Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Bitbillions (Estimated Future Co-Founder Account Value)

$ 192,111.88 (Estimated Future Co-Founder Account Value)

GBBG projects a long-term revenue strategy of $35 per month, per active member. This revenue will come from Premier membership upgrades, premium advertising sales, GBBG|ware projects, outside product sales, and many other sources. Because Co-Founder members have a fixed position near the very top of the Matrix, we predict a Co-Founder could generate $ 64,037.29 USD per year worth of Bitcoins, IF they achieve ALL of the following:
  • Entirely filled Matrix genealogy
  • At least 50% active members in down-line
  • 100 personally sponsored referrals
  • Maximum points each month
It is common in many situations for a buyer of a business to pay 3 years revenue for the business. Therefore, IF a person achieved all of the criteria above, AND our organization were able to achieve revenue of $35 per month, per active member, a person could generate $ 64,037.29 USD per year worth of Bitcoins. Therefore, if common business buyer trends hold true, they could be able to sell this business to a potential buyer for around $ 192,111.88 USD.
The GBBG|market will be open after the launch of the Matrix. This will be a place where members can buy and sell Founder and Co-Founder accounts. You may create as many accounts as you wish. You may also upgrade as many of them to Co-Founder as you wish, as long as there are available upgrades remaining. Many people are strategically building multiple Co-Founder accounts for the purpose of selling them in the GBBG|market in the future. How much profit will YOU make from your multiple Co-Founder accounts?

Only 2,390 Co-Founder Upgrades Remaining

Expand your earnings potential exponentially by upgrading to Co-Founder status today! When we enter the Matrix Stage, these PRIME POSITIONS will be loaded at the very top, just below our 3,285 Founders. Co-Founder status is a LIFETIME status, and your position can NEVER be compressed out of the TOP of the Matrix!
Prime Position
You will be permanently locked into a top position in our forced 3×7 Matrix!
  • Founders loaded 1st
  • Co-Founders loaded 2nd
  • Everyone else loaded after Co-Founders (forever)
2 Matrix Pools
Earn from two Matrix Pools for life!
  • Members Pool
  • Co-Founders Pool
Resale Potential
Sell Co-Founder accounts for huge profit!

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Is Bitcoin Really the Next Internet?


| Published on April 27, 2014 at 12:10 BST | Analysis, Bitcoin protocol, Blockchain, News, Technology
Everyone who encounters bitcoin for the first time grapples with how it works, and what it means. The former is relatively easy enough to learn, the latter however is something that everyone seems to have a different opinion on. ‘Is bitcoin the next Internet?’ seems to be the question behind many news articles and passionate debates alike.
Entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate Marc Andreessen has most visibly made comparisons between the two, while CNBC reported that many more venture capitalists thought bitcoin could be ‘as big as the Internet’.
Despite the comparisons’ obvious buzz appeal, it’s a serious question with profound implications. How alike are bitcoin and the Internet, and what conclusions can we draw from the comparison?

A natural metaphor

Within the world of monetary theory and finance, bitcoin is unprecedented. It is such a radical concept that most in the field are sceptical that the kind of decentralized technology bitcoin represents is even compatible with the modern economy.
The Internet thus provides an obvious reference point for a technology that seems utterly similar in its decentralization, open-source code, state of development, and most importantly its potential to disrupt on a global scale.
Indeed, if nothing else, the comparison can help effectively communicate the magnitude of bitcoin’s technological achievement.
Chris Ellis, the co-founder of feathercoin, captures this sentiment eloquently:
“The first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”
That’s actually a quote from Eric Schmidt, and he’s talking about the Internet or the ‘network of networks’. Every network it touches it liberates. Already we’ve seen publishing, education, retail, and most famously music and film be disrupted in ways we could not have imagined. Does bitcoin represent just such a moment for banking and finance?
Given the fact that bitcoin cannot be centrally regulated, ‘an experiment in anarchy’ seems like an apt description. However for any bitcoin/Internet comparison to be truly useful and tell us where bitcoin can go from here, we need to compare their characteristics in much closer detail.

Core difference

Bitcoin and the Internet are indeed both decentralized, but both serve rather distinct purposes.
The Internet evolved as the general purpose infrastructure for a limitless amount of applications and traffic, such as email. Bitcoin on the other hand has a very specific core purpose, a ‘peer-to-peer electronic cash system’ as described in the very title of Satoshi’s original white paper.
Ultimately most services built on top of bitcoin are meant to help it to more effectively achieve its primary goal as a medium of exchange in one way or another. It exceeds this function by leaps and bounds, accomplishing what the current financial infrastructure can never do.
However as a general platform for new applications to run on, bitcoin currently has severe limitations. Mastercoin, Counterparty, and others have attempted to build additional functionality on top of the Bitcoin protocol with limited success.
While the bitcoin block chain does contain properties that allow it to be used for third-party purposes, the resources are limited and have led to conflict in the past. Bitcoin simply isn’t designed to function as the flexible infrastructure for a wide range of applications like the Internet is.

