Winklevoss twins betting Bitcoin will be bigger than Facebook
(NewsBTC) The duo — who infamously won a multimillion dollar settlement from
Facebook following claims Mark Zuckerberg had ripped off their idea —
says that bitcoin could very well become bigger than Facebook, says The Guardian.
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| The Winklevoss twins are betting big on bitcoin. |
Facebook, of course, is the world’s largest social network — with a user base exceeding one billion.
The two came to learn about bitcoin whilst on holiday in Ibiza, saying they were “fascinated from day one.”
And while bitcoin’s $5.67 billion market cap doesn’t come close to
touching Facebook’s $150 billion cap, the Winklevosses put their faith
in the digital currency for the reason that it has more potential to be
more impactful than a social network.
“Bitcoin potentially could be more impactful because being able to
donate 50 cents to someone across the world has more impact than
potentially sharing a picture,” said Tyler Winklevoss.
“But they’re very different. Facebook is like the internet – a large
company and an application. Bitcoin is a protocol for decentralisation,
so you could build a decentralised company on top of it, a stock market.
It’s an internet of ownership, so it’s not quite a direct comparison.”
For critics who point to bitcoin’s volatility as a reason it can
never be widely successful, the twins say that’s basically a
non-statement.
“Unregulated assets with unclear regulatory landscapes are always
going to be volatile. That’s what unregulated assets do,” said Tyler,
who points to the early days of the Internet as an example of a
technology that can go from an enthusiast’s interest to a worldwide
phenomenon.
The twins, who are working on the own bitcoin ETF (and also recently launched a price index) predict that this is the year Wall Street becomes heavily involved in the bitcoin-o-sphere.
Already, we’re seeing incredibly amounts of investor interest,
especially in the wake of two major price spikes that eventually brought
the price of bitcoin above $1,000 late last year.
The Winklevosses are estimated to own one percent of bitcoins presently in circulation.
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Give $250,000 in Bitcoin, get second citizenship
with a Las Vegas escort.
Bitcoin these days.
that sets clients up with citizenship to balmy Caribbean island-nation St.
Kitts and Nevis, payable in cryptocurrency. St. Kitts and Nevis has offered a
‘citizenship by investment’ program since 1984 that accepts investment into the
local economy in exchange for a spanking-new passport.
isn’t cheap. Wannabe citizens must either buy local real estate worth $400,000
or more, or donate at least $250,000 to the Sugar Industry Diversification
Foundation (SIDF) – on top of a nonrefundable application fee of about $60,000
per applicant plus an additional $30,000 for each one of his or her dependents.
holding a St. Kitts passport offers a number of benefits. Aside from the
stunning seas, sands, and climate offered by the Caribbean country, St. Kitts doesn’t
take any income, wealth, or inheritance taxes; citizens get visa-free travel to
140 countries and a 10-year multiple-entry visa to the United States.
countries or ones with invasive policies on individual privacy, the citizenship
process offers more abstract benefits: freedom and privacy.
stories from around the globe about upheaval, increased taxes, and governments
exerting more and more control over citizens’ freedoms and privacy,” the
Passports for Bitcoin website says. “Having a second citizenship and passport
in a stable country is now a must in order to hedge against governmental
intrusion and excessive taxation.”
home countries aren’t notified that their citizens have applied for or received
a second citizenship.
Kitts passport with Bitcoin isn’t clear. The website of the project’s parent company,
International Investments & Consulting, Ltd., says it has processed over
100 applications, though it does not specify how they were paid for.
popular amongst the rich and famous. Roger Ver, an American Bitcoin
entrepreneur and ‘angel investor’ in Bitcoin startups, has bought himself a
passport to St. Kitts, as has as the so-called “Most
Interesting Man on Instagram” millionaire/poker player/playboy Dan
Bilzerian.
ago as a hedge against possible world political turmoil which could negatively
affect the United States,” Bilzerian wrote in a testimonial
on the Passports for Bitcoin website. “I value freedom more than almost
anything else and a second or third passport provides me insurance just in case
the U.S. government decides to value security over freedom.”
