I think that would be neat. Not even wolfram alpha gets it right which makes me a bit sad.
 | submitted by soxh to Bitcoin [link] [116 comments] |
Forbes contributor and Bitcoin Foundation (@BTCFoundation) board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) shares some details from leading online gaming services where bitcoins are used as the currency. Excerpts:
“SatoshiDice reported first year earnings from wagering at an impressive ฿33,310. During the year, players bet a total of ฿1,787,470 in 2,349,882 individual bets at an average monthly growth rate of 78%. […] The odds are calculated to give the house an edge of 1.90% with full transparency because all dice rolls and earnings statistics are verifiable using the blockchain. […] SatoshiDice shares are traded on the MPEx bitcoin [cyber-equities] stock exchange […]. At the current exchange rate of $17.00 per BTC, SatoshiDice is a company valued at $8.9 million.”
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“BitZino reported first year earnings from wagering of ฿10,137. During the year, players bet a total of ฿664,192 in 3.2 million individual bets. […] [From June to December BitZino saw] a period growth rate of 894% or average monthly growth rate of 149%.”
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“Seals With Clubs is dealing about 10,000 hands of poker per day and raking only about 4,000 of them. […] The current rake is 2.5% with a cap of ฿0.10 per hand which is slightly less than half of what other poker sites would charge.”
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“With privacy, efficiency, growth, payment irreversibility, and cost savings as demonstrated by the above, it’s only a matter of time before the mainstream casino operators of Gibraltar and Malta realize the benefits of a gaming economy that leverages the ideal digital casino chip.”
- http://onforb.es/10DVrxq
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=138032.0 (Further discussion of this article)
- http://tcrn.ch/Wgetql (Related article on TechCrunch)
- http://bit.ly/W06gXC (Related article on The Verge)
- http://ars.to/10QcVYw (Related article on Ars Technica and Wired.co.uk)
- http://bit.ly/10JloM3 (Related article on Boing Boing)
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Vitalik Buterin, writer for Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine), describes today’s rally that has taken the Bitcoin BTC/USD exchange rate above its high water mark from 2012. Excerpts:
“Today’s maximum of $15.68 at the time of this writing [is] the highest that the Bitcoin price has been since July 6, 2011.”
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“The [network data] figures, which attempt to measure Bitcoin’s actual usage rather than public opinion or interest in the currency as search volume and all market statistics inevitably do, show the same pattern: the values rose during summer 2012, dropped off in the fall, but then began to quickly pick up again in November after WordPress started accepting the currency.”
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“The 14-day average is also now as high as it ever was, and may well go even higher.”
- http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-price-breaks-15-4-august-2012-high
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Vitalik Buterin writes in Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) about the two major Bitcoin Conferences scheduled in 2013. Excerpts:
“The first [conference], entitled “The Future of Payments”, will take place in San Jose, California on May 17-19, and the second, named “unSYSTEM”, will happen in Vienna on 1-3 November.”
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“The two conferences have radically different themes. For the 2013 conference in San Jose, the Bitcoin Foundation is pushing back in the direction of a conference organized around Bitcoin specifically and the more pragmatic issues that Bitcoin is trying to solve.”
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“The unSYSTEM conference in Vienna, on the other hand, is pushing even further in the direction of activism. Of the sixteen speakers now listed on the site, only three are notable purely because of their work around Bitcoin, and the majority have nothing to do with the currency.”
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“Both conferences are expecting a larger number of attendees than either of the conferences that took place in 2011 and 2012, and meeting the faces behind the most popular projects and services in the Bitcoin community has always been a key attraction of these events.”
- http://bitcoinmagazine.com/the-two-bitcoin-conferences-of-2013
- http://twitter.com/BTCFoundation
- http://twitter.com/UnsystemNet
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The latest Forbes post from Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@Matonis) describes a PayPal’s actions are making a business case for Bitcoin. Excerpts:
“PayPal is requiring private BitTorrent tracking sites to provide them free access for purposes of monitoring user content for possible copyright infringement.”
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“PutLocker had their PayPal funds frozen for six months because they objected to the backend monitoring of their customer’s files.”
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“Used properly, bitcoin can have the privacy attributes of paper cash and bitcoin doesn’t make morality judgements about what you choose to do with your money.”
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“PayPal enforces a blanket global policy across legal jurisdictions as a substitute for due process. File-sharing sites comprise both file-hosting and BitTorrent tracking sites each of which may have different legal status in different jurisdictions depending on interpretation and enforcement of various copyright laws.”
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“PayPal is actually setting the stage for its payment successor.”
