How Public is our Public Ledger?

Research group "R3" recently put out a report scrutinising coloured coins or Bitcoin 2.0 developments. The detailed report expressed some quite esoteric ideas about the abilities of off-chain activities. It sounds like Flavien Charlton, of Coinprism and Colu fame, has these well under control. Complex concepts are never seem to be far from the crypto mind. I can't help but feel lie this might be a last gasp on behalf of block size debate?

Bitcoin 2.0 and sidechains or "Watermarking" are responsible in the main for cooling off the passionate XT or BIP 101 fires. That is, unless Gavin Andreson can turn it around and with that fine i highly doubt it. At the moment it is not even clear if he wants to. Digging further you discover that Mike Hearn (formerly XT) quite for a private contract. That contract being to become the leader of R3! Clearly these are some frantic moves and they are in last gasp territory. The bitcoin community is still not huge and when there's no love i guess some people just have to get paid.

With semi independent side chains to the main blockchain higher transaction volumes can easily be handled. These auxiliary apps have to check in with the bitcoin blockchain every so often but are not subject to the same decentralised lore as bitcoin itself. They are less resistant to manipulation, sometimes just due to the size of their user base, but also because many sidechains are created and maintained by centralised organisations.

Companies like NASDAQ, Bitfinex, BTCC and Kraken are using and developing these systems gain some degree of corporate control over their sidechains. This is a concern for some tinfoil hat bit coiners who have in the past been able to revel in bliss at the fact that bitcoin is fundamentally free from capitalist control. Blockstream have created a compromised here with "federated sidechains". Organisations can share control over a sidechain, in this way creating some decentralisation in a different way, using mutual benefit rather than proof of work. It is all still a compromise.

Can we have our cake and eat it with our funny hats on? Now that we are developing private blockchains tied to our public blockchain, is the face of bitcoin becoming privatised. How public is public enough?

Data size has a significant impact on how effective the public ledger can be. On the one hand we want information to be available for all and on the other average people have to be able to actually use this information in a practice way. People need to be able to get insight that is useful for them and big data can become a wash. If the blockchain is too large only corporations will be able to fully harness it, download and search times become an issue. Data can also become so global and disaggregated to be useful for local purposes.

We are talking stats here, not simply transactions. It is not yet known what kind of information may be useful on the ground in San Francisco coffee shops and for the unbanked. Micro-transactions may also drastically distort data on the global scale and impair the publics ability to participate. We already have companies like Elliptic and fiatleak.com to help us interpret bitcoin data and they are centralised in their own way. Moving forward data is obviously going to be important, but it is unclear weather we can split our data and still have the same purity. Could accessible data be just as important as fast cheap transactions.

So do we trust the bitcoin 2.0 companies and have aggregated data on the bitcoin blockchain that may or may not be more relevant and user friendly?  Can we use sidechains and federated companies for local statistics or do we band together and create guru's and super computers at our local crypto-dojo?  A combination would be ideal, but I haven't seen many club flyers.

HYPE #bitcoin #blockchain

There have been a few articles lately talking about how bitcoins hype might be diminishing. How could this be? I did some investigation and found that the opposite is true. Also somewhat unfortunately, ISIL is getting more attention than Jesus at the moment. What is bitcoins hype like? and how does that compare with the blockchain which we have been reading about so much lately? Some people have been saying that the sway of the blockchain, with its almost infinite uses, may be out weighing bitcoin in itself.  Worthy of investigation I found that for this purpose I think Google trends is a reasonable authority. #bitcoin on Facebook simply resulted in a mile long role of coinable visa card shares and comments and one ridiculous video. Lined up on this chart are the first few things that came to mind.



Notice that at its peak bitcoin had hit residual coca-cola level. Something that is a good achievement, but then Why anyone would want to google Coca-cola? You can see that ISIL has by far out paced any other grab for attention. Unfortunately reckless violence does that, Getting people to search positive things is a more honourable chore.

The list of cities where bitcoin is searched most frequently looks like the making of hypsteropolis.



Bitcoin now, has a residual level of interest about equal to that of an olive. This is up significantly on last year and the years before. The blockchain is sitting at about one tenth of that, but on a steady rise.



I also wanted to compare bitcoin interest with gold. silver and veganism to see if there were any correlations. No hype connections here.



