The tiny South American nation of Ecuador has begun its experiment with virtual currencies. The government announced earlier this year that they would be creating a government backed virtual currency
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Ecuador’s National Digital Currency Experiment Explained
The tiny South American nation of Ecuador has begun its experiment with virtual currencies. The government announced earlier this year that they would be creating a government backed virtual currency
Lamassu Integrates IdentityMind's AML and Compliance Platform in its Bitcoin ATMs
Bitcoin ATM manufacturer Lamassu Bitcoin Ventures partners up with IdentityMind Global to offer integrated Anti-Money Laundering and Compliance platform within Bitcoin ATMs.
‘A Ban is Not the Way to Handle the Risks Cryptocurrencies Pose’ - Dr Victor Dostov, Russian Electronic Money Association
With such an extensive track record and experience in pioneering digital payments in Russia, CoinTelegraph could not pass up the opportunity to ask Victor some questions on Bitcoin in Russia and get h
How Pegged Sidechains Can Solve the Problem of Transacting Across Blockchains
Recently Side Chains released a teaser about an innovative new technology called pegged sidechains that would allow public ledgers of various cryptocurrencies to transfer between multiple blockchains.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
An Interview with Roger Gabriel of bitINKA
Roger Gabriel has four years of experience working in a financial division of IBM in Argentina and 5 years working on e-commerce businesses. He is launching a Bitcoin trading platform that is easy enough for anyone in South America to use.
Ruben Alexander: How did you get started with Bitcoin?
Roger Gabriel: On bitcoin itself around July of last year, I read a lot about the currency and it intrigued me. Made my first purchase of around 0.25 BTC and just held it on a wallet. On developing a platform around November of last year, I had purchased several coins and made some profit [and] I wanted to invest that on a bitcoin related business.
What would be your advice to other Bitcoin investors when searching for a company to support?
To investigate the product, if the company/product could make a difference and not just be another exchange. Mt. Gox went down and tons of companies are fighting to replace that hole, but no one is doing what we are trying to do [which] is make a difference with bitcoin on a daily basis.
We are trying to integrate bitcoin on the current financial world to make a difference.
Basically, how everyday users can benefit from bitcoin not just bitcoin followers.
Do you recommend that Bitcoin investors focus their efforts outside of the US? If so, why?
Yes as previously mentioned based on what we are doing, using bitcoin in countries like Argentina and Venezuela where there are currency exchange restrictions bitcoin falls right into place. On our product you will see how we employ bitcoin to satisfy this demand, created by local governments.
What has been your experience in getting Peruvians to use Bitcoin?
[The] Bitcoin movement here in Peru just started. We are trying to get the attention of the local community by showing how easy bitcoin can fit on local finance when we explain our product, and for example we tell a cab driver how easy it could be for him to charge customers when they don’t want to pay cash: they immediately ask when is the product coming out.
If a bitcoin owner wanted to travel to Peru, what is one thing they should do and see?
It depends on how he wants to use Bitcoin, if just for tourism. Unfortunately right now we haven’t launched yet, and actually tourism is one of the target areas for our platform, so if they come here before December I would guess try selling it online.
What is your advice to Spanish speaking Bitcoin users who want to get more involved in the community?
This is a tough question since there are very little newspapers that are just based on bitcoin in Spanish, but the good thing is that since there is a lot of interest in bitcoin from bilingual users, there are tons of Facebook pages and Facebook groups – even a couple of pages that go ahead and translate important articles. Also they can go ahead and follow us on Facebook and we will have news on not only our product but [also] the LaTam Bitcoin Community.
What specific problems will bitINKA solve for the Peruvian community?
Great question, but we don’t only target the Peruvian community but the community in South America. We will change the way micropayments are processed; I can even dare to say we will create a demand of our product in micropayments in Peru. We will show everyone a new method to send money to people in neighboring countries like Argentina and Venezuela and have both the sender and receiver benefit tremendously from using our product. We will educate the local community on how all of this is done using Bitcoin and make it simple.
Click here to read this interview in Spanish.
BlockNet Is Like The Mega Man of Altcoins
Blocknet combines the features of several coins into one super network
Why Tea is a Good Place to Start Bitcoin Adoption with Tealet Founder, Elyse Petersen
Tealet is an online farmers market for tea founded by food scientist Elyse Petersen. With an extensive background in the tea industry and with a dream of solving tea the production and distribution pr
PeerTracks Will Allow CryptoHipsters to Profit by Discovering a Band Before Anyone Else
You know that friend who always tries to score indie snob cred by saying he thinks a specific band’s “early stuff was better?” P2P music startup PeerTracks might have devised a way for your hipster fr
PeerTracks: Paradigm Shift In Music World
The time has come for starving artists to finally make real money from their music. As the Internet disrupted the way record labels make their money, the blockchain is taking this another step by threatening to render them useless. PeerTracks is matching the artist up with the audience and allowing them to both make money, all the while spreading knowledge of the blockchain to the mainstream.
