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Daily Archives: July 19, 2017
Gladstone gold does club proud – Gladstone Observer
Posted: July 19, 2017 at 3:50 am
MARTIAL ARTS: The Gladstone Martial Arts Academy's stocks continue to pack a punch with its latest achievements yielding more medals.
Nine students collected a total of 18 medals at the recent Queensland Brazilian Jiu-Jitsi State Titles on the Gold Coast.
The tally was made up of five gold, six silver and seven bronze in an event that attracted 515 competitors.
Among those was 13-year-old Trinity McKenzie who beat more experienced boys on her way to a gold medal for Gi and No-Gi divisions.
The teenager said enjoyment is the key to her success.
"All the people at GMAA are like my family now and it's just so much fun every class I love it, Trinity said.
What's more impressive is that she has been doing BJJ for just two years and she also trains in Mixed Martial Arts, Muay Thai and Zen Do Kai under GMAA head coach Rob McIntyre
"This was her sixth BJJ tournament, McIntyre said.
"Her favourite submission is definitely the rear naked choke and her second is the arm bar.
McIntyre said the club's athletes have excelled in the competitions they have competed in.
"It has been a big year for GMAA in Jiu Jitsu and after only three competitions, the club has earned an amazing 40 gold, 27 silver and 11 bronze medals, McIntyre said.
"The club will travel to three more tournaments this year in Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast.
The BJJ competition is based on grappling only, with competitors earning points for take-downs, controlling top positions and reversing positions.
They can win outright with a submission making their opponent tap from chokes, arm locks or leg locks and has been made famous by its skills being used in the UFC.
People interested in BJJ can contact McIntyre on 0439739619 or visit the club's Facebook site or website http://www.gladstonemartialarts.com.au.
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Suspected AlphaBay founder dies in Bangkok jail after shutdown of online black market – Washington Post
Posted: at 3:50 am
Until earlier this month, AlphaBay served as a one-stop shop for illicit consumer needs online. Essentially an Internet-based black marketplace stationed on the dark Web and accessible only through an untraceable Tor browser, the platform hosted sales using bitcoin for everything from illegal drugs to stolen credit card data. With up to 300,000 listings, the site was conservatively hosting $600,000 to $800,000 a day in transactions, Wired reported, and was said to host more products than Silk Road, the illicit marketplace closed by U.S. authorities in 2014.
But on July 5, all that back alley commerce stopped when AlphaBay suddenly went dark. The shutdown was reportedly due to an effort by law enforcement across the world to bust the administrators running the website. And now the Bangkok Post and Sydney Morning Herald report that a Canadian national allegedly linked to AlphaBay has died in custody after he was arrested on the same day AlphaBay disappeared.
Canadian-born Alexandre Cazes, 26, was arrested by Thai authorities on July 5 at the request of U.S. authorities, according to the Morning Herald. Known online as DeSnake, Cazes was found last week dead in his cell at the Thai Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB) in Laksi district of Bangkok.
The Bangkok Post reportedCazes was discoveredin the bathroom of his cell hanging from a towel. The NSBs Major General Soontorn Chalermkiat told the paper there are no clues that suggest he didnt hang himself. Cazes was reportedly set to meet with an attorney about his extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges an hour before his reported suicide. Another Thai official, Maj. Gen. Chayapote Hasoonha, told the Bangkok Post Cazes had been living in Thailand for about eight years and had a Thai wife.The official added Cazess spousehas been charged with money laundering.
He was a computer expert involved with international transactions of bitcoins, Chalermkiat told Agence France-Presse.He didnt have any business in Thailand but he had many houses. The Bangkok paper said he also had four Lamborghini sports cars in Thailand.
Cazes father, Martin, told Journal de Montrealhis son was an extraordinary young man, with no history, no judicial record. He never smoked a cigarette, never used drugs.
Neither the Canadian nor U.S. embassies in Thailand responded to The Washington Posts request for further detail on Cazess arrest, extradition and reported death.
The AlphaBay shutteringcomes after an uptick in law enforcement action aimed at the marketplaces users an indication that U.S. policehave figured out how to skillfully mingle within the dark Web bazaar and target users.
AlphaBay is dedicated and designed to facilitate the sale of illegal narcotics, drug paraphernalia, firearms, and counterfeit and fraud-related goods and services, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent wrote in an August 2016 affidavit related to federal charges against a 50-year-old Detroit man named Robert Kenneth Decker. Illegal drugs, such as methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine, are openly advertised and sold and are immediately and prominently visible on the Alphabay website.
