Bitcoin Celebrity

Is Ashish Gulhati, an Indian, Satoshi Nakamoto?

Posted by Benson Samuel on May 28, 2013

Posted in: Alternative Currency, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Celebrity, Bitcoin Regulation in India, Crypto Anarchy Manifesto, Cryptocurrency, Finance, Future Technology, India, IndiaBitcoin, Payment Technology. Leave a comment

Is Ashish Satoshi Nakamoto?

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto has become a word-wide slogan.

An astute deduction on ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto’ was derived by Phinnaeus Gage from the bitcointalk forums.

Between sessions at MFC’s, Gage stumbled upon some literature that introduces us to some names of legend. These led him to strong conclusions of India’s involvement in the evolution and early stage development of Bitcoin.

This is a strong case to add to Ted Wilson’s articulate deductions earlier this month.

While Gage has made a more prominent case with facts, citations and several spot on inferences, It would be great to see how the panel of entries identifies the most likely candidate from the deductions of several other people as well.

While this information is a lot to analyze, I am providing the forum link below for anyone who wishes to understand the chain of events that leads to some powerful conclusions about one of the most elusive man/ collective on the planet.

A proud moment for me, not just to see an Indian associated with Bitcoin, but most importantly the contributions from Ashish Gulhati in aiding the backbone research to our currency of the moment and the future.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=217732.0

Update:

Ashish tweeted a reply confirming that he is not Satoshi. But that is what the real Satoshi would have said as well. 🙂 Ashish deleted the tweet from his feed after messaging me, confirming a need for privacy. Hmmmm, Satoshi indeed.

The hunt continues with Adam Beck, Inventor of Hashcash joining the thread.

Jeff Garzik makes up for a substantial portion of the Bitcoin development team. Self-described as a Husband, father, Linux kernel, cloud computing, Bitcoin, armchair foreign policy nerd & kinda sorta libertarian.

Jeff Garzik is an American Red Hat engineer and Bitcoin developer. He studied at the Georgia Institute of Technology and currently is employed by Red Hat as a kernel developer. He is also the founder of BitcoinWatch, a website for statistics in Bitcoin. Garzik wrote the original push-pool daemon used by all of the pooled miners today. He’s also the original author of ethtool. As an advocate of Austrian economics, Garzik argues that the deflationary aspect of Bitcoin makes it a superior currency and that the decentralized nature means it’s a fairer means of commerce.

Bitcoins technical side has been covered in great volume, so I requested a few opinions from Jeff Garzik during our discussion below.

Chinwag with Jeff Garzik

Question: What is the most non-technical way to explain Bitcoin?

Answer: A global Internet currency with no central bank or controlling authority.

Question: When is Bitcoin-qt likely to come out of Beta?

Answer: When “lightweight client” mode is fully functional and tested.
Perhaps a year or two.

Question: Do you see Bitcoin as the end product or are there forked technologies that may take over as the anonymous currency of choice?

Answer: Bitcoin is just the beginning of a brand new category of algorithms. Bitcoin itself may fail, but it is the first of a new category of “crypto-currencies” based on the proof-of-work algorithm method.

Question: How is the Bitcoin development team funded?

Answer: Gavin Andresen is very recently employed full time by the BitcoinFoundation. All other developers are unpaid volunteers.

Question: What is your Vision on the future of money?

Answer: Bitcoin, the Euro, the US Dollar, China’s RMB will all exist on an even playing field. You may choose which type of currency you hold in your wallet, and transact with.

Question: Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?

Answer: Would be great! Among other things, Bitcoin is great for low-fee remittances from relatives overseas to those at home.

2013 was expected to be a big year for Bitcoin in India, with small Exchanges emerging and IndiaBitcoin coming up fast as a one-stop-shop for Bitcoin in India. As Jeff’s last answer had suggested, remittance is a huge opportunity for Bitcoin in India and there is an initiative being planned for a service rollout this year as well.

Remittances is a growing market in India. Currently dominated by banks or Hawala operators (Interpol Hawala Document), Bitcoin can instantly change this market bringing about a tremendous positive change to the way remittances can occur. Thanks to the global ledger capabilities in the blockchain. This change can even be driven and adopted by the remittance companies and banks currently operating in India.

