Saturday, 28 March 2015

Community Roundup #15: Winter Is Gone, but Snowden Remains

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Merry spring, LTB community!


We've all witnessed the ever-intensifying discussion regarding freedom of (online) speech, protection -- or the lack therof -- of our identities, and various governments' control over the internet; issues that involve all citizens of this planet, not just us involved in cryptocurrencies. Regarding all this, Dan discusses "Citizenfour," a documentary concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. If you haven't seen the documentary yet, it is well worth your time.


Arthur, the producer of the Beyond Bitcoin podcast, is in the process of starting a new podcast; this time with a broader subject matter than Bitcoin.


In his new podcast, Arthur's plan is to explore Darkmarkets, Anarchism, Cypherpunks, and Identity Systems, among many other topics. As the show is still a work in progress, Arthur is looking for your input. If you have ideas for a name for his podcast, a topic, or an interview subject, make sure to drop him a line on the LTB forums. Arthur, we all look forward to getting your show back on the front page!


William is speculating about the Synereo crowdsale. Synereo is a distributed social network based on "the economy of attention." In case you missed it, or want to refresh your memory on what Synereo is all about, you can check Adam's interview with Dor Konforty, the CEO of Synereo.


In another thread, William asks questions about Factom's crowdfunding effort. Factom's project page explains that "businesses and governments can use Factom to simplify records management, record business processes, and address security and compliance issues."


In case it is not obvious already: When it comes to any kind of crowdfunding, let alone in the cryptocurrency space, buyer beware! Also, the mention of these crowdsales is not an endorsement by LTB. Do your due diligence!


The Securities and Exchange Comission (SEC) has previously applied old regulations to cryptocurrency crowdfunding, forcing projects to either spend large sums of money for legal opinion in order to follow the regulations designed for legacy currency and securities, or hope that SEC won't target them for selling a token (security) for bitcoins (currency).


A recent SEC ruling, while not entirely clarifying the subject, makes things a bit easier. The SEC has set a cap of US$50 million that can be raised through non-accredited investors like you and me. A cryptocurrency project or company seeking crowdfunding is still required to register the sale of the token, or the "security," as the SEC sees it. However, the cost of the registration process is much lower than before. So the projects or companies that wish to play by the rules set by the SEC can now do it much more cheaply.


Morgan has setup a project called BlockDev. BlockDev aims to be a hub for "blockchain apps created by the blockchain community." If you have skills in leadership and management, coding, UX/UI design, writing, or social media management, among many others, BlockDev is looking for you! You can join the BlockDev ranks here.


Buying a home can be a daunting task. Imagine throwing in some bitcoins and cloud mining in to the mix! That's exactly what Tim is embarking on. He is using cloud mining to supplement his mortgage payment with bitcoins. You can follow the process on Tim's blog. We've all probably realized by now the only bitcoin mining that is in any way profitable is done on an industrial scale. The requirement for the bitcoin mining math to really work is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of ASIC miners humming in data centers and warehouses, like on this video by Motherboard. So is Tim's goal to "bring in 5 BTC each month to apply to the mortgage" via cloud mining probable, possible, or impossible?


For our personal entertainment, Ahmad is drawing up some Bitcoin related manga. If you like his work, and feel generous, why not leave him an LTBcoin tip! You can follow the full comic strip here.


'Omnibus' has a nice write up of Joe's LTB Companion Wallet (Chrome extension). If you'd like to check out the wallet source code, or contribute to Joe's already excellent work, go to Joe's GitHub page.


And finally, some random numbers:



  • Over the past month, LTB has had over 200,000 pageviews

  • 61% of our visitors use Windows

  • 1.68% of the visitors come from New York, NY

  • As of this writing, 1 BTC buys 1818181 LTBc


Be excellent to each other,


Tuomas


LTB Community Manager






via Lets Talk Bitcoin! http://ift.tt/1By63LC

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