[OFFICIAL SPONSOR] Nick Spanos, Bitcoin Center NYC @ CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 – Video

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[OFFICIAL SPONSOR] Nick Spanos, Bitcoin Center NYC @ CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14
CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 - Nick Spanos Bitcoin Center Next Event to be held in London UK 2014! Follow Us on Twitter @ #CryptoEvents for more info! Fo...

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[OFFICIAL SPONSOR] Nick Spanos, Bitcoin Center NYC @ CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 - Video

— The Great Debate — Bitcoin vs Altcoin @ The CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 – – Video

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--- The Great Debate --- Bitcoin vs Altcoin @ The CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 -
CryptoCurrency Convention 4/9/14 - The Great Debate Bitcoin vs Altcoin Next Event to be held in London UK 2014! Follow Us on Twitter @ #CryptoEvents for more info! http://www.CryptoCurrencyConventio...

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Cryptocurrency – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange designed around securely exchanging information which is a process made possible by certain principles of cryptography. The first cryptocurrency to begin trading was Bitcoin in 2009. Since then, numerous cryptocurrencies have been created. Fundamentally, cryptocurrencies are specifications regarding the use of currency which seek to incorporate principles of cryptography to implement a distributed, decentralized and secure information economy.

When comparing cryptocurrencies to fiat money, the most notable difference is in how no group or individual may accelerate, stunt or in any other way significantly abuse the production of money. Instead, only a certain amount of cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is bounded by a value both prior defined and publicly known. In centralized economic systems such as the Federal Reserve System governments regulate the value of currency by simply printing units of fiat money or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers. However, governments cannot produce units of cryptocurrency and as such, governments cannot provide backing for firms, banks or corporate entities which hold asset value measured in a decentralized cryptocurrency. The underlying technical system upon which all cryptocurrencies are now based was created by the anonymous group or individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto for the purpose of creating an economy within which the practice of fractional reserve banking would be fundamentally impossible.[1][2][3]

Hundreds of cryptocurrency specifications now exist; most are similar to and derived from the first fully implemented cryptocurrency protocol, Bitcoin.[4][5][6][7][8] Within cryptocurrency systems the safety, integrity and balance of all ledgers is maintained by a swarm of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners who are usually members of the public handling cryptocurrency transactions for a small fee. Miners use resource intensive computer software to help secure a particular cryptocurrencys network by increasing that networks ability to solve mathematic equations which the network directly uses to impede fraudulence. Subverting the underlying security of a cryptocurrency is mathematically possible, but the cost may be unfeasibly high. For example, against Bitcoin's proof-of-work based system, an attacker would need computational power greater than that controlled by the entire swarm of miners in order to even have 1 / (2^(# authentication rounds for this cryptocurrency) - 1) of a chance, which means directly circumventing Bitcoin's security is now a task well beyond even a technology company the size of Google.[9]

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually introduce new units of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation. This is done both to mimic the scarcity (and value) of precious metals and to avoid hyperinflation.[10][11] As a result, such cryptocurrencies tend to experience hyperdeflation as they grow in popularity and the amount of the currency in circulation approaches this finite cap. [12] Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies are less susceptible to seizure by law enforcement.[10][13] Existing cryptocurrencies are all pseudonymous, though additions such as Zerocoin and its distributed laundry feature have been suggested, which would allow for anonymity.[14][15][16]

The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, which was created in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, and used SHA-256 as its proof-of-work scheme.[17][18][19] Later, other cryptocurrencies, such as Namecoin (an attempt at a decentralized DNS, which would make internet censorship very difficult), Litecoin (which uses scrypt as a proof-of-work, as well as having faster transaction confirmations), Peercoin (which uses a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid, and has inflation of about 1%) and Freicoin (which implements Silvio Gesell's concept of Freigeld by adding demurrage) were also created.[20] Many other cryptocurrencies have been created, though not all have been successful, especially those that brought few innovations.

David Chaum designed a number of electronic money systems such as DigiCash and ecash, which incorporated certain concepts of cryptography to anonymise electronic money transactions, however these were not cryptocurrencys because they did not have a transaction approval system based upon miners providing proof of stake/work, instead the systems used a centralized issuing and clearing system similar to paypal.[21]

For the first two years of existence, cryptocurrencies gradually gained attention from the media and public.[22] Since 2011, interest has rapidly increased, especially during the rapid price rise of Bitcoin in April 2013.

The most widely used proof-of-work schemes are SHA-256, which was introduced by Bitcoin, and scrypt, which is used by currencies such as Litecoin.[20] Some cryptocurrencies, such as Peercoin, use a combined proof-of-work/proof-of-stake scheme[20][23] and one Nxt[24] , exclusively use proof-of-stake.

This is a list of cryptocurrencies. By December 2013 there were more than 60 cryptocurrencies available for trade in online markets.[25]

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Cryptocurrency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TNW – Stefan Molyneux – Money, Power and Politics The Cryptocurrency Revolution – Video

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TNW - Stefan Molyneux - Money, Power and Politics The Cryptocurrency Revolution
Historically, politicians have always fought for the power to create money out of thin air, so they can increase their spending without having to directly increase taxes. The staggering growth...

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TNW - Stefan Molyneux - Money, Power and Politics The Cryptocurrency Revolution - Video

Crypto()Currency – CryptoCurrency.org

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AltCoins

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world. It differs from its parent Bitcoin in that can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware. Litecoin provides faster confirmations (targeted at every 2.5 minutes on average) and uses memory-hard, scrypt-based mining to target the CPUs and GPUs most people already have. The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce four times as many currency units as Bitcoin.

One of the aims of Litecoin was to provide a mining algorithm that could run at the same time, on the same hardware used to mine bitcoins. With the rise of specialized ASICs for Bitcoin, Litecoin continues to satisify these goals. It is unlikely for FPGA or ASIC mining to take over Litecoin until the currency is widely used.