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“TorrentBytes announced that they may have to shut down unless they can find a way to process payments.”
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“File-hosting sites and private torrent sites that have successfully adopted the bitcoin payment method from their users include Lumfile, filecloud.io, and TorrentLeech.”
- http://onforb.es/UQ3m5l
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=135623.0 (Further discussion about this article)
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Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) couldn’t let pass a flawed argument about what fiat money is, so he penned a new post. Excerpts:
“Money is not money because of ‘common agreement.’ No common agreement ever happened.”
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“Money is money because it is specifically useful in fulfilling the function of exchange. Money is money because its specific properties make it superior in exchange to other alternatives.”
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“Governments realized that if they could force the population to use a specific arbitrary money – say instead of pink triangle paper maybe green rectangular paper – then they could create that money at whim and benefit from it. It is not hard to understand why politicians would love this scheme: they get to dish out benefits by magically creating tokens that they themselves force people to accept as ‘legal tender.’ But while it’s not hard to understand why governments approve of their own fiat tender, it is very hard to understand why the public accepts this scam…”
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“For those who learn about Bitcoin, it is not hard to understand why it is now succeeding as an amazing new form of money.”
- http://bit.ly/11gd1b1
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=135552.0 (Further discussion of the post)
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Peter Vessenes (@Vessenes), Executive Director of the The Bitcoin Foundation (@BTCFoundation) provides the organization’s first Quarterly Update. Excerpts:
“We’ve opened up a grant proposal process to anyone who wishes to apply for a grant that could further Bitcoin in some way. The deadline is February 15, 2013.”
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“Announced our first conference, Bitcoin 2013: The Future of Payments, for May 17-19 in San Jose [CA].”
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“Member Review - over 240 at last count.”
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“2012 was the year of Bitcoin Angels, 2013 seems more likely to be a Venture year. I am also starting to hear from Hedge Fund managers.”
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“We’re working to get a shark-tank style demo day for the Bitcoin 2013 conference.”
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“As larger companies figure out Bitcoin and how they can be involved, I think we’ll start to see significant adoption and exciting announcements.”
- https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=99
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Caroline Winter (@caro_winter) wrote in Business Week on Bitcoin’s impact to online gambling. Excerpts:
“Calgary-based Infiniti Poker, like several other new online gambling sites, plans to accept Bitcoin when it launches later this month. The online currency may allow American gamblers to avoid running afoul of complex U.S. laws that prevent businesses from knowingly accepting money transfers for Internet gambling purposes.”
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“Hajduk says Infiniti Poker will accept credit cards, wire transfers, and other payment options, but players in the U.S. will be able to play only using Bitcoins.”
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“On Black Friday [April 15, 2011], gamblers in the U.S. had more than $100 million in online accounts frozen. Nearly two years later, the U.S. government is still working to reimburse the players, who were not targeted in the crackdown.”
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“It’s unclear whether the government will go after Bitcoin gambling sites.”
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“Bitcoin gaming sites keep popping up. Erik Voorhees, director of marketing and communications at BitInstant, helped design SatoshiDice, a gambling site hosted in Ireland and owned by an anonymous investor. Since launching in April, the site has taken in about $15 million in bets, Voorhees says.”
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“Josh Strike, who in 2011 launched the Costa Rica-based Bitcoin casino site Strike Sapphire, says he makes sure Americans can’t access his games. [..] ‘I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.’ [said Strike]”
- http://buswk.co/132kSIk
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134575.0 [Further discussion of the article]
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Vitalik Buterin posts on Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) with an outlook for 2012. Excerpts:
“There are a considerable number of projects scheduled for release this year.”
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“Once [ASIC] devices are released, the Bitcoin network’s hashpower is projected to increase by a factor of ten, making the network extremely robust against attacks from traditional, general-purpose supercomputing networks.”
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“Bitcoin Wireless – This BitInstant project intends to provide a way of buying credits for prepaid cellphone and data plans from over 300 carriers around the world at competitive prices.”
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In November, Marek Palatinus, operator of the Slush mining pool, announced a project to develop a physical Bitcoin wallet device that would take the form of a USB key. The device outputs transactions signed with its internal private key directly.”
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“Multisignature Transactions. The technology also has applications in secure wallets, as one can create 2-of-2 wallets with one key on your machine and the other under the control of a third party, ensuring that anyone wishing to steal your bitcoins must compromise both the provider and your own machine.”
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“Bitcoin Conference – This year’s Bitcoin conference will take place in May in San Jose, California, and will be hosted by the Bitcoin Foundation.”
- http://bitcoinmagazine.com/the-next-year-in-bitcoin-what-2013-has-in-store
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