As a progressive regulator of this 1.2B population economy, the RBI have recently increased their cap for remittances from US $25,000 to US $200, 000 under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme of USD 200, 000 this was upgraded from the original document that can be found here.

Feel free to Donate @ 1NvQuPB4L2hkJtY6NiNw9fLT1HQMYLfC4b

Energy decentralization has been a dream for several worldwide organizations and communities supporting a clean green environment.

Gogreensolar.com is a market leader in solar panels, batteries, charge controllers, and solar mounting hardware. Loaded with an energy savings calculator and technical support for installation and troubleshooting, this could be the answer to Bitcoins electricity hungry nature.

I caught up with the COO of Gogreensolar for a quick Chinwag on their initiatives and Business model.

Harold Tan: COO of Gogreensolar

1. Tell us a bit about your vision and mission for Gogreensolar.com.

Hi Benson, our vision is simple – change the world with green energy. Our environments are toxic, communities are exploited, and we’re on a collision course for a dead end if things don’t change. We’re here to help make that change, and our mission achieves it by bringing awareness and access to effective green energy solutions.

2. Would be great if we could see a graph of Gogreensolars growth since inception.

Unfortunately we can’t provide that graph, but we can say that we’re undergoing tremendous growth and can always utilize more team members!

3. How did you hear about Bitcoin? How did you’ll make the decision to go with it as a payment option?

From a good friend in the financial services industry. The values of Bitcoin and energy independence seem to be aligned. Bitcoin is a decentralized economic tool, and we see energy moving toward a decentralized model. We support systemic decentralization (like the internet), and partner with entities of similar values.

4. Any Bitcoin orders so far?

Yes! Big thanks to Redditors for helping get the word out. Sorry for any initial confusion on the checkout process, we’re waiting for Shopify integration to have the purchase experience completely seamless, but we definitely do accept Bitcoins for any orders by phone or email.

5. What plans are in store for 2013-2014?

We have some very big projects lined up with major municipalities that I can’t talk about quite yet. But it will make news headlines. We have a lot going on behind the scenes beyond just selling parts 😉 We are also in talks with traditional investors regarding these big projects, but are exploring new investment models like crowd-sourced funding.

6. Any plans to go international with Gogreensolar?

We currently already service international clients, but don’t have any physical presence overseas. If there’s anybody international reading this article that would like to partner, drop us a line!

7. Any partnerships planned in the near future?

Many! The growth of our business ultimately depends on partnerships and relationships. Without people, without an integrated web of support, we would just be another retail shop buying and selling matter. We’re here to do much more than that, we’re here to improve the way we produce and consume energy. Join us!

That was a nutshell of Gogreensolars plans, vision and dedication to Energy and Decentralization. I am hoping that a few Business cases can emerge based on this adoption of Bitcoin.

Gogreensolar Payment Options

Aaron Koenig: Director Of Bitfilm

A superb event at the Centre for Internet & Society was organized on the 23^rd of January 2013. The all star team at the CIS (http://cis-india.org/) was awesome at organizing this event for Bitcoin. Live Streaming, Mainstream Newspaper coverage and Twitter based Q&A made this the first Bitcoin Event in India that leveraged these mediums of information transfer.

Aaron Koenig gave a talk on the creation and use of Bitcoin, and on a payment system designed for the voting process of the Bitfilm Festival for Digital Film. Since the year 2000, the Bitfilm Festival has been showcasing films that use digital technology in a creative and innovative way. It takes place on the Internet. However, physical screenings of the films will be held in Bangalore and in Hamburg. Each of the 59 nominated digital animations has its own Bitcoin account, and users worldwide may vote by donating Bitcoins to the films they like anonymously and without any transfer costs. The donated money will be divided among the most popular films (the films with the most votes/Bitcoins).

A strong knowledgeable speaker, Aaron brought forward his tremendous knowledge of Bitcoin, Art & Economics.

