Neocash Radio ep. 170 -- Bitcoin Core update, an early look at Monero, CA and FL still want to regulate crypto, plus more! AND check out our NEW video explaining Bitcoin and blockchains!
Starting today, Neocash Radio switches from Sunday to its new time: Wednesday nights! And @jjepic & @newhampshire have officially welcomed me as an additional co-host for future episodes! Woohoo! I'm honored!
Here are the hottest topics we covered on today's show:
California lawmakers shut down again by EFF. Golem releases code, advertising itself as the AirBnB for computing power. Poloniex to de-list 27 altcoins. The State of Florida appeals the decision of a Miami judge that ruled Bitcoin did not qualify as money. $25 million in DAO funds still unclaimed. Bitwala adds Dash and Steem to their Bitcoin wallet, Ethereum is on the way. A closer look at Bitcoin 0.13.0 and what it means. 5th Quill Studios launches with a great Bitcoin explainer video. Germany warns its citizens to stock up on food and water for an impending attack or emergency. And we take a first look at darkcoin Monero!🔊 Stream Neocash Radio Episode 170, or download the full episode MP3
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Traditional Markets
Gold $1323
Silver $18.50
Oil $46.77
DOW Jones 18,481
30Y UST 2.248%
Crypto Markets
BTC $579
LTC $3.89
Ether $11.02
Dash $13.34
Monero $4.46 (a two-fold increase over the last few days)
1 Doge = 1 doge
California lawmaker pulls digital currency bill after Electronic Frontier Foundation opposition
For the second year in a row, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) beat back a California bill that would have created ridiculous burdens for the emerging cryptocurrency industry & community. Assemblymember Matt Dababneh thankfully withdrew his bill—A.B. 1326—which required a “digital currency business” to get approval from the state before operating in California and also comply with Sisyphean regulations similar to banks and money transmitters.
It claimed to protect consumers, but in reality, it would have forced Bitcoin miners, video game makers, and even digital currency users to register with a state agency and be subject to the new regulations and undoubtedly taxes. Worse, the bill failed to accomplish its intent—protecting consumers—because it would have limited the number of digital currency options available to Californians.
Golem releases code, purports to be an AirBnB for computer time
Code has just been posted to Github for Golem, a blockchain-enabled distributed computing platform that allows users to rent out their computer’s processing power. Golem’s “aim is to use any personal computer to do jobs that are done today by servers, computing farms or supercomputers. The ultimate Golem Net will be the truly decentralized Web, where the combined power of user's machines will deliver all the hardware resources they would ever need.”
Poloniex de-listing 27 altcoins on September 5
Here is the list of altcoins being de-listed from popular cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex soon, including the DAO tokens at long last. Trading will stop for these coins on September 5, though users will still be able to withdraw them after that date.
Bitfinex to Offer Company Equity to Reimburse Customer Losses
After the recent Bitfinex hack that saw 119,000+ BTC stolen, customers were told the company was considering “socializing” the losses across the platform. Bitfinex issued special BFX tokens to affected customers—representing equity in the company—in an effort to make up for the missing BTC. Bitfinex has now signed a letter of intent with UK investment platform BnkToTheFuture to enable users to redeem BFX tokens for equity in iFinex Inc, the British Virgin Islands-based parent company of Bitfinex.
Many are speculating that regulators will be watching this case carefully, especially if Bitfinex users begin to file complaints. Jerry Britto, executive director of the non-profit research facility Coin Center, shared his thoughts in a previous article: "I would be surprised if there are not lawsuits that emerge from this incident, especially by customers who may want to contest the socialized loss scheme."
Florida Files Appeal After Charges Against Bitcoin Seller Dismissed
We recently reported that a Florida judge ruled that Bitcoin doesn’t qualify as “money.” Charges of illegal money transmission and money laundering against defendant Michell Espinoza were dismissed. Now, the State of Florida is filing an appeal, unsurprisingly.
Over $25 Million Worth of Recovered DAO Funds Still Remain Unclaimed
More than a month has passed since a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain resulted in 11.6 million Ether being moved to a recovery account.
