Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Dogecoin Hacked; Scottish Bitcoin Trial & Foundation Resignations

Crypto markets remain stagnant, bitcoin emerges as potential new Scottish currency and Doge Vault is hacked.

The cryptocurrency speculators have taken a day off it seems, as the markets have remained virtually flat for the last 24 hours.
The top five altcoins (bitcoin, litecoin, peercoin, dogecoin and namecoin) all experienced increases or decreases of less than 1% in the past day, with darkcoin seeing a drop of over 3% after a major increase in value over the weekend.
While the markets may have been quiet, there has been a lot of news elsewhere in the cryptocurrency world.

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Bitcoin the new Scottish currency?

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An experiment is taking place in Scotland this week where one retailer is declaring a "pound-free zone" and only using bitcoin.

CeX, which buys and sells second-hand electronics, DVDs, and video games, has also installed Scotland's first bitcoin ATM at its Glasgow store, with commercial director David Butler saying this could be the answer to Scotland's currency problems should they vote for independence later this year:
"With Scottish Independence high up on the news agenda along with questions surrounding what currency Scotland would use, the three day trial will give Scots the opportunity to ditch the pound and trial a different kind of currency altogether."
Pouring cold water on the possibility however is Philippe Gelis, a currency expert and co-founder of foreign exchange trading platform Kantox who said:
"Although perhaps valuable as a publicity stunt, the idea that cryptocurrency has the potential to take over from the pound in an independent Scotland has a fundamental flaw – Bitcoin cannot be classified as a currency."

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Popular Dogecoin wallet service hacked

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Despite being seen as the friendly cryptocurrency, one where those using it are not out to make a quick profit, it doesn't mean it won't be a target for cybercriminals.
On Tuesday Doge Vault, one of the most popular dogecoin wallet services, confirmed it had been hacked on 11 May, and having been alerted to the breach, shut down the service on 12 May.
The administrator of the account has yet to reveal the extent of the attack, both the number of accounts compromised and the amount of dogecoin stolen.
An updated statement is expected within the next 48 hours.

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Bitcoin Foundation resignations

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The Bitcoin Foundation, which is hosting the Bitcoin 2014 conference in Amsterdam this week, has seen 10 of its members resign at frustration about the "general direction" of the organisation.
The Foundation's mission is to help the bitcoin community "exchange resources and ideas more freely" but annual member Patrick Alexander wrote on the group's forum:
"So far, the track record of prominent Bitcoin Foundation members has been abysmal. I know that most foundation members are probably swell people and are not like this. However, the actions of a few have overshadowed us all unfortunately."
Alexander stated in the posting that he was terminating his membership and since then nine others have followed suit. The Foundation has hundreds of members including companies and individuals.
The resignations come days after the Foundation announced the controversial appointment of Brock Pierce to the organisation's board. Pierce is a former child actor and dot-com entrepreneur who is looking to rebuild MtGox.
The controversy surround decade-old allegations of possessing child pornography, sexual misconduct and embezzlement which continue to haunt Pierce.
Pierce is the latest controversial board member, following MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles and BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem.
Bitcoin Foundation forum administrator Brad Wheeler responded to Alexander, outlining the way the foundation operates and why there was little to no vetting of members

source : http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cryptocurrency-round-dogecoin-hacked-scottish-bitcoin-trial-foundation-resignations-1448394

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Beijing Summit: What if They Had a Bitcoin Ban and No One Cared?

If the recent issues surrounding bank account closures and domestic media warnings were supposed to scare Chinese attendees away from the two-day Global Bitcoin Summit starting in Beijing Saturday, someone forgot to tell everyone.
The main 400-seat auditorium was regularly full on the first day for the event’s keynote speakers, which included Roger Ver, Aaron Koenig of the Global Bitcoin Alliance, and Wang Wei of the Chinese Museum of Finance.

The overall tone was not so much defiance, but apathy towards greater regulation.

While Bobby Lee of BTC China was noticeably absent from the day’s lineup, attendees remained focused on the future and dedicated to the cause.
Both the size and mood of the crowd confirmed what several of CoinDesk’s local Chinese sources have been saying for a while: the community at large is tired of hearing about banks vs. exchanges, and wants to keep building.
How exactly they plan to do this without fiat gateways will be a discussion point tomorrow and in the coming months.

China is big, in every sense

The huge China National Convention Center, located just across the road from Beijing’s 2008 Olympic main stadium, also highlighted just how niche bitcoin still remains in the overall Chinese economy, which is still booming.
The bitcoin summit itself took up a relatively small space at the back of the second floor. Attendees passed massive franchising and marketing conventions, each with their own collection of booths and babes, before even seeing a bitcoin logo.

Regulation not an issue

Regulatory issues were barely touched upon, if mentioned at all, during Roger Ver’s keynote. Stressing once again the utterly voluntary nature of the bitcoin economy, he told the audience his mission was now more that of a promoter of bitcoin’s cause around the world.
“I’m pretty much done investing in bitcoin startups. But if you know some good ones I’m always very happy to introduce you to the right people,” he said, when asked if he intended to invest further in Chinese companies.

Roger Ver speaks in Beijing

On the topic of which companies he predicted would succeed in future, Ver said “it’s still too early to tell” – comparing the landscape to search engines in the late 1990s, when it was still unclear whether Lycos, Yahoo or Altavista would dominate in future years. He continued:

“But somebody’s going to work it out. Somebody’s going to do it right.”

