Month: May 2015

How Trustless Off-Blockchain Transactions Could Solve the Block Size Problem (Op-Ed)

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Recent innovative ideas and projects, such as micropayment channels and the lightning network, are creating trustless channels between people so they can transact with each other without touching the

from CoinTelegraph.Com News http://ift.tt/1LVbP0v

Bitcoin News Roundup – 31 May 2015

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Recapping the week’s biggest Bitcoins stories from around the web.

The “Silk Road saga” is over, the founder of illegal online market Silk Road has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. US District Judge Katherine Forrest was not convinced that Silk Road was created “out of youthful naïveté.” On the top of the prison sentence, Ulbricht has to pay a fine of nearly $200 million.

Australia plans on making a criminal offense to informing people about the benefits of cryptography.

As Justin OConnell of CryptoCoins News reports, academics and cryptography researchers in Australia could face up to ten years imprisonment in the event of even lecturing on cryptography. According to Australian Department of Defense, “university researchers would need prior permission from a Minister at the DoD to communicate new research to foreign nationals or to publish in any research journals.”

Switzerland might consider establishing the first bitcoin bank. As Sarah Jenn of NewsBtc writes, according to Handelszeitung, Switzerland’s major newspaper, arrangements are in progress for a bitcoin bank to acquire the licenses to start operations.It is also confirmed by various sources in the financial industry that the Financial Market Supervisory Authority is aware of the project and the license application will be submitted with the forthcoming weeks.

Canadian universities are increasingly acknowledging the bitcoin potential and openly support the cryptocurrency technology. As JP Buntinx of Digital Money Times writes, students at Simon Fraser University are allowed to pay for their textbooks in bitcoin. Additionally, the campus provides three bitcoin ATMs.

Regulation

The American Bar Association (ABA) is hosting “Bitcoin and other Digital Currencies: Emerging Issues in Regulation and Enforcement” event. The event will take place on June 26that the Ritz-Carlton in Washington DC. As John WeruMaina of CryptoCoins News writes, the ABA plans to investigate the latest improvements in bitcoin compliance and regulation issues, including whether the digital currency should be regarded as money or as a commodity.

Taxes

New Jersey favors tax breaks for companies that embrace the bitcoin. As Katherine Fletcher of Coin Report writes, New Jersey Assemblymen Raj Mukherji and Gordon Johnson introduced a bill that would block municipalities from launching their own tax regulations on bitcoin. Registration with the Department of Banking of Insuranceis mandatory for the companies that operate in the cryptocurrency industry. Additionally, the bill includes incentives to attract more businesses to adopt the bitcoin and expand the use of the digital currency in New Jersey.

Payments

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) joins forces with Ripple Labs. As Jeffrey Maxim of Bitcoin Magazine reports, CBA will capitalize on Ripple technology to expedite payments between its subsidiaries. The CBA has tested the cryptocurrency technology before taking the decision to explore the benefits of intrabank transfers using the Ripple protocols. According to CBA CIO David Whiteing “Bitcoin is a protocol which is now being replicated by non-asset based vendors like Ripple and others. We are about to launch using Ripple as a means to transfer payments between our subsidiaries.”

Bitstamp launches a new prepaid debit card. As Maria Santos of 99bitcoins writes, the London-based Bitcoin exchange has partnered with the payment processor AstroPay to enable Bitstamp’s clients to acquire debit cards in USD, Euros and/or GBP. The debit cards could loaded in fiat currency or in bitcoin and they will be available within the European Union.

ChainPay, the global bitcoin gateway partners with Payment Goblin to facilitate seamless bitcoin transactions. According to Bitcoinist.net, the partnership will enable the customers of Payment Goblin, the UK-based payment processor, to accept bitcoin by using its API. According to an announcement by Payment Goblin “Through this partnership, we hope to introduce merchants currently using traditional card payments to the benefits of digital currency.”

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Meet The Market Admin Who Was Responsible For the Ddos Attacks

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Without getting into too much details – a market was responsible to at least some if not most of the DDosing of the past 2 weeks, luckily the ddoser account got hacked by another market admin who was extorted by him (TRD), and all communication documented – its pretty much self explanatory, added some comments:

* Need to point out that he wasn’t responsible for the initial ddosing – but onlty after he was contacted by the ddoser

At first,  he was ddosed himself and was asked for a ransom to stop the attack:
ddos1

More chatter with the ddoser:
ddos2

Wants to take out 8 markets:

ddos3

Will pay 200$ a day for the attack:

ddos4

Partnership:

ddos5

Make up your mind:

ddos6

More:

exit1
Want to become Evo:
exit2
More talks:
exit3
Keep it secret:
exit4
You got paid:
p1
Abraxas is down:
p2
Make a post with DeepDotWeb about the ddos mafia!
ppp

Ddos status report:

pp
We need to optimize the attack:

pp2

When i asked about it:
response-1
response-2

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Silk Road Admin Ross Ulbricht (DPR) Sentenced to Life in Prison

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The Silk road saga came to an end when Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison for running the underground online drug bazaar Silk Road (1), signaling the government’s seriousness in combating Dark net markets.

Before the sentencing the parents of the victims of drug overdoses addressed the court. Ulbricht broke down in tears. “I never wanted that to happen,” he said. “I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path.”

The Judge about DoctorX & harm reduction:

Judge about keeping a journal:

“Good work LE!”

The 31-year-old physics graduate and former boy scout was handed five sentences: one for 20 years, one for 15 years, one for five and two for life. All are to be served concurrently with no chance of parole.

Judge said – “The stated purpose [of the Silk Road] was to be beyond the law. In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist. You were captain of the ship, the Dread Pirate Roberts,” she told Ulbricht as she read the sentence, referring to his pseudonym as the Silk Road’s leader. “Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its…creator was better than the laws of this country. This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.”

In addition to his prison sentence, Ulbricht was also ordered to pay a massive restitution of more than $183 million, what the prosecution had estimated to be the total sales of illegal drugs and counterfeit IDs through the Silk Road—at a certain bitcoin exchange rate—over the course of its time online. Any revenue from the government sale of the bitcoins seized from the Silk Road server and Ulbricht’s laptop will be applied to that debt.

“I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives…to have privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht told the judge. “I’m not a sociopathic person trying to express some inner badness.”

Ulbricht’s defense team has already said it will seek an appeal in his case. That call for a new trial will be based in part on recent revelations that two Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Administration agents involved in the investigation of the Silk Road allegedly stole millions of dollars of bitcoin from the site. One of the agents is even accused of blackmailing Ulbricht, and of allegedly selling him law enforcement information as a mole inside the DEA. But the judge in Ulbricht’s case ruled that those Baltimore-based agents weren’t involved in the New York FBI-led investigation that eventually took down the Silk Road, preventing their alleged corruption from affecting Ulbricht’s fate.

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