Inside Bitcoins NYC Day 1: Bitcoin 2.0 Takes Center Stage

Tom Sharkey | Published on April 8, 2014 at 00:26 BST | Events, News

More than 2,000 digital currency enthusiasts gathered at the Javits Center in New York City on 7th April for the city’s second Inside Bitcoins conference and expo, organised by Mediabistro.
Attendees traveled to New York from more than 30 countries and 38 US states to hear speeches from industry leaders about the usual topics, such as the future potential and big-picture implications of bitcoin for consumers and the financial markets.
As the day progressed, though, panelists began to emphasize the opportunities of Bitcoin 2.0 and applications of the Bitcoin protocol beyond currency, and notably turned attention to the topic of governmental regulation of digital currencies.
The event kicked off with Alan Meckler, the CEO and Chairman of Mediabistro, who welcomed the crowd and noted the dramatic increase in attendance from last year’s Inside Bitcoins NYC event, which he said had just over 150 attendees.

A ‘buzzing’ crowd

Even before Circle’s Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire kicked off his opening keynote address – which centred on bringing bitcoin to mainstream audiences, Inside Bitcoins NYC conference programmer Stewart Quealy commented on the energy in the room, saying:

“It’s great to be in this room and feel the energy of the crowd. There’s a certain buzz in the air of everyone who is excited about the potential in this industry.”

This was evidenced by the number of startup companies who signed up as exhibitors and showcased their work in a variety of fields, including mining, cloud storage and regulatory compliance consulting.
Conference attendees lined the exhibition hall during the lunch break to learn more about the diverse offerings of exhibitors, and even participated in a live bitcoin trading session hosted by the Bitcoin Center NYC.

Diverse topics and opinions

Day one of the conference played host to a diversity of topics discussed by a wide range of industry professionals. Panels focused on issues such as regulation, mainstream adoption, the startup ecosystem and security, among others.
Unsurprisingly, the variety of topics brought with them a variety of opinions and viewpoints.
More than once when questions were fielded from the audience, members of the panel made a point to speak up in opposition of their fellow panelists’ perspectives.
In a panel titled ‘Moving Bitcoin Forward: Bringing Trust, Legitimacy and Transparency to the Market’, moderator Michael Terpin, co-founder of BitAngels, asked for a show of hands as to which area holds the most importance for increasing the number of bitcoin users: ease of use, security, regulation, public perception, economics, or liquidity?
While there were votes for each of the five areas of concern, there was a clear majority consensus that bitcoin’s ease of use is the most important factor in growing the industry; members of the panel agreed.

A maturing industry

One recurring theme across the board from Monday’s panels and keynote speeches was the notion that the digital currency industry is rapidly evolving, and that it has already come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2009.
During a panel discussion titled ‘New Ideas in Bitcoin’, speakers highlighted the emerging ideas in digital currencies that expand beyond bitcoin’s use solely as a currency.
Ryan Charleston, founder and CEO of Bitcorati, used the Internet as a metaphor for bitcoin’s potential:

‘Bitcoin represents Internet 2.0. I’m happy [we're] shifting away from talking about bitcoin only as a currency,’ R. Charleston @bitcorati
— CoinDesk (@coindesk) April 7, 2014

Regulation and education

The topic of regulation was a primary focus in many of Monday’s panel discussions. A number of different viewpoints on regulation were presented from panelists, but the popular stance seemed to be that some level of regulation will be necessary in order for bitcoin to achieve mainstream adoption.
Jacob Farber, senior counsel at Perkins Coie LLP, noted the contrasting attitudes that the bitcoin community holds about regulation, stating:

“I’m struck by the seemingly mass acceptance of regulation in this room. There are contrasting interests between the original crowd who are averse to regulation and the new innovators working on Bitcoin 2.0.”

Other panelists, like Izzy Klein of Podesta Group, believe that regulation is inevitable.
As such, Klein argued that there needs to be more consensus among regulators in their approach to dealing with digital currencies:

“When you start to get mixed messages out of regulators, you start to get contradictory regulations.” @izzysk of @PodestaGroup #bitcoinconf
— CoinDesk (@coindesk) April 7, 2014

Educating regulators about bitcoin’s underlying technology and its value for the global economy is paramount for productive and meaningful regulation, Klein said.

