[Freedombox-discuss] FreedomBox and Bitcoin (and the petition)
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 09:59:57AM +0100, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> Bitcoin is quite resource intensive,
It isn't. It works on smartphones and tablets, over 3G.
> the block chain is large and growing,
You don't need fully validating clients. You don't have
to connect to hundreds of peers, either. A lot of
the blockchain is zero transactions, and be be
compacted eventually.
> so to set it up takes time. On a small plug computer this is quite a bit
The "small" plug computers are not so small anymore.
The target is moving rapidly, and now looks something
like 1.7 GHz dual-core Exynos 5250 with 2 GByte ram
and 16 GByte SSD. That's about twice as fast as an
Atom netbook.
> of work and may be tricky (i dont know if you could renice it). Then you
> need to open a few ports, and also you'll become a target for people
BTC clients work fine from behind NAT. Just because ports
are open it doesn't mean you're vulnerable. It depends on
what the code listening behind the ports does, and whether
the result can be turned into a DDoS amplifyer.
> wanting to steal your wallet.dat (either from the web or your own house!).
You don't have to keep your coins in an online wallet.
> If those hurdles can be overcome, there could be a good match.
I think it would be a very good match indeed. It's too bad
the Debian bitcoind is ancient, and actually comes with a
DoS bug.
> The block chain is public, but you can have a new key for each
> transaction.
You can trace the transactions. Of course you can run BitCoin
over an anonymizing network, so you cannot associate
BitCoin addresses with IP addresses.
> I think what would be extremely valuable would be a freedombox economy
> where people get credits for helping each other out. e.g. with valuable
> services such as VPN, storage, encrypted backup, routing ... all the stuff
> that Amazon EC2 offers (which fbx could securely replace). This paradigm
> works well in, for example, private torrent networks.
Exactly.
> Once you can offer value, either for free or as a service, the feasibility
> of a currency becomes more valid. I'd love to see freedombox plans where
> you get the hardware cheaply and can pay for it by offering cloud storage
> to the community, for example. Then roll out the hardware to a large
> population, making the network stronger and more resilient.
Very much so. There should be an incentive for Tahoe LAFS users to keep
their nodes online.
>
> >
> > Back to the original question though: do these potential social benefits
> > outweigh the lack of 100% privacy in Bitcoin? Is there a `privacy
> > threshold' for something to be included in FreedomBox?
> >
>
> Freedombox can have its own currency, there's a few systems such as
> opentransactions that provide anonymity. Ben Laurie has written a paper
It is funny that the Satoshi persona has built a system that became widely
adopted, and Ben Laurie, so far, hasn't. Due to network effects it is
increasingly difficult to launch a competing digital currency. Your
best chances will come when BitCoin runs into a design flaw, or scaling
limits.
> saying that you can operate a lottery instead of using huge amounts of
> electricity to generate coins.
Sure, but where can I check out buildable code?
>
> >
> > Also, somebody has started a petition to ask the ISO to provide a
> > three-letter symbol for Bitcoin (BTC is not officially recognised yet):
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.change.org/petitions/six-interbank-clearing-include-a-symbol-for-bitcoin-in-iso-4217
> >
>
> ISO is unlikely to bite here. But why would you want to? Dont think in
> terms of legacy currencies, just use a URL for currencies and you have the
> freedom of the whole web, without gatekeepers.
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