BitBuzz Daily: A look at what's new on bitcoin around the web

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that bitcoin has broken out and topped $1000. Of course it has ignited talk of bubbles and popping again. This short piece by Maureen Farrell in The Wall Street Journal looks at the impressive rally over the past two months and how bitcoin has jumped in value since 2010.

Bitcoin topped $1000 for the first time Wednesday morning. It’s the latest milestone in yet another epic rally for the four-year old virtual currency created a man or group of people going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

As of early 2010 was valued at just 4 cents, according to Mt. Gox. That’s a 2,499,9000% jump.

As of Oct. 1, 2013, bitcoin closed at $140.3. The jump in less than two months: 614%.

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Here’s an interesting interview with Futurist, Heather Schlegel on Tech Crunch all about the future of money. It is a subject she has researched for several years and why she is now crowdfunding her TV series to talk about The Future of Money. Peer to peer crowdfunding is, she says, one trend we will definitely be seeing more of…

 

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So, why is debt the source of income inequality and serfdom? According to Charles Hugh Smith on his blog: OfTwoMinds.com, "It’s The Interest, Baby". Here he takes a look at how being locked into the current fiat system is subjecting us to a life of servitude – both financial and political. It’s a discussion that will make anyone holding bitcoin, glad they have taken steps to remove themselves from a system likey to “self destruct.”

"Governments cannot reduce their debt or deficits and central banks cannot taper. Equally, they cannot perpetually borrow exponentially more. This one last bubble cannot end (but it must)."

I often refer to debt serfdom, the servitude debt enforces on borrowers. The mechanism of this servitude is interest, and today I turn to two knowledgeable correspondents for explanations of the consequences of interest.

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Bitcoin and wallets go hand in hand and so security of those wallets is paramount to any discerning bitcoiner. So, we thought we’d share Four Facts About Bitcoin Wallets, which Bitcoin Examiner thinks you should know…

Read them here

And there's something about bitcoin that seems to be attracting the young entrepreneurs, and when I say young, I mean, really young. We first told you about Bees Brothers a few months a go, then BitKidz came along and today, Emily Spaven on CoinDesk tells us about the nine-year-old who is “bullish about bitcoin”.

Andrew Karam isn’t your average nine-year-old. While most kids his age ask for the latest must-have toy for their birthdays, Andrew requested shares in Apple.

His parents bought him $120-worth and Andrew watched the price of the stock with interest, checking regularly whether his investment had gone up or down in value. Andrew’s dad, Steve, later told him about bitcoin and the schoolboy was well and truly hooked.

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"I want to change the world," states Bitcoin's first debit card creator

“I want to do something that can possibly change the world,” Cameron Halter says.

It’s a big claim but then dreaming big is not necessarily a bad thing.

Halter is the man behind bitcoin’s first debit card, one of the latest ideas to try to push bitcoin out to a wider audience and take it mainstream. His company, Tradecoinz, is hoping to launch the iBTCard in a matter of months and is gauging interest now by asking people to pre-register to reserve their spot to obtain a card.

Halter says the main reason he decided to create a debit style card for bitcoin was to try to address what he saw as three key issues with the currency: Security, useability and acceptance. After a year of research he believes he is ready to develop such a card. “We believe this card will help fix some of the problems bitcoin has. We are developing with technology people who already understand and use bitcoin almost every day. I believe this card will increase acceptance of bitcoin and encourage consumers to sign up,” he says.

In addition to the PIN that is used with most debit cards, the iBTCard will also require one-time password (OTP) authentication and he hopes that merchants will easily be able to integrate the iBTCard into their current point of sale (POS) systems. “If they have a supported POS, all they will need to do is install a simple update from the POS manufacturer,” Halter says, although on bitcointalk he did concede that this may take some time and is currently in talks with POS manufacturers.

For the consumer, what he hopes will prove a big attraction are the absence of monthly fees. Halter told us the card will function just like a Visa or MasterCard. “When a request enters our system, it will contain the amount requested in fiat. We will then convert that amount into bitcoins and pull that amount from the cardholder's wallet.”  What mechanism they will use to determine the bitcoin value at the time of the transaction he did not say and he is still looking for potential wallet clients to work with so won’t give names at the moment.