Operating under the handle DIGITALPOSSI2014, Decker was tied to10,738 transactions on AlphaBay, including deals in whichhe sold and mailed hydrocodone to undercover law enforcement in exchange for bitcoins. After his arrest in late 2016, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and one of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Decker was sentenced to 140 months in prison.
With the website now dark, illicit e-commerce is struggling to find a new home. Like Silk Road, AlphaBay left a gaping hole in the marketplace when it disappeared.
Its been really chaotic, Nicolas Christin, a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science and public policy, recently told Wired. When you have asite like AlphaBay going down, it puts a lot of stress on the other players. Its stress-testing their infrastructures.
More from Morning Mix:
FBI agents spent decades searching for a mobster wanted in a cop killing. Then they found his secret room.
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S. Sudan blocks Sudan Tribune website over hostile coverage – Sudan Tribune
Posted: at 3:50 am
July 18, 2017 (KAMPALA) South Sudan government has admitted that it blocked access to the Paris-based Sudan Tribune website over its hostile news coverage.
If they [Sudan Tribune website] have been disseminating hostile messages towards us then we have the authority to close them, information minister Michael Makuei Lueth told Bloomberg Tuesday.
So many countries have been closing down, even giving total blackout to such media houses which create hostility, he added.
Multiple sources, however, confirmed that two other news websites were inaccessible on Monday after authorities directed internet providers to block them.
However, the Sudan Tribune and other banned websites remain reachable for our readers in South Sudan when they use Tor Browser or install applications like Fire Onion, Orfox and Tor nado on their smartphones.
The move comes barely two weeks after authorities arrested the head of the state-owned television, Adil Faris Mayat after the station failed to broadcast President Salva Kiirs Independence Day speech.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the immediate release of Mayat, who has reportedly been held incommunicado since 10 July.
We call for this journalists immediate release, said Cla Kahn-Sriber, the head of RSFs Africa desk, adding Frequent arbitrary measures of this kind by the security services and the accompanying impunity are killing media freedom in South Sudan and are holding back a return to peace and national reconciliation.
After South Sudan obtained independence in 2011, a civil war broke out in 2013 and the ensuing political and security crisis has not spared the media. News outlets have been suspended, newspaper issues have been seized, and journalists have been detained arbitrarily, tortured, harassed, forced to censor themselves or forced to flee abroad.
The war-torn East African nation has fallen 20 places in RSFs World Press Freedom Index since 2015 and is now ranked 145th out of 180 countries.
(ST)
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Assassins and child porn; a darknet offers everything – The Slovak Spectator
Posted: at 3:50 am
The Slovak Spectator spent several days on the Darknet.
It is used by the mafia, journalists and activists. Tens of thousands of people do trade there without knowing the identity of their partners while using a currency that does not officially exist. Thus unwritten rules had to be created to ensure the entire system does not collapse.
A darknet or the Dark Web is becoming a widely used because it allows users to hide their tracks on the Internet, according to Tom Zako, the CEO of the Citadelo firm.
This tool is important in countries with strong censorship, Zako told The Slovak Spectator. The original purpose was not to aid criminals.
However, it is obvious that criminals, including Slovaks, have discovered it. Police recently arrested two Slovak citizens for the illegal sale of drugs via the darknet. At the same time they seized the electronic hard-to-track cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) being used as a means of payment on the darknet. This currency hit a historic high on June 11, reaching $3018 per Bitcoin and fell to around $2200 in mid July.
The Slovak Spectator spent several days on the Darknet. It bought bitcoins, visited drugstores, weapons shops and sites with illegal pornography.
A darknet is formed by individual pages which can only be opened if a person knows their exact address and knows which program to use. Guessing a page name is not possible as they look like this: anonywebix6vi6gz.onion.
To open such sites users need the Tor browser originally developed by the US Army for the secure communication of its employees.
Entering a darknet is not difficult. The process can easily be found on the Internet. The user just needs to download Tor for free, find the list of websites working only through this program, and start exploring the dark corners of the Internet.
Soon a person finds that many of the published darknet websites, probably up to 80 percent, do not really work.
