Mastercoin Foundation, Open-Transactions (Monetas), BitAngels and Others Contributing to Bitcoin 2.0 Hackathon: Building Next Generation Decentralized Applications & Protocols

The upcoming Texas Bitcoin Conference just got more exciting.

The Texas Bitcoin Association, organizers of the conference announced that they will be including a hackathon with over $1 million in prizes and contracts being offered by sponsors.

The hackathon is called Bitcoin 2.0 Hackathon: Building Next Generation Decentralized Applications & Protocols, putting a great emphasis on the future of digital currency. Sponsors include the Mastercoin Foundation, BitPay, Open-Transactions (Monetas), BitAngels and Ripple.

The hackathon will run over two days, March 5 to 6, coinciding with the conference on the same dates.

Registration for the 29-hour-long event starts at 9 a.m. Central, Wed., March 5, and the event starts at 10 a.m. Winners will be announced at 6 p.m. Central, Thur., March 6. Prizes will be in various denominations of digital currencies such as Mastercoin and Ripple.

The event will be held at the Technology and Conference Center located at the Circuit of the Americas motor racing complex, 9201 Circuit of the Americas Blvd., Austin, TX 78617.

Decentralized Applications

MtGox, the embattled Bitcoin exchange based in Japan, has filed for bankruptcy protection citing that it has lost 850,000 bitcoins.

Earlier this week, we reported that MtGox was in its last days. Now we are seeing the final nail in the coffin.

The Bitcoin loss is comprised of approximately 750,000 BTC entrusted to MtGox by its customers and 100,000 BTC from its own holdings. In addition, MtGox’s attorney disclosed that the company had debt obligations of ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million) with assets worth ¥3.84 billion.

This is a tragic outcome for MtGox customers who have lost their investments, and a blow to the credibility of the Bitcoin ecosystem overall. But many in the Bitcoin community are looking forward.

Erik Voorhees, a profilic Bitcoin entrepreneur, wrote a memo to the Bitcoin community disclosing that he personally lost 550 BTC in the MtGox collapse and providing his pioneering perspective. “We are building a new financial order,” wrote Voorhees, “and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow’s finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so.”

Will O’Brien, CEO of BitGo, published a 2,000-word essay this week entitled “With MtGox Effectively Dead, Bitcoin Officially Enters Its Third Stage of Evolution” in which he described how “we are seeing the beginning of a new, more secure and more robust, future for digital currency” where the next generation of exchanges and companies will be built by veteran entrepreneurs and designed to scale.

Read: After Demise of MtGox, Bitcoin Now Enters Third Stage of Evolution

At the same time, MtGox customers need to understand what exactly happened to their investments.

Speaking with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire described MtGox’s failures as, “either total incompetence or negligence or outright criminal behavior.”

Now that MtGox is seeking bankruptcy protection, it looks like it will be a matter for the courts to decide.

“I believe that we are seeing the beginning of a new, more secure and more robust, future for digital currency.” — Will O’Brien, CEO of BitGo

Will O’Brien, co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin security company BitGo, published a 2,000-word essay analyzing the past, present, and future of Bitcoin.

The past is a great story of growth in adoption, a mining arms race, illicit marketplaces, and early exchanges. In the present, O’Brien explains, people seem preoccupied with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

But the future is amazing, where Bitcoin is a “foundational technology that will lead to an incredible amount of financial innovation and global empowerment.”

O’Brien uses a framework of four stages of evolution in Bitcoin, and asserts that we are now officially entering the third stage with the demise of MtGox.

In this essay, O’Brien also introduces the concept of multi-signature Bitcoin wallets, an advanced technology that his company, BitGo, is pioneering.

The challenge with the increased adoption is that now theft is more prevalent.

“As more people have looked to own Bitcoin and as more exchanges and marketplaces have come online to support the increased demand, hackers now have easier and bigger targets,” writes O’Brien.