The Twitter based Q&A can be viewed on the Twitter ID’s of

@pranesh_prakash

@cis_india

@bensonsamuel

The Newspaper Articles where Bitfilm & Bitcoin made their news in India were

Deccan Herald – http://www.deccanherald.com//content/306184/a-view-digital-short-films.html

The Hindu – http://goo.gl/YJYni

The Bangalore Mirror – http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/31/2013011620130116192721769fafd9b65/Chinwag-withAaron-Koenig.html

Bitcoin Resources In India

Local Exchange – LocalBitcoins.com

India Fourms – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=89.0

https://plus.google.com/communities/107097658582969818131

Blogs – bensonsamuel.com

Unocoin.com

Services – indiabitcoin.com – Official Partners of Bitpay USA in India

Meetup Group – http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Bangalore-Meetup-Group/

Blink.li is a new magazine that is in its 4th publication.

Blink is being maintained and published by the MD of Bitfilm.com

The main topic of new BLINK issue will be the new digital currency Bitcoin.

With articles by Thorsten Polleit, Rick Falkvinge, Mike Hearn, Dominic Frisby and many others.

Bitcoins will be used for the voting and as prize money for the Bitfilm Festival Awards

The Bitfilm Festival for Digital Film will be the first film festival worldwide that uses Bitcoins for its online voting and as prize money. Its opening event will take place in Bangalore at Jaaga Art Space (68, KH Double Road, Shantinagar) on January 17, 2013, 6.30 p.m. This event will mark the beginning of a worldwide online voting action for the Bitfilm Awards in 3D animation, 2D animation, hybrid digital films and Machinima (films shot live in computer games).The worldwide audience will decide which films will win the Bitfilm Awards, to be handed over at the Bitfilm closing event in Hamburg (Germany) in April, 2013.”Our closing event for 2011 was in Bangalore, and we have met so many interesting and creative people here, that we decided to come again to do our opening show this year”, explains Aaron Koenig, Bitfilm’s founder and director, who is in Bangalore for the Launch of the Competition.

Bitfilm has been showing films that use digital technology in a creative and innovative way since 2000. For the first time, Bitfilm will use the new digital currency Bitcoin for the voting process and as prize money. Each of the 59 nominated films has its own Bitcoin account, to which film fans may transfer money anonymously and without any transfer costs. The film with the highest number of donated Bitcoins and votes per category will receive the award. The donated money will be divided among the three best-ranked films per category.

“We are very fascinated by Bitcoin. It is a new kind of money, which has the potential to revolutionise the world as much as the Internet did” says Aaron Koenig. “Bitcoin is an open source currency that needs no central bank and knows no inflation. It is also a new worldwide payment system that makes money transfers around the globe cheap and fast.”

In Bangalore, Bitfilm will present a selection of 12 nominated films which represent a huge variety of genres and styles. There will also be a talk about an Indo-German co-production by Aaron Koenig and Vijayaraj D. from Bangalore, who have been working on a number of short animated films together, the most popular one is about Bitcoins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb0xHN1Dq7M

More information on the Bitfilm Festival: http://www.bitfilm.com/festival

More information on Bitfilm production: http://www.bitfilm.com

More information on Bitcoin: http://blink.li/current-issue

Press images for free use: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hvpe5llkxvzpryi/dL0ZtBKDeo?m

http://www.localbitcoins.com

Localbitcoins.com has easily been the most pervasive Bitcoin Exchange of 2012. A Plug and Play system which allows for Face to Face or Local area transactions.

Localbitcoins.com comes with an inbuilt Escrow, multi-factor authentication and an inbuilt wallet. Built on GPS technology, this nifty service tracks the location of users who wish to buy and sell Bitcoin.

I was fortunate to catch up with Jeremias Kangas (Chief of Localbitcoins) for a quick interview on his initiatives for Bitcoin.

Interview with Jeremias Kangas @kangasbros

Tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What was the tipping point for you to get involved in Bitcoin? How big is your team?

I’m from Finland, been programming since I was a kid. I first heard about Bitcoin on november 2010, just before I went backpacking to India for a month. After that I started working on various bitcoin projects as a hobby, and soon noticed that it is consuming 90% of my time. Then I decided to go full-time retard on Bitcoin, move on from my previous work. Now I’m trying to make a living as a bitcoin entrepreneur 🙂

Our team consists of me, my brother and couple of part-time freelancers. My brother is currently doing a master thesis at university, so I have loads of work trying to keep this going forward! I hope my brother completes his thesis quickly 🙂

Do you think that Bitcoin is ready for the mass adoption and use? If No, Why not? If Yes, How can it spread faster?