There are also plans to integrate the iBTCard with ATMs in several major cities but he told us he will figure out where those will be from the data he receives during preregistration.

Halter's passion and enthusiasm for bitcoin are infectious. He believes getting bitcoin circulating is key to the future success of the currency. “I see a future where at least 30% of the global transactions involve bitcoin. This will take a lot of effort and require hard working individuals to make this happen. The current path bitcoin is taking isn't promising.” He says in reference to the fact that more than 50% of bitcoins are currently lying in dormant wallets and states that unless this changes, “bitcoin will continue to be an unstable currency,”. He went on to say, “I believe a series of groundbreaking companies have the opportunity to push bitcoin to a successful path.”

In order to become one of those companies, Halter is hoping to raise over $500,000 through a combination of investment and crowdfunding. He hopes that if they manage to raise enough, they will have a demo card ready by October 5^th, with plans to reveal it at the Crypto-Currency Conference in Atlanta.

There is certainly no doubting his ambitions for this project, nor for the company itself. His final words to us: “I don't want to create a great company. I want to create a great company that changes the world.”

By Louise @ Bitscan

Strength in numbers: Bitcoin and Crowdfunding hand in hand

Stick ‘crowd’ in front of a verb these days and you have created one of the latest buzzwords. Back in the day, crowd surfing was about all there was and that involved (by nature of the act) people you could thankfully see!

Now there is crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and even crowdvoting. The concepts have been around for a few years, with the phrase ‘crowdsourcing’ coined in 2006 by journalist Jeff Howe in his article for Wired magazine.

It was a growing phenomenon then and it remains so today with big brands such as Qantas getting on board with one of their recent advertising campaigns and smaller crowdsourcing projects springing up all over the internet.

With the large audience potential through online communities and social networking, the internet gives these projects exposure and has become an effective way of amassing resources, be that labour, ideas, or revenue, by allowing individuals to contribute as much as they want or can afford to campaigns they wish to support.

Being a digital currency, bitcoin lends itself well to the crowdfunding model and crowd-funded bitcoin projects have started to gain momentum and achieve their targets.

Bitcoinstarter is one such player, acting as a platform for crowdsourced, bitcoin-funded ventures. Launched in April of this year, three projects have already been successfully funded with another two or three about to achieve their goals. To date, upwards of 100BTC have been pledged to campaigns listed on the site and founder, Matt Allen, believes the ease of use with bitcoin is a big selling point. “I’ve always had an interest in crowdfunding and the day I came across bitcoins I knew these two were a match made in heaven,” he says.

Having said that, in comparison to fiat-funded projects, bitcoin-funded ones are still struggling to gain traction.  One of the world’s largest crowdfunding platforms is Kickstarter, which states it has raised over $720 million so far to fund over 45,000 projects.

It is not surprising when taking into account that bitcoin is relatively new on the scene and when the success of these projects is also reliant on the projects' owners making the time and effort to effectively market their goals and spread the word.

“Bitcoin crowdfunding is only successful the more people are introduced to bitcoins and the more people want to spend their bitcoins. We are part of this economy,” Allen says.

He is also hoping to help fundraisers build their profile in online communities with a new feature allowing people to fund projects through Reddit. If a project fails to reach its fundraising goals he adds that Bitcoinstarter has an inbuilt system on the platform for returning bitcoins to pledgers.

Although bitcoin-funded campaigns may still have a way to go before attracting the same interest or scope for virality as fiat-funded projects, people are still asking for fiat currency to back bitcoin-related projects. In the past week, a project launched on crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, raising money for a bitcoin mining project ‘Bitcoin Prospecting’. With ten days left and nothing towards the venture as yet, time will tell whether it will succeed.

What is clear though, is that the ideals of a peer-to-peer community rallying to help each other achieve something bigger fit both the crowdfunding and bitcoin concepts and the fact is not lost that both attempt to eliminate the middle-man and the bank to do this.

By Louise @ Bitscan