Block chain potential

However, the potential exists to use the fundamental technology underlying bitcoin, the decentralised block chain, to build numerous decentralized applications.
Decentralized applications have been getting much media attention as of late as the true revolution behind bitcoin, and where we’ll see the most groundbreaking innovation. It opens the doors to decentralized email, domain names, smart contracts, and even Decentralized Autonomous Corporations. As David Jonston, Executive Director of BitAngels, put it:
“[Decentralized applications or DAs] have the potential to become self-sustaining because they empower their stakeholders to invest in the development of the DA. Because of that, it is conceivable that DAs for payments, social networking, and cloud computing may one day surpass the valuation of multinational corporations like Western Union, Visa, Facebook, Google, and Amazon that are are currently active in the space.”
Even Goldman Sachs remarked that the underlying technology behind bitcoin holds promise. Systems designed with the bitcoin blueprint can be extremely specific in nature, or instead provide a backbone that can support as many programs and applications as human creativity can generate – much like the Internet and web. Ethereum is currently being built on that very premise.
Bitcoin itself however remains first and foremost a means of exchanging value. While its block chain technology holds the potential to create a new platform of permissionless innovation, this platform has until recently seemed destined to be divorced from the main bitcoin chain and functionality.

Enter side chains

In the context of the Internet comparison debate, new side chain proposals have great significance.
If implemented into the bitcoin core code by the open-source community, it would enable anyone to create a side chain that can interact with the bitcoin block chain via two-way pegging. Coins can be moved from one chain to the other, allowing decentralized systems to be built that are interoperable with bitcoin.
Rather than the next Internet, bitcoin can become the next killer app for the Internet, much like the web before it
This means that new decentralized applications won’t require their own native unit of exchange and thus can avoid a new ‘race for scarcity’, as well as the extreme volatility that comes with a new, small market cap currency.
Instead such systems can utilize the rapidly maturing and more widely accepted bitcoin as their native means of exchange and operation. In turn, the utility of such systems will directly add to the value and staying power of the bitcoin network.
The implications of this are huge, as side chains will allow the general purpose infrastructure needed to allow the permissionless innovation the Internet and web are famous for. All tied in the end, to bitcoin.
Side chains could be the last piece of the puzzle that links together the bitcoin currency, to the limitless possibilities its block chain technology holds.

Brave new world

This would make bitcoin not ‘merely’ a new e-cash system that far outperforms the capabilities of modern financial infrastructure. It would make bitcoin the de-facto currency in a new decentralized online economy of unbound utility and possibility.
An economy of decentralized applications that can’t be shut down, regulated, or censored by governments or even traditional corporations. All exchanging a similarly decentralized transnational digital currency.
Thanks to side chains, bitcoin could become a frictionless global payment system, and a platform for decentralized innovation all in one.
‘Bitcoin is the next Internet’ has been a useful slogan to gain mainstream attention, and underscore bitcoin’s potential impact on the world. However when we take a more systematic view of bitcoin’s growing evolution as a whole, a more appropriate comparison becomes readily apparent.
Rather than the next Internet, bitcoin can become the next killer app for the Internet, much like the web before it. A massive network of decentralized applications run by instant microtransactions rather than the exploitation of users’ personal information and more. A new web with new rules, and new possibilities.
Bitcoin image via Shutterstock