Closing remarks

The first day of Inside Bitcoins NYC drew a large crowd with diverse interests and opinions, and the variety of panelists and discussions ensured that the conference offered something to appeal to everybody’s interests.
Topics like regulation and entrepreneurial opportunity held a particular focus throughout the day, and though not everybody shared the same opinions, it was clear that attendees felt that they were part of a rapidly evolving and disruptive industry.
Images by Tom Sharkey and Pete Rizzo

Google Coin May Stand Up Against Bitcoin

Added by Daris Abraham on January 26, 2014.
Saved under Daris Abraham, Opinion, Technology
Tags: google

A recent e-mail conversation between Google executives and a curious columnist had indicated the internet giant’s intention to include Bitcoin as a medium of payment for transactions. However, the truth might be far from this and Google may be already on the road to stand up against Bitcoin with its own Google Coin.
The news of Google-Bitcoin integration had created a lot of flutter in the tech circuit since Bitcoin getting attention from a prestigious company like Google would give it the required reputation boost. Google’s Senior VP of Ads and Commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy, had apparently confirmed through the e-mail that the company was in midst of a working strategy to integrate alternate payment solutions like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s disadvantages in its current form, however, makes it very difficult for Google to quickly align its service with the digital currency. Moreover, Google itself dealing with the currency transaction through its platform could result in multiple issues and even a possible litigation for the company through the still unreliable Bitcoin universe.
Customers and users of Bitcoin have been cribbing about the various usage issues involving Bitcoin including security and ease in interface for the transactions. Yet, there seems to be no let up in the ever-increasing popularity of the digital currency. It is clearly visible that Bitcoin has captured the imagination of many and can become a powerful element in the future.
Thus, Google is most likely to introduce a rival to Bitcoin with the introduction of a robust coin system capable of standing up against it. This will ensure that the company is able to serve the ever-increasing customer demand for an independent and universal digital currency transactions.
With Google’s extensive experience and research capabilities it can quickly encompass the issues that currently haunt the Bitcoin service and ensure availability of a seamless system for users across geographical locations:

• Google Drive for Google Coin Wallet 

The biggest concern of every Bitcoin user is the loss of Bitcoins to wallet file corruption from hard disk crashes or virus attacks. Any loss of Bitcoins from such data corruption is forever lost in the system and there are no available measures to claim the orphaned coins back.
Google Drive and the Google Wallet can essentially resolve this issue within no time as both services can hold data away from such mundane issues and keep Google Coins safe for its users. Google Coin millionaires and billionaires will feel far more secure with their hard-earned money.

• Traceable Transactions 

The serious adoption of digital currency has been plagued by bans in some countries like Thailand for its already reported use in buying drugs and in other illegal transactions. The lack of traceability of transactions by the authorities is a worrying concern which could find more countries pursuing a total ban in the future.
Google with its “One account, All of Google” service can effectively keep every transaction completely traceable. Illegal transactions once discovered can be mapped back to the suspects involved.

• Irreversible Payments

Lack of a central payment authority certainly undermines the possibility of resolution of any payment related errors that can occur for Bitcoin users. Non-reversible payments has continues to be an issue but Google with its Wallet service can quickly look into a possible solution of the same, possibly by setting up a central authority for regulation and addressing grievances.

• Escrow Services for Buyer Protection

Google Wallet can effectively be an escrow account service as well for all transactions that has a waiting period attached to it. Buyers can make the payment into the Google Wallet which can be later released once the seller delivers its promised service effectively.

• Ease of Use of Interface

Bitcoin interface remains confusing for almost all current users and new users are finding it extremely difficult to navigate through the services. This deficiency in ease of usage has been the reason behind the lack of wide-scale adoption of the digital currency.
Known for its dumbed down user-interface for all its platforms and services, Google is already a master of simplicity. Google Coin, thus, can be launched with an easy to use platform for better adopt-ability by all users concerned.
Bitcoin is at its very nascent stage of evolution and as more and more people discover its benefits, more chinks will definitely emerge. Google’s vast team present in the payments and Wallet section would definitely watching over and would be able to resolve these issues faster with its Google Coin services as against Bitcoin. Google for sure has the ability to stand up strong to rival Bitcoin and may even surpass its popularity with its own Google Coin service.
By Daris Abraham
Sources:
Wallstcheatsheet
Blackbambu
Stanford.edu
Yahoo
Telegraph

Mining Roundup: Solar-Powered Mining, DVR Malware and the ‘Bitcoin Baron’

Daniel Cawrey (@danielcawrey) | Published on April 6, 2014 at 16:47 BST | Analysis, Mining, News, Prices, Startups, Technology

The price of bitcoin on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) has declined in recent weeks on the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had released complex guidance for digital currency users amid growing uncertainty regarding exchange regulation in China.
In the mining world, these price fluctuations can cause ongoing profitability issues, as miners, hardware manufacturers and price are key factors that impact the difficulty.
The incentive for people to mine varies with the bitcoin price. A high price makes mining attractive and people invest in costly ASIC rigs. The mining manufacturers then ship newer, more powerful units which raise the difficulty and mean more capital expenditure for miners if they want to keep up with the mining Joneses.
Then the price plummets, leaving everyone mining at high difficulty without the ability to cash in their coins at a significant profit.
The mining industry is pretty much held hostage to these realities. Call them bitcoin economic factors, if you will. Now, with that unfortunate news out of the way, let’s see what’s been happening since our last roundup.