I got a chance to speak with Cédric Cobban, the individual who, along with Eddie Corral, is orchestrating the unique Peertracks effort.
What is Peertracks?
PeerTracks is a music streaming/retail website that plugs into the BitShares Music blockchain. It’s a user friendly front end aimed at the masses, allowing them to benefit from all the advantages crypto brings without the need to understand or even know what a blockchain is.
What does PeerTracks do?
For an artist, it’s a platform to sell your music and engage your fans through the creation and sale of your own artistcoins, whose value is tied to the sale of your music. This incentivizes artistcoin holders to promote you, get you to stardom and increase your sales – all this without a middleman taking a cut.
For a fan/regular user, it’s a place to buy cheaper music and know all your funds are going to the artist. It’s a place to discover new music and benefit by buying the coins of artists you think will be big. Being avant-garde has never been so lucrative!
PeerTracks essentially ties price discovery with talent discovery since the value of an artist’s coin is tied to his music’s sales.
How does it work?
Everything PeerTracks allows is made possible by the BitShares Music blockchain. BitShares Music is essentially a spinoff of BitSharesX, only tweaked to make it better suited for the music economy.
PeerTracks users will spend and earn BitUSD, a crypto-currency market pegged to the US dollar. This shields our users (which are not day traders) from the volatility normally present with crypto-currencies while still benefiting from the many advantages like low fees.
This blockchain is a decentralized exchange; many things trade on it. First, there are Notes, the unit of the blockchain. Then there are artistcoins, which are user issued assets created by the artists to sell (or give away) to their fans. Think Snoopcoin, Biebercoin, etc.
Third and finally, there are BitAssets, like the BitUSD, which are market pegged to their real world counterparts and are collateralized by Notes, meaning all BitAssets are backed by units of the blockchain.
All trades are done ON blockchain. No centralized exchanges required in:
- the purchase of music (a fan sending BitUSD to the band)
- the trading of artistcoins (Snoopcoin for Rihannacoin, or Biebercoin for BitUSD)
- the trading of Notes for BitAssets or artistcoins
PeerTracks never holds any funds. All trades are done peer 2 peer, on blockchain, no trust required.
What is your vision for PeerTracks?
PeerTracks and BitShares Music are going to change the entire digital content economy.
Not only does Peertracks cut out extremely inefficient middlemen, but it also links the fans, the artists and the promoters’ incentives towards the same goal: getting songs and albums out to the world and generating as many sales as possible. Napster changed the world, yes, but it shortchanged the content creators. Incentives did not align… simple as that. This project will change the way small time artists are funded, how they are promoted and how they make a living from their music. The artist’s coin being tied to sales of music is one thing but combining this with “token controlled access” allows artists to bring value to their fans at relatively low cost. For example, an artist could grant backstage passes to anyone with over 100 of his artistcoin.
The model does not stop at music. This concept can be used for movies, ebooks, and even physical goods traded online (eBay could adopt this model for example)
What are you currently busy with?
We are getting BitShares Music and PeerTracks launched. We are presently focused on our pre-sale which started october 6th. Anyone can claim their stake in the future of music by going to http://ift.tt/1suC8nv
What is your professional background?
Eddie Corral’s background is 25 plus years working with the biggest names and companies in the music business. He brings years of copyright, publishing, marketing and promotions experience with independent and major label artists – from sheet music to download he has taken many artist from recording studio to radio.
For myself [Cédric Cobban]: I am a small time entrepreneur in a relatively small town called Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. Co-owner of an MMA gym + real estate investments (not too relevant to technology!)
My interest in Austrian economics and investing led me to Bitcoin in 2011 which led me to BitShares… which consumed me!
What would you like to tell our readers?
We would like them to know that they have about 45 days left to participate in the NOTE pre-sale. If you see value in what we are doing and realize that this technology we can displace a multi billion dollar industry, check out the pre-sale at http://ift.tt/1suC8nv and be a part of it.
CoinFest 2015: Journey Around the World
When CoinFest started in 2013 as a relatively small gathering of 100 or so Bitcoiners, celebrating the adoption of Bitcoin at a Waves Coffee House in Vancouver, it was conceived as a way to incentiviz
The Digital Currency Dilemma: Anonymity vs. Privacy (Op-Ed)
If you want to be viable player on financial markets then the rules of Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) measures need to be central to company policy. Fundamentally Bitstamp’s
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Bitcoin Trader.Biz Shuts Down: Scam or Theft? (Plus, Details on Panamanian Bankruptcy Laws)
Bitcoin Trader goes down, and its former customers are left out in the cold. The only question left is, Scam or Theft?
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