What’s up, Idiots?
Just crushed day two of golf with six pars, a birdie and three 9’s. (Go big or go home…with golf, Bitcoin and life itself.)
Speaking of crushing it, our guest posters today are undergrads leading the charge for Bitcoin on college campuses across the nation. Jeremy Gardner and Daniel Bloch are University of Michigan students (still alive in the NCAA tournament), who have cofounded the College Cryptocurrency Network (CCN), an association that seeks to promote Bitcoin development, education and club organization on campuses nationwide.
One of my favorite things to do in Bitcoin in 2014 has been to go talk to college students and literally give away bitcoin 5-10 mBTC at a time. So far I’ve had the opportunity to do so at Cal Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Boston College, and I’d expect that with the help of the CCN, I (and you) might be able to set up similar events like that whenever you travel to a new city with an awesome college in town. Thanks to the young guns for stepping up with a guest Daily Bit…
"Bitcoin College" | Jeremy Gardner & Daniel Bloch
When a handful of students at the University of Michigan started a “Bitcoin club” two years ago in a small Ann Arbor restaurant, they were among the first people in the country to dedicate themselves to this radical new technology. Yet while their meeting led to new ideas, confidence and even a startup called BitBox, most early adopters at that time still considered Bitcoin a better tool for buying drugs on the Internet than reshaping global finance.
Boy, have times changed.
Two months ago, we spoke with a journalist from USA Today about Michigan Bitcoiners, the official club that had spawned, from that early restaurant meetup. And when the writer mentioned that she had also spoken to students at similar clubs at MIT and Stanford, we realized we had an opportunity to work on something much bigger than a college club. By the end of that night, we were chatting with our counterparts in Cambridge and Silicon Valley (including TBI), and brainstorming ways we could share resources and collaborate on new student Bitcoin initiatives.
We thought, if crypto-currencies were to succeed, they would need to proliferate on college campuses first. Thus, the College Cryptocurrency Network was born.
After being contacted by a member of the Bitcoin Foundation about their possible support of our endeavor, Daniel and I went into hypersdrive. We founded CCN on March 8th with Stanford, MIT and a couple of other nascent community clubs. Just two weeks later CCN is up to 15 established student clubs on three different continents, and has an additional 25 in the works.
Some of you are probably wondering: “Why should I care what some kids are doing on their college campuses?” While that’s an understandable sentiment, try answering these Bitcoin-relevant questions first:
1. What age demographic is generally the most impressionable?
2. Where do most mass social technology movements begin?
3. What sort of populations have the highest concentration of tech-savvy individuals?
4. Who is most likely to be convinced about the merits of a radical new technology by a peer vs. Fox News, MSNBC et al.
Answers: college students
Under these circumstances, there should be no better place for the cryptocurrency revolution to truly take off than at institutions of higher learning (and possibly, secondary schools.) If we are going to see widespread acceptance of virtual currencies, there must be incubation among large swaths of a population, especially populations that are highly concentrated (like college campuses).
The proliferation of Bitcoin’s amazing peer-to-peer technology cannot be left solely to speculators, professional tech-geeks and the mainstream media. Or else it risks being dismissed (as one of my recent dates said) as “that sketchy, volatile online currency that people either lose or use to buy drugs or launder money.” As a technology that must flourish with, and be accepted by, the masses, we need to work on college evangelism.
At the CCN, we plan to relentlessly promote the spread of Bitcoin and related technologies like a megachurch pastor on Sunday morning cable.
We tweet, post, call, lecture, and email (and video chat…a lot). We follow every potential lead when it comes to starting new clubs, and persevere until they are established. We provide the educational resources, administrative documents, marketing materials, and regional contacts that might be needed for a college student to start a crypto club at their school. We hold regular video conferences with our counterparts all over the world to ensure they have all the materials they need to thrive. And we do it for free (or at worst at cost)… because this is something important enough to be fanatical about. (Read: 9% Western Union wire fees, Goldman Sachs vampire squid, and authoritarian Chinese capital controls.)
The College Cryptocurrency Network is growing at a baffling rate. Thanks in part to terrific support from other executives in the industry. If you know a college student (or very ambitious high schooler) who might be interested in forming a cryptocurrency club at their respective school, please pass along our information. You can stop by our website collegecrypto.org to check us out.
And don’t forget to drop us some coin (forget beer money…we’re running out of Red Bull!)