Namecoin is a peer-to-peer generic name/value datastore system based on Bitcoin technology (a decentralized cryptocurrency). It allows you to:

There are plenty of possible use cases. Read more about Namecoin.

Note: the latest version of this document is at: this github location.

Devcoin is the coin where 90% of the generation goes to open source developers and 10% to the miners.

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Bitcoin vs. Political Power: The Cryptocurrency Revolution – Stefan Molyneux at TNW Conference – Video

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Bitcoin vs. Political Power: The Cryptocurrency Revolution - Stefan Molyneux at TNW Conference
Historically, politicians have always fought for the power to create money out of thin air, so they can increase their spending without having to directly increase taxes. The staggering growth...

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Bitcoin vs. Political Power: The Cryptocurrency Revolution - Stefan Molyneux at TNW Conference - Video

Edan Yago – Free Market Bitcoin regulation and Honduras free trade zones.mp4 – Video

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Edan Yago - Free Market Bitcoin regulation and Honduras free trade zones.mp4
Click here to learn how to protect your wealth during the coming currency crisis http://www.successcouncil.com/sc/great_wealth_transfer.php?a_aid=5106e35d53c7e #maxwrightsc Edan Yago - Free...

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Bitcoin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Bitcoin[note 1] is a peer-to-peer payment system introduced as open source software in 2009 by developer Satoshi Nakamoto. Although it does not meet the generally recognized definition of money, the digital currency created and used in the system is alternatively referred to as a virtual currency, electronic money, or cryptocurrency.[6] The bitcoin system is not controlled by a single entity, like a central bank, which has led the US Treasury to call bitcoin a decentralized currency.[7]

Bitcoins are created as a reward for payment processing work in which users who offer their computing power verify and record payments into a public ledger. Called mining, individuals engage in this activity in exchange for transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins.[8] Besides mining, bitcoins can be obtained in exchange for other currencies, products, and services.[9] Users can buy, send, and receive bitcoins electronically for a nominal fee using wallet software on a personal computer, mobile device, or a web application.

Bitcoin as a form of payment for products and services has seen growth, and merchants have an incentive to accept the currency because transaction fees are lower than the 23% typically imposed by credit card processors.[10] The European Banking Authority has warned that bitcoin lacks consumer protections.[11] Bitcoins can be stolen and chargebacks are impossible.[12] Commercial use of bitcoin is currently small compared to its use by speculators, which has fueled price volatility.[13]

Bitcoin has been a subject of scrutiny amid concerns that it can be used for illegal activities.[14] In October 2013 the US FBI shut down the Silk Road online black market and seized 144,000 bitcoins worth US$28.5 million at the time.[15] The US is considered bitcoin-friendly compared to other governments, however.[16] In China, new rules have restricted bitcoin exchange for local currency.[17]

The most important part of the bitcoin system is a ledger that records financial transactions in bitcoins. Recording transactions is accomplished without the intermediation of any single, central authority. Instead, multiple intermediaries exist in the form of computer servers running bitcoin software. These form a network by connecting over the Internet that anyone can join. Transactions of the form payer X wants to send Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Bitcoin servers can validate these transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other servers.[18]

Just as a ledger can be used to record transfers of conventional money like dollars, all bitcoin transfers are recorded in a computer file that acts as a ledger called the block chain. Where a conventional ledger records the transfer of actual dollar bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, bitcoins are simply entries in the block chain and do not exist outside of it.[19]

Maintaining the block chain is called mining, and those who do are rewarded with newly created bitcoins and transaction fees.[20] Miners may be located on any continent and process payments by verifying each transaction as valid and adding it to the block chain.[20] As of 2014 payment processing is rewarded with 25 newly created bitcoins per block added to the block chain. To claim the reward, a special transaction called a coinbase is included with the processed payments.[18] All bitcoins in circulation can be traced back to such coinbase transactions. The bitcoin protocol specifies that the reward for adding a block will be halved to 12.5 bitcoins in 2017 and halved again approximately every four years. Eventually, the reward will be removed entirely when an arbitrary limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached c. 2140, and transaction processing will then be rewarded by transaction fees solely.[21] Fees are optional, but users that pay may have their transactions processed more quickly.[22] Payers have an incentive to include transaction fees because their transactions will likely be added to the block chain sooner; miners can choose which transactions to process[citation needed] and prefer to include those that pay fees.

As of 2013 mining has become quite competitive, and the process has been compared to an arms race as ever more specialized technology is utilized. The most efficient mining hardware makes use of custom designed application-specific integrated circuits, which are much faster and use less power compared to general purpose microprocessors, such as x86 processors.[23] Without access to these purpose built machines, a bitcoin miner is unlikely to earn enough to even cover the cost of the electricity used in his or her mining efforts.[24]

The odds of winning the reward for adding a block to the block chain decrease alongside an increase in the number of miners. Mining is a competitive process, and while many participate, the reward for each block can only go to a single miner. As of 2014 it has become common for miners to join organized mining pools to circumvent this problem.[25] Such pools split the work and the reward among all participants and make mining a less risky endeavor. Even for those who join pools, the cost of the electricity necessary to mine may outweigh the bitcoin rewards from doing so.[24]

The public nature of bitcoin means that, while those who use it are not identified by name, linking transactions to individuals and companies can be done.[26] Additionally, many jurisdictions require exchanges, where people can buy and sell bitcoins for cash, to collect personal information.[27] In order to obfuscate the link between individual and transaction, some use a different bitcoin address for each transaction and others rely on so-called mixing services that allow users to trade bitcoins whose transaction history implicates them for coins with different transaction histories.[28]

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Bitcoin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia