Forbes has a stable of bloggers that have relative independence on what they write about (hence Jon Matonis using the platform for years).  In this case though it seems like she's had to delete it, maybe because of conflict of interest from her Bitcoin investments?  She's reposted it on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140819143139-12560-why-i-backed-a-bitcoin-start-up

I love your retroactive origin myths, especially the Soviet space dog, and the Z symbol is cool. The name isn't naturally sticky, if for no other reason than it will have to be explained to anyone who hasn't heard it before (unlike the admittedly unwieldy micro & millibitcoins).  I think it would need some kind of 'institutional' support to get the ball rolling, by which I just mean people in the community who can bring it attention.  I assume you've posted it to Reddit and reached out to the foundation/coindesk/let's talk bitcoin etc?

Plus a shift to full-reserve banking would make the "basic income" scheme feasible.

Yup, that's why we should use "bitcoin days destroyed" (BDD?) as a measure.  Explained here:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bitcoin-days-destroyed

and graphed here:

http://blockr.io/#!/charts

Two in one!

http://www.solarmonitor.org/data/2007/06/02/pngs/seit/seit_00171_ar_10959_20070602_175851.png

You had me until "(filmed in)"

Just curious, where did the name "zibcoin" come from?

Most things "go away" eventually, if you looked at the technology that was in use 10,000 or 1,000 or even 100 years ago, most of it is now obsolete.  I don't think a specific payment protocol like Bitcoin is comparable to general human practices like agriculture or barter, physical phenomena like fire, or fundamental frames of thinking like mathematics.

There is *huge* variety in the various languages that we simply call "Chinese", and they are usually mutually unintelligible.  But I take your point that Croatian has a rich and independent history.

Great discussion, but as brush242 says it would be far too messy to require proof-of-human work every single day.  A non-profit verification foundation makes more sense, and to avoid double-dipping/double-claiming it would need to base verification on a derivative of some unique identifying feature that cannot be changed.  I think there are three broad categories of such identifiers, all of them imperfect:

• Commercial identifiers (phone numbers, accounts on social networks)
• Government identifiers (passport metadata, tax/identity number etc)
• Biometrics (see CheapID for a proposal on this front)

The fourth way is to build a web of trust with crypto, check out OpenUDC project who have gone down that road.

Thanks very much!  And oh man, I know all about the sensitivities around Croation/Serbian/Serbo-Croat...but I couldn't justify listing all three of them as options without also including the Chinese dialects and various other Asian languages with tens of millions of speakers.

This is a really interesting development, thanks for pointing it out!  I happily splash out a few satoshis for interviews, but I would worry that a financial reward for a largely multiple-choice survey would be vulnerable to repeat answers, and that would make the results less reliable.

There's been a solid response so far but this forum is currently underrepresented (I guess because this post initially got buried)...please take a few seconds to fill it out and then let the world know you did so, it will obviously count as one of your first five posts

It seems obvious why they interview him...they LIKE him. In the human sense, not as part of some nefarious plot to undermine Bitcoin.

You'll see it in the way the interviewer introduces him, addresses him, and closes out the interview.  Anyone who talks to media-trained suits day after day will be refreshed to talk to someone as sincere and accomplished as Amir, who is happy to rock up to the studio in a hoodie and talk street English.  I've met Amir a few times and he is eminently likeable, and it seems this debate is partly a division between those who know him and those who don't.  It's also a split between those who think rhetoric is needed to convince the world to use Bitcoin, and those who think a fully-functioning blockchain and ecosystem is what will convince the world to use Bitcoin.

In a similar vein, this is a great website that gives an abstract of every academic paper on Bitcoin picked up by Google Scholar alerts.

http://btcgsa.info/

Seems to be inactive since Sept 2013 though

Greetings new forum members,

Community survey below is open to noobs and veterans alike. I conducted a similar survey last year and am keen to see how things have changed since then.  So please take a few moments to share your experience of Bitcoin. Like last year, all responses will be publicly available afterwards.

Direct link to the survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cjzskJf1RgQFXmY0GrGrK5rQMnnJ3wanDMnrFhM387E/viewform

Updates and results will be posted here:

http://simulacrum.cc/2014/02/01/bitcoin-community-survey-2014/

Thanks!

Lui

Except that Russia Today is aimed at Western audiences... Bitcoin does not get positive coverage from domestic Russian broadcasters.  Presumably they see it as subversive.  In a similar vein: the US domestic media demonise "the dark web", while the parent body of Voice of America (the international propaganda broadcaster) helps fund the TOR network.

Hi all,

This time last year I conducted a survey of the Bitcoin that looked at various aspects of the community, including demographics, politics, and expectations for the year ahead. The survey got over 1,000 responses, and the results were open sourced and made very interesting reading.  More importantly they helped journalists, academics, businesses, and startups get a far more accurate picture of the Bitcoin community. Hopefully we can do the same again this year, so please take a few moments to share your experience of Bitcoin. Like last year, all responses will be publicly available afterwards.

Direct link to the survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cjzskJf1RgQFXmY0GrGrK5rQMnnJ3wanDMnrFhM387E/viewform

Updates and results will be posted here:

http://simulacrum.cc/2014/02/01/bitcoin-community-survey-2014/

Thanks!

Lui

Update: 120 so far, thanks to those who have answered. Major jump in the proportion of atheists and agnostics....either Bitcoin is getting more godless or it's getting more clicks from Reddit...either way keep the response coming in!

In case anyone still thinks this was "just" media hype, the first thing I would say is that media hype in Russia (especially via state-owned media) is often the preferred method for signalling how the authorities feel about something, and maybe preparing the country for upcoming policy or legislation.

The CBR announcement (link below) specifically states that "the issuing of currency surrogates in the Russian Federation is prohibited."  They may not be planning to arrest everyone with a BTC-E account, but they are saying that the Bitcoin economy is not welcome in Russia.

(One potential implication: this could be problematic for Russia Today's work as a Bitcoin cheerleader)

http://www.cbr.ru/press/PR.aspx?file=27012014_1825052.htm

Anyone else doing this course (Crypto I)?  Enjoying it so far and definitely learning a lot.