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Category: economics – Page 198

Getting your First Bitcoin; Choosing a Wallet

There are at least four ways to acquire Bitcoin and three ways to store it…

Acquire Bitcoin: You can trade Bitcoin in person, accept it as a vendor, mine it, or buy on an exchange.

Store Bitcoin: You can keep your Bitcoin in an online/cloud service (typically, one that is connected to your exchange account), keep it on your own PC or phone, or even print it out and store it on a piece of paper. Like a physical coin, the piece of paper has value. It can be placed in your lock box or under your mattress.

Let’s look at the market for Bitcoin Wallets (all of these are free), and then we shall talk about Bitcoin exchange services. This includes my personal recommendation for the typical consumer or coin enthusiast…

1. Choosing a Wallet

You can start your search for a wallet on this page at Bitcoin.org. Use the drop down tabs to refine your search by platform: Mobile, Desktop, Hardware gadget or Web. Don’t overlook the web option. For many users, the wallet (and VAULT) included with an online exchange account is all you need.

Each wallet platform is further distinguished by operating system. For example, you can find a smartphone wallet for Android, Apple, Windows Mobile or Blackberry. Some popular apps are listed under more than one OS or platform.

When you click on any of the app logos, you will see a checklist of five key traits, according to reviewers at the Bitcoin Foundation:

  • Control over your money
  • Simplified validation
  • Basic transparency
  • Secure environment
  • Weak privacy

These are not necessarily critical traits/features. It depends on your needs and preferences. For example, everyone wants good privacy and security. But not everyone wants to control their private keys. That places the risk of loss, backup and/or the burden of inheritance issues on you, rather than a standardized recovery process. The feature comparison simply helps you to begin your own comparison and evaluation.

For Android users, my personal recommendation is Bitcoin Wallet by Andreas Schildbach (the logo is a tilted orange ‘B’). It is simple, secure, well maintained and very popular. (iPhone users: See my my suggestion in the recommendations, below).

2. Portable –vs– Online

Despite the simplicity and low cost of spending or sending Bitcoin between individuals and vendors, getting your first Bitcoin can be confusing, complex and even risky. For this reason, I suggest that Newbies open an account at a very established and trustworthy exchange.

In the near future, this will include most big banks. But for now, the safest and most reputable exchange is Coinbase in San Francisco. They are also the one with the highest level of regulatory compliance. Bitstamp of Slovenia and Great Britain is a close second. In my opinion, using either of these organizations as a currency exchange or a secure place to park your digital currency is a safe bet.

Both of these exchanges include a cloud wallet service that—when used properly—is safe and secure. But, because Bitcoin is still in its infancy, you will need to learn about sweeping funds into a ‘vault’ (to better protect against hacking) and you should also learn about portable backups and multi-sig (to protect your assets, in the event of forgetfulness, death or incapacitation).

With either type of wallet—device storage or online with an exchange—I recommend that you install and play with a portable wallet on your phone, just to get the hang of a few basic functions: Display wallet address for incoming money, Send money, Request money (i.e. send an invoice), and Pay with the QR-camera feature. All wallets serve these basic and critical needs.

Recommendations:

  • Coinbase is a most reputable exchange for buying/selling & storing Bitcoin
  • Bitcoin Wallet by Andreas Schildbach is an excellent choice for portable, secure storage. This app is available for Android phones only. Apple iPhone users may wish to try Bitcoin Wallet by Blockchain. I have not reviewed it. It has a slightly less friendly user interface but it is stable and very popular.

Related Reading:


Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, produces The Bitcoin Event and is a board member at
Lifeboat. He will deliver the Keynote Address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.

When the Mother of Invention Is a Machine, Who Gets Credit?

What do the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush, about a thousand musical compositions and even a few recent food recipes all have in common?

They were invented by computers, but you won’t find a nonhuman credited with any of these creations on U.S. patents. One patent attorney would like to see that changed.