It is mostly because they are operated by individuals who have cancelled them for various reasons. Another possibility is that one company is running a number of sites, and when it ends, all of its sites end as well, according Polish internet security expert Marcin Koziej.
Websites accessible through Tor come and go, Koziej told The Slovak Spectator. They are mostly maintained by individuals, and can easily be discontinued.
This is also the case of websites belonging to Slovak drug dealers. Today there was only the announcement that they were locked by the police due to a decision of the Bratislava District Court.
Among those pages whose links are commonly available on the Internet, The Slovak Spectator has found, for example, a child pornography page aimed at the spanking of small children. The operator offers five albums for download, the possibility of commenting on them and discussion of the topic in a forum.
There is a freely available page of a false passport vendor promising that the customer will not only receive ID, but will also be registered in official databases and will be able to travel freely with the document.
On another page, people were offering 92-percent uncut cocaine from Peru for $75 a gram.
On the contrary, sites with crowfunding for an assassin or ordering a hacker attack did not work.
The websites do not always offer illegal activities though. For example, there are forums where people anonymously discuss ongoing protests in their countries.
There are actually many more sites running but people have to learn about them in locked forums or personally from other users.
When surfing a darknet, community and personal references are important, according to Koziej.
The community is also a source of trust in some hidden sites, Koziej says. A trust network is reason to believe a particular site is legit, and not police bait.
In general, dealers ask for bitcoins in exchange for goods. For example, a Walther PPK gun was available for BTC0.434, which is around 852.
The currency is produced by complex mathematical operations under the rule that only 21 million bitcoins can ever be created, preventing its inflation. The process is gradually slowing, which should resemble gold, a precious metal that has become increasingly rare following the start of its mining.
People can access their bitcoin via a unique key granted after creating a virtual wallet.
The Slovak Spectator has downloaded the mobile application that provided the key for BTC. Using this app, the editors bought BTC worth 10 at a special ATM in the centre of Bratislava in mid May.
The entire operation passed quickly and ended without a receipt. The machine only produced a confirmation QR code, which appeared on the display and the amount of 0.005 bitcoin appeared in the mobile wallet. If the transferred euros had immediately disappeared, the police or any bank would not have done anything about it.
All BTC transactions are visible, but the trading parties are anonymous. The trader does not know who is buying the goods, and the customer does not know who is selling it to him. So users therefore have to solve the issue of who has first turn: the one sending the goods or the one sending the money.
For example, a system of intermediaries has been created. The customer first sends the money to a third party they both trust. After the salesperson learns that money has been transferred he or she sends the goods. After the customer receives what they paid for the seller gets their money from that third party.
In order to gain trust, salespeople in a darknet are much more customer-focused than their counterparts in ordinary life, British journalist Jamie Bartlett says in one of his lectures. He spent several months on a darknet, made contacts with the users, and bought marijuana in order to report on how the whole system works.
Now, this kind of consumer-centric attitude is the reason why, when I reviewed 120,000 pieces of feedback that had been left on one of these sites over a three-month period, 95 percent of them were five out of five, said Bartlett. The customer, you see, is king.
The Slovak Spectator did not buy any illegal goods and neither did it use its bitcoins.
Though it could be surprising that the vast majority of goods, even illegal ones, arrive via standard postal service, according to Zako.
People in the European Union only focus on a sender operating in the Schengen area so that the package doesnt go through scanners, Zako said.
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Hackers Just Stole $7 Million in a Brazen Ethereum Cryptocurrency Heist – Fortune
Posted: at 3:49 am
Hackers hijacked cryptocurrency trading platform CoinDash on Monday just as it was in the middle of its initial coin offering, or ICO. It's the first known breach of an ICO, this season's hottest fundraising method.
CoinDash, an Israeli startup, planned to raise capital by selling its own digital tokens in exchange for the cryptocurrency Ethereum , which is similar to Bitcoin . But just 13 minutes into the token sale, which began at 9 a.m. ET Monday, an "unknown perpetrator" hacked CoinDash's website and changed the address for sending investments to a fake one, the company later announced on its website . That diverted millions of dollars in contributions to the attacker.
While the CoinDash ICO still managed to raise $6.4 million from early investors, the hacker stole $7 million worth of Ethereum before the company was forced to pull the plug on the token sale. Despite the losses, CoinDash promised to dole out its tokens accordingly to everyone who participated in the ICO before it was shut down, whether or not they sent funds to the correct address.