I personally believe in solving the scaling problems as they come. Engineers tend to overstress scaling issues, even when they aren’t a real problem yet. Look at twitter, for example – it was constant failwhale when the site was becoming popular, still the concept succeeded pretty heavily.

I think the best marketing strategy for Bitcoin is to market it towards startups and innovative small companies. I have been myself doing this kind of promotion in the finnish startup scene. I’m pretty sure that soon we will be seeing startups popping up around bitcoin like mushrooms!

Big companies tend to be conservative and slow, and one of Bitcoin’s strengths lies in enabling new kind of business models. This is the reason why I believe that startups will bring the change faster.

I see that you are involved in several Bitcoin projects. Would you be able to give us a short summary of all the initiatives that you are working on.

– LocalBitcoins.com – our main effort currently, and probably the most known project

– Django-bitcoin – open source bitcoin library for the django web framework – https://github.com/kangasbros/django-bitcoin

– Easywallet.org – started as an instawallet clone, now has lots of different features that make it quite distinct

– Acceptbit.com – developed as a joint venture with Stefan Thomas in Berlin bitcoin hackathon (weusecoins.com) – https://github.com/kangasbros/electrumpos

– Bitcoin/payments-hackathon – Have been organizing these events in Finland and once in Berlin. The idea is a weekend of completing some Bitcoin-related project, and publishing it. I really like this kind of “hacker events”.

As Localbitcoins is a well known site, any future plans of adding an international online exchange as well?

We are doing tools for those who want to do online trade as well. However not traditional order-book-based exchange. More like a toolset for setting up a fixed-rate online exchange – allow anyone to setup fixed-rate online exchange in any country, with any payment methods! That is the vision anyway, let’s see how it will look in practice.
We just recently released this “escrow” feature in localbitcoins. It basically tries to automate the selling process, making it both safe, efficient and quick for both participants. We have been getting some good feedback, and plan working on the concept based on how people use the feature etc.

Any road map for 2013? Any partnerships envisioned?

I will be working 24/7 on everything bitcoin related, but localbitcoins will be the main focus. No partnerships yet, however we are open to any ideas.

Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?

I love India! Have been backbacking there couple of times. I think bitcoin would be much more revolutionary in country like India, than for example country like Finland. Some things:

– When I was traveling there, smaller shops had often change problems. Bitcoin could solve this in the future 🙂

– Online bookings (hostels, trains, etc) were pain in the ass, I never got my international visa working. Bitcoin could help with this as well.

– I’ve heard India has nowadays more and more native, born-global startups, and there is strong startup movement emerging. Bitcoin could be really the technology to get Indian startups off the ground! Cost-effective way to pivot your product on global marketplace.

I hope that I will be able to do my next backpacking trip to India with Bitcoin! 🙂

Localbitcoins.com is the most recommended Exchange in India right now. This has enabled a lot of trades and people get onboard every day.

Wishing everyone a Happy and prosperous 2013 and hopes of effective solutions to enable the permeation of Bitcoin into our everyday lives.

Buy Gold with Bitcoin – Seriously?

Posted by Benson Samuel on December 19, 2012

Posted in: Alternative Currency, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Celebrity, Companies of the Future, Cryptocurrency, Finance, Future Technology, India, Modern Banking with Bitcoin, Payment Technology, Startup. Tagged: Buy Gold with Bitcoin, Buy Silver with Bitcoin, Coinabul Interview, Interview with Jay Shore. 6 Comments

Coinabul

Yes, Seriously. WordPress and Paymium aside, Coinabul is a Bitcoin company that provides more validation to the success and stability of Bitcoin. Coinabul is the first Bitcoin to Gold resource available to the Bitcoin marketplace.

I caught up with the Chief of Coinabul Jay Shore and got a few thoughts from him about Coinabul, Bitcoin & regulations.

1. Tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What was the tipping point for you to get involved in Bitcoin? How big is your team?

