Category Archives: News
Bitcoin Prediction Market Predictious: Bet on Gender of the Royal Baby
Irish startup Pixode has launched a Bitcoin prediction marketplace called Predictious. You can bet on anything: the next winner of the Tour de France, the top grossing movie this summer, or the sex of the Royal baby.
There have been prediction marketplaces before. Predictify was a US-based startup that let people wager with virtual currency (no cash involved) and went out of business in 2009. Intrade is another Ireland-based company that let users bet on any outcome, famously including the U.S. presidential election, with real money and suddenly halted operations.
What makes Predictious different is that Bitcoin is the only supported currency for wagers. This means that wagers are both virtual and real money, and anyone in the world can participate if they have Bitcoins in their wallet.
This seems to be the first time real-world events wagering has been coupled with Bitcoin. There are numerous sites focused on the speculation of the price of Bitcoin, but none let users wager Bitcoin on actual events.
Betting on the gender of the Royal baby is just one example of the type of major event that could continue to propel Bitcoin into the spotlight through a Bitcoin prediction marketplace. In the meanwhile, whoever gets the sex correct will win 10 BTC, or just under $1000 USD.
Learn more at Predictious.com.
Top Bitcoin News Last Week: DEA Seizure, Africa, Bitcoin Foundation
Bitcoin News
A roundup of the top Bitcoin news from July 5 to July 11.
Friday, July 5
Sunday, July 8
Tuesday, July 9
Wednesday, July 10
Thursday, July 11
Inside Bitcoins Conference Adds Virtual Currency Regulatory Panel
Learn about Legal and Regulatory Issues Facing Bitcoin Businesses
Mediabistro announced that James White, Director, Tax Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, has joined the panel Legal and Regulatory Issues Facing Virtual Currency Businesses at its upcoming Inside Bitcoins conference on July 30 in New York City.
Mr. White’s bio from the IRS is below:
Mr. White is a Director at GAO responsible for work on IRS, tax administration and tax policy. He has held this position since July 1998. Previous positions at GAO include Associate Director and Acting Chief Economist. Mr. White joined GAO is 1990 from Hamilton College where he was an Associate Professor in the economics department, teaching public finance. Prior positions include faculty appointments at Williams College and New York University, plus a Senior Fellowship with the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Mr. White has a Ph.D. in economics, with a concentration in public finance, from Columbia University. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Virtual currencies, like Bitcoin, are driving innovation and new business models. This panel will help technology companies building Bitcoin software learn about the bounds of financial regulation.
Additional panel speakers include Jerry Brito, Senior Research Fellow at Mercatus Center of George Mason University, Jacob S. Farber, Senior Counsel at Perkins Coie LLP, Chris Larsen, CEO and Co-founder of OpenCoin, Greg Schvey, Managing Editor of The Genesis Block, and Ryan Singer, President and COO of Tradehill.
Enter On Bitcoin’s discount code: ONBC to save 15% on your conference pass. For the best rates, register before July 11.
Bitcoin Foundation Appoints Jon Matonis as Executive Director
The Bitcoin Foundation has appointed Jon Matonis as Executive Director. Matonis is an e-Money researcher and author of The Monetary Future at Forbes. Matonis is also a board advisor to startups in Bitcoin, gaming, mobile & prepaid, and was previously CEO of Hushmail.
Below is the letter of acceptance he published on the Bitcoin Foundation blog:
I am proud to have been associated with the Bitcoin Foundation since its launch just nine short months ago. A nonprofit organization for Bitcoin can add greatly to the political and economic discourse for cryptographic money and monetary freedom. As Executive Director, I welcome the new challenge.
The Foundation has never claimed to represent all of Bitcoin nor all of its users because that would be impossible for any organization. Rather, the Foundation has consistently attempted to fill the gap where market-based incentives may not have produced the same outcome, such as in the areas of specialized grants and compensation transparency for volunteer developers as well as legal challenges to bitcoin usage and the sponsorship of aggressive legal defense.
For instance, we made our “cease and desist” correspondence with the State of California publicly available which can assist bitcoin exchanges and other bitcoin organizations in the future. Also, we intend to file amicus briefs in significant bitcoin-related legal cases and to offer pro bono legal defense where appropriate. In the next 30 days, we are scheduled to submit comments to FinCEN’s guidance and request for industry feedback on rulemaking. This will be made publicly available too.
The Foundation is not pro-regulation as some have claimed, but it is pro-education. I fully support across the board bitcoin education for legislative and regulatory entities. Proper education is not anti-market and I also agree with economist Peter Šurda who stated that lobbying on behalf of Bitcoin is not necessarily anti-market. However, constructing barriers to market entry and being complicit in certain crony capitalism regulatory outcomes is anti-market. I will steadfastly oppose a crony capitalism direction for the Bitcoin Foundation.
One of my primary near-term objectives for the Foundation is to become more inclusive of the various constituencies within the global bitcoin community. This will involve being more responsive to and communicative with member requests. It will also involve being more open to internationalization. Currently, 60% of the Foundation’s membership is non-US based and we need to do a better job behaving like a global organization. To this end, we will hold the next Bitcoin conference outside of the United States and we will sign on local Foundation chapters in several countries where interested parties have taken the lead on expanding the principles of Bitcoin in their region.
The bursting of Bitcoin technology on the scene at this time in history is not a mere coincidence. It is a reaction to three separate epochal developments largely emanating from the developed economies: (1) centralized and oppressive monetary authority (2) a dominant and complicit legacy banking system, and (3) the eradication of financial privacy.
Future generations will not be very forgiving if the Foundation fails in its mission to standardize and protect Bitcoin worldwide. The youth of today, including the youth of the legislative and ruling classes, certainly grasp this movement and the demographics clearly bear that out. Choice in currency is the free speech of commerce.
Just as those against file sharing and BitTorrent technology were on the wrong side of history, so too are the institutional forces opposed to unfettered bitcoin growth. The great challenge and mandate for our time is in encouraging them to see it that way. Please join us.
In Bitcoin First, DEA Seizes Bitcoin Citing Controlled Substances Act
In a first for alternative currency Bitcoin, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized Bitcoin from an American. Eric Daniel Hughes of South Carolina was forced to forfeit 11.02 Bitcoins, or $814.22 at the time of seizure, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. § 881, which prohibits property to be used or acquired as a result of a violation of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 801 et seq.).
LetsTalkBitcoin was the first to break this news and link to the official DEA notification, which reads:
DISTRICT OF SOUTH CAROLINA
13-DEA-581051, 11.02 Bitcoins, Acct.#1ETDwGUC1QcjYuehFr3u1FD3MvDaUs7SFy,
VL: $814.22 which was seized in Charleston, SC from Eric Daniel Hughes AKA Casey Jones on April 12, 2013
LetsTalkBitcoin explained that the DEA likely lured Hughes into an illicit transaction on a website such as Silk Road.
The Bitcoin address referenced in the complaint recieved a transaction for 11.02btc at 17:10:36 Blockchain time on the date noted as “seized”. This could mean that either the DEA took control of a computer with an unencrypted wallet and transferred the amount to a DEA controlled wallet, or more likely that this was not an in-person confiscation at all. This could be an illicit “Silk Road” transaction, where US authorities set up a “honeypot” selling account, and accepted the 11.02btc as payment.
As for how the DEA tracked down Hughes, well, considering that his username on Silk Road was Casey Jones, anyone who listens to The Grateful Dead could have had some suspicions about Hughes’ profession.
CC image by Images_of_Money
