The Gatekeepers
This post was released for Issue 19 of Bitcoin Magazine as part of a series of articles about puzzles and games that started with Issue 12. This series of puzzles and games was inspired by a talk given by the founder of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, at the European Bitcoin Conference in Prague on November 26, 2011 called 'the fall of the....
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Major regulatory agencies plan to work harder to prosecute individuals and companies that have had dodgy dealings with digital assets. A group of high-level U.S. government attorneys has oulined their priorities for the enforcement and prosecution of individuals and companies that have committed crypto-related crimes.Enforcement officials from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) spoke about the direction their agencies will take at a panel discussion at the American Bar Association's annual....
Bitcoin, as a distributed and open source type of money, is destined for greatness. Like any young prodigy, its abilities can be foreseen and its potential visualized by those with a certain clairvoyance in these matters. Bitcoin is a tiger pup, stretching its limbs and jumping about. It poses no threat to its brothers and sisters, nor to any other animal in the kingdom. Bitcoin's total market capitalization reaches only $6 billion with only $130 million in everyday transactions. Not quite the elephant in the room. But this is temporary - for even mighty heroes begin as toddlers, unable to....
Bitcoin, since its introduction in 2009 has come a long way to compete against US dollar and other prominent fiat currencies of the past. Banks and financial institutions who were the gatekeepers of everyone's wealth now feel threatened as they find themselves powerless in front of the new digital currency. Bitcoin is completely independent and pseudonymous, taking central bank and other government organizations out of the picture. As if that is not enough, there is no single entity that controls bitcoin. The decentralized nature combined with security, speed and low costs of transaction....
Two artists want to take on the art-world hierarchy with a website selling art with prices quoted in bitcoin. The artists, Andy Boot and Valentin Rurhy, both based in Vienna, have created an online platform selling work by international contemporary artists. The twist is that its exhibitions are ephemeral. Cointemporary.com only features one artist every seven days, and there's no way for buyers to purchase works if they missed the original showing. Artists can also choose to accept payment in bitcoin and will receive a greater share of the proceeds than they would at most traditional....
As one of its most important properties and a key selling point, Bitcoin is not controlled by any government, (central) bank or company. Nor is there even an active inventor to call the shots, as is the case in many other open-source projects. But that doesn’t mean the peer-to-peer electronic cash system is not governed by humans at all. Many attribute this governance role to the Bitcoin Core development team. This is a misguided attribution, however. While Bitcoin Core developers may have an influential position, Bitcoin is really governed by only two groups of people: users and miners.....