An organized effort is underway at multiple levels of the US government to investigate, understand, regulate and potentially domesticate Bitcoin. We dig through the details and ponder the future.

Plus the ASIC challenge, the Electrum server outage, and a PSA for Android users.

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• A look inside KnCMiner, bitcoin mining\’s dark horse

• ORSoC and KNCminer are partnering up to develop Bitcoin mining products. » ORSoC –

In our partnership ORSoC will be responsible for product development, including design, production and testing.

Lets Play w/Coins! Send in your favorite online gaming sites that take Crypto currency.

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— Discussion —

Every Important Person In Bitcoin Just Got Subpoenaed By New York\’s Financial Regulator

• New York State to investigate \’Wild West\’ Bitcoin industry • The Register

An official told the Associated Press that 22 subpoenas have been issued in all, seeking information on such topics as what measures Bitcoin companies may have taken to prevent money laundering, and what kind of consumer protections might be available for Bitcoin investors.

\”If virtual currencies remain a virtual Wild West for narcotraffickers and other criminals, that would not only threaten our country\’s national security, but also the very existence of the virtual currency industry as a legitimate business enterprise,\” Benjamin Lawsky, who heads the New York Department of Financial Services, said in a memo accompanying the subpoenas on Monday.

• Every Important Person In Bitcoin Just Got Subpoenaed By New York\’s Financial Regulator – Forbes

The New York State Department of Financial Services is stepping into the sheriff\’s boots.

\”We believe that — for a number of reasons — putting in place appropriate regulatory safeguards for virtual currencies will be beneficial to the long-term strength of the virtual currency industry,\” said NYSDFS superintendent Benjamin Lawsky in a statement.

List of companies subpoenaed by the New York State Department of Financial Services

• BitInstant
• BitPay
• Coinabul
• Coinbase Inc.
• CoinLab
• Coinsetter
• Dwolla
• eCoin Cashier
• Payward, Inc.
• TrustCash Holdings Inc.
• ZipZap
• Butterfly Labs
• Andreesen Horowitz
• Bitcoin Opportunity Fund
• Boost VC Bitcoin Fund
• Founders Fund
• Google Ventures
• Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Tribeca Venture Partners
• Tropos Funds
• Union Square Ventures
• Winklevoss Capital Management

Congress appropriations bill directs FBI to launch a federal investigation of Bitcoin as potential means for criminal, terrorist or other illegal activities

• Congress starts looking into Bitcoin

A Senate committee is pressing federal regulators and law enforcement officials to explain how they plan to oversee Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as the issue gains increasing attention from government officials concerned about the role these new markets will play in the future.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Monday sent letters to several agencies requesting that they disclose their virtual currency policies, how they developed them, how agencies are coordinating and finally what they plan to do going forward.

• From the bill (page 45):

Money laundering.–The Committee understands that Bitcoins and other forms of peer-to-peer digital currency are a potential means for criminal, terrorist or other illegal organizations and individuals to illegally launder and transfer money. News reports indicate that Bitcoins may have been used to help finance the flight and activity of fugitives. The Committee directs the FBI, in consultation with the Department and other Federal partners, to provide a briefing no later 120 days after the enactment of this Act on the nature and scale of the risk posed by such ersatz currency, both in financing illegal enterprises and in undermining financial institutions. The briefing should describe the FBI efforts in the context of a coordinated Federal response to this challenge, and identify staffing and other resources devoted to this effort.

• CRPT-113hrpt171.pdf

• Crypto-currency for NSA leaker: Snowden fund accepts Bitcoin — RT News

The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund (JSPD) was set up on August 9 with the goal to provide legal as well as campaign aid to journalistic sources. Snowden, who is behind the biggest intelligence leak in the history of the US National Security Agency (NSA), has been selected the first such source.

Android Security Flaw Puts Bitcoin Wallets at Risk

• 55 BTC Stolen Through Security Vulnerability in Android Bitcoin Wallets

SecureRandom is a Java class that generates cryptographically strong random numbers. In order to remain secure the random numbers used to generate private keys must be nondeterministic, meaning that the output of the generator cannot be predicted. Mike Hearn stated in an email to bitcoin developers regarding the Secure Random class on android, \”Android phones/tablets are weak and some signatures have been observed to have colliding R values, allowing the private key to be solved and money to be stolen.\” Bitcoin uses a random number in transaction signatures and if the same random number is reused the private key of the wallet can be determined.

Before the announcement was made, users on the bitcointalk.org forums had noticed over 55 BTC were stolen a few hours after the client improperly signed a transaction using the compromised random number generator. Users observed SecureRandom re-using the same random numbers for multiple transactions, thus compromising the private keys.

• 55 BTC Stolen Through Security Vulnerability in Android Bitcoin Wallets

There are two types of mobile wallets, those where the private keys are generated locally on the phone, and those where private keys are held by a private company. Android wallet apps where keys are generated on the device include: Bitcoin Wallet, BitcoinSpinner, Mycellium Wallet, and Blockchain.info. Blockchain.info has already repaired the vulnerability, Bitcoin Wallet has an update in beta testing, and fixes for BitcoinSpinner and Mycellium are currently in development.

• 55 BTC Stolen Through Security Vulnerability in Android Bitcoin Wallets – The Genesis Block

The announcement on bitcoin.org identified a three step process to secure existing addresses on all other apps:

1. Generate a new address on a secure random number generator.
2. Transfer all existing bitcoins to the new address. Do not send any bitcoins from this address using an Android device until the updates are implemented
3. Notify any users of your old address of the change, so that the compromised address does not receive any more bitcoins.