Friday, April 25, 2014

How bitcoin is moving money in Africa


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It's OK to admit that you still don't know what bitcoin is — but you may now officially be behind the curve. Because all of Africa could soon be getting onboard.
The virtual currency — straight up: computer money — created by an anonymous hacker in 2009 has captured hard-core geeks' hearts. Its appeal? It enables bank-free (aka middleman-free) anonymous purchasing and, crucially, it's a global currency that's not tied to any central bank and not much different than a dollar or a euro. The key characteristics of this digital cash also happen to make it a great fit for people who aren't so down with advanced digital technology: the 326 million Africans who lack access to basic banking services.
This isn't such a crazy idea. Mobile payments that work on standard-feature phones have already made strong inroads in Africa, with 16 percent of Africans using the services. The largest provider of such payments, M-Pesa, already operates in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, as well as India and Afghanistan.
But if you were a member of the large and expanding African diaspora, and you wanted to send money home to grandma or the hubby left behind, you couldn't count on mobile payments. M-Pesa, for instance, lets foreign-dwelling folk send money through a partnership with Western Union — but the latter tends to charge onerous fees. Which makes bitcoin super-appealing, if you can get past the expensive exchange rate — as of publication, one bitcoin was worth nearly US$500.
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It'd be a huge loss for Western Union if bitcoin cut into its business: Africans throughout the diaspora send home $32 billion a year, according to the World Bank. Right now, they pay dearly for the privilege: 12 percent of each transaction, on average. Mobile money also doesn't much address larger economic woes back home, such as inflation and scarcity.
According to bitcoin advocates, the cryptocurrency could help solve both problems.
Companies like Kipochi and BitPesa have already begun to use bitcoin for those home-to-grandma payments, known as remittances. For now, bitcoin users need an Internet connection, but these companies are developing platforms for the standard-feature phones commonly used in Africa (rather than building apps for smartphones, which are more rare).
So far, bitcoin activity in Africa has picked up most among young tech-savvy men in urban centers such as Nairobi, says Pelle Braendgaard, the CEO of Kipochi. But it could be spreading. Lately, Braendgaard has seen an increase in exchanges among friends and family members.
His goal: to expand access to women managing household expenses. They're the most common recipients of remittances. "My goal is to make bitcoin usable by ordinary people all over the world, so that even my grandma can use it," he says.
Still, the challenge remains: There's no system to cash out bitcoins for government-issued currency. Unlike a euro or a dollar, you can't hold a bitcoin in your hand or pop it into your wallet to use at the local merchants. There's also still an unsettled debate about whether bitcoin is a currency or payment protocol — a crucial legal distinction that has made regulators especially wary, says Bill Maurer, director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California-Irvine. China, for instance, has barred its financial institutions from carrying out bitcoin transactions. African countries have also been hesitant, due to concerns about money laundering.
African banks have started warming up to Bitcoin — but they've stopped short of a full embrace. In February, South Africa's Standard Bank tested a bitcoin trading system, but hasn't yet offered the service to customers. Braendgaard, however, remains hopeful. He says he's in talks with several banks in African countries — including Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe — to enable the conversion of bitcoin into local currencies using Kipochi's service. He expects to launch the first such partnership within six months.
One of bitcoin's strangest facets may be one of its biggest challenges on the continent: the way it's produced through a process called mining. Developers use computer clusters to solve complex mathematical equations and verify transactions, thereby earning, or "mining," bitcoin. But given the computer processing requirements, most people in Africa can't easily mine bitcoin — instead, they receive bitcoin from someone else, often from outside the continent. Receiving the currency from outside "creates dependency," says Will Ruddick, the co-founder of Koru, a nonprofit based in Mombasa, Kenya.
Yet it's tempting to think about the inflationary troubles bitcoin could solve. Specifically, a broader application of bitcoin — as a complementary currency — could appeal to African consumers who are leery of their country's inflationary troubles, which are a constant threat to economic stability. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe once rendered the country's currency nearly worthless, halting commercial activity. By contrast, because the circulation of bitcoins is capped at 21 million, the cryptocurrency is — at least theoretically — inflation-proof. As a result, proponents argue, it could serve as a trustworthy store of value in periods of economic distress.
It's not the first time Africa's seen an alternate currency, and in the past, new currencies have managed to open up informal economies to broader markets. Take Koru, Ruddick's nonprofit, which developed Bangla-Pesa for a slum in Mombasa called Bangladesh. Small-scale business operators, such as fruit sellers and tailors, join the currency's network upon receiving endorsements from four current members, and then receive 200 Bangla-Pesa (equivalent to 200 Kenyan shillings). The members then use the currency to purchase goods from one another, while reserving shillings for commerce outside the community, such as paying school fees. It's an indirect barter system, says Ruddick. Bangla-Pesa allows economic activity to continue even in periods of scarcity. Using bitcoin could help by providing an easier way to execute and monitor transactions.
But getting to that sort of system would still be a challenge.
Convincing people to put their trust in new money systems takes significant effort. And bitcoin's emphasis on anonymity runs counter to traditional means of doing business in Africa, in which relationship-building is critical. "Bitcoin comes with this notion of pseudo-anonymity, but do people want that?" Maurer asks.
Still, if Africans can get past bitcoin's cloak-and-dagger, mask-and-cape front, the cryptocurrency could get its shot at making good on its promise.
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