So how do you deal with theft? You need to change the way you manage your security. Instead of issuing a single key, BitGo creates a secure wallet with three keys and requires two of them to sign any transaction. No single machine has more than one key making the wallet virtually hack proof. This innovative new technology is called multi-signature security.

Read Will O’Brien’s full essay on Medium.

Visit https://bitgo.com to learn more about multi-signature secure Bitcoin wallets.

CC image by btckeychain

“We are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow’s finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so.” — Erik Voorhees

Erik Voorhees, a respected Bitcoin entrepreneur who created SatoshiDice and now runs Coinapult, shared his views about the collapse of MtGox in an impassioned letter to the Bitcoin community on Reddit.

In this update from Erik, he warns people to be ready for mainstream media mayhem, and then put their heads down and keep building the future of money. Erik also admits that he lost over 550 Bitcoin that were locked up at MtGox and likely went down with the ship.

If you haven’t heard Erik speak before, we recommend you watch this video of Erik speaking about the role of money at a Bitcoin conference in May 2013.

Below is Erik’s full comments to the Bitcoin community about the demise of MtGox.

Hello friends,

MtGox is gone. So let’s prepare ourselves.

On Tuesday, and for the rest of the week, all hell will break lose in the media. It will be blamed on MtGox, it will be blamed on Bitcoin, it will be blamed on the “bug,” and it will, more than anything, be blamed on the “lack of regulation.” Pundits and “experts” of all types will weigh in on the calamity. It will be world news in a matter of hours.

Get ready, because it will be an ugly week.

For all of you who lost money, my heart goes out to you. Some people lost a little, some lost a fortune. It will make people sick, and depressed, and full of grief. Personally, I had over 550 BTC in Gox. I will never get any of that back. If misery loves company, then we’ll be enjoying a grand feast today.

I should have known better, of course. I take responsibility for leaving those funds with an entity that had proven incompetence repeatedly. I chose to ignore even my own warnings, for nothing more than the sake of convenience.

Gox is still at fault, to be sure, but I have learned the lesson. I hope it is not such an expensive lesson for others. And for all you observers, please take a moment to consider it as well.

Be mindful, however, that the wrong lessons are not learned, for that would be the true tragedy, indeed.

Let me suggest that the lesson is not that Bitcoin is broken. Bitcoin is fine.

Similarly, the lesson is not that security is impossible. Those who know what they are doing, can achieve it and help others to do so.

The lesson is not that nobody can be trusted. There are countless good men and women in this community who are worthy of trust, and some of the very best people I’ve ever met.

And finally, the lesson is not that we ought to seek out “regulation” to save us from the evils and incompetence of man. For the regulators are men too, and wield the very same evil and incompetence, only enshrined in an authority from which it can wreck amplified and far more insidious destruction. Let us not retreat from our rising platform only to cower back underneath the deranged machinations of Leviathan.

The proper lesson, if I may suggest, is this: We are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow’s finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so.

We are at risk from accidents. We are at risk from fraud, from corruption, and from evil. We are at risk from journalists seeking headlines and from politicians seeking power and glory. We are at risk from the very market we are trying to build – a market which cares not about our portfolio, our ambitions, or our delicate sympathies.

For all these risks, devastation will befall us repeatedly. Some of us will be discouraged. Some will be ridiculed and insulted. Some will be tricked, or swindled. Some of us will be crushed or caged. We will be set upon by all manner of antagonists, repeatedly, for a long time.

So why do we do it? Why do we build these towers that fall down upon us? Why do we toil and strain and risk our precious time, which is the only real wealth we possess?

Because the world needs what we’re building. It needs it desperately. If that matters to you, as it does to me, then hold to that thought. You will see through the smoke, and your wounds will heal.

So shake it off, brothers, for this won’t be the last calamity endured before the win.

Tonight, my heart is with you all.

Tomorrow, my head is down. My eyes are open. And I am building.

Toward peace and freedom,

-Erik Voorhees