VIDEO — How the Silk Road Trial Could Chill the Internet | Interview with Derrick Broze
Breaking The Set
Feb 4, 2015
Abby Martin interviews, Derrick Broze, writer for Liberty Beat, about the trial and conviction of Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbircht, and how this case could impact the rest of the internet.
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[related: VIDEO — The Final Days of Silk Road]
Meet Darkleaks, a Bitcoin-Powered Black Market for Secrets
by Grace Caffyn (@GCaffyn)
Coindesk
Published on February 3, 2015 at 14:50 GMT
A new black market for secrets that rewards informants with bitcoin has been announced this week.
Darkleaks, masterminded by members of crypto-anarchist collective unSystem, will let users sell leaked data in an anonymous, trustless environment powered by bitcoin’s blockchain.
Amir Taaki, the project’s systems developer, told CoinDesk that platforms like this provide a financial incentive for insiders to reveal information in the public interest, thereby “devaluing business models based around proprietary secrecy”.
History of radical schemes
The unSystem team has divided opinion with radical projects like the anonymous Dark Wallet, due for release soon, and Dark Market, a P2P eBay-style platform designed to run outside government control.
Darkleaks, which Taaki said has been in development “on and off for many months”, builds on another proof-of-concept from his team, PayPub, revealed last May.
Unlike Silk Road’s moderated marketplace model, which has proved vulnerable to law enforcement, there are no third parties on Darkleaks who can weigh in on disagreements between sellers and buyers. In fact, buyers and sellers cannot communicate at all.
VIDEO — 2nd Week of Silk Road Trial: Irony, Contradiction & Tears
BraveTheWorld
Jan 24, 2015
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The Price of Bitcoin Doesn’t Matter Right Now
Balloons bearing the bitcoin logo float above the floor at the Inside Bitcoins conference and trade show, on Monday, April 7, 2014 in New York. The balloons are part of a promotional effort by London-based Cloud Hashing, a bitcoin mining company. image credit: Mark Lennihan/AP
by Jerry Brito
WIRED
Jan 14, 2015
The price of Bitcoin has taken bit of a dive over the last couple of days, shedding over 20 percent of its value in the last 24 hours. The sell-off, like other sell-offs and rallies before it, draws a lot of attention and questions about what it means for the future of the technology. Here’s why I don’t focus on price much.
Bitcoin is best thought of as a 5- to 10-year project, and we’re at the very early stages. An (admittedly imperfect) analogy is the early Web.
Like the early Web, Bitcoin is an open platform that no one owns, and on top of which anyone can build without having to get anyone else’s permission. And just like the early Web, success requires investors, entrepreneurs, and developers to build out the infrastructure and applications that will make it useful to average users.
The World Wide Web was conceived by Tim Berners-Lee; he published a paper proposing it in March of 1989. The following year he worked to implement the idea in code, making the first website in December of 1990. The first popular Web browser didn’t come until 1993 when Marc Andreessen and the team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications released Mosaic. The following year Andreessen started Netscape and released the Netscape Navigator browser in 1994.
VIDEO — Silk Road/Ross Ulbricht Trial — Ben Swann Interviews Derrick Broze
Damon Shaw
Jan 15, 2015
Derrick Broze talks to Ben Swann about the Silk Road/Ross Ulbricht trial on RT America.
VIDEO — Scams in the Bitcoin Space: Interview with MK Lords
Liberty.me
Jan 3, 2015
Jeffrey Tucker interviews MK Lords based on her experience in the Bitcoin space regarding how to spot shady deals and sketchy operators.
Cody Wilson Speaks Out on Campaign to Dismantle Bitcoin Foundation
CoinDesk
Published on January 2, 2015 at 17:18 GMT
Anarchist activist Cody Wilson has officially launched his candidacy for the upcoming Bitcoin Foundation board elections, and reaffirmed his intention to try and disband the organization from within if successful.
Wilson nominated himself with a post on the foundation’s forums on 20th December and has also launched a website to support his campaign.
A staunch opponent of bitcoin regulation or centralization, Wilson is also best known for co-founding Defense Distributed, a donor-funded nonprofit organization that designs and distributes plans for the 3D-printed ‘Liberator’ pistol and ‘Ghost Gunner‘ CNC milling machine.
He was also part of the founding team of DarkWallet, the project to make bitcoin transaction anonymization easy for everyday users.
“I will run on a platform of the complete dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation and will begin and end every single one of my public statements with that message,” Wilson said in November when he first announced his intention to run.
Notably, the Bitcoin Foundation‘s November announcement that it would wind down its education, outreach and public policy efforts to focus on developing bitcoin’s software core appears not to have weakened his campaign.
Wilson’s recently posted manifesto also does not hold back on its combative rhetoric and disdain for the foundation, with its introduction that states:
“This Bitcoin Foundation … was always an embarrassing exercise in bad faith and state philosophy. It was always a vessel for frauds and second-rate minds to collude against the public. I invite you now to its ritual sacrifice.”
Elections will be held 13-19th February for the individual board seats being vacated by outgoing executive director Jon Matonis and current chief scientist Gavin Andresen. Election committee chair Brian Goss posted an acknowledgement that nominations including Wilson’s had been received. Official confirmations will be posted mid-January.
The foundation board also voted in November to retire the Founding Member seat of chairman Peter Vessenes, to be replaced with an International Chapter Director Seat to represent non-US affiliates. The goal is to eventually have a board 100% elected by foundation members.
Structure is the problem
Speaking to CoinDesk, Wilson said his complaint is not with any individual or group within the foundation, but the structure of the organization itself.
The problem with the Bitcoin Foundation goes all the way back to its inception and original mission, Wilson said, adding:
“The best way to help your business is to be part of a trade group and lobby Congress for preferential or beneficial regulation.”
Rather than forming a body to standardize and protect an open-source technology a la the Linux Foundation, he said, the Bitcoin Foundation gave itself a wider role with lobbying power and creation of global policy strategies.
Incoming executive director Patrick Murck promised a new era of openness and consultation with the foundation’s constituents, and conducted surveys into what members wanted most. This led to the promise to focus only on bitcoin’s technology.
This refocus on development only, however, is superficial and there is no meaningful break with its current incarnation, Wilson believes. He notes that public statements have not changed the foundation’s by-laws, its established channels of communication or its affiliate programs around the world.
Even if current leaders are sincere, those in the near or longer-term future could simply come in and pick up the threads previous lobbying efforts have left in place, he said.
PN 