The Cell Phone Connected the Unbanked, Bitcoin Will Bank Them
In a guest post on Virgin Entrepreneur Dominic Frisby - the author of "Bitcoin: the Future of Money?" - argues that Bitcoin will do to banking what the cell phone did to telecom. Cell phones are technically more advanced and much more flexible than landline phones, and today they offer a lot of new and useful options, but the main reason for the explosive growth of the cell phone market worldwide is financial inclusion. "Quite simply, many people couldn't get access to the basic financial services needed to get a landline. Landlines were, except for pay-phones, credit-based. You needed a....
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Consumer privacy has been a hot topic for over a year now, and it looks like a new ruling by the Department of Justice might move things along in the right direction. Federal law enforcement agencies will be forced to be more transparent about cell-phone surveillance technology. While this decision is only a small step in the right direction, it is setting a precedent for future rulings protecting consumer privacy. Law enforcement agencies – including the DEA, FBI and US Marshals Service – will need to explain how cell-phone surveillance technology will be used when requesting a warrant.....
As previously reported on CNN, Ecuador has now started to implement their new electronic cash system through the Central Bank of Ecuador. Ecuador has long needed a better and more inclusive way to integrate the sixteen million Ecuadorians into the nation's economy and banking system. Approximately 40% of the population are "unbanked", so this can have many benefits to the state and the economy as a whole. The Central Bank of Ecuador held a press conference to reveal the details of the EMS or Electronic Money System. As of now, the US Dollar is the de facto national currency and will be....
NSA whistleblower and American fugitive Edward Snowden has revealed information on the scope and capabilities of the United Kingdom’s GCHQ intelligence agency. He has found that this British version of the NSA, “a subsidiary of the NSA,” according to Snowden, can hack into and control British citizen’s phones without a warrant, or without the owner even noticing. Americans may have heard of the “Stingray” program that police and government agencies have used in major American cities since 2012. With Stingray, illegal and unconstitutional access of phone conversations and locations is....
Coil whine: it’s not just a problem for PC gaming enthusiasts anymore. A recent paper outlines an attack vector for capturing RSA keys by analyzing the noises, RF variations, or electromagnetic changes produced from computers as they do intense computational tasks. Of particular note is their work capturing RSA keys with sound. This so-called ‘coil whine’ is loud and regular enough to be picked up by a cell phone mic attached to an AM radio from as much as a foot away, or over thirty feet using more sophisticated equipment. The process takes time, isn’t stealthy, and isn’t exactly....
A startup based in Uruguay is looking to make bitcoin easier to use via the widely used SMS platform on cell phones. Steven Morell, chief programming officer of the company Moneero, told CoinDesk that the plan is to make bitcoin easy for anyone to use. The company estimates that its service can be used on the 6.8bn mobile phones already being used worldwide. "We want to make it easy and convenient for non-tech savvy people. People who have heard about bitcoin in the news, and would buy it if it were easy for them," he said. Morell points out his mother as someone who is not tech-savvy, but....