Ryan Abbott is petitioning to address what he sees as more than a quirk in current laws but a fundamental flaw in policy that could have wide-ranging implications in areas of patent jurisprudence, economics and beyond if his proposals are adopted.

How Automation is Going to Redefine What it Means to Work

In Brief The time for machines to take over most of humanity’s work is rapidly approaching. The world is woefully unprepared to deal with the implications that automation will have over the coming decades. Universal basic income is just beginning to be discussed, and automation has the potential to displace much of the world’s workforce. Many decisions have to be made, and quickly, if we hope to keep pace with innovation.

On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a pile of bricks and wood underneath a football field at the University of Chicago. Known to history as Chicago Pile-1, it was celebrated in silence with a single bottle of Chianti, for those who were there understood exactly what it meant for humankind, without any need for words.

Now, something new has occurred that, again, quietly changed the world forever. Like a whispered word in a foreign language, it was quiet in that you may have heard it, but its full meaning may not have been comprehended. However, it’s vital we understand this new language, and what it’s increasingly telling us, for the ramifications are set to alter everything we take for granted about the way our globalized economy functions, and the ways in which we as humans exist within it.

Energy is the new new internet

If you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in energy, you should. We’ve seen this movie before. Spoiler alert: There’s massive economic opportunity ahead. How massive? Imagine standing in 1992, knowing that Google, Akamai, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, BuzzFeed and Uber lay ahead.

This time it’s the “enernet,” not the internet, that will transform our lives. The story is the same, though the players have changed.

Here’s the tee up. Across the country, incumbent network providers operate highly centralized networks in their respective cities. Then, scrappy local outfits start serving the market with innovative, distributed technology. These startups create competition, and a new network emerges atop the legacy network.

Four Countries With A Rapidly Growing High Tech Sector

The high tech sector is often the backbone of a healthy economy, and this sector of the economy is growing rapidly in many parts of the world. While growth of the technology sector is likely to continue in the developed world, high tech growth is often especially rapid in the developing world. Here are some countries where high tech sector growth is taking place at a particularly rapid pace:

China: China is experiencing rapid economic growth in general, and this includes the country’s high tech sector. While the high tech sector of China has been growing for some time, it may grow at an even faster rate in the future. China’s economy is thought to be making a transition from an industrial to a post industrial nation. This transition often leads to growth in the high tech sector.

Since people in China are spending more on merchandise in general, more people in China are purchasing high tech gadgets. You can see this trend from the increase in internet usage that has been happening throughout China. It is estimated that there is a new internet user in China every 1.6 seconds. Currently, nearly 600 million people in China already use the internet. This is nearly double the population of the United States, and this figure is expected to continue rising rapidly!

Elon Musk: Moving Toward Universal Basic Income Due To Automation

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk told CNBC on Friday that economies would most likely need a form of ‘universal basic income’ as more and more industries become automated.
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Elon musk: moving toward universal basic income due to automation | CNBC

The Best Universal Basic Income Videos of 2016

2017 is already shaping up to be a big year for the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI). The idea to build an unconditional income floor to cover the basic needs of each citizen has been gaining worldwide attention and traction. In just the first 10 days of 2017, Finland has already launched a trial, a nonprofit in India is preparing to launch their own, Scotland is seriously considering trials, and several South Korean presidential candidates are now calling for support for UBI.

But before we turn our focus to the latest happenings, I want to look back and highlight some of the best videos of 2016 that explained and advocated for Universal Basic Income.

World’s eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%

Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population. However, the number has dropped to eight in 2017 because new information shows that poverty in China and India is worse than previously thought, making the bottom 50% even worse off and widening the gap between rich and poor.

The world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population, according to a charity warning of an ever-increasing and dangerous concentration of wealth.

In a report published to coincide with the start of the week-long World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.

The development charity called for a new economic model to reverse an inequality trend that it said helped to explain Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

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