Bitcoin Reaches Critical Mass

Must… Not… Spend… Rent money… On Moar Bitcoins!

I’m hearing so much good news about the growth & future of Bitcoin these last few weeks that I’m fully convinced that bitcoin has reached the critical mass it takes to ensure success. The mind boggles at how much good news is churning out each day in fact and how this news is going to effect the price of bitcoin… But then I start to wonder, why hasn’t the upward surge started yet?

The answer must be that only hardcore bitcoiners are hearing this stuff so far… The mainstream public is still trying to just wrap their heads around what bitcoin is, and frankly just isn’t ready to understand  the significance of all these investments, laws, new services, and new vendors. That, and I probably don’t speak the language where most of the bitcoin news is being reported.

Alt Coins – What are they good for?

Bitcoin and Litecoin are the two largest cryptocoins traded today. If Bitcoin ever was fatally attacked, Litecoin could easily replace it.

Now that Bitcoin has stabilized above $100 for a while, and the world’s press is sending out a steady stream of info (or disinfo) on the subject of cryptocoins, I’m getting bombarded with questions about the alt-coins, such as Litecoin, PPCoin, Novacoin, Namecoin & even Ripple. “Alt coins” is a term used to describe all of the cryptocurrencies that aren’t the dominant cryptocurrency at the time. (e.g. Not bitcoin.)

Alt coins have all branched out from bitcoin, started in it’s wake, and each and every one of them excepting only Ripple are based on the same decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture that requires a miner crunching cryptography and user wallets to function. Yes, they are all worth dollars in trade on some exchange somewhere right now as I write this, and all have their own developer community and hopeful users like bitcoin does. (Only much smaller, with extremely little, if any, merchant adoption.)

Why are people putting time and money into alt coins? It is assumed by the developers that one day a major government or at least the Mexican drug cartels will have a reason to try to “take out” bitcoin. Although its peer-to-peer behavior should be adequate at stopping these threats, nobody knows what the future holds, and the fate of our very economy is at stake here… So litecoin (LTC) was the first created to be a sort of “understudy” or backup for bitcoin. It has it’s own wallet, mining software and blockchain. Although it was the 2nd alt coin created, it has almost always been the most traded of the group, worth about 2.5% what a bitcoin is worth.

For an updated listing of all cryptocurrencies, with descriptions, see here.

Foodler now accepts Bitcoin!

Foodler wins the race as first large-scale restaurant service to take Bitcoin

I’m an android guy myself, and can’t get the Foodler app on my phone, (for now at least) but on iPhones, Foodler is king for restaurant delivery orders.

I just browsed their website and saw an extremely impressive array of restaurants across the united states, all set up to take orders directly through this app or their website. They have many payment options too, including their own “Foodler credits” which appear to be US Dollars just like paypal.

However, with today’s announcement, Foodler wins the long-standing contest in many people’s minds to become the first major food retailer to offer meals for bitcoin. For years there have been many single restaurateurs like local mom-and-pop shops to accept bitcoin in their one location, but no one can live off of one single restaurant alone.

Bitcoin will be central to the DEFCAD revolution

Dear friends, I just saw the future, and it is completely distributed.

Earlier today, Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed (where you can download printable gun parts) released a video that gave me as much hope as bitcoin does, if not more, for reshaping this planet into something desirable.

Without further ado, here’s the video: (We’re very likely going to be discussing it many times in the future, so you might want to take notes!)

DEFCAD is going to be a Bittorrent-like program, totally peer-to-peer, that has its’ own search for any and all 3D files online, especially the illegal ones. (Right now it’s just a website listing printable gun parts. Later it will be be a full peer-to-peer protocol listing all kinds of products, including those that unfairly cost too much, such as a prosthetic limb.)

KimDotCom Wants to Start His Own Bitcoin Credit Card

Mega Credit Card? Who needs it?

Mega’s KimDotCom recently tweeted:

#Megacard: I would love to create a #Bitcoin credit card! Who can help us make it happen? Email: twitter@kim.com

I think Kim’s proven himself a real action taker; he’s going to attempt to make this happen… The question then becomes; Will it be useful?

Considering the fact that mega.com didn’t go back up (yet) to the level of traffic that megaupload did, (meaning that the market is a bit shy or scared) I’m a little bearish on this card… Especially because it’s a CREDIT card, as he asked for in his tweet.

If it were a debit card, meaning that bitcoins back a local-currency denomination and any monies you take out of it get funded by your BTC balance, then I’d say he’d have a winner… If he can pull it off.

But as a credit card, I don’t know what to think. You make minimum monthly payments in BTC and it can pay BTC to vendors who take it? Seems like that’d be easy enough to do, but it wouldn’t overcome the limitations that BTC already has… Namely that few merchants accept BTC.

Perhaps he means that you make minimum monthly payments in BTC and it can pay Local currency at floating conversion rate to anyone at all… Which would be one helluva trick.