The worst bitcoin miner ever

Records television shows well. Mines bitcoin not so well. Source: Engadget

Bitcoin mining in the form of SHA-256 hashing requires serious processing power, and the higher the difficulty, the more power needed. That’s why it seems counterintuitive to create ARM-based bitcoin mining malware.
Sure, recently discovered Linux-based bitcoin mining malware already seems like a bad enough idea, but the concept of ARM processor mining malware that can infect digital video recorders (DVRs) is just downright inefficient.
There is potential for lower-powered chips to mine bitcoin in the future, but that’s only going to happen on smaller nodes of silicon that are using ASICs designed for that specific purpose. Anything else is just going to be a complete nuisance.
Also to be filed under pointless mining malware is the one announced on 25th March, that gets your Android device mining for dogecoins – veeery slooowly.

City-sized electricity bill for miners

Freakonomics recently released a bitcoin podcast that featured venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Stanford professor Susan Athey.
If anyone ever thought that bitcoin was a resource hog, take this comment from Athey as an idea of how much energy mining might use:
“So it’s just burning a lot of electricity, enough to power many, many homes. I’ve heard estimates as high as 3 million homes could be powered with the electricity that goes to bitcoin mining.”
Athey’s number for bitcoin mining’s electrical consumption is just an estimate, but given ever-increasing network power, it’s likely to end up being far higher than that.
As a result, technologies that can improve the efficiency of miners are going to become highly important, which brings us onto …

Spondoolies Tech now shipping power efficient miners

Spondooliestech Sp10 Dawson, still in the box. Source: Mineforeman

Israel-based manufacturer Spondoolies-Tech has begun shipping units of its new power-efficient miner.
Called the Sp10 Dawson, this rig should produce 2.1 TH/s per kilowatt of energy, claims the company – a figure that Spondoolies-Tech reached by reducing the toggle rate of its 40nm ASICs.
However, Neil Fincham from Mineforman reviewed one of these units and found that the miner hashes at 1.49 TH/s. The SP10 Dawson does draw at less than 1 Watt per gigahash, though – adds up to 1388W while running.
The unit weighs in at 14kg, which gives it the heft of a regular server and means it needs to be housed in a proper rack.

Solar-powered bitcoin mining

The unit has a battery for cloudy days. And those pesky nighttime hours. Source: Solarminer.

Some people try to locate miners in places where there they can find cheap prices for all that power their miners will eat up, but if you don’t want to move to Iceland or the US’s Pacific Northwest, you could opt to go green.
Solarminer is now selling a USB hardware product that the company says uses nothing more than sunlight in order to operate.
The device uses three 150W solar panels and 288Wh LFP batteries to harvest and store energy, and costs $889.
Solarminer customers do have to buy USB miners for the unit’s 16 slots. However, there are a lot of different USB mining options available, and using something like, for example, the BitFury RedFury USB miner you could hash at 40 GH/s from one of these, just with sweet sunlight.

The ‘Bitcoin Baron’

Selling at every single peak. Source: Wired

Wired recently ran a story on a couple of data geeks, Kai Chang and Mary Becica, that took the leaked Mt. Gox data and made a bunch of visualizations from that information. One user that stood out was referred to as the ‘Bitcoin Baron’ – a Mt. Gox exchange trader that mostly sold BTC at the top of every market peak.
The speculation is that the Bitcoin Baron might be a big-time miner, or perhaps a pool operator. Many (but not all) of those who operate large bitcoin mines or pools are hesitant to divulge any information regarding operations. But if this chart is true, it shows that big-time miners are always closely looking to make the best fiat profit that they can.

2.5 TH/s Bitfury Razz

BitFury’s slogan is “Extreme Performance. Source: Bitfurystrikesback

BitFury, a chip manufacturer that claims it powers 20-30% of the bitcoin network, is now selling mining units.
The ecommerce site Bitfurystrikesback is offing the 2.5 TH/s ‘Razz’ unit, which sucks up 3kW of power for its hashing ability.
The Razz costs €7,250, or about $9,947. Interestingly, it is marked as a ‘used’ model, which would logically lead one to assume that BitFury has used these Razz units to mine prior to putting them up for sale.
When CoinDesk asked Bitfurystrikesback’s CEO Niko Punin about the used status of the machines, he offered no comment.
However, Punin did say that there would be another version of the Razz for sale soon with even better specs.

1.2MW, liquid-cooled, bitcoin mining container

Industrial mining evolved. Source: Allied Control

For those inclined to study data centre architecture and design, the concept of the modular container has been considered one of the best ways to pack servers into a small area. Google did it in secret for a while, and then Facebook open-sourced it.
Allied Control, which is a startup partnering with 3M on a special type of cooling fluid, has written a paper on modular bitcoin mining design.
It involves immersion cooling using six 200-240kW flat-rack tanks and is designed so that ASIC boards can be easily swapped when they become obsolete.
Each of these modular units can support a whopping 1.2MW of power. That is a figure that even Allied Control admits would not have seemed fathomable in bitcoin mining a year ago, but has become a harsh reality.
Got a cryptocurrency mining tip for future roundups? Contact us.
Disclaimer: This article should not be viewed as an endorsement of any of the companies mentioned. Please do your own extensive research before considering investing any funds in these products.
Electrical lines image via Shutterstock