St. Kitts citizenship last month after fleeing the country under pressure from
the government over data protection and privacy.
passport in Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin’s youngest entrepreneurs and educators
money in digital currency and skilfully using it for in-game purchases,
tipping buddies on reddit and other really cool things which have yet to
be invented.
there are a few enterprising youngsters here and there who have already
discovered the advantages of bitcoin, are using it, and are even making
generous amounts of pocket money from it.
A swarm of talent
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| Image via Bees Brothers |
Hailing
from Cache Valley, in northern Utah, three brothers between the ages of
11 and 15 have their own successful honey business at home in the Cache
Valley.
swarm of bees as an experiment. Little did they know it would lead to a
small business and an obsession with bitcoin.
says they had no intention of starting a business. “As we started
working with honey and beeswax we started making new things for
ourselves, and eventually got a small business licence, more honeybee
hives, and started selling our items at our local Farmer’s Market,” he
said.
attracted by the concept of a decentralised, non-inflationary
currency. The ideals behind bitcoin seem to align with those of the
Huntzinger family.
father admits they have a different view of education. “We don’t believe
that government has a monopoly on education, nor that the only way to
learn is being forced to sit at a desk all day and stare at a book […]
The whole purpose of getting that first hive, and later the business
licence, was all about education. What would happen if we did this…?”
answer is a flourishing business and three boys learning about finance
and investing before they’ve even finished high school. Business is
booming. From selling pots of their honey locally, their company, Bees Brothers now
produces several different flavours of honey caramels, honey roasted
almonds, beeswax lip balms and candles both at the markets and via their
website. And all can be had for bitcoin, of course.
The publishing moguls
you’ll find a host of online tutorials, as well as the chance to buy a
host of books (using bitcoin) that explain the subject.
not the best part. The site and books, as well as a host of other blogs
and publications are all written by a trio of young sisters, who
describe themselves thus on their blog:
“We’re three
tech tweenpreneurs, also known as The Sabra Sisters. We were born in
2000, 2001 and 2003. We’ve been blogging since 2008, started making
money online in 2010, [and] became bestselling kindle authors in 2013.”
that they were all successful juvenile nonfiction authors, he
challenged the sisters to write a ’25 Fun Facts of Bitcoin’ book, which
eventually evolved into the five-book ‘Bitcoin for Kids‘ series.
immediately started researching into bitcoin and, less than 24 hours
later, surprised him with the launch of their brand new blog dedicated
to learning about the digital currency – the first post being entitled, ‘Yes, we’re interested Uncle I.J.‘ The rest as they say, is history.
girls generally divide up the different tasks required for the
publications, depending on their skills and preferences, but said JuJu:
“My sisters and I split up the various tutorials so everyone had a share in spending bitcoin and having fun. ;-)”
the home-schooled girls justifiably boast they are “professional
bloggers and bestselling authors”, with some credit given to their
mother Ponn – also a blogging professional – for her guiding input too.
the Sabra sisters have over two-dozen kindle books published, with an
astonishing 55,000 plus downloads during the past year, JuJu told
CoinDesk, adding:
“We rarely look at each individual title, but two books are our bestsellers making up nearly 40,000 of those downloads: ’Science Projects for Kids’ and the ’My First Smoothie Recipe Book’.”
Cuteness and cookies
Image via DorkusPrime/redditReddit
user DorkusPrime came across young entrepreneurs Mia and Taylor in
California back in January in the Noe Valley neighbourhood of San
Francisco. He posted a photo of the two little girls at their cookies and lemonade booth and it quickly became something of a web sensation.
adorable little girls just sold me snickerdoodles for Bitcoin in San
Francisco. I asked them to say cheese for the Internet :),” DorkusPrime wrote at the time.
The youngest bitcoin author
writer, Jaden Shelton (A.K.A. the Bitcoin Kid) claims to be “the
youngest author ever who has published a book offered only in bitcoin”.
“It was something funny that happened in my childhood – I used to not eat certain foods and we would say ‘are you scared of a blank?
I would say ‘no’ and we would keep joking around with it. A few years
later, we started thinking about making a book about it.”
promising TV presenter, Jaden has posted a series of videos in which he
interviews key staff at prominent digital currency businesses, such as
ripple, Mycelum and BitInstant.