"Reminder: We are still under attack. Please do not send any [Ethereum] to any address, as the Token Sale has been terminated," CoinDash said in the statement.
The incident is likely to put a damper on the enthusiasm surrounding ICOs. The offerings are similar to stock market initial public offerings, or IPOs. But there are two key differences: ICO investors receive cryptocurrency instead of equity, and the offerings face far less regulation.
ICOs have had a banner year. In 2017 alone, such token sales have raised at least $540 million, my colleague Jeff John Roberts reported in a recent Fortune Magazine story, "Why Tech Investors Love ICOsand Lawyers Dont." A month ago, a single ICO raised as much as $147 million; another raised $35 million in just 30 seconds .
The CoinDash hack is reminiscent of another large-scale Ethereum heist last year, when attackers breached a blockchain organization called the DAO and stole more than $50 million that had been raised in an ICO a month earlier. But the DAO hack occurred after the token sale had already ended.
To CoinDash, which hyped its ICO with modified promotional imagery for HBO's Game of Thrones , the breach is a blow both financially and in terms of its relationship with customers, some of whom suggested on social media that the attack could have been an inside job.
For its part, CoinDash pledged to investigate the breach and move on. "This was a damaging event to both our contributors and our company but it is surely not the end of our project," the company said in its statement.
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Now could be a good time to pick up a secondhand graphics card as … – TechRadar
Posted: at 3:49 am
Cryptocurrency mining is the process of using GPUs, or graphics cards, to invest in, and profit from, the value of digital encrypted currencies. In recent times there has been something of a boom in the value of cryptocurrencies, meaning that miners have been snapping up GPUs.
However, in the last few days there has been a swift decline in the value of both Bitcoin and Etherium, leading to many miners selling their GPUs. According to CoinDesk, there have been 260 entries on Ebay for 'Etherium mining rig', all bar three of which appeared online after July 11.
That date is significant because thats the day after Etherium hit its peak of $400 to put that in context it was only worth $10 a unit on January 1. The value of cryptocurrencies plummeted after that, with the market losing $10 billion over the weekend and Etherium hitting a low of $133, although it's since recovered to around $200.
If you want to take advantage of the sudden glut of GPUs on Ebay, youre going to have to know what youre looking at, as they are definitely packaged for the purpose of mining, even though they're essentially just powerful gaming GPUs.
It's worth bearing in mind that months (or years) of mining could shorten the life expectancy of graphics cards if they've been used a lot, but the savings you get may be worth the risk. As the rigs usually contain a number of GPUs specifically calibrated for mining, it will require a few friends and a little expertize to get your cheap GPU.
If plowing through mining rigs sounds like a lot of work, you may still see a discount in the price of GPUs in the coming months as the diminishing demand may well have a knock-on effect on GPU cost.
If we see any change in GPU prices, we'll let you know.
From CoinDesk
Via PC Gamer
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The bitcoin bump has turned into a beating – VICE News
Posted: at 3:49 am
Two of the most popular cryptocurrencies have a bit of a hangover after a wild weekend theyre only now starting to recover from.
Bitcoin and ether bothtech-based alternative currencies essentially crashed over the weekend before rebounding sharply on Monday, racking up the kind of gains in one day that normally takesix months or a year in the stock market.
Though no single news event drovethe last few days dramatic swings, a few occurrences, taken together, help explain the roller coaster.
But whatever causedthe weekends fluctuations, the markets stabilized on Monday. Ether rose almost 9 percent, while bitcoin gained 10 percent. Both, however, aretrading well below their June highs; ether is down almost 30 percent, and bitcoin, almost 60 percent.
On the bright side, early buyers of cryptocurrencies have still made a ton of money. Despite the recent downward trend, the price of bitcoin has still nearly tripled over the last 12 months, while ether is up more than 10 times its price a year ago.
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13 Japanese Exchanges Agree to Suspend Bitcoin Service on August 1 – Bitcoin News (press release)
Posted: at 3:49 am
The Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association has officially announced its plan on how to deal withthe possibility of a Bitcoin protocol split on August 1. Thirteen of the groups bitcoin exchange members, including Coincheck, Gmo-Z, Bitbank, and Bitpoint, will suspend bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on August 1 at 00:00 Japan time.
Also read: Japans Cryptocurrency Business Association Plans for August 1 Guidelines
The Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association (JCBA), formerly known as the Virtual Currency Business Study Group, announced on Tuesday its official plan forAugust 1.
