This $200 Raspberry Pi Box Could Have Saved Mt. Gox

• By Robert McMillan

The innards of the PiperWallet, powered by Raspberry Pi. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

The PiperWallet is a small black box that does little more than generate numbers and spit out paper. But if you invest in bitcoin — the popular digital currency — it could be a lifesaver.
When you own bitcoins, they’re stored at a particular address on the internet, and if you want to spend them or move them, you’ll need a cryptographic private key associated with that address. Many people store their keys in “wallets” that sit on their personal computer or on a website somewhere. Some companies, such as Coinbase or Blockchain, now offer free online wallets that are pretty convenient. But those who hold a large number of bitcoins don’t like to use conventional wallet services. They’re worried these services will be hacked.

Based on the popular Raspberry Pi hardware kit, this $200 device makes bitcoin wallets out of paper. That way, no one can hack them.

In fact, it’s good to be a little paranoid when it comes to storing bitcoins. There’s a lot of malicious software out there that sniffs around on computers for ways to steal the digital currency. That’s why PiperWallet takes a different tack. Based on the popular Raspberry Pi hardware kit, this $200 device makes bitcoin wallets out of paper. That way, no one can hack them.
In the online world, stealing bitcoins is pretty darned simple. Just ask Bloomberg TV’s Adam Johnson. A few months back he quickly had $20 worth of bitcoin stolen when he briefly flashed a private key on television. It’s one of the big security problems with bitcoin — the internet’s version of cash. If someone steals your coins, they’re gone forever.
So, when they own serious amounts of bitcoin, investors go to some pretty extreme lengths to protect their private keys. Charlie Shrem, the now-indicted CEO of the Bitinstant bitcoin exchange, saves his on a ring that he wears on his finger. Others generate their private keys on brand new computers that they never connect to the internet. PiperWallet wants to help anyone store their keys in a similarly secure way — but with dead trees as the medium.

An example of a PiperWallet paper bitcoin wallet. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

That tactic could have helped Mt. Gox, the first major bitcoin exchange, which kept its bitcoins in what’s known as a “cold wallet”. That means that Gox’s private key was supposedly stored in a way that it couldn’t be accessed by hackers, or by any systems connected to the internet. Except that many of Gox’s bitcoins “vanished” — somehow — and Gox was forced to declare bankruptcy, a mess that looks like it will take years to sort out.
Nobody but CEO Mark Karpelles seems to know what happened to Gox, but there may be a lesson here. If the company had simply used a secure paper wallet, perhaps it would still have its bitcoins. That goes double for Gox customers who had stored their bitcoins with the troubled exchange rather than on their own. “If people had stored their coins in PiperWallet, then they wouldn’t have lost them on Mt. Gox,” says PiperWallet’s creator, Chris Cassano.
He has sold about 300 of his PiperWallets to date, mostly to paranoid bitcoin types, or to bitcoin ATM operators who want to give customers a quick and easy way to print out a secure bitcoin wallet. The device is easy to use. You plug it in, push a button, and out comes your wallet complete with digital keys and phone-scannable QR codes. You can print a wallet, use your phone fund it with bitcoins, and then hand it over to a friend or family member or just like cash. It’s the perfect gift for your favorite Bloomberg TV reporter.

11 Top Bitcoin Memes

Roop Gill (@roopgill) | Published on March 29, 2014 at 11:56 GMT | Lifestyle

Bitcoin and viral memes are two of the greatest gifts of the Internet.
Hence, it makes perfect sense to pay tribute to both in a rundown of the best bitcoin memes making the rounds on cyberspace.

1. Let’s establish who the bitcoin owners are:

However, thanks to a little something called ‘anonymity’, we’ll never really know exactly who owns what, although some have tried.

2. They took the blue pill:

While it may take Neo some time to get ready, you can already buy lots with your bitcoins.

3. Bitcoin is going to be explosive:

But could it be worth more than an ounce of gold?

4. You can go places with bitcoin:

The Caribbean, Mount Everest, the Moon … oh the places you’ll go!

5. But not everyone loves bitcoin:

In fact some people really hate it. Like this guy. And this one too.

6. What we are all wondering:

It might be these guys in Asia.

7. This could be their strategy:

All hail Queen B? These contenders are catching up. Some did really well last year.

8. There were definitely some winners in bitcoin:

If you want to know exactly what happened with the value of bitcoin, then make sure you read this.

9. And then there was Chuck Norris:

But sadly, lots of other people were not able to do so.

10. Rejoice! The chosen one has been found:

Maybe not. But, this is what Newsweek speculated.

11. Just in case the man didn’t make himself clear enough:

Because one does not simply find Satoshi Nakamoto.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Bitcoin is Moving Past ‘Amateur Hour’

Carrie Kirby (@carriekirby) | Published on March 26, 2014 at 21:52 GMT | Companies, Events, Investors, News

In a wide-ranging, pointedly honest and often funny on-stage interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek writer Brad Stone at CoinSummit San Francisco on Wednesday, 26th March, venture capitalist and former Facebook and AOL executive Chamath Palihapitiya reflected on the future of bitcoin and on the changes the bitcoin ecosystem is undergoing right now.

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Though he had just flown in from Toronto for day two of CoinSummit San Francisco, Chamath Palihapitiya immediately opened his fireside chat on 26th March with a quote that arguably summed up the feeling of the conference, saying “I feel like I’ve traveled to Mecca” in a quip that garnered laughs from the packed crowd.

BusinessWeek’s Brad Stone followed by asking Palihapitiya to bring the audience up to speed on his recent investments, and he quickly illustrated that he remains bullish on bitcoin, stating his belief that “everyone in the world should have 1% of their assets in bitcoin”.

Palihapitiya took big topics head on out of the gate, dismissing all other digital currencies by emphasizing that his previous statement referred only to bitcoin, not other alternative currencies, and stating that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance issued on 25th March was in fact a boon not just for the industry, but for the general investing public.

“For anyone who thinks this is a bad thing, it’s actually a really good thing. There has been tax policy that has been exploited by rich people for years that have allowed us to wash taxes on anything we own.”

Has-beens and also-rans

The troubles of Mt.Gox and several other recently failed bitcoin companies are “awesome for bitcoin,” Palihapitiya said.

“We’ve got to flush out all the has-beens and also-rans. There’s a bunch of amateur hour bullshit in the bitcoin ecosystem.”

“They will get replaced by a more systematic approach to problem-solving, the right checks and balances, the right regulatory participation,” he said. ”The fact that the price stabilized after is even more important, because it shows the growing maturity of the bitcoin market,” Palihapitiya added.
CoinSummit, has a more business-focused mood than some past bitcoin events, with a notable absence of panels on libertarianism or floating extra-national communities.
This shift is exactly what bitcoin needs, Palihapitiya asserted.

“All of the folks that want to have a libertarian bent or some other political agenda and strap it in on top of bitcoin – it’s really bad for us. You need to replace them with people who have a technological motive or a financial motive.”

Bitcoin’s apolitical agenda

Palihapitiya made it clear that this is an important point to him, returning to it when asked about his biggest worries as a bitcoin investor:

“We need to divorce ourselves from all the political rhetoric. I don’t think this is meant to be a mechanism to evade taxes, a mechanism to push back on government structure.
If we can drop the ego-driven part of wanting to thumb our nose at the establishment, then what we’re left with is actually a Trojan horse that replaces the establishment. And that’s good enough.”

What he is not concerned about is the use of bitcoin for illicit transactions, like on the now-defunct Silk Road marketplace.
In the future, Palihapitiya said, bitcoin will be more crime- and terrorism-resistant than cash, because it will likely get to a place where bitcoin addresses are associated with real names – or even Facebook accounts. But even right now, US dollars are used for more illicit purposes than bitcoins, he stated.

“The CIA drops bushels full of money at the feet of Afghan warlords. What do you think they’re doing with that, buying bread and fucking cheese? That’s not what they’re doing with it. They’re harvesting heroin and killing people.”

Golden State Warrior

Palihapitya swore freely during his interview, usually drawing chuckles from a clearly admiring crowd. Stone jokingly asked when Palihapitiya, a partial owner of the NBA franchise the Golden State Warriors, would start accepting bitcoin for ticket sales.
“We’re working on a stadium, and are about to plow three-quarters of a billion dollars into the San Francisco economy. … As soon as we figure that out, we’ll talk to BitPay,” he said.
Becoming more serious, Palihapitiya said that big retailers such as Walmart will eventually want to accept bitcoin because it will cut their credit card processing costs and provide customers with fraud protection.
Here are some of the other topics Palihapitiya touched on in his lively conversation with Stone.
On Mark Zuckerberg’s opinion of bitcoin:
“I think he thinks it’s cool. I don’t think they’re going to do anything in the near term. I’m speculating. Here’s a  great thing that would be awesome, is if Facebook figured out how to partner or launch a secure wallet, and then how to apply their identity on top of it to create a whitespace within the blockchain so that transactions, buying between people who were willing to be named, have some mechanism to have an easier way of doing things, acknowledged by governments and tax authorities, etc. That would be a game changer for bitcoin overnight.”
On the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto:
“Who cares? The only reason to care is because that person or group of people should be celebrated. … We’re all going to mythologize this now to kingdom come. It’s almost better if this person or group of people never became public, because then it’s really all of ours – and that’s what we want.”
On why he advocates for everyone owning at least a little bitcoin:
“When we look back after 30 years and these things are at $1m (dollars) a coin, I think it would be better if many people had shared in that appreciation instead of a few. That’s why I’m so evangelical about it. You can own one bitcoin, you can own five, you can own a few satoshi. Everyone should just have a little taste of it.”
Images via CoinDesk