“Well, you can’t buy anything unless you have a job, so I might be an entrepreneur … or maybe sell toys to kids.”
The shrewd investor
Karam isn’t your average nine-year-old. While most kids his age ask for
the latest must-have toy for their birthdays, Andrew requested shares
in Apple.
price of the stock with interest, checking regularly whether his
investment had gone up or down in value.
was incredibly excited about it and asked if I could take his Apple
stock and cash it out for BTC, so I made him a paper wallet and […]
bought a bit at a time,” Steve wrote in a post on reddit.
later told his teacher about his investment, revealing he had made
about $50 since his dad bought him some bitcoins. He said he was
originally thinking of cashing out 25% of his investment, but the savvy
youngster decided to hold on to his cryptocurrency.
to do more than just a talk at school to get his peers involved in
digital currency. So he asked his father whether he could sell bitcoins
to his classmates, then get them back by accepting BTC as payment for
his Wonder Bracelets, which he makes from colourful elastic bands.
story and enthusiasm struck a chord within the bitcoin community, with
some members of reddit making donations to the 4th grader.
said his son is “super excited” by all the support he is getting and
even commented that he wants to be a “professional millionaire” when he
grows up.
The chancer
Credit: ImgurAnd
finally, let us not forget the enterprising college kid who, in early
December 2013, made it onto TV holding up a sign with a bitcoin logo and
wallet QR code at ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ game.
and caught the attention of the bitcoin community, who promptly sent
him a flurry of donations amounting to over $24,000 in bitcoin, some of
which he allegedly donated to Sean’s Outpost – a bitcoin-funded homeless outreach centre in Pensacola, Florida.
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George Soros sells out of J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup …. time for Bitcoin?
to several news sources billionaire George Soros recently sold nearly
all of his bank stocks, including shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup,
and Goldman Sachs. Between the three banks, Soros sold more than a
million shares. Billionaire John Paulson dumped 14 million shares of
JPMorgan Chase (appr. 750 million dollars). Other billionaires are pulling out of US stocks too.
surely there is a growing discomfort about the all time high levels of
stock market prices. Some are expecting a massive correction. Even if
there is no good reason for it, fear could make such predictions a
reality.At BitcoinOwl we of course speculate that the growing success of
crypto currencies and their promise to revolutionize the financial and
other systems could be a factor as well. Just like email threatened the
business model of the postal services and file sharing scared the music
labels, crypto currencies without a doubt cause some anxiety to
financial institutions who see Bitcoin as a competitor instead of an
opportunity to reinvent themselves.
It may take years before Bitcoin makes any noticeable dent in
Citigroup’s profits, but Bitcoin’s existence alone raises some
uncertainty about the future of such financial institutions and their
profit margins. Some players like Western Union have already been forced
to drop their fees drastically in response to Bitcoin’s extremely low
transaction fees.
The question is where does all that money pulled out of the stock
market will go? Many investors like Kevin O’Leary publicly said that
they’ve put a few percents of their money into Bitcoin already. His
Bitcoins were without a doubt his best performing asset in 2013. It’s
likely that most billionaires pulling out of the stock market will put a
small part of their wealth into crypto currencies as it’s highly
independent from other assets which is important for healthy
diversification.
Let’s just see how much money are we talking about. Let’s assume only
a fraction of those stock dollars will be funnelled into cryptos. Half
percent of NYSE’s total market cap is 83 billion dollars.
If 70% of that 0.5% would flow into Bitcoin it would increase BTC’s
market capital 7 fold raising the price of Bitcoin to over $5,000. If
10% of it went to Litecoin it would increase LTC’s market capital by 13
times raising the price to $325. And we’re talking about just 0.5% of
one stock exchange in the world.
Potentially it is also possible that the crash of stock market prices
will scare crypto currency investors too. Although, it’s hard for me to
find a plausible reason why this would happen.
It will be interesting to see how the predicted decline in the stock
market will influence the valuation of the popular crypto currencies.
