money

Why bitcoin has a firm foothold in the online gambling world

"What’s interesting in bitcoin-based gambling sites is how many of them are possibly more transparent than traditional casinos or other online sites. That’s because with the block chain being a public ledger, all that an inquisitive gambler would need to do is follow the transactions from a site’s bitcoin address. It’s no wonder, then, that sites like SatoshiDice show the latest plays being transacted on the site and claim to be 'provably trustworthy'. In addition, some sites even publish how they implement their random number generator. BitSaloon, for example, defines itself as a 'provably fair casino' meaning that the site operators cannot modify the outcome of any particular game." Continue reading →

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Do bitcoins belong in your retirement portfolio?

"For years, investment firms and professionals have advocated the need to include a small percentage of high risk and potentially high reward assets into your retirement portfolio. The thinking is that including a small percentage of your overall asset allocation (from 5% - 10%) into these assets can provide high potential returns with only a small impact on your portfolio if the risk becomes too great. Robert Powell wrote on this site recently of how defined benefit plan managers often go beyond stocks and bonds to achieve high returns by pursuing more 'nontraditional strategies'." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Can paper money survive a full credit cycle?

"A super bank run by super economists? How long would it take for them to blow up the whole world's financial system? But don't worry about it. The system will blow up anyway. No paper money system has ever survived a full credit cycle. That - and not a lack of international monetary reform - is why there are so many bubbles now. When interest rates are falling - often pushed to artificially low levels...and held there for an extremely long time - credit expands and the burden of debt. That has been happening for the last 3 decades. And now, the whole economy depends on something that can't possibly continue. Debt can't grow forever." Continue reading →

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Indians Who Bought Gold, Won. Those Who Didn’t, Lost.

"The idiot Keynesians who ran the Bank of India destroyed the rupee. In India, fathers buy gold for their daughters’ dowries. They don’t buy rupees. India put a tax on gold imports in a vain attempt to save the rupee. It didn’t work. The government hates it when Indians buy gold. This shows a lack of faith in the government. That lack of faith is well deserved. The government said that Indians who bought gold were making a big mistake. But it turns out that Indians who trusted the government’s rupee made the big mistake. If you think it can’t happen here, you could wind up like all those Indians who have lost a quarter of their wealth in recent months. They believed their government. Silly them." Continue reading →

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Jeffrey Tucker: Canada: Land of the Freer?

"With QuickBt, consumers are buying bitcoins and then transferring them to merchants. No harm, no real money exchange as traditionally defined, no sneaky financial trickery. It's just business, and the Canadian regulators have said: it's not our business. Meanwhile, just south of the border, regulators are putting the fear of government into every conceivable crypto-currency merchant. Congress is issuing warnings. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is exacting fees. The feds are driving services out of existence. It's so bad that Bitcoin advocates are reduced to Stockholm-like begging: 'Please regulate us as soon as possible.'" Continue reading →

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Bitcoin offers privacy—as long as you don’t cash out or spend it

"Using special algorithms, the researchers were able to associate large numbers of seemingly anonymous bitcoins addresses with certain major services such as exchanges and payment processors, said Sarah Meiklejohn, a doctoral candidate in computer science at UC San Diego, who assisted in the research. For example, they linked more than 500,000 Bitcoin addresses with Mt. Gox, a popular exchange in Japan where users buy and sell bitcoins. 'We saw a lot of people deposit into Silk Road directly from their Mt. Gox address,' Meiklejohn said. In those cases, law enforcement would have minimal work to obtain the name of a user if they presented a legal order to Mt. Gox." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin Gains Credit Union Cred

"A New Jersey credit union has agreed to accept accounts transferred from a trading exchange that handles Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The move, apparently aimed at attracting business from investors and financial institutions that trade in the alternative forms of tender, could provide them with a much needed level of legitimacy. Staff reporters discuss." Continue reading →

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Edward Snowden legal defense fund raises over 100 BTC so far

"The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund raises money for Journalistic sources' legal defence. Periodically it will nominate sources it wishes to direct legal and campaign aide to. For its first source it has selected Mr. Edward Snowden whose revelations have exposed the extent to which the world is being mass surveilled by the United States. Mr. Snowden is currently in Russia where he has been granted temporary asylum. The United States government is exerting substantial pressure on Russia and other countries in an attempt to force Mr. Snowden to the United States where he will face decades in prison or worse." Continue reading →

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10 Futuristic or out of the ordinary projects that accept Bitcoin

"Financing novelty projects can be a challenge when it comes to gather supporters, but Bitcoin might be a great help. In these cases, when the projects sound too outrageous for conventional financial investment, cryptocurrency steps in to change the game. Take a look at these 10 examples." Continue reading →

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Hayek to Satoshi and Beyond

"In Denationalisation, Hayek wrote that if anything resembling his vision were to come about, it would probably happen in a way he had no chance of accurately predicting-and on that count, he was definitely right. We, however, may be in similar position to the one he occupied some thirty seven years ago. If Bitcoin succeeds, it will completely alter the way human beings relate to the creation and management of money; the future that’s set to unfold over the next three and half decades is probably even more opaque to us than our present day was to F.A. Hayek." Continue reading →

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