In conclusion bitcoin hype is alive and kicking. Previous spikes have been pretty significant, nearly hitting a curiosity level equal to that of coca colas background noise. There is definitely no down trend, however there is still a long way to go, with vegans and olives more inquirious.  The hype cycle is clearly in its early stages, who knows where new surges will hit. These charts are a live feed.

#bitcoin #blockchain @googletrends

Bitcoin Booms and the Money Supply

Inflation and deflation are gathering an increasing part of our consciousness recently with the US Feds continual hype and delay of raising there interest rates from "near zero". Next month it is fabled that they may move it up after 7 years of at zero and fiat credit creation for longer still. It is interesting to consider what happens to the fiat (normal) money supply in the midst of a bitcoin boom?

When the bitcoin price goes up, people are buying it generally with fiat money, they are putting an increasing spend into bitcoin and in that sense the supply of fiat money is stretched (proportionally reduced) and there are deflationary forces on that fiat currency. In the first instance if most bitcoins are bought and then simply held by Americans then the USD will experience deflation. Ie: the value of the USD is forced up locally to some degree because there are not as many around to use.

This assumes that the exchanges or traders do not spend or exchange their fiat immediately. It also assumes that bitcoin are not spend as much at this time. Something that is fair in a way, considering the speed at which a boom can happen. Buyers and sellers are likely not to spend bitcoin, to hold reserves or reinvest funds in other traded things.

The current measure of inflation "the basket of goods" also does not include the bitcoin. This point however may not hold in the future. We know that bitcoin is quite different to other consumer investments. Many bitcoins are simply held and not speculated with. It also has a practical everyday use and that is spending. Bitcoins don't need to be exchanged for fiat in order to make purchases. In this way when the price goes up for holders, money or value is literally created out of thin air. The effective money supply in the bitcoin economy is increased. People selling things for bitcoin are likely to experience more sales in the period after the boom with this new money, which could lead to increased prices. In reality however the price in bitcoin of most items is pegged on the USD price and this updates in real time. So whilst prices in bitcoin experience inflationary pressure, they do not change relative to this, rather the inflationary pressure are transferred to the fiat currencies that the products are pegged or to the fiat items that are further up the supply chain. As a transaction enabler the effective fiat money supply is increased in this way.

Can these two things happen at once? It is difficult to comprehend the dynamics here but unlocking this certainly be important for the modern crypto economy or simply for making millions out of bitcoin trading. It seems we may initially we get a deflationary impact during the boom followed by inflationary once the bitcoin price has levelled out.

At the moment with a market capitalisation of $5 billion the bitcoin price has only a marginal impact on the global economy, if that. An increase in the value by a factor of 10 could potentially result in and increase in the money supply of $50 billion when people start spending their bitcoins. This is still not huge when compared with the $3.2 trillion M1 money supply in the USA. Considering booms like this have happened multiple times in the past, we may well see a global impact here in the future. In a world flush with crypto currency a complete rethink may be required. Increasing bitcoin value could boost global spending.

Crypto Scratchies Anyone?

Now we can run a lottery without a collection office. These scratches by Prypto are pretty cool, but what about the more youthful gambling type. I have fond memories of getting these for birthdays as a child. These days it feels a little irresponsible giving a kid petrol fiat scratches, but what about earth or lego coin versions? No need to cue up at the Lotto counter to have your ticket scanned. I think its a great idea. Instant gratification anyone?

http://cryptoscratchcards.com/

Essential Road Trip Gear

http://midwaycrypto.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-great-bitcoin-road-trip.html

Bitcoin and The Hunger Games

My sister, an LA stylist, writes off The Hunger Games as hollywood junk. She might be right, the last movie felt like a bit of filler and did have a distinct lack of face burn. Still I'm looking forward to the final, Mockingjay Part 2.

It is the social concept in the story which I think is inspired. I wonder what Suzanne Collins, author of the original books would think of bitcoin and the prospect of some kind of crypto hyper-community culture in the future. She might find it quite scary.

Mokingjay portrays a world 'Pan America' where districts are enslaved in a communistic way by 'The Capital', a large flamboyant but morally ambivalent city of the future. Though the people of The Capital are rich, money and transactions never seem to feature in their daily lives. Something I think most of us would appreciate.

Could these directors, fluffers and 'Game Makers' be collecting their credits via dogerain? Maybe, you never know what might happen looking at the news and the terrible events in Paris, there is some risk that the world could turn into a kind of Hunger Games like hell. There's got to be a way to make a better world than this. I'll be looking for ideas at the theatre. Hopefully it has a bit more fire than part one.