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Building a Bitcoin Economy: how to stimulate adoption
evangelist? Want to learn how to start your mission into the world of
fiat economics? Having preached the good word of Satoshi to laymen of
all kinds, I’ve made my mark and learned a lot about promoting crypto
adoption. Before you begin your journey, take a moment to read and learn
about the science of Bitcoin evangelism.
things: intellectual capital (to code the software and design the
systems that make everything work) and financial capital (to pay for
hardware, commercial space, legal fees, and intellectual capital if it
is lacking). Adoption is probably the only field of the crypto industry
that requires cultural or social capital, at least at the grassroots
level. But what does that mean in practice?
connections you already have. In my case, that was a network of notable
Vancouver Meet Up groups, and a job as a venue promoter. At first you
won’t have existing merchants to refer to as references, so you’re going
to need to find people who really trust you. Plenty of free solutions
to accept exist, and once they realize the advantages of cryptocurrency,
they’re likely to stick with it.
superiority of accepting payments via Bitcoin is meaningless if nobody
is spending their bitcoins. Even if Bitcoiners prefer to spend
fiat–maybe because the price is on an upswing–just bringing their
business to the adopting merchant provides the necessary incentive, and
there are a number of ways you can do that.
come in handy. If you’re not a member of your local cryptocurrency Meet
Up, already, become one, or start your own group if none exists.
Community pages at Facebook and Google Plus will also help. Since all of
the businesses I signed up were event venues like coffee shops,
restaurants and bars, I was able to bring them business directly by
holding Meet Ups at their locations. Even for non-venue businesses,
though, a community allows you to connect producers to consumers and get
the word out.
more businesses on board, and that network should grow. In addition to
the natural benefits of cryptocurrency, you now can now promise
additional benefits in the form of direct customers–look for businesses
likely to be open minded, like those already hosting Meet Ups or listed
on websites like GroupOn or LivinSocial. Each new adopter you post to
social media will bring more Bitcoiners into the fold, which in turn
increases the amount of business (and incentive) you can provide.
you can bring more customers indirectly via publicity than you can
directly. You should probably have a couple local reporter contacts, by
now. New crypto Meet Ups and splinter groups will form, and inevitably
the majority of events and merchant connections will be initiated by
people other than yourself. This is natural in community building, and
even moreso in a community based on techno-libertarian roots–don’t be
discouraged.
marketing power to promote those working together for the cause. If you
maintain an honest, non-profit-focused campaign, you will become the
face of this new community; forward media inquiries where appropriate,
and engage positively with the mainstream media. Soon you’ll be ready to
take Bitcoin adoption to the next level.
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“Commodity” is the right way to pitch Bitcoin
nothing like holding a stash of bitcoins and watching the price to make
you hold on for dear life (HODL – the cry of many a bitcoiner) or want
to get off. Its volatility is also a draw for people who would never
even consider such a thing to take a stab at day trading. The frequent
swings up and down make it seem like it should be easy to simply follow
the old rule of buy low and sell high. Most of those who try this,
though, soon learn that it’s not so easy to predict the market, time it
well enough to get a return, and make enough to beat the spread and the
fees.
news for Bitcoin. Price and volatility are important, of course, and the
price of a bitcoin is going to need to rise astronomically in price if
it’s going to fulfill its role as a global asset and currency. But price
is actually a feature of Bitcoin and not its make or break point. On
any given day, the fact that the price is soaring on the seeming
blessing of a hedge fund manager or crashing on some rumored meeting of
the PBOC in a back room somewhere in China is actually fairly
irrelevant.
right. Adoption is progressing, and for sure there are more and more
sellers accepting Bitcoin, but many of the sellers I’ve been in contact
with admit that they have gotten few, if any, Bitcoin sales. Merchants
have natural reasons to accept bitcoins in payment, but it isn’t nearly
as clear to consumers what the benefits to them are. The technical
difficulties, bad press, and risk of theft are great enough to easily
offset the advantages of saying bye bye to their bank accounts and
credit cards.