Wallet: 1Fr4qnLJFzkWnJvmi1npmjNMMkAB8hn2fe
Twitter: @collegecrypto
Facebook.com/collegecrypto
Email: contact@collegecrypto.org
Now for Today’s Tid Bits:
From John Doe to DPR
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/silk-road-case-began-with-hunt-for-a-john-doe/
Matthew Goldstein traces the beginning of the case against Silk Road mastermind Ross W. Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts. The case started off quietly, with an indictment filed in a Maryland courthouse against an unidentified individual five months before the authorities actually made an arrest. It was purposely sealed so as not to spook DPR into fleeing or destroying evidence. After his arrest, the unsealed court filing fills in some of the gaps in the timeline of the federal government’s undercover investigation, which lasted more than a year. FBI agents tracked the computer servers that ran Silk Road’s website to locations in Iceland and a small town in eastern Pennsylvania. It’s quite the sensational case, spanning multiple countries, a wild new technology, and murder-for-hire plots. There are some areas that need to be clarified, but it’s still an interesting read to see how the Feds tackled the DPR case.
Gyft Adds WalMart
http://www.coindesk.com/gyft-adds-us-retail-giant-walmart-bitcoin-gift-card-network/
San Francisco-based mobile gift card app provider Gyft officially added US retail giant Walmart to its merchant network. This is a huge deal, as Bitcoiners can now purchase Walmart gift cards with bitcoin. While this is still a roundabout solution, it’s still a step forward nonetheless. Only a matter of time before companies like WalMart and Amazon have to decide whether to invest in Bitcoin acceptance tools themselves.
Bitcoin Derivatives
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/24/new-derivative-guards-against-bitcoins-price-swings/
Tera Group, a start-up derivatives exchange, said it has drafted documentation for a 25-day Bitcoin swap transaction between a pair of U.S. financial firms. The swap works by allowing the holder, say a vendor who accepts bitcoin as a method of payment, to protect against a potential drop in the virtual currency’s value against the U.S. dollar. It’s going to trade off the firm’s exchange, on the OTC market. Tera says it is seeking permission from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to offer them on its own, regulated market. If it gets regulatory approvals, it plans to move the swaps to its own exchange. This is big move for the Bitcoin industry, as many have been clamoring for a Bitcoin derivatives market for a long time now, and if this goes well it may open the floodgates.
Europol Wants More Authority to Clamp Down on Digital Money Laundering
http://www.coindesk.com/europol-seeks-powers-to-clamp-down-digital-money-laundering/
Europol, the European Union’s top law enforcement agency in charge of criminal intelligence, is urging legislators to provide law enforcement with greater powers to identify criminal activities online, including digital money laundering. Europol acts more as a well equipped support unit to various law enforcement agencies across Europe. At a security conference today, Europol head Rob Wainwright issued statements that suggest he believes law enforcement agencies are ill-equipped to crack down on those who use digital currencies for illicit means, and says that criminals are abusing the freedoms that come with digital currencies.
Auroracoin Airdrop
http://www.coindesk.com/auroracoin-airdrop-iceland-embrace-national-digital-currency/
For our Icelandic Idiots, tomorrow is the big day. Auroracoin, the “cryptocurrency for Iceland”, will begin distributing auroracoins to the country’s citizens this week. About 50% of all premined Auroracoins will go to Icelandic citizens, with each citizen receiving about 31.8 AUR. The “Airdrop”, as the distribution is called, is described in detail in the article. Some are saying it fixes the distribution problem that Bitcoin faces, but others say that the lack of awareness will kill the project. Iceland has had severe capital controls in place since 2008, and AUR is a means around that. There’s been a large amount of speculation around AUR as well, and it will be fascinating to see what will happen to the price as the drop happens, as some might see it as a way to just cash out.
Bitcoin ATMs go Oprah On Us
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/you-get-a-bitcoin-atm-and-you-get-a-bitcoin-atm/
There’s a ridiculous market materializing for Bitcoin ATMs. People are fascinated by them and manufacturers like Lamassu and Robocoin can barely keep products in stock. The amount of exposure that Bitcoin and these ATM manufacturers can gain from winning the ATM landgrab globally is enormous.
To the Top of Everest!
http://www.coindesk.com/forget-moon-bitcoin-can-now-take-summit-mt-everest/
Cue the “to the moon” jokes. Trek and expedition organizer Mt Everest Adventures has now started accepting Bitcoin for its adventure packages, which include climbing Mount Everest itself. Before people start deriding it as a publicity stunt, there are some actual key benefits that the firm can gain from using Bitcoin. A company like this relies on foreign customers, and accepting payments from outside the country is both complex and expensive. The Nepali rupee is tightly controlled as well, and is virtually useless outside of the country. Bitcoin allows them to circumvent both of these issues. An Everest trip costs about $30k a person, or about 53.3BTC at prices today. Happy climbing.
Don’t forget, Inside Bitcoins kicks off in two weeks! If you haven’t registered yet, be sure to do so before April 7 to save $300 on on-site pricing. (More in the PS.)
Cheers,
TBI