Within hours of the recovery account’s creation, nearly half of those ~$145 million had been claimed. Now though, the withdrawal rate has come to a crawl. 2.29 million ETH—approximately $25.9 million USD worth of Ether—still sits unclaimed.
Charlie Shrem receives bizarre encrypted letter; is it a private key to something?
Entrepreneur and Bitcoin advocate @charlieshrem recently posted an article to Steemit with a picture of a curious letter he’d received in 2014, full of odd phrases, irregular punctuation, and other peculiarities. “Could this letter hold the key to Satoshi's wallet?” the headline reads. Give it a look and see if there’s anything in the code you think you might be able to crack!
Bitwala Launches Bitcoin Wallet, Adds Support for Dash and Steem
In addition to being able to accept Bitcoin, Dash, Steem (and soon Ether), Bitwala also released a messenger web app allowing users to send money over chat.
Bitcoin Unlimited changes status to non-profit, receives $500K donation
A large half-million dollar donation from “donors who represent the on-chain scaling community,” will allow Bitcoin Unlimited to transform its structure and future plans. Bitcoin Unlimited is prepared to register as a non-profit organization in the US to “formalize its presence and assist with future public relations initiatives” and foster the prospect of further donations.
Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 Released! What’s New?
- Child Pays for Parent — Both Senders and receivers are able to increase the transaction fee thereby increasing the chance of faster confirmation and block propagation.
- Compact Block Support (created by Blockstream) — Previously, nodes received the transaction data twice: once when the transaction was sent to the network, and again when the transaction was included in a block. Now, nodes will not receive full blocks but rather a hash of the transactions and a way to combine that with data to get the full picture.
- SegWit (Segregated Witness) — New blocks will separate the transaction data from the signatures, and both will be stored in two separate blocks within the new block structure. Overall storage will increase allowing new blocks to hold more transactions.
- Hierarchical Deterministic Key Generation — This feature has been available in numerous wallets, and has now come to the Bitcoin Core client. HD Key Generation would allow users to create a number of address and keys pairs from a 12 word passphrase. This would allow the user to recreate their entire wallet with only the passphrase. Previously, the Bitcoin client would only create each pair of public and private keys individually for each address.
- Database Cache memory increased from 100 Mebibyte (MiB) to 300 MiB
- Internal Miner removed — CPU Mining is useless currently.
- Windows XP will no longer be supported.
@jjepic and I have just released the first video from our new media studio, and it’s called “Decrypting Bitcoin: Blockchain Technology Explained.” I discuss the benefits of Bitcoin and provide an informative overview of how Bitcoin and blockchains work under the hood… in simple terms! If you're new to cryptocurrencies: WELCOME! And if you're an expert, we hope this intro video will be a valuable tool that you're inspired to share with curious friends & family!
Germany warns its citizens to stockpile emergency food and water in case of terror attack
The German government is planning to tell citizens that they must stockpile 10 days’ worth of food and 5 days’ worth of water in their homes “in case of a terror attack or catastrophe.”
A First Look at Monero -- Anonymous coin based on the CryptoNote protocol
On Monday, AlphaBay—the largest online Silk Road-style market for drugs and unsavoury items like fraud tools—announced on Reddit that they are adding support for a reportedly super-anonymous cryptocurrency called Monero starting on September 1.
All Steem Dollars received from Neocash Radio posts are divided amongst the three podcast hosts: @jjepic, @newhampshire, and @randyclemens! Thanks for your support and upvotes! ✌️
It was nice to get the EFF involved, at least our freedoms are secured, for a little bit more. But beware, they might start again next year with an even more draconian bill.
Thanks for the great write up, Randy!
that great contribution, I am happy having people like you all in the community, also I do radio, am speaker in my country (Spanish-speaking) and I have the dream of one day when our community be large, perform the same as you do but in Spanish, you are my mentors, UPVOTE
Neocash has always been internationally focused and we would love to be able to have multi-lingual capability. With the changes we are making we may look to hire whomever we can afford to help. Thank you for the kind words. :)
It would be wonderful, here I am to order what you need of my
Hi @randyclemens - it's always a pleasure to read through the interesting bits of news that you gather. Thank you for your hard work :)