Lifeboat Foundation

The recently concluded Bitcoin & the Blockchain Summit in San Francisco on January 27 came up as a vivid source of both anxiety and inspiration. As speakers tackled Bitcoin’s technological limits and possible drawbacks that can be caused by impending regulations, Bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos lifted up everyone’s hope by discussing how bitcoins will eventually survive and flourish. He managed to do so with no graphics or presentations to prove his claim, just his utmost confidence and conviction that it really will no matter what.

On the currency being weak

There have been statements about Bitcoin’s technology surviving, but not the currency itself. Antonopoulos, however, argues that Bitcoin’s technology, network, and currency are interdependent with each other, which means that one element won’t work without the other. He said: “A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.”

On why Bitcoin works

Continue reading “Bitcoin’s Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future” »

Armstrong and the Winklevoss twins have promising visions in securing Bitcoin exchange.

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase has brought innovation to the next level by opening the first ever licensed US Bitcoin exchange. Backed by $106 million from the New York Stock Exchange, banks, and venture-capital firms, Coinbase’s newly launched US exchange, said to be named Lunar, will provide greater security features; so as not to repeat the mistakes of Mt. Gox and Bitstamp, the former of which declared bankruptcy last year while the latter has sustained hacking attacks and is now back in the game.

Coinbase has already acquired licenses from 50% of the states in the country, which includes New York. The remaining 50% is still in the works and is necessary to complete to be able to provide full nationwide services. Also, Coinbase does not only look at expanding nationwide, it also looks at expanding worldwide in offering their Bitcoin-related services.

Of this plan, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said: “Our goal is to become the world’s largest exchange”.

Continue reading “Coinbase releases first licensed US Bitcoin exchange; Winklevoss twins gear up to do the same” »

Quoted: “We’re not there yet, but in less than 10 years, I believe that the technology behind bitcoin will transform the accounting profession entirely. What is this technology? The blockchain. Let me set the scene by going over a few bitcoin related concepts before explaining why I think that the accounting profession will undergo a major disruption in the coming years.”

Read the article here > http://www.techvibes.com/blog/how-technology-behind-bitcoin-…;01-22

From Innovation to Oblivion…

The ups and downs of Bitcoin as an internet currency may be compared to the eventual demise of Google Glass due to its lack of purpose among consumers. While it does not significantly hold true for bitcoins, which apparently have a more supportive and enthusiastic followers, the path that these two have taken and will take may be substantially similar than we like to admit.

For one, Bitcoin’s staggering price decline in the recent days left some people wondering what road it will eventually take in the near future. Is it only taking a detour or is it bound for a dead end?

In the case of Google Glass, it received much attention during its inception a few years ago. It was even named by Time magazine one of the best innovations of 2012. However, despite the ingenuity behind a supposed-to-be groundbreaking invention, Google Glass lacked a tangible sense, its purpose incoherent.

Continue reading “Bitcoins and Google Glass: Are They Heading For the Same Direction?” »

Quoted: “IBM has unveiled its proof of concept for ADEPT, a system developed in partnership with Samsung that uses elements of bitcoin’s underlying design to build a distributed network of devices – a decentralized Internet of Things. The ADEPT concept, or Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry, taps blockchains to provide the backbone of the system, utilizing a mix of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake to secure transactions.”

Read the article here > http://www.coindesk.com/ibm-reveals-proof-concept-blockchain…et-things/

Quote: ” Internet of Coins strives to create a decentralized, self-sustaining economy by implementing intersystemic connectivity sustained by a hybrid P2P meta-network. The system will help to leverage each of its participant’s strength in numbers hence supporting both the stability of alt coins and the cryptocurrency community as a whole. Internet of Coins had an official Whitepaper launch party on the 3rd of January at the Bitcoin Embassy Amsterdam. The Whitepaper is available for download on http://internetofcoins.org. Internet of Coins has partnered-up with security oriented cryptoexchange and service provider Bitalo since November of last year for continuous development and funding of the project. The open source system will soon be released for non-commercial purposes and be easily accessible to the public; supporting continuous decentralization and empowering the cryptocurrency ecosystem to evolve.”

Read the article here > http://www.baystreet.ca/viewarticle.aspx?id=424703

The volatile nature of bitcoins took its toll as recent turn of events saw the value plunging down to $274 as of this writing. CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index reported that while it opened to $314.59 last Saturday, it was followed by a staggering $263.63 the next day.

The remarkable price drop got everyone talking and while it instigated worries among market watchers, some focused on its bright side, deeming it the perfect opportunity for buying. However, the question still lies out in the open unanswered. What caused the steep crash?

Theories suggest that it may have something to do with margin calls, which if accurate, already did something of this nature sometime in August last year. The holiday season is another factor that may have had affected the value of bitcoins inadvertently. This was the season where exchanges were few with all the banks closed, disabling traders from filling up their cryptocurrency accounts.

Continue reading “Bitcoin’s Plummeting Crash and How it Affects Altcoins” »

Quoted: “Legendary cyberculture icon (and iconoclast) R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell have written a delicious funcyclopedia of the Singularity, transhumanism, and radical futurism, just published on January 1.” And: “The book, “Transcendence – The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity,” is a collection of alphabetically-ordered short chapters about artificial intelligence, cognitive science, genomics, information technology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, space exploration, synthetic biology, robotics, and virtual worlds. Entries range from Cloning and Cyborg Feminism to Designer Babies and Memory-Editing Drugs.” And: “If you are young and don’t remember the 1980s you should know that, before Wired magazine, the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 edited by R.U. Sirius covered dangerous hacking, new media and cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs, with an anarchic and subversive slant. As it often happens the more sedate Wired, a watered-down later version of Mondo 2000, was much more successful and went mainstream.”

Read the article here >https://hacked.com/irreverent-singularity-funcyclopedia-mondo-2000s-r-u-sirius/

Quoted: “If you understand the core innovations around the blockchain idea, you’ll realize that the technology concept behind it is similar to that of a database, except that the way you interact with that database is very different.

The blockchain concept represents a paradigm shift in how software engineers will write software applications in the future, and it is one of the key concepts behind the Bitcoin revolution that need to be well understood. In this post, I’d like to explain 5 of these concepts, and how they interrelate to one another in the context of this new computing paradigm that is unravelling in front of us. They are: the blockchain, decentralized consensus, trusted computing, smart contracts and proof of work / stake. This computing paradigm is important, because it is a catalyst for the creation of decentralized applications, a next-step evolution from distributed computing architectural constructs.

Read the article here > http://startupmanagement.org/2014/12/27/the-blockchain-is-th…verything/