Lifeboat Foundation

Bitcoin survived a wild youth marked by drug trafficking, money laundering, theft, bankruptcy, and political spats. Now, the digital currency is getting cleaned up and heading to grad school.

A fledgling project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab is offering researchers and software developers a quiet home to work on bitcoin’s core technology, a computer science breakthrough that lets people trade money securely without paying a middleman. Read more

Cryptocurrency aficionados have been discussing Bitcoin limitations ever since the blockchain buzz hit the street. Geeks toss around ideas for clearing transactions faster, resisting potential attacks, rewarding miners after the last coin is mined, and supporting anonymity (or the opposite—if you lean toward the dark side). There are many areas in which Bitcoin could be improved, or made more conducive to one camp or another.

Distinguished Penn State professor, John Carroll, believes that Bitcoin may eventually be marginalized due to its early arrival. He believes that its limitations will eventually be overcome by newer “altcoins”, presumably with improved mechanisms.

So, does progress in any of these areas threaten the reigning champ? It’s unlikely…

More than any other individual, Andreas Antonopoulos is the face of Bitcoin. We discussed this very issue in the outer lobby of the MIT Bitcoin Expo at which he was keynote speaker (March 2015). Then, we discussed it again, when I hosted his presentation at The Bitcoin Event in New York (also in March). He clearly and succinctly explained to me why it is unlikely that an altcoin will replace Bitcoin as the dominant—and eventually surviving—cryptocurrency…

Continue reading “Could Bitcoin be Dethroned by an Altcoin?” »

“Cryptosteel is an indestructible private cold storage system not only for Bitcoin users”

https://vimeo.com/128299690

http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"},{"width":1240,"height":826,"url":"http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1240x826/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"},{"width":1920,"height":1280,"url":"http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1920x1280/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"},{"width":458,"height":305,"url":"http://cdni.wired.co.uk/458x305/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"},{"width":281,"height":187,"url":"http://cdni.wired.co.uk/281x187/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"},{"width":195,"height":130,"url":"http://cdni.wired.co.uk/195x130/a_c/bitcoin_18.jpg"}]}" />

“When you combine Bitcoin’s global scope, its extreme divisibility and its ability to verify transactions without third parties, you end up with a system where engaging in exchanges of economic value becomes nearly as friction-free as tweeting or texting.” Read more

“But if Bitcoin is ever used by enough people so that blocks are 90 or even 100 percent full, the network could become congested to the point of unusability. The solution, Andresen believes, is to increase the size of each block to 20 megabytes by 2016. How? By changing Bitcoin’s underlying protocol and splitting the blockchain into two different versions—one using 1 megabyte blocks and the other using 20 megabyte blocks.” Read more

By Felix Salmon — Mother Jones

Nathaniel Popper’s new book, Digital Gold, is as close as you can get to being the definitive account of the history of Bitcoin. As its subtitle proclaims, the book tells the story of the “misfits” (the first generation of hacker-libertarians) and “millionaires” (the second generation of Silicon Valley venture capitalists) who were responsible for building Bitcoin, mining it, hyping it, and, in at least some cases, getting rich off it.

The tale is selective, of course: Not everybody involved with Bitcoin talked to Popper, and the identity of Bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains a mystery. But Popper did talk to most of the important people in the cryptocurrency crowd, and he tells me that he put real effort into trying “to find a woman who was involved in some substantive way.” Read more

Quoted: “I recall reading somewhere that “Ethereum is to Bitcoin as an iPhone is to a calculator”, which is a pretty good analogy. Bitcoin proved to us that it was possible to keep a tamper-proof system synchronised across the globe. There really is no reason the same system can’t be applied to other problems in the same way we apply normal computers to them.

Ethereum is a single computer spread out over the internet, processing the information we all feed it together. I guess you could call it a ‘shared consciousness’ if you wanted to.

In this computer, information cannot be suppressed. In this computer, ideas and trust rule. Work and reputation are visible and independently verifiable. Anyone can contribute and everyone is automatically safe. Collaboration will overcome privatisation as people work together to build an open network of ideas contributing to the betterment of us all. They are calling it internet 3.0. And though web 2.0 was a thing in some ways, I think we’ll look back at everything up until this point as the first internet. The internet we built by adapting old communication lines into new ways of communicating. The internet we built when we were still used to centralising responsibility for things.”

Read the article here > http://pospi.spadgos.com/2014/11/30/injustice-ethereum-and-t…naissance/

By Tom Simonite — MIT Technology Review
A Stanford professor claims to have invented a Bitcoin-like system that can handle payments faster and with more security.

The total value of the digital currency Bitcoin is now approximately $3.4 billion, and many companies and investors are working to prove that the technology can make financial services cheaper and more useful.

But Stanford professor David Mazières thinks he has a faster, more flexible, and more secure alternative. If Mazières is correct, his technology could make digital payments and other transactions cheaper, safer, and easier—particularly across borders. He released the design for his system in a white paper last Wednesday. Read more

By Sarah Jenn — NewsBTC
In a step closer towards the institutionalization of bitcoin trading, a New York firm announced that it is expanding its operations to include trading in blocks of bitcoin. Genesis Trading, a division of SecondMarket, says that it is currently the only licensed broker-dealer that offers this service.

Genesis is now specializing its operations to focus on bitcoin trading with its own team of traders and support staff. According to its Chief Executive Brendan O’Connor, their plan is to generate business from the hedge funds and private investors who have shown an interest in the cryptocurrency. Read more