I’ve got a background in computer science dating back more than a decade, with an emphasis on web application development. We’re based in the USA, and the key figures in our team have been involved in Bitcoin for years- I personally have always found the technology appealing from a development and day-trading viewpoint ever since I heard about it around the later part of 2010.

2. Do you think that Bitcoin is ready for the mass adoption and use? If No, Why not? If Yes, How can it spread faster?

Bitcoin is certainly ready for widespread adoption. Whether it’s viable for someone who is not technically inclined to become a Bitcoin user is relatively undetermined- as young as Bitcoin is there are a lot of services which make it easy for new users who are not technically savvy to use the platform, and large corporate supporters such as WordPress who advocate for and provide tools for widespread adoption. The main thing that will bring Bitcoin into a more widely consumed state will be market stability, I feel- this will let new users feel more confident, veterans less skittish, and new businesses join in without hesitation.

3. Any big news to be announced to the world? Something new from Coinabul which is right around the corner?

There is nothing particularly new happening for Coinabul customers with the exception of even faster processing times, as well as cheaper shipping for all of our international clients. We have recently renegotiated rates with our shipping carriers such that we are able to bring our rates for clients down a fair bit.

4. What is your roadmap for 2013-2014?

Mainly, our goal for 2013 is to increase efficiency as we scale, and continue to grow as substantially as we have in 2012. This entails a huge amount of work in various ways, which I won’t get into here as it’s really quite mundane and tedious. However, I will outline some of our primary goals: grow the amount and variety of stock we have on hand at any given point, increase the number of employees and premises we have, decrease processing times, and increase the frequency as well as size of orders which we process.

5. Any Partnerships that you envision to enable faster growth of Coinabul?

We are exploring critical growth partnerships with various entities to help us continue to improve our product offering, although I cannot really get into that in a public medium.

6. What are the legality aspects of Coinabul? Does Metal to BTC/ BTC to Metal rest in the grey area of law or is it unregulated?

BTC/precious metals exchange is a very complicated endeavor both from a legal and a logistics perspective. We encounter huge amounts of legal constraint as a fringe service operator in a regulated market, but we have amazing legal minds who keep us compliant within, and voluntarily above and beyond, the bounds of regulations that we are obligated to follow.

7. What kind of effort goes into running a growing business like Coinabul? Any challenges that are pressed at you every day?

The primary hurdles we overcome tend to be fairly standard in terms of a company experiencing massive and rapid growth. As a fixture in the Bitcoin community for more than a year, we have established a huge amount of trust which generates larger and larger daily volumes for us. While we grow, we have to do all of the fun things that are required for expanding businesses but on a much more accelerated curve.

8. What advice can you share for budding entrepreneurs?

As far as advice I can give to budding entrepreneurs, I can only recommend a few things:
Do what you love;
Stay dedicated to your projects, but if it’s not taking off you have to cut your losses and move forward or reformulate your model;
Don’t quit your day job until your startup requires you to do so;
Build the right team early on since you can’t do every task by yourself as you scale;
Don’t be afraid of change- it is innovation as well as hard work that powers your startup.

9. Any thoughts on Bitcoin in India?

India is a growing Bitcoin market, and I see more and more services and users coming out of India day to day.

In a world of Bitcoin entrepreneurs, Coinabul seems to have taken some of the biggest risks in the market and listening to Jay talk about their viral growth, there is no doubt that they are an entity to watch as Bitcoin covers the globe.

Maintaining 24/7 updated prices, a provision for voice based customer service, dipping shipping costs and a well accredited team makes these guys one of the earliest Bitcoin success stories.

Links:

Coinabul Website

Crypto Anarchist Manifesto – Video

Posted by Benson Samuel on November 26, 2012

Posted in: Alternative Currency, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Celebrity, Bitcoin Event, Companies of the Future, Crypto Anarchy Manifesto, Cryptocurrency, Finance, Future Technology, Payment Technology, TOR. 1 Comment

My first attempt at non-static publishing. Hopefully will get better over the coming weeks.