Chinese companies were continuing to do well, he added, ”I’m often more impressed with Chinese bitcoin exchanges than I am with some of the US and European exchanges.”
Harry Zhou, an Associate with White & Case LLP, gave another presentation on regulation-specific issues, but chose to speak generally instead of referring to current events directly.
Comparing the legal situation in China to that in the US, he drew key differences between each country’s definition of ‘legal tender’, as well as the US’s federal system and competing state jurisdictions.
In China, he said, the renminbi is the only legal tender and that is sacrosanct – even precious metals are not allowed. In the US, however, alternative local barter systems and gold and silver are tolerated even though the US dollar remained the only official legal tender.

Other features

Other international guests on the day’s speaking agenda were Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin and Anthony di Iorio from the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada.

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin & Ethan Wilding in Beijing

While some booths marked with exchange names (like CHBTC) were empty, other local startups filled the spaces. We saw secure wallet Bifubao, mining equipment maker Gridseed Technology Ltd, and even a couple of OKCoin-branded ATMs.
Representing the alt universe was Zetacoin, promoting its Swiss-built payment infrastructure designed for countries like Kenya.

Beijing’s Global Bitcoin Summit continues Sunday.


source : http://www.coindesk.com/beijing-summit-bitcoin-ban-no-one-cared/

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Why Bitcoin’s Greatest Asset is its Community

While the protocol underpinning the network will always be key, an engaged community is more important to the future success of bitcoin than its underlying technology.
There is a large and rapidly growing community of developers, merchants, users, miners, and investors in the world that believe in democratizing the financial markets and making money accessible and easy-to-use for everyone the world over. People tend to underestimate this community.
Union Square Ventures, one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past decade, is famous for its simple 140-character investment thesis:

“USV invests in: large networks of engaged users, differentiated through user experience, and defensible through network effects.”

USV has had tremendous success investing in networks of people that have specific expertise, creativity and passion, like Twitter, Tumblr, and Kickstarter. Particularly given the strong emotional aspects of money and the open-source nature of the bitcoin project, it is the expertise, creativity, and passion of the community that will ultimately determine bitcoin’s future.
It is common for newcomers to bitcoin to say “I believe in digital currencies but I don’t think bitcoin will be the winner.” However, those people underestimate the power of the bitcoin community.

Developers

I haven’t met anyone that personifies the ethos of the community better than Gavin Andresen. Andresen is a scientist and hacker who began working on bitcoin’s open-source project in 2008.
Up until last month, Andresen was the lead developer for bitcoin and is still a very active contributor to the Bitcoin Core code. Andresen, along with Wladimir Van der Laan (who replaced Gavin as lead developer), Pieter Wuille, Greg Maxwell, and Jeff Garzik are the five core developers who actually accept code changes and apply them to the Github repository.
These five, along with thousands of others from across the world, spend their time maintaining and improving Bitcoin Core, which is only in version 0.9.1. The talented and rapidly growing developer community, led by Andresen and Van der Laan, is working hard to improve the code and there will be lots of future improvements to the five-year-old technology.

Merchants

Right now, bitcoin is more compelling for US merchants than US consumers because merchants are able to use bitcoin as a more efficient payment protocol without worrying about the volatility or tax implications associated with it.
Overstock.com, Tiger Direct, CheapAir, and Fiverr are a few of the merchants using bitcoin. In total, there are currently over 60,000 merchants using bitcoin and that number is rapidly growing.

Users

People are generally emotional and naturally sceptical when it comes to money. So it should be no surprise that to date, the most widely discussed bitcoin users have been Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous bitcoin creator, and Dread Pirate Roberts, the anonymous founder of Silk Road – the online marketplace for illegal goods that the FBI shut down in October.
This mysterious ‘Internet money’ surely can’t be real money used by real, law abiding citizens for real purposes, right?
That assumption turns out to be wrong. Coinbase has over 1,200,000 consumer wallets held by people across the world that use bitcoin because it’s a cheaper, faster, and safer way to send money and an attractive alternative way to store value.
The users I know use bitcoin not because they engage in illegal activities, dislike banks, and don’t trust government, but because they understand the benefits of the technology.

Miners

Miners are not widely talked about, but they are an essential part of the community because collectively they form the infrastructure that powers bitcoin’s payment network.
The mining community is generally made of mining pools such as GHash.IO, Discus Guild and BTC Guild, and mining hardware manufacturers such as KNCMiner and Cointerra.
Blockchain has a chart on the distribution of hash rates in the network that is helpful in understanding the major players.
These mining pools are financially incentivized to uphold the security of the network and verify transactions. The hardware companies are dedicated to finding ways to mine more efficiently and they are an important player as the technology matures.

Investors

Venture Capitalists and institutional investors have increased their interest in bitcoin over the past year.
High profile Venture Capitalists like Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen and investment managers like Bill Miller of Legg Mason and Mike Novogratz of Fortress have publicly spoken about investments in both bitcoin the digital currency and the bitcoin ecosystem.
Furthermore, Bloomberg recently announced that it is now offering price info and news on bitcoin to all of its users.
While the high-profile investors’ involvement in bitcoin is not quite as important as the merchants, developers, users, and miners, their presence does lend credibility to the digital currency and is likely helping to accelerate adoption.
Community image via Shutterstock


source : http://www.coindesk.com/why-bitcoins-greatest-asset-community/

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