Thirteen bitcoin exchange members of the association have agreed on how to deal with the possibility of a Bitcoin protocol split, which is expected on August 1 at 9:00 am Japan time, the JCBA detailed.The occurrence of forking affects the transmission and receipt of bitcoins by all bitcoin users, and it is expected that all related virtual currency exchange operators and service providers will be seriously affected.
The exchanges have collectively declared:
We decided to temporarily stop accepting bitcoin deposits and withdrawals at each exchangeWe will stop only the services related to depositing and withdrawing bitcoins, but we will provide our other regular services for virtual currencies and legal currencies.
Currently, the following 13 bitcoin exchanges are members of the JCBA that have agreed to this plan.
Japans largest bitcoin exchange by volume, Bitflyer,isnot among the list of members of the association. According to a July 13 article by Nikkei, the exchange has not decided on a plan for the possible disruption, but is expected to come out with one this week.
The suspensions will commence on August 1, 2017, at 00:00 Japan time. However, the JCBA warns that in the event of the fork happening sooner than Aug 1, the suspension date/time may be advanced depending on the situation.
The official service restart date and time following the network disruption is still undecided, the association noted, adding that (loosely translated):
We plan to update the acceptance of bitcoins and the resumption of withdrawals by 16:00 August 4, 2017 (Japan time).
What do you think about the JCBAs plan to deal with the upcoming disruption? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and JCBA
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check ourtoolssection.
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Bitcoin, Pot Startups Embrace Regulations to Succeed – Fortune
Posted: at 3:49 am
Executives from health to cannabis discuss regulation at Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2017.Stuart Isett for Fortune Brainstorm Tech
A few years ago, it was popular for startups to follow the path forged by Uber and AirBnb, ignoring regulations and laws to build a business first and deal with legal complications later.
But several startups fields as varied as housing, finance, and marijuana went a different way, and they've succeeded by playing nice with the regulators instead.
"Silicon Valley's fixation with disruption can be counter-productive," Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, said at the Brainstorm Tech conference on Tuesday. Ripple helps banks use some of the technology behind bitcoin for other financial transactions.
Garlinghouse is worried that some other bitcoin-related startups ignored regulations, which will lead to major problems down the line. "Heavily regulated markets are typically regulated for a reason," he said, pointing to the recent theft of $7 million from a cryptocurrency fundraising effort of Israeli startup CoinDash. "It's the lack of regulation gone awry," he added. "Frauds are happening; people are going to go to jail."
While some bitcoin startups opted to go around regulators and others cooperated, in other industries ignoring the regulatory issues is much harder, creating more of an incentive to cooperate from the beginning.
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Colorado is one of just a few states has legalized marijuana consumption. But pot is still illegal at the federal level, making the regulatory environment complex, Kyle Sherman, CEO of startup Flowhub, said. Helping marijuana suppliers and retailers track the movement of the product along the supply chain, from farm to distribution center to store, Flowhub also reports data to state regulators.
"We realized this had to be a collaborative effort," Sherman said. "We're not just building a business, we're building an industry."
The startup Common is helping to build apartments that will be designed to attract unrelated people, essentially roommates, to live together. CEO Brad Hargreaves said with big, long-term, building projects, there was too much risk in flouting zoning and community approval rules.
"We started in 2015that was sort of peak of anti-regulation, that was really when Uber and AirBnb were doing tremendously well from their strategy of not playing well with regulators," Hargreaves said. But building buildings is a much larger and more permanent endeavor than relying on contractors who drive their own cars or rent their own homes. "We're much more sitting ducks."
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The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. Is Half Full Node, Half Work of Art – Bitcoin Magazine
Posted: at 3:49 am
Bitcoin is a decentralized system of digital cash in which users dont need to trust anyone else with their money; however, the full benefits of this technology are only seen when users operate a full node on the network. The vast majority of Bitcoin users do not operate their own full nodes, but one man is trying to change that with a piece of hardware he calls the Bitcoin Block Clock Jr.
There are many good reasons for individual Bitcoiners to operate a full node. Full nodes are responsible for validating transactions and blocks on the Bitcoin network. Only by running full nodes can users know with full certainty that they received a valid payment. Additionally, the more users that run full nodes, the more decentralized the Bitcoin network is, making it harder to shut down or corrupt.
