goods (and services, etc.) sectors for levels of trade.  Even if they could regulate total supply, there probably is no way to provide for shocks in the distribution of money and the need for it.  Presumably whatever regulatory mechanisms are used for bitcoin mining (which I have not made any adequate effort to understand) will have the same difficulties, even under good management.  This seems to be the best argument for a decentralized (but as transparent and regulated as possible) credit market, the contracts of which inherit legal protection from the money in which it is denominated: it can respond to local needs and local evaluation problems, varying the effective money supply in ways that the total supply cannot be varied.  But then one introduces a whole host of problems of design and regulation of that system, which bring us the constant problem of credit bubbles and crashes.  They become catastrophes when most of the money that people are taking for granted in the process of planning their activities is private credit that can suddenly dry up, even if the underlying government money remains sound, because then one gets huge fluctuations in the money supply which the government has very little power to buffer.  

Maybe as long as bitcoin is a discretionary currency and not exclusive to some geographic region and its laws, there isn't so much advantage to adding a private credit layer on top of it.  If some group wanted to go to it exclusively, though, I assume these questions would come back as they have for sovereign national currencies.  

Don't know what to do with this question to move toward any insight.

Eric

 

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[Parks, Raymond]

Are you thinking about Kinect VR?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7agnTVMjSy4

Or, possibly, Paperdude VR?

http://vimeo.com/?1336141

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Nov 21, 2013, at 11:16 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

Greetings:

Hmm. Interesting. I know at one point the OculusRift was going for some kickstarter funding. Some of those were game publishers for online gaming. Names that surfaced included ID Software, Activison, and Sony. I wouldn't be to suprised if one of the things they're devs could help lower development cost. Real time response being a big thing for game publishers I wouldn't be suprised if they could bring that to the table as well.

Android though isn't known for being consistant with realtime response.

Can google get android right on the phone? Dodgy at that.

This makes me skeptical that android would pan out well for the Rift stuff.

Steve you may know the name, and have some insight. At a some dev confrence,  A MS Dev had said that it's on the table for the Kinect to have some sort of imersive environment doodad- that didn't require having a tv screen on your face. I bring it up because that kind of thing may have more longevity in terms of extended use. I'd love to here your insight and experience with either one.

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Does anyone in this group (including remote/non-SFe folks) own or have had some direct experience with the Oculus Rift pre-consumer models?

Matt and Janire (last year's Artists in Residence at SFx) have one now (in the UK) and I've a collaborator using one for viewing OmniStereo still images captured by the CaveCAM. 

My experience with (even professional grade) HMDs has always been disappointing, especially because of tracking lag/error.

It looks like the consumer model may be a System On a Chip (sorry Owen, not in a browser) running Android, available mid 2014.   Not clear how that plays *with* a computer, but is conceivable that the Android SoC has a "passthrough mode" that just displays whatever is coming in on it's video interface.

I almost pulled the trigger this week and ordered a Dev Kit but there is indication that the next hardware rev will have improved tracking.

  And *then* I discovered there is a new player on the (KickStarter) block...   This Technical Illusions castAR system is a glasses-mounted pair of pico-projectors that project onto a retroreflective screen surface.  It is sortof a proto-AnySurface(tm) system.  A head mounted projector (pair) with tracking, if you will.  A multi-view, shared space.  And *bonus*, a clip-on mini-screen turns these into an HMD very much like the Oculus Rift.

Their KickStarter video has a lot of obfuscating hype (live testimonials of people who have just seen it for the first time) but it looks like a very promising Alpha example of, as I said, AnySurface(tm) experience.

- Steve

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[Giles Bowkett]

Hello! I bought some BTC back when they were $40 each. They went down to $10 so I sold them. But then I decided against it and bought 3.475 more, for around $34.75. I sold the 0.475 the other day for ~$337. I obviously now wish I'd bought more when they were $10.

My Bitcoins could be diamonds or Beanie Babies, so I don't know if I'm going to retire on them 20 years from now or just think of them as a nostalgic joke. Only time will tell.

This is the best (even-handed) thing I've seen recently on Bitcoin:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html

This is the classic (wildly optimistic) thing on Bitcoin, I think:

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

And this is something (handy but not amazing) which I built: http://btcusd.gilesb.com/

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:07 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

Families sending money to family in Africa, avoiding huge transaction fees for pennies of bitcoin fees.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

The third world carries its money in their phones.

WikiLeaks who takes BC as their only payment method, due to US pressure on international banking.

A Market on the lives of political leaders, on the likelihood of assassination, and guys who get a take of the stakes once they prove they done it.

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

And its trading very high against the dollar.

Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin? They interviewed a cupcake business that takes BC and they've made a bundle just on its huge increase in value.

   -- Owen

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--
Giles Bowkett
http://gilesbowkett.com

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[Owen Densmore]

Have you bought anything with BCs?  The California cupcake seller accepting them was a great story, and interesting that they have grown considerably in value must have helped her business too!

   -- Owen

On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Giles Bowkett <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello! I bought some BTC back when they were $40 each. They went down to $10 so I sold them. But then I decided against it and bought 3.475 more, for around $34.75. I sold the 0.475 the other day for ~$337. I obviously now wish I'd bought more when they were $10.

My Bitcoins could be diamonds or Beanie Babies, so I don't know if I'm going to retire on them 20 years from now or just think of them as a nostalgic joke. Only time will tell.

This is the best (even-handed) thing I've seen recently on Bitcoin:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html

This is the classic (wildly optimistic) thing on Bitcoin, I think:

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

And this is something (handy but not amazing) which I built: http://btcusd.gilesb.com/

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:07 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Just listened to an NPR discussion of bitcoin.  Fascinating!  Good for bad-guys, and good-guys.

Families sending money to family in Africa, avoiding huge transaction fees for pennies of bitcoin fees.

The Silk Road market where you can buy all sorts of illegal things.

The third world carries its money in their phones.

WikiLeaks who takes BC as their only payment method, due to US pressure on international banking.

A Market on the lives of political leaders, on the likelihood of assassination, and guys who get a take of the stakes once they prove they done it.

BC is illusive. Like another "bit", bit torrent, it's so distributed and p2p that its hard to get your brain around it.

Even the Fed Reserve admires it and is interested in its future.

And in terms of legality, it an offense to steal it and a guy is being tried for a ponzi scheme involving BC.

And its trading very high against the dollar.

Has anyone gotten involved? Got a bitcoin? They interviewed a cupcake business that takes BC and they've made a bundle just on its huge increase in value.

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Giles Bowkett
http://gilesbowkett.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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