No,Bitcoin’s time to act as a currency has not yet arrived. Right now it’s
a commodity with an excellent appreciation outlook. And that’s how
Bitcoin should be being pitched. Purchase one or ten or twenty bitcoins,
put them in a paper wallet and forget about them; that small investment
may be the same as buying Microsoft stock or Berkshire Hathaway stock
20 or 30 years ago. Bitcoin is designed to be deflationary, and as
adoption increases, so will its value. Given the state of the political
and financial systems, for those worried about their retirement, their
kid’s university, or just the state of the economy, Bitcoin might be the
best investment there is.
in. When demand to hold Bitcoin as an investment has risen sufficiently
high that people stop looking at what a bitcoin is worth in terms of a
local currency and start pricing things directly in Bitcoin, Bitcoin POS
payments are going to take off. At this point, the fiat currency will
be valued against Bitcoin rather than the other way around. At this
point also, many of the concerns we currently have about regulation and
taxation are going to become moot as the regulators and taxmen will have
to recognize the reality on the ground and adapt or die.
an apt comparison. Bitcoin’s most famous feature is as a currency, but
the blockchain itself is a powerful development. Right now there are
companies and projects underway to create smart property (where you can
prove or transfer ownership of anything with a chip by showing
possession of a bitcoin ‘marked’ as that property), smart contracts
(where you can encode the terms of the contract to fulfill automatically
once certain conditions checkable on the Internet are met), distributed
shares in companies, anonymous, verifiable voting, and much more. It’s
possible that we are going to start to see some of these applications
gain wide adoption before most people are buying a coffee with Bitcoin.
People will come to Bitcoin, probably without meaning to, because of its
simple usefulness. This will dispel some of the myths and fears
associated with it. From there, people will start dropping their bank
accounts and credit cards in favor of saving in their own (by this point
easy and secure) wallets and paying for their coffee by keying in a PIN
on their phone.
and easily, bad press, and security are going to dog Bitcoin’s
development for the foreseeable future. But the trend lines are also
easy to see. Bitcoin is developing, expanding, and gaining in usefulness
every day. So the next time someone tells you they’re worried about
their retirement or their kid’s education, let them know that they
should do their own research and make their own choice, but that Bitcoin
might just be the best investment they could make.
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Why simplicity is best for bitcoin growth
With the many people who have boarded the bitcoin train
lately, and bitcoin acceptance growing each and every day, security is
still of paramount concern and for those new to bitcoin or wondering
about buying some, there are still many doubts and uncertainties, which
hang over them.
(BitScan) Bitcoin
is a fascinating technology and our job as users is to keep it safe. I
had a friend tell me this weekend that bitcoin was “too hard for people
to learn.” I reminded him that email is used by so many people and that
less than 10% of those who use it, understand it all. The same will go
for bitcoin.
Often these newcomers to bitcoin are overwhelmed with
- facts and figures
- hash rates
- difficulty
- brain wallets
- blockchain
- cold storage
- private keys
- the list goes on
It is not surprising it all sounds too complex to even begin to understand and get involved.
The email analogy
Imagine if I had told you when email was starting that there was this
cool electronic mail available now and I think you should check it out.
To that, you ask, “How does it work?” I could answer you in two ways:
1. “You type out a message, put in the intended recipients address, and click send.” Or
2. “To start, you go to your mail user agent, or your MUA. You
address your message to the intended recipient and click the “send”
button. This causes the MUA to format the message using Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol, or SMTP and delivers the message to a local mail
submission agent, an MSA that is located at an SMTP address that is run
by your ISP.
Your MSA looks at the destination address provided in the SMTP
protocol, starting with the part before the @ sign, which is the local
part of the address and often a username, and then the part after the @
sign, which is a domain name. The MSA resolves a domain name to
determine the fully qualified domain name of the mail server in the
Domain Name System or DNS. The DNS server responds with any MX records
that are listed as the mail exchange servers for that domain.
SMTP transfers the message and your recipient then needs to press the
“get mail” button in his MUA, which picks up the message using either
Post Office Protocol also named POP3 or the Internet Message Access
Protocol or IMAP. It’s easy as pie!”
I wonder how many of us would have forged ahead with email had the
second version been the usual explanation given. Bitcoin is still in its
infancy and products will be coming along as well as solutions to make
it easier on the user. Much like Outlook and Google made email easier,
so too will product developers and businesses make bitcoin easier.
Keep It Simple
So, when talking bitcoin, keep it simple.
