Bitcoin Plaza

Friday, April 3, 2015

APRIL 3 DIGEST: Spain Makes First Bitcoin Related Arrest, Legal Fight Unfolds Involving Ripple, Bitstamp and Jed McCaleb

Russia’s proposal to ban Bitcoin is expected to pass in August, Ripple, Bitstamp and Jed McCaleb are involved in a US$1 million legal fight, and more top stories for April 3.

GAWminers’ CEO Garza Rebrands PayBase to Mineral, Moves Operation Abroad

Embattled CEO of GAWminers and PayBase, Josh Garza, has helped launch a new wallet and exchange service while relocating operations to Hong Kong.

'Obama Effect' Results in 200 Bitcoin Donations to Edward Snowden

In light of a sudden “executive order” issued by Barack Obama in America, many Bitcoin redditors realized that it's now illegal to donate money to people like Edward Snowden.

Swiss Banking Giant UBS to Open Blockchain Research Lab in London

The Swiss banking giant UBS is about to dip its toe further into cryptocurrency related technology. The bank will open a blockchain research lab in London later this month.

NeuCoin Whitepaper Reignites Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake Debate

A little more than a week after release of NeuCoin's technical whitepaper, an intense debate been sparked between the proponents of the two main crypto technologies, proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-s

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Czech Republic Crypto Community Bolstered by CoinTelegraph’s Regional Launch

CoinTelegraph is proud to announce the launch of our new regional website in the Czech Republic.

Synereo-Splicious Partnership Unveils Prototype in User Demo

Next-generation decentralized social network Synereo has announced its partnership and integration with US social communications platform Splicious following the unveiling of its first tech demo.

Coinbase Issues Request for Bitcoin Micropayment Services

In a thoughtful blog post, Coinbase offers ideas for new Bitcoin applications and business models. Based on the applications under development by the more than 7,000 developers using the Coinbase API, it appears that four main categories of Bitcoin applications are gaining popularity among developers: P2P tipping, cross-border payments, international microfinance and reputation platforms.

The Coinbase post identifies other promising Bitcoin application categories and business models that haven’t been targeted by many developers so far, and recommends to Bitcoin developers and startups: “Here’s 10 ideas for Bitcoin startups that we would love to see more developers working on.”

Coinbase recommends developing innovative email and online content services based on bitcoin micropayments. We are used to a “free” Internet where nobody has to pay, but, of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The price that we pay for free email is spam, and the price that we pay for free content is rampant advertising – often annoying, intrusive, and ugly – and disclosure of browsing habits to marketers. Paid models based on bitcoin micropayments could change that.

For example, email could be a pay-as-you-go service, with a small fee (say 0.1 cents) to send a message. That wouldn’t be too much of an annoyance for normal email users, while at the same time it would impose prohibitive costs to bulk email campaign and mass spamming. Similarly, web ads could be replaced by micropayments for viewing articles and videos. For example, an article or a video could be unlocked for one hour when a dedicated Bitcoin address receives a micropayment.

Micropayments are impossible to implement with traditional payment systems, because the overhead costs (transaction fees) would be too high. But the fast micropayments with low transaction fees, permitted by Bitcoin, allow the switch to alternative models for paid online content.

That would also permit creators, such as artists, fiction writers and filmmakers, to make a living with their work.

Coinbase also recommends developing applications that incentivize nodes to provide resources to communications networks, such as the Tor network or the Bitcoin blockchain itself, by rewarding participating nodes with micropayments.

Internet pioneers such as Ted Nelson, Marc Andreessen and Tim Berners-Lee thought that the Internet should have a built-in framework for micropayments. Berners-Lee tried to include micropayments in Web protocols, but the idea was never implemented.

“The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution,” a 2014 book by Walter Isaacson, has the full story:

“In the late 1990s Berners-Lee tried to develop a micropayments system for the Web through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which he headed. The idea was to devise a way to embed in a Web page the information needed to handle a small payment, which would allow different ‘electronic wallet’ services to be created by banks or entrepreneurs. It was never implemented, partly because of the changing complexity of banking regulations.”

Berners-Lee revived the effort to develop an official W3C micropayments framework in 2013. The work hasn’t been completed so far, but Bitcoin is a good solution, because sending a micropayment with Bitcoin can be as easy and immediate as clicking a button.

Isaacson reports that Andreessen mentioned Bitcoin as a good model for standard Internet payment systems. “If I had a time machine and could go back to 1993, one thing I’d do for sure would be to build in Bitcoin or some similar form of cryptocurrency,” Andreessen said.

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