And as Sia Co-Founder David Vorick pointed out in a talk at this years MIT Bitcoin Expo, those who do not operate their own full nodes do not get a say in the matter when hard forks are deployed on the network. If youre not running a full node your opinion on whether or not you like a hard fork is less relevant because, ultimately, if youre not validating the rules and someone gives you a transaction following a different rule set, you dont have a way to detect that, he explained.
Running a full node, however, has been a rather expensive proposition. As a result, larger, economically invested entities that are better able to support full nodes have had more of a say.
According to Vorick, users can be dragged along with miners and large businesses if the cost of running a full node is too high: If full nodes are expensive to run, only people who are capable of running nodes really have any say in what happens in a contentious upgrade.
Matthew Zipkin is the man behind the Bitcoin Block Clock. A sound engineer by trade, he has been working in his spare time on creating full nodes that are both affordable and fun to use. During a recent discussion with Bitcoin Magazine, Zipkin revealed his desire to create a piece of hardware for operating a low-cost Bitcoin full node that isnt boring.
When commenting on his reasoning for creating the Bitcoin Block Clock, Zipkin pointed to the full node devices made by Bitnodes before they were acquired by 21.
I always wanted one, but they disappeared when they got bought out, so I decided to build my own, said Zipkin.
While there are other full node options out there, such as Bitseed, Zipkin wanted to make something that was more than a piece of computer hardware that would sit on the floor next to a router. Zipkin wanted to turn a Bitcoin full node into a work of art, and thats exactly what he did.
Zipkin built the first version of the Bitcoin Block Clock last year, and it was on display at the SF Bitcoin Meetups Proof of Art event in May of 2016. After receiving positive feedback at the event and on Reddit, Zipkin decided to make a smaller version of the full node hardware to sell.
The Bitcoin Block Clock included a screen that displayed various live information about the Bitcoin network. Zipkin put the original version of the Bitcoin Block Clock for sale on OpenBazaar and Purse.io, but it hasnt sold.
I priced it pretty high because its art and I love it and kind of want to keep it, explained Zipkin. So of course it still has not sold.
In an effort to create a version of the Bitcoin Block Clock that could be produced at a lower price, Zipkin turned to Raspberry Pi Zero and Bcoin, which is an implementation of the Bitcoin protocol written in Node.js.
I discovered Bcoin was super easy to install and use, and the codebase was easier for me to review because its in Javascript instead of C++, and was built from scratch by a small group of developers (basically just two guys), so everything is really well labeled and consistent, explained Zipkin.
Of course, the problem with using SPV mode is that its not a full node and the device wont receive all of the information related to a new Bitcoin block as its mined on the network. Zipkin opted for the pruned full node option in Bcoin in an effort to lower the system resources required to operate the node on Raspberry Pi Zero.
With pruning, I get all the fun block details I wanted to display, said Zipkin. I even submitted a pull request (which got merged!) to Bcoin to make my application work even easier.
Zipkin described the LED displays on the Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. as follows:
The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. has two LED rings. The outer ring of 24 LEDs indicates recent blocks. Each LED represents 2 minutes, and they tick clockwise around the ring. The color of the LED is determined by the blocks version (BIP 9 version bits combined with keywords from the Coinbase scriptSig like /EXTBLK or /EB1/AD6/). The inner 16-LED ring indicates the progress of the current difficulty period (2,016 blocks, or about two weeks). It starts blue and gradually turns more and more red as the meter fills up. The tiny little display screen indicates some details about the latest block: height, size, version (and extra scriptSig version) and the adjustment period progress. I added a little web interface so I could turn the lights off at night without having to SSH into the Pi every time.
While Zipkin noted that the original Bitcoin Block Clock displays much more information and also comes with full wallet functionality, he also pointed out that the latest model proves that Bitcoin users only need about $20 to run their own full nodes (at least in pruned mode).
Having said that, Zipkin admitted that the Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. can struggle to keep up with the network at times.
Bcoin plus my Python script and all the GPIO display output just barely hangs in there on this tiny underpowered computer, said Zipkin. The Python script has a method to restart Bcoin when it crashes and monitor it as it catches up to the network.
All of the technical details of the Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. are open source and can be found on GitHub.
Zipkin has now placed the Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. for sale on OpenBazaar and Purse.io.
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The Bitcoin Block Clock Jr. Is Half Full Node, Half Work of Art - Bitcoin Magazine
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