Paymium Home

About Cartes 2012

Bitcoin Cartes

CARTES is the worlds leading smart Technology Event for Security, Payment, Identification & Mobility. All the industry channels are present: from products and equipment (manufacturing of cards, accessories, etc.) To trusted services and solutions. CARTES is not only the largest exhibition in its sector but is also an international conference that brings exceptional added value and offers SESAMES Awards for top innovations, recognised by the profession worldwide. Business opportunities in identification, financial services, transport and telecommunications coexist today as a result of NFC projects, machine to machine and cloud computing market developments.

Leading global event in the digital security and the payment solutions market, CARTES will take place at the Paris-Nord Villepinte exhibition centre from 6 to 8 November 2012.

“CARTES 2012 will be decked out in the colors of India and we are delighted to put in the fore the achievements of this large, fascinating and complex country. We expect to see more Indian visitors attending the show this year and wish to promote exchanges between the demand and supply sides, the international players and the decisionmakers in the Indian market.”

– Isabelle Alfano, Exhibition Director

Bitcoin at Cartes – Paymium

Gonzague Grandval – CEO Of Paymium

Bitcoin has been at the centre of attention as it has been one of the best financial investments of 2012. I happened to reach out to the CEO of Paymium, Gonzague Grandval, who connected me to his COO Pierre Noizat to announce a statement on the current work being done by the Paymium Team.

Paymiums Latest Announcement & An Important Bitcoin Banking tie-up – By Pierre Noizat

Pierre Noizat – COO Of Paymium

These days, we are actively preparing the “Cartes 2012” trade show where we are exhibitors on the Galitt booth (Galitt is an investor in Paymium with over 20 years of payments expertise).
We will be introducing our “Paytunia” app (web and mobile) in its “multicurrency” version: Payments in Euro are processed through the Bitcoin network.
Merchants using “Paytunia Pro” can accept payments from Paytunia app users and/or from Bitcoiners using any other “Bitcoin-enabled” payment app.
Merchants do not need to display prices in Bitcoin because Paytunia Pro will calculate the equivalent Bitcoin amount from a price denominated in Euro.
Paytunia Pro provides merchants with the benefits of using Bitcoin (easy set up, no chargebacks, low fees, immediate payments, regardless of a customer’s country of residence) without the need to display prices in Bitcoin (a difficult step to take for most merchants).
To roll out its new payment app to the consumer market, Paymium has signed an agreement with a banking partner.
Thanks to this agreement, funds deposited in Euro to Bitcoin-central or Paytunia will enjoy the same level of legal protection as any other bank account in France.

Paymium Offerings

Paymium has some of the most talked about products in the Mobile Bitcoin Space.

– Paytunia – Bitcoin Wallet with cloud based storage. No download of Blockchain required.

– Instawallet – Anonymous Bitcoin wallet. 1.3m wallets in existence at the time of writing this article.

– Bitcoin-Central – Bitcoin Exchange

– Instawire – Purchase Bitcoin directly via Wire Transfer

Paymium bridges the gap between legacy payment companies and the newer generation of Bitcoin companies by providing solutions for Consumers, Developers and Enterprise.

With Paytunia Pro, now allowing POS & Multi-Currency capabilities in EUROs, we can expect viral growth in the company as well.

With the financial backing of a payments veteran & exposure to CARTES, It would be great to watch the Paymium growth across Europe and the rest of the world.

Closing

Needless to say, Mobile wallets are a large area for Bitcoin to penetrate and Paymium seem to be getting it right on every count.

This is a tremendous victory for Bitcoin to be introduced at this massive Payments stage at CARTES.

No doubts that Paymium will be one of the stronger Bitcoin players going forward.

Links

Cartes

Create an Instawallet

Bitcoin Central

Paymium Home

Galitt

@ggrandval – Gonzague Grandval

@bensonsamuel – Me

Jorge Timon

Jorge Timon (@timoncc) captured my attention through his in depth knowledge of Bitcoin. I managed to get a few questions past him. Jorge Timon is the founder of frecoin, a Bitcoin fork which he explains to be an economic improvement compared to Bitcoin. Heavily involved in the Ripple project, Jorge has involved even Jeff Garzik’s opinions to his projects.

Known as jtimon on the forums, here is a look at some of his opinions and contributions to Cryptocurrencies.

An Interview with a Rising Star

Ben: Tell me a bit about yourself. (Web resources will help as well)

JTimon: I will make a quick summary, but most it’s distributed among different forums,
so pretty chaotic.