• Electrum Server Issues

Bitcoin Pick

• Just got 10 Block Erupters and ROI doesn\’t look good

• Mining Dashboard – The Genesis Block

• Bitcoin Difficulty.COM
• Bitcoin Difficulty Profitability Decline Calculator

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The post US vs Bitcoin Revolution | Plan B 19 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We chat with Amir Taaki about Libbitcoin, and how it could enable a new generation of Bitcoin powered applications and services. And what he see’s as the biggest threat facing Bitcoin, his work with Electrum and more.

Then Ben Morse from the Port Forward Podcast joins us to wrap up the best of this weekend’s #Bitcoin2013 Future of Payments conference.

Plus a big batch of your questions, the news of the week, and more!

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Bitcoin 2013: The Future of Payments Wrap Up

• Bitcoin 2013 in review – CoinDesk

More than 1,000 Bitcoin enthusiasts who converged on San Jose were an impassioned bunch — some fired with the excitement of getting in on something big the ground floor, others lit up by a more ideological passion for freedom from government or from the existing financial system.

• Great interview with BitInstant founder on RT

Producer Bob English and Perianne flew out to San Jose over the weekend and reached out to the 1100 attendees and sponsors of the first major Bitcoin conference. Today, we feature the CEO of BitInstant, Charlie Shrem, who will explain how easy it is to buy Bitcoins.

• The Top 3 Things I Learned at the Bitcoin Conference – Reason.com

This past weekend I attended the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San
Jose, where over one thousand enthusiasts, developers,
entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and, yes, lawyers gathered to
chart the future of the virtual currency. Here are the top three
things I learned at the conference.

• With $1.5M Led By Winklevoss Capital, BitInstant Aims To Be The Go-To Site To Buy And Sell Bitcoins

BitInstant, a New York City based startup that operates an online platform for buying and selling Bitcoins, has raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Winklevoss Capital with the participation of other strategic investors including money services veteran David Azar. The investment was closed this past fall, but the Winklevosses are just now publicly announcing it in the lead-up to the Bitcoin Foundation\’s 2013 Conference being held in Silicon Valley this weekend.

BitInstant, which has a full-time staff of 16 led by CEO Charlie Shrem, has emerged as a key player in the nascent Bitcoin market: The company already processes approximately 30 percent of the money going into and out of Bitcoin, and last month alone facilitated 30,000 transactions, the Winklevosses said in a phone call this week. The funding is meant to allow the company to further scale up its staff and product as it angles to become the go-to site for Bitcoin transfers.

• Bitcoin2013 – Imgur

• Ben demos Bitcoin ATM – YouTube

• Feds Seize Assets From Mt. Gox’s Dwolla Acount, Accuse It Of Violating Money Transfer Regulations

In order to accept funds in dollars, Mt. Gox opened a Wells Fargo business account for Mutum Sigillum LLC (Mt. Gox\’s American subsidiary). The company had to complete a document that states whether it provides money services or not. The warrant reads: \”That document was completed on May 20, 2011, and identified Mutum Sigillum LLC as a business not engaged in money services.\”

In particular, Karpeles answered no to two important questions: “Do you deal in or exchange currency for your customer?” and “Does your business accept funds from customers and send the funds based on customers’ instructions (Money Transmitter)?”

— Amir Taaki —

• Amir Taaki – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amir Taaki is a British video game and computer software developer. Taaki is best known as a Bitcoin project developer and for pioneering many open source projects

• libbitcoin – Bitcoin library
• The libbitcoin Tutorial — libbitcoin 1 documentation

libbitcoin is a bitcoin library targeted towards high end use. The library places a heavy focus around asynchronicity. This enables a big scope for future scalability as each component has its own thread pool. By increasing the number of threads for that component the library is able to scale outwards across CPU cores. This will be vital in the future as the demands of the bitcoin network grow.

Another core design principle is libbitcoin is not a framework, but a toolkit. Frameworks hinder development during the latter stages of a development cycle, enforce one style of coding and do not work well with other frameworks. By contrast, we have gone to great pains to make libbitcoin function as an independent set of mutual components with no dependencies between them.

• subvertx command line utilities (proof of concept using libbitcoin)

• Async Programming by Amir Taaki – YouTube

Amir Taaki giving a talk about Async Programming at Brmlab hackerspace

• genjix/query-layer · GitHub

• Bitcoin 2013: unSYSTEM Vienna, 1-3 Nov 2013

Bitcoin 2013: unSYSTEM is the biggest event in the world covering
Bitcoin and social change. The event will be held in Austria\’s largest venue,
a building normally used by the United Nations.

— Extended Q&A —

• https://slexy.org/view/s20xeTs4sY
• https://slexy.org/view/s20Ke1PzyU
• https://slexy.org/view/s2lPFSSuFD
• https://slexy.org/view/s2140K6HTC

— Over Time —

• Max Keiser – Bitcoin, Bernanke & Buffett | London Real – YouTube

Max Keiser of Russia Today drops by to explain the genesis and implications of the digital currency Bitcoin, why The Federal Reserve and the banking system should apologise to the people for manipulating interest rates, how Warren Buffett is complicit in the Mexican drug trade by purchasing Wells Fargo, and Max\’s crazy times in the 1980s as a New York City stockbroker by day and punk-rock party animal by night.

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• Donate to the network with your worthless fiat or your fancy bitcoins!

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The post Amir Taaki & #Bitcoin 2013 | Plan B 7 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

It’s been called the largest DDoS attack in history, we’ll bust past the hype and explain how a DNS Reflection attack works.

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