Allaying Fears
One of the main worries that anybody, new to or expert in bitcoin
has, is over security and potential theft. With hackers and their tools
getting better and faster with each day, we must protect ourselves now
before it it’s too late.
First, line of defense is a secure password.
NEVER use the same password on more than one site. You may end up
giving a scammer universal access. So now they have your bitcoin, and
passwords to all your online wallets, exchanges, email and more.
An easy and free solution might be LastPass. It is a simple and
effective way to manage all of your passwords as it stores your entire
password, encrypted on your device and all you need is to remember one
master password. There are other options as well. Do a search for
password managers and make sure they are secure and reputable.
The take away here is every password you have should be unique, at
least 15 characters with some of each upper and lower case letters,
numbers and symbols, and not contain dictionary words, names or places.
There are other safety steps that can be taken including storing bitcoin offline or in a paper wallet. See what the creator of bitcoinpaperwallet.com has to say here.
All these measures can be used when greater amounts of bitcoin are
involved but for ease of use for a new user with a small amount, finding
the best bitcoin wallet or wallet app is key.
Your Bitcoin Wallet is like the wallet in your pocket – except you
have the private key for that wallet – so it is incredibly difficult for
anyone to steal your wallet and make use of the bitcoin without your
private key.
Together
The more people who are encouraged to adopt bitcoin, the stronger and
more normal it becomes. There are no regulators for bitcoin,
decentralization means that the bitcoin community has to keep its own
house in order. By sharing information and spreading the word the
community can help bitcoin in its progress. By helping each other stay
safe, the bitcoin horror stories can be kept to a minimum.
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An Internet of Blockchains
The blockchain is a hard concept to wrap one’s head around because it describes a system for which no analog exists today, and it runs counter to everything we know about how trust works. In today’s world, trust can only be assigned or transmitted by an individual or organization. The idea that one could safely send money from point A to point B, and have that transaction fascilitated by potentially millions of agents without you knowing who those agents are, what motives they might have vis-a-vis your money, whether they are nefarious or not, is an anathoma. But that is exactly what the blockchain helps enable.
With the blockchain, trust stems not from the reputation of an actor or collection of actors, or from a process or set of controls that abstracts power and authority away from individuals. Nor does trust get transmitted through a graph of friends, or from an external auditor who can vouch for a claim. Instead, we place trust in a design pattern. But what does that mean, to trust in a design pattern? To answer that, let’s look at another decentralized system we have all grown to trust so much that it has transcended the need for trust entirely, and just is: the Internet. The Internet has no governing body or centralized authority. There is no mastermind responsible for making sure some secret collection of computers are plugged in and working. There is no facility that if compromised could “take down the Internet.” No, the Internet works because of a design pattern that dictates that data should move the same way between networks, as it does within networks. So if a network wants to take advantage of the access and opportunity afforded by the Internet, all it has to do is connect, and in so doing it begins contributing it’s own resources to the benefit of the whole, further decentralizing it, making it faster, and making it more resilient.
We take all of this for granted without knowing how this system works. But if you look back to your own history, assuming you were around when the Internet had it’s tipping point, I bet you will find a moment where you had to take a leap of faith. A moment when you had to drop AOL for a generic Internet Service Provider who provided no information services of their own. Of course, the later you made this leap of faith the easier the choice was to make because you were entering an increasingly useful and utilitarian landscape of services – companies like CNet, Excite, Yahoo!, Excite, and others. And the more companies that began building their businesses ontop of this infrastructure, the less and less people cared about the fundamentals of how it worked. The proof was in the pudding.
The blockchain today is operating in a time not that dissimilar to the Internet in the 1990’s. Consumers are baffled and confused by how a decentralized finance system could even function, while a growing number of people led by technologists, futurists and entreprenuers see the potential for ideas and companies that heretofore had been impossible due to the economics of a centralized system. But slowly, as more and more people take their own personal leap of faith, more and more people will stop caring about how it works, and just accept that it does. By then we will no longer be talking about “a blockchain,” but rather an Internet of Blockchains. And no longer will our computers simply connect to the Internet, they will contribute their computing cycles to an untold number of micro-economies that will power far more than even they are aware of.
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