Apart from being involved in the ripple project and helping to spread the word, I proposed freicoin (not much technical value, but an economic improvement compared to bitcoin IMO). Mark is making most of the development for now, but I hope to help soon.
Here’s a summary of my near future plans I’ll reuse (after Jeff Garzik’s quote “if people are interested”):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117800.msg1293663#msg1293663

Ben: What projects are you currently undertaking with your participation in Bitcoin & Ripple?

JTimon: Only discussion (design) for now and proposing many crazy ideas. But I’ll finish university this Friday and I hope to contribute with something soon. Maybe find a less time consuming job too (and more interesting, hopefully related with some of this).

A lot of diffusion too. I gave a virtual conference for the 5^th spanish conference on complementary currencies.

Ben: What are a few ways that Bitcoin & Ripple can integrate?

JTimon:

Two-phase distributed Ripple can make commits atomic using a blockchain: http://ripple-project.org/Protocol/BlockChainCommitMethod

Implementing ripple through coloured coins (discussion with Jeff Garzik)
There’s more discussions on coloured coins on bitcointalk.
I make some examples of ripple transaction using coloured coins here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92421.msg1217467#msg1217467

Modify the Bitcoin protocol to enable ripple without the need of underlying Satoshi is (1 Satoshi is the smallest denomination in Bitcoin, is 0.00000001 btc). I call this one RippleCoin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3557.0

Ryan Fugger’s commit blockchain which only acts as a timestamping system without making the payments public.

http://ripple-project.org/Protocol/CommitBlockChain

That conversation with Jeff is pretty technical, but the basic concept is to use Satoshis to represent ripple IOUs. We must agree outside the chain that those Satoshis represent credit and not only Bitcoins

Ben: What is your Vision on the future of money?

JTimon: Ideally, everyone would issue his own credit money (through an implementation of Ripple). Probably local and/or specialized communities will have their own LETS-like currencies too.
Cash monies will be digital, like Bitcoin and Freicoin. Hopefully gold will be demonetized (because people has chosen not to use it anymore, not by decree). Ideally all cash monies will have demurrage and interest rates will be near zero without any authority manipulating it, just the free market with demurrage cash and abundant credit (anyone can issue money through credit instead of only the banks).

Probably the various levels of the state will issue cash too. They will create it directly by spending it and it will be “backed” by nothing but taxes. Ideally the state will stop borrowing and the peoples will suffer the excesses of politicians fast trough taxes increases and inflation. We won’t be as vulnerable to inflation as we are today anyway.

Credit won’t be denominated in cash units, but in indexes defined as non-existent basket of commodities (see Bernard Lieater’s Terra) or CPI’s. After all, debts are contracts.

Take into account that this is a very personal view.

Conclusion

Hopefully not a distraction from our usual banter, here are a few resources for those who are eager to know about freicoin as well.

More resources on freicoin:
http://freico.in
http://www.freicoin.org/
https://github.com/freicoin/freicoin

Local Exchange Trading System – LETS

Benson's Blog

Understanding tomorrow, Today!

Is Ashish Gulhati, an Indian, Satoshi Nakamoto?

Talking Bitcoin with Jeff Garzik

Decentralizing Energy With Bitcoin

An Introduction to Bitfilm & Bitcoin in Bangalore, India

Bitfilm Festival to Launch Worldwide Film Competition in Bangalore

Blink is being maintained and published by the MD of Bitfilm.com

The main topic of new BLINK issue will be the new digital currency Bitcoin.

With articles by Thorsten Polleit, Rick Falkvinge, Mike Hearn, Dominic Frisby and many others.

Universal Bitcoin Exchange

Buy Gold with Bitcoin – Seriously?

Crypto Anarchist Manifesto – Video

Bitcoin goes to CARTES 2012 – Paymium’s Newest Offering

Jorge Timón – An Interesting & Involved Bitcoiner

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Blink is being maintained and published by the MD of Bitfilm.com

The main topic of new BLINK issue will be the new digital currency Bitcoin.

With articles by Thorsten Polleit, Rick Falkvinge, Mike Hearn, Dominic Frisby and many others.

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