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2013 Bitcoin Mid-Year Review and Outlook

"The past six months may one day prove to be among the most important in bitcoin’s history. As global events sparked increasing need for frictionless wealth transfers, bitcoin’s popularity ballooned and ignited a conversation that will likely continue to flourish in the years to come. Growth in bitcoin’s value was outpaced only by the incredible interest from entrepreneurs, investors and the press. In this 27-page report we cover the major events from the first half of 2013 and what to look out for in the months ahead." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin exchange opens in Hong Kong

"Anti-money laundering and know-your-customer compliance is easier for banking and financial institutions when they deal with virtual currency exchanges rather than cash, says the founder of what may be Hong Kong’s first licensed Bitcoin exchange. Aurélien Menant, a former investment banker at Société Générale and now chief executive and founder of Gate Digital Services, said Bitcoin’s traceability feature would help institutions with compliance and risk management." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin gets big bets from Silicon Valley

"Dot-com pioneers and fresh-faced 20-somethings alike are founding companies to help transact the virtual currency. Are those chasing Bitcoin headed for a gold rush, or fool's gold? Nick Holland, a Javelin Strategy analyst in Boston, is among those who believe math-based currencies like Bitcoin, which enable transactions from one user to another without official oversight or high fees, could upset the centuries-old tradition of paper money -- much as user-generated Wikipedia all but replaced the venerable Encyclopaedia Britannica." Continue reading →

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Life-Saving Third-World Remittances Smothered by Anti-Money-Laundering Laws

"Without a formal banking sector, millions of Somalis rely on money sent from abroad. Underground agents could potentially fill the void. Alternatively, migrant workers could simply transfer new cryptographic commodities like bitcoin, which are not against the law. Also included in the countries put on notice by Barclays are Nigeria, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh with the resulting impact certain to be felt by Somalia's neighbors, Kenya and Ethiopia. The wholesale closure of accounts parallels the situation in Minnesota last year when a local bank, citing the risk of strict penalties, ceased transfers to Somalia for migrants wanting to send money home." Continue reading →

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The Government’s Perilous Bitcoin Chase

"Nothing can strip the shine off a cool trend as quickly as national security officials sharing how it is poised to become a cutting-edge tool in terrorists’ ongoing death-to-America project. As such, I want to thank David Cohen, the Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and John Carlin, acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security—distinguished and otherwise delightful members of a panel I moderated at the Aspen Institute’s National Security Forum this past weekend—for casting a sinister shadow over what I had previously assumed to be the harmless if quirky Bitcoin craze." Continue reading →

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CryptoParty: Party like it’s December 31st, 1983

"Attend a CryptoParty to learn and teach how to use basic cryptography tools. A CryptoParty is free, public and fun. People bring their computers, mobile devices, and a willingness to learn! CryptoParty is a decentralized, global initiative to introduce the most basic cryptography software and the fundamental concepts of their operation to the general public, such as the Tor anonymity network, public key encryption (PGP/GPG), and OTR (Off The Record messaging). CryptoParties are free to attend, public, and commercially and politically non-aligned." Continue reading →

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Cypherpunk (Wikipedia)

"A cypherpunk is an activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since the late 1980s. A very basic cypherpunk issue is privacy in communications and data retention. Such guarantees require strong cryptography, so cypherpunks are fundamentally opposed to government policies attempting to control the usage or export of cryptography, which remained an issue throughout the late 90s." Continue reading →

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Whitfield Diffie (Wikipedia)

"Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie is an American cryptographer and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography. In 1975-76, Diffie and Martin Hellman criticized the NBS proposed Data Encryption Standard, largely because its 56-bit key length was too short to prevent Brute-force attack. Subsequent history has shown not only that NSA actively intervened with IBM and NBS to shorten the key size, but also that the short key size enabled exactly the kind of massively parallel key crackers that Hellman and Diffie sketched out. When these were ultimately built outside the classified world, they made it clear that DES was insecure and obsolete." Continue reading →

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Data Encryption Standard – NSA’s involvement in the design (Wikipedia)

"In 1973 NBS solicited private industry for a data encryption standard (DES). The first offerings were disappointing, so NSA began working on its own algorithm. Then Howard Rosenblum, deputy director for research and engineering, discovered that Walter Tuchman of IBM was working on a modification to Lucifer for general use. NSA gave Tuchman a clearance and brought him in ...] NSA worked closely with IBM to strengthen the algorithm against all except brute force attacks and to strengthen S-boxes. Conversely, NSA tried to convince IBM to reduce the length of the key from 64 to 48 bits. Ultimately they compromised on a 56-bit key." Continue reading →

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Data, meet spies: The unfinished state of Web crypto

"Most Internet companies do not use an privacy-protective encryption technique that has existed for over 20 years -- it's called forward secrecy -- that cleverly encodes Web browsing and Web e-mail in a way that frustrates fiber taps by national governments. Lack of adoption by Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others is probably due to 'performance concerns and not valuing forward secrecy enough,' says Ivan Ristic, director of engineering at the cloud security firm Qualys. Google, by contrast, adopted it two years ago." Continue reading →

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