The Essence of How Bitcoin Works (Non-Technical)

A brief intro to the main ideas behind How Bitcoin Works, including how money is transferred, who keeps track of it, and how the whole thing is secured.

I thought I would make a quick post here to collect together some information about a few of the various infrastructure projects completed and currently underway within the maxcoin ecosystem, along with details of some additional third-party service agreements that are helping to increase the utility and promote adoption of maxcoin in the medium-long term.  Bear in mind, this is an incomplete list of the work that is currently being undertaken by the community, but I have tried to cover as many of the most relevant developments of interest to the wider community. The bullet points below merely scratch the surface of the work currently taking place.  If you have any comments to add, or if I have left anything important out, please post and discuss!

1. BitXATM have announced that they will be launching 1,000 ATMs in the US, all of which will be capable of transacting in MaxCoin. They will also have PoS devices for point of sale purchases. Not many other altcoins can make that claim. This potentially will increase the real world utility of maxcoin in day-day use by making adoption by bricks and mortar businesses as easy as possible.

2. The MaxCoin Silver Cryptobullion project on StartJOIN raised over $100,000 in crowdfunding capital in under two weeks with the aim of manufacturing a physical silver MaxCoin. The demand seen for this was huge, demonstrating how much support there is from this community to fund worthwhile projects.

3. The MaxCoin Power Mining project is attempting to create an FPGA that supports keccak for the purposes of mining maxcoin. It has raised almost $20,000 in funding and is currently seeking qualified VHDL programmers to assist with creating a working SHA3 implementation interfaced with cgminer. 

4. A brand new MAX/BTC market was launched on Bittrex.com, the largest and most well known AltCoin exchange. In less than 24 hours after going live, the Bittrex market surged ahead of Cryptsy to become the 2nd largest maxcoin market by daily trade volume. 

5. Work is underway on a MaxCoin Android Wallet to enable MAX transactions on your Smartphone.

6. The TXTCoinsNow project on StartJOIN is aiming to enable payments in MaxCoin via SMS without the need for a computer, a smartphone or even an internet connection. This project aims to bring max to the unbanked people of the world who do not have the privilege of owning expensive computing hardware. All that is needed is any regular phone to send and receive payments in maxcoin.

7. StartJOIN have confirmed that MaxCOIN will be accepted on their platform in the coming weeks for the purpose of making pledges towards crowdfunding projects. StartJOIN is one of the few serious crowdfunding platforms embracing cryptocurrencies and is aiming to be a large player in the crowdfunding market in the coming months and years. This gives maxcoin a unique use case, as no other crowdfunding platform has yet embraced a cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.

8. MaxCoin is currently in the process of being integrated into the NXT multigateway decentralised exchange. Yes, that's right. A decentralised MaxCoin exchange! You can learn more about the NXT multigateway on their website.

9. After the launch of MaxCoin in February, a single mining pool controlled a dominant share of the network hashrate for a significant amount of time. However, during that period, no 51% attacks on the blockchain were attempted. The mining community have however finally addressed the issue, such that no single pool now controls >51% of the MaxCoin network.

10. A paper wallet generator has been created to enable secure, long-term cold storage of maxcoin.

11. A MaxCoin News site has been established at maxcoinnews.net.

12. MaxBay.eu is an auction site currently in development that allows you sell your old stuff for MaxCoin.

13. The core wallet software has been updated on GitHub with built-in QR code support.

14. A secure web-wallet implementation is approximately 80% complete.

15. A minikey format has been implemented to create compact maxcoin private keys - GUI under development.

16. Work has been completed on a MaxCoin brain-wallet generator - GUI under development.

17. MaxCoin compatible versions of BitcoinJS and Bitcoin-abe are being being ported and are nearing completion.

Coinbase is turning into a worst kind of fascist dictatorship.

...

This kind of behaviour should in no way be surprising – they are turning evil right on schedule.

Andreas Antonopoulos - Government not a threat to Bitcoin

Andreas talks with Adam Kokesh about bitcoin and government regulation.

r.sloyalty.com

• Super easy configuration
• Amazing cooling and long quietness
• Hash Rate: 13MH+
• Case Material: Aluminum
• Chip: 55nm GAW Miners dedicated ASIC Scrypt (QFN Design)
• Power Consumption: 450W

• 1 x GAW Miners Black Widow
• 


1 x ZenController by ZenMiner
• 
1 x SD CARD ready for ZenController with GAW Miners firmware.

• 1 x USB DATA cables to use with the ZenController
• 1 x ZenController power cable for standard power supply unit (4 PIN Connection)
• 
1 x Ethernet cable for connecting the ZenController to your router.

The cryptocurrency community is a highly resilient one, chiefly due to its decentralized and cooperative nature. Cryptocurrency encourages features such as the open source development model, network consensus protocols, and democratic software version adoption, which foster community acceptance and buy-in from users who all participate voluntarily. Cryptocurrencies are not the only economic agents that exhibit decentralized cooperation. In seeking out other such like-minded economic agents and interfacing with them, all involved can mutually benefit from increases in the anti-fragility and resilience of our communities. Those acting on behalf of the dominant model economic model will first seek to exploit and then destroy counter-models such as Bitcoin. We’re lucky that at this point it’s mostly just exploitation. To maintain and build robust count-economic models we must integrate with other organizations such as cooperatives, credit unions, and distributed autonomous organizations.  By having cooperative interactions that build an emergent, explorative, and asset-based economic complex we can create an economy that creates greater value for its agents— without being easily divided and conquered.

Full Article

cur.lv

Guncoin and the 2nd Amendment

In this spirit of ‘pro-gun’ constitutional conservatism we now have ‘Guncoin’. If Bitcoin is a libertarian wet dream then we really should have seen Guncoin coming. Perhaps some did.

The cryptocurrency Guncoin claims to exist out of a real public need. In the United States it is very difficult to find conventional payment processors willing to serve online firearm dealers. When a third party payment processor is willing to process a transaction it involves an incredibly high fee.

Guncoin therefore promises to increase competition in online firearms distribution. This will be achieved by providing a payment option that removes the need for any third parties.

Guncoin will be officially released to the public on May 1st of this year, regardless of how well the funding campaign does. The fundraising campaign will last for the next 40+ days.

There is already a lot of controversy about Guncoin and it has only been advertised for a few days.

If you are interested, please check out the Facebook page and the Fundraising Campaign for all of the information.

Article by Tristan Winters

An event at the Bitcoin Center NYC, just a block away from the New York Stock Exchange. Digital, decentralized, algorithmic, possibly disruptive and for now at least, rather volatile.

It was only a matter of time before the success of Bitcoin led to a new attempt to create a digital currency backed by gold. It seems as if that day has now arrived.

Douglas Jackson is the founder of e-gold, which was shut down by U.S. authorities a little over five years ago under accusations of money laundering. While I fully think the ultimate monetary solution will be a decentralized payment protocol that merges Bitcoin-like technology with the ability to back it with gold, silver or whatever people want, I am of the view that it cannot be done from an overly centralized authority or protocol. There are several reasons for this.