Other P2P Currencies vs. Bitcoin:
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(http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/bitcoin-the-cryptoanarchists-answer-to-cash)
(http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/bitcoin-the-cryptoanarchists-answer-to-cash)
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=Technological
Problems
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=Technological
Issues
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Review of incidents related to Bitcoin, by Benjamin Wallace:
Review of incidents related to Bitcoin, by Benjamin Wallace:
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More disasters followed. Poland-based Bitomat, the third-largest exchange, revealed that it had—oops—accidentally overwritten its entire wallet. Security researchers detected a proliferation of viruses aimed at bitcoin users: Some were designed to steal wallets full of existing bitcoins; others commandeered processing power to mine fresh coins. By summer, the oldest wallet service, MyBitcoin, stopped responding to emails. It had always been fishy—registered in the West Indies and run by someone named Tom Williams, who never posted in the forums. But after a month of unbroken silence, Wagner, the New York City bitcoin evangelist, finally stated what many had already been thinking: Whoever was running MyBitcoin had apparently gone AWOL with everyone’s money. Wagner himself revealed that he had been keeping all 25,000 or so of his bitcoins on MyBitcoin and had recommended to friends and relatives that they use it, too. He also aided a vigilante effort that publicly named several suspects. MyBitcoin’s supposed owner resurfaced, claiming his site had been hacked. Then Wagner became the target of a countercampaign that publicized a successful lawsuit against him for mortgage fraud, costing him much of his reputation within the community. “People have the mistaken impression that virtual currency means you can trust a random person over the Internet,” says Jeff Garzik, a member of bitcoin’s core developer group."
More disasters followed. Poland-based Bitomat, the third-largest exchange, revealed that it had—oops—accidentally overwritten its entire wallet. Security researchers detected a proliferation of viruses aimed at bitcoin users: Some were designed to steal wallets full of existing bitcoins; others commandeered processing power to mine fresh coins. By summer, the oldest wallet service, MyBitcoin, stopped responding to emails. It had always been fishy—registered in the West Indies and run by someone named Tom Williams, who never posted in the forums. But after a month of unbroken silence, Wagner, the New York City bitcoin evangelist, finally stated what many had already been thinking: Whoever was running MyBitcoin had apparently gone AWOL with everyone’s money. Wagner himself revealed that he had been keeping all 25,000 or so of his bitcoins on MyBitcoin and had recommended to friends and relatives that they use it, too. He also aided a vigilante effort that publicly named several suspects. MyBitcoin’s supposed owner resurfaced, claiming his site had been hacked. Then Wagner became the target of a countercampaign that publicized a successful lawsuit against him for mortgage fraud, costing him much of his reputation within the community. “People have the mistaken impression that virtual currency means you can trust a random person over the Internet,” says Jeff Garzik, a member of bitcoin’s core developer group."
(http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1)
(http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1)
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=Other P2P Currencies vs. Bitcoin=
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==Is Freicoin in competition with Bitcoin?==
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"Yes and no, but mostly no.
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We are in favor of a free monetary market. We believe that there should be a free monetary market and monetary diversity. In this respect, yes, Freicoin and Bitcoin will compete with each other for users as currencies. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use both for different reasons or that one of them has to necessarily disappear. In any case, that’s for you and the the marketplace of ideas to decide, not us, the bitcoin community or any coercive agency. Silvio Gesell wrote that money was a natural monopoly and thus the state should operate it, but we disagree with him on that point. Thousands of complementary currencies in circulation today are a living proof that this is not the case.
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The Austrian school of economics underlies Bitcoin’s design. Most Austrian economists don’t support a monetary monopoly, even if such a money system were based on gold, which Bitcoin is designed to resemble. E.C. Riegel was a strong opponent of a state monopoly on money. Bernard Lietaer argues that both competition and diversity are important for the efficiency and resilience of a market economy. There are many other inspirations to defend a free monetary market inclusive of both Bitcoin and Freicoin.
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Bitcoin and Freicoin support each other as collaborative free software. Free software is software that respects your freedom as a user and with a collaborative development model. Freicoin is a fork of Bitcoin because we don’t want to compete with it technically. The technical improvements we develop will be submitted “upstream” to the Bitcoin developers, and we will of course draw upon features and bug fixes applied to Bitcoin. Our software development relationship with the bitcoin community is based on collaboration, not competition.
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We don’t compete with bitcoin for miners either. Merged mining allows network operators to secure both currencies simultaneously. The merged mining technology first developed for Namecoin allows miners to use their proof of work in several block chain networks simultaneously. We’re currently evaluating the tradeoff between security and the convenience of having merged mining included early-on, since some new chains have been attacked by bitcoin pools (even without the users of that pool knowing it) and merged mining makes new currencies vulnerable to such attacks. Even if Freicoin isn’t merged-mine capable at launch, it will be in the near future. The result is more security for both Freicoin and Bitcoin." (http://freico.in/about/)
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==Can Ripple be integrated with [[Bitcoin]]==
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Interview of Ryan Fugger, conducted by Samuel Benson:
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"Ben: Can Ripple and Bitcoin integrate?
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Ryan: Sure, they can integrate in lots of ways. For example:
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http://ripple-project.org/Protocol/BlockChainCommitMethod
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There’s a discussion on the Bitcoin forums about Ripple being a good way to implement instant Bitcoin transactions.
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https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3557.0
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Ben: What plans do you have for Ripple over the next few years?
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Ryan: I don’t know… I’d like to have a working distributed server implementation. Beyond that, I hope the idea catches on further and more people starting building systems like this.
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Ben: Any thoughts on Decentralized currencies and networks growing in India?
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Ryan: Ripple would be a great way to build a Hawala network:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
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You can look at Ripple as Hawala with automated routing.
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There is no API to Ripplepay yet and Ripple still has a few problems to solve. It has the strong potential to be a monetary system to work alongside Bitcoin. Similarities can be found in the PayPal exchange website Bitcoinary.com."
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(http://bensonsamuel.com/bitcoin-3/a-decentralized-monetary-system-for-a-decentralized-currency/)
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==What is the difference between Coinbase and every other Bitcoin wallet service?==
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From an interview of Brian Armstrong, conducted by Samuel Benson:
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There are several good online wallets for Bitcoin, and open source Bitcoin clients for the desktop.
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Why should someone use Coinbase instead?
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Here are a few ways Coinbase tries to be different:
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They try to make Bitcoin easy to use for non-technical users. This means they avoid asking the user to deal with private keys, encryption, or any topics they might be unfamiliar to them.
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They try to make buying and selling Bitcoin with your local currency as simple as possible.
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They handle security and backups for you so don’t have to worry about losing your device, or forgetting to back it up.
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(Note that all of these may not be built yet, but this is their goal for the product.) They understand there are a variety of users in the Bitcoin ecosystem from beginner to advanced, and they certainly do not claim to be the best solution for everyone.
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What is the difference between Coinbase and PayPal?
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Coinbase uses a different currency underneath (Bitcoin) which is a distributed, open-source protocol for transmitting money. Bitcoin is still relatively new, but they believe it is a good platform to build on top of due to the following properties:
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Low (or zero) transaction fees
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Payments arrive instantly (at about the speed of an email) and are confirmed within the hour
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Works internationally
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They try to make Coinbase easy to use and help avoid transaction fees when making payments."
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(http://bensonsamuel.com/2012/10/24/bitcoin-gets-funded-by-ycombinator-interview-with-the-ceo-of-coinbase/)
=Interview=
=Interview=