4 Lessons to Learn From Ross Ulbricht's Trial (Op-Ed)

By Amanda B. Johnson

Ross Ulbricht – the man who 12 strangers recently deemed to be rightful property of the state – is set to spend the rest of his otherwise productive life in a cage. But if you're interested in the future of cryptocurrency, whether or not Ross really ran the successful Silk Road website is beside the point.

Whatever you think about the victimless act of buying or selling “illicit” plants, consider the following:

1. Cryptocurrencies will do best where states are poor. Imagine for a moment how much the Ulbricht and Silk Road persecution cost the state in America.

Imagine how many state employees like Jared Deryeghiayan collected fat salaries – for years – to infiltrate the site's administrative operations. To track down and seize the servers on the other side of the world.

Imagine the manpower, computer power, caging facilities and weaponry used to carry out the capture and year-long caging of Ulbricht. Imagine the cost of the jail guards, state-employed hackers, judges, lawyers, prosecutors, police, and paper pushers. The “press” releases. The “evidence” collection and archival.

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NYC Wants Drivers to Pay For Parking Tickets Via Apple Pay, Mobile Apps and Bitcoin

By GEOFF WEISS

New York City is weighing new legislation that would enable drivers to instantaneously pay for parking tickets via Apple Pay, mobile apps and even Bitcoin.

The city collects roughly $600 million from 10 million parking tickets annually, according to MarketWatch. However, the current payment system is rather outdated: offenders can only pay online, through the mail or in person at the courthouse. And if they don’t pay on time, late fees begin to accrue. This, along with a 2.5 percent credit and debit card fee, could change with the use of mobile apps and cryptocurrencies.

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Reserve Bank Governor: India “will adopt digital currencies at some point”

By  Charlie Richards

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India has said he has “no doubt” that digital currencies will play a role in India's future society. Drawing a comparison between the rise of debit and credit cards in the country, the Governor argues digital currency will help pave the way to a cashless society.

Speaking during a wide-ranging TV interview in New Delhi, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan made his first comments on Bitcoin and the world of digital currencies yesterday mixing both caution around the issues of price instability, and previous examples of coin theft, with optimism about the future implementation of digital currencies in society.

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What is a Bitcoin Wallet

What is a Bitcoin Wallet?

The universe wants one money

By Oleg Andreev

In this post I address issues of competing government currencies, competing private currencies, gold, silver, bitcoin and alternative “crypto-currencies”.

We all know that variety and competion is a good thing. We all want slightly different things, value the same things differently or make different trade-offs. That’s why we have a wide variety of products, prices, quality, colors and materials on the market. Interestingly, money is different. We all want one single universal money. It may not be obvious to many people, so let me explain.

How money is different from everything else? On one hand, money is just an asset. You can produce, buy, sell or hold it. On the other hand, money is a medium of exchange. It allows you to trade your 8 hours in the office for a new iPhone. It also allows you to delay consumption decision. You can spend 8 hours of work today, but then be free to decide when and for what to spend your salary. If suddenly you need to buy a ticket to Hong Kong, you can do it without working extra couple of hours to earn it.

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Bitcoin not a financial product: ASIC

By Leon Spencer

In its submission to the ongoing Australian Senate inquiry into digital currency, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has said that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not financial products.

ASIC, which regulates Australian organisations, financial markets and services, and finance sector professionals, said in its submission that: "It is our view that digital currencies themselves do not fit within the current legal definitions of a 'financial product'."

This means that a person does not need an Australian market licence to operate a digital currency trading platform, or an Australian financial services licence in order to trade in digital currency; hold a digital currency for another person; provide advice in relation to digital currency; and arrange for others to buy and sell digital currency.

ASIC said in its submission that contracts for the sale and purchase of digital currencies are typically settled immediately, and as a result are unlikely to be financial products or derivatives.

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What the Financial Elite Say about Bitcoin

By Amanda B. Johnson

CoinTelegraph attended Money20/20 this year, an event that brings together players in financial services from all over the world, and even some state central bank actors. This year marked the second year that Bitcoin was officially included among topics covered, and CoinTelegraph asked a slew of fiat’s bigwigs what they thought of Bitcoin.

Here’s what they said:

CoinTelegraph: What do you think about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

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Is Bitcoin the Future?

Below is the November 30th Thoughts from the Frontline, republished in full.

Bitcoin is a topic of discussion almost everywhere I go. My introduction to Bitcoin came when I was speaking at a gold conference in Palm Springs and three bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college students approached me with a video camera and asked for my thoughts on Bitcoin. 

Noting my confusion, they began to evangelistically espouse the virtues of Bitcoin and tell me how it would save us from the evils of the Federal Reserve. I kept from rolling my eyes (you do want to encourage passion in the young) and mentioned a meeting that I had to go to – at that very moment as it turned out.

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Decentralized Markets Kills E-commerce Stars: OpenBazaar

In July 2001 the fall of Napster gave birth to a revolution in peer to peer file sharing, the technology sector learned the dangers of censorship and several peer to peer file sharing protocols were born: Gnutella, Fast Track, eDonkey, Direct Connect and ultimately BitTorrent.

The peer to peer file sharing community always knew that peer to peer could do a lot more than just file sharing – it was always the dream, being able to let people trade digital goods in a distributed fashion just the way people were free to trade files – but this wasn’t possible until the Blockchain technology was created.

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THE FIRST BITCOIN SUPERMARKET IN ARNHEM, THE NETHERLANDS

Arnhem, the capital of the province of Gelderland and one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, has the first supermarket where you can pay in Bitcoin. The Spar Arnhem Centraal started to accept Bitcoin this week.

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Citi Chief Economist: Bitcoin is Closest Commodity to Gold

Gold is a commodity like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Citi's chief economist argues in a research note published yesterday, ahead of a Swiss vote that could cause the global gold price to spike.

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