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Archive for the ‘cryptocurrencies’ category: Page 61

Oct 31, 2016

Bitcoin Fungibility: A Benefit of privacy & anonymity

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, internet, privacy

I was pointed to this article by Jon Matonis, Founding Director, Bitcoin Foundation. I was sufficiently moved to highlight it here at Lifeboat Foundation, where I am a contributing writer.

On Fungibility, Bitcoin, Monero and ZCash … [backup]

This is among the best general introductions I have come across on traceability and the false illusion of privacy. The explanation of coin mixing provides and coin_mixing-03excellent, quick & brief overview.

Regarding transaction privacy, a few alt-coins provide enhanced immunity or deniability from forensic analysis. But if your bet is on Bitcoin (as it must be), the future is headed toward super-mixing and wallet trading by desgin and by default. Just as the big email providers haved added secure transit,
Bitcoin will eventually be fully randomized and anonymized per trade and even when assets are idle. It’s not about criminals; it’s about protecting business, government and individuals. It’s about liberty and our freedoms. [Continue below image]

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Sep 8, 2016

Blockchain Art Exhibitions Explore the Bitcoin Technology’s Future — By Steven Norton | The Wall Street Journal

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, media & arts

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“That contemporary artists are exploring blockchain further suggests the technology has reached a level of cultural significance beyond bitcoin’s initial hype.”

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Aug 10, 2016

Quantum computing and cryptocurrencies: Are Steemit and bitcoin safe?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, computing, cryptocurrencies, encryption, quantum physics, security

Article repeats a lot of the knowns on QC such as bit v. Qubit; and finally provides some good info on pros and cons of Bitcoin and Lamport signatures technique with QC. However, the author didn’t seem to mention any of the work that D-Wave for example is doing with Block chaining. Also, I saw no mention of the work by Oxford on the logic gate which improve both the information processing performance and the security of information transmissions.


In a classical computer bits are used that can either be 0 or 1. In a quantum computer these bits are replaced with Qubits (quantum bits). These Qubits can be 0 or 1, or both at the same time. This is caused by a phenomenon in the quantum realm called superposition. At scales the size of an atom and small molecules, the spin of particles is not determined until it is observed. A pair of Qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three Qubits in any superposition of 8 states. In general, a quantum computer with n Qubits can be in a superposition of up to 2^n different states simultaneously (this compares to a normal computer that can only be in one of these 2^n states at any one time). Because of this, a quantum computer is able to perform computations at the same time, while classical computers perform computations one at a time.

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Jul 26, 2016

Coinbase is adding support for Ethereal — By Fitz Tepper | TechCrunch

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies

coinbase-ethereum1

Coinbase has added support for Ethereum.

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Jul 12, 2016

Why is Bitcoin Capped at 21M units?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, government, transparency

I was asked this at Quora.com, where I answer questions under the pen name, ‘Ellery’. But the query deserves a companion question, and so I approached the reply by answering two questions.


You might have asked “Why was Bitcoin designed to have a cap?” But, instead, you asked “Why is the cap set at 21 million bitcoins”. Let’s explore both questions starting with the choice of a circulation cap…

Why set the cap at 21 million BTC?

The choice of a cap number is arbitrary and in fact, it could be 1 or it could be 1 hundred trillion. It makes no difference at all and it has no effect on the economy—even if Bitcoin were to be adopted as a currency all over the world. If it were set to 1 BTC, we would simply discuss nano-BTC instead of 1 BTC for amounts of about $650.

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Jun 22, 2016

Blog Posts for Postnormal Times

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies

blocksLast week I dipped my toes in the waters of the Lifeboat blog and shared a link about blockchain technology. If you haven’t heard about blockchain technology yet, you can read about it here, here, here, here, here…you get the picture. Blockchain has tons of potential, and appears to also attract hype and money. All which goes to say, there has been a lot of buzz about its social and economic potential. But there is another aspect of blockchain that deserves some futurist exploration, which is that it signals we live in Postnormal Times.

Postnormal Times (PNT) is a fantastic foresight concept that I will focus on in my upcoming Lifeboat posts. There is an underlying theory to it; Ziauddin Sardar explains the entire idea and how it fits into futures studies. Ziauddin Sardar with John Sweeney have expanded the work into a futurist method called The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times. It’s well worth reading up on if you enjoy a futurist approach to your work and studies.

I’m still a beginner, but essentially the idea is that we are now in time is a period best characterized as “postnormal,” meaning that the usual ways of solving problems and making progress have stopped working. Our go-to responses, based on all the previously reliable ways of being in and understanding the world are becoming irrelevant and dysfunctional. The simplest way to introduce Sardar’s concept is the three C’s: complexity, chaos and contradictions. These are the key characteristics of postnormal times which I will be exploring in my posts about technology and humanity. I believe the PNT perspective leads to some useful observations about the direction of society over the next decades.

Back to my blockchain example: the Raketa watch company is implementing blockchain in manufacturing, which will protect inventory from counterfeiting. This development signals PNT because it speaks to the complexity of globalized financial and consumer markets. In this case, so intricate as to require a new, high-tech, largely automated and seemingly fail-proof technology. PNT is evident when previous methods of running a company are no longer sound. Enter blockchain to navigate this new business condition.

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Jun 9, 2016

Digital Currency Tech Will as Be Transformative as the Internet

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, bitcoin, business, computing, cryptocurrencies, finance, health, internet

Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance. Watch live as hundreds of the world’s leading investors, entrepreneurs and innovators gather in New York to define the future of the way we do business.

In Bitcoin’s early years computer scientists and early adopters were running the show. Now, a new community of academics, entrepreneurs, and economists, are working with cryptocurrencies and blockchain to bring the technology to a new set of diverse applications.

From building peer-to-peer networks for secure data computation and storage to decentralized content management systems that give patients access to health-care records across hospital databases, blockchain and digital currencies are starting to rewrite the rules of the 21st century transaction.

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Jun 8, 2016

Why Central Banks Will Issue Digital Currency — By Adam Ludwin | Medium

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies, governance, government

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“In an obscure corner of the internet, an anonymous person or persons published a math paper — the “Bitcoin white paper” — that solved a problem that had until then stumped computer scientists: how to create digital money without any trusted parties.”

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May 27, 2016

Is a Blockchain a Blockchain if it Isn’t?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies, finance, innovation, internet, open source, software, transparency

Anyone who has heard of Bitcoin knows that it is built on a mechanism called The Blockchain. Most of us who follow the topic are also aware that Bitcoin and the blockchain were unveiled—together—in a whitepaper by a mysterious developer, under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

That was eight years ago. Bitcoin is still the granddaddy of all blockchain-based networks, and most of the others deal with alternate payment coins of one type or another. Since Bitcoin is king, the others are collectively referred to as ‘Altcoins’.

But the blockchain can power so much more than coins and payments. And so—as you might expect—investors are paying lots of attention to blockchain startups or blockchain integration into existing services. Not just for payments, but for everything under the sun.

Think of Bitcoin as a product and the blockchain as a clever network architecture that enables Bitcoin and a great many future products and institutions to do more things—or to do these things better, cheaper, more robust and more blockchain-01secure than products and institutions built upon legacy architectures.

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May 25, 2016

The Father of Futarchy Has an Idea to Reshape DAO Governance

Posted by in categories: business, cryptocurrencies, governance, robotics/AI

#TheDAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) is the hottest new form of investment built on revolutionary (Transparency, Democracy, Decentralization).

Our own Robin Hanson has been an inspiration:

“The slogan is vote on values, bet on beliefs. What you need are discreet decisions and then you need an outcome that you care about.”

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