It has been down this road before. Oversight bitcoin reserves is managed in conjunction with our reserve banking partners, including HSBC, stalnaker via our currency board, which approve s any changes to the exchange of the currency. I do think outlawing digital assets is stan futile exercise, and will only bitcoin the places that try to do so by pushing activity and innovation outside their purview of influence. You can also customize the types rate stories it sends you. This system of stan values exchange to stalnaker things represented on the Internet will turn the Internet rate into a pervasive exchange.
Everyone laughed, and we soon learned that for a currency to have relevance, it must be measured against other things. It is profoundly affecting the central vs. In the beginning, I think people were skeptical that we needed a virtual currency — especially in the financial industry. The tension between these two assets and their relative value will set the agenda for much going forward. I would also like to receive business enhancing offers and promotions.
And as the open source aspects of Bitcoin grew and strong demand began to stalnaker up prices, China took notice, perhaps having been more aware than others of how exchange and completely stan things can take bitcoin. Such members individually range from private bankers to singularity theorists to ordinary folks interested in collaboration. Our initial strategy focused on the development of Hubs as places for our members to gather and work, rate recently we have been working hard to bring Ven to new heights as a truly beneficial digital reserve currency for the Internet. Major banks like Citibank have been bitcoin the forefront of Ven growth by purchasing Exchange for their own use, but the banks themselves are not yet trading Stan. Governments will not choose the rate of their money, or be able to ease or tighten supply at will. Bitcoin What is Bitcoin? In this guest post, he extrapolates where virtual currencies like Ven and Bitcoins stalnaker take us.
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And what it means is the end of money as we know it. Digital currencies are really just online account books that measure and record transactins of financial value between nodes on the Internet. By the middle of the last decade, the virtual currency economy boomed on the strength of gaming systems: Now Internet currencies are moving out of virtual gaming systems and into the global economy, with Flattr an electronic tipping currency , Bitcoin , Ripple , Ven and local exchange trading systems LETS leading the way.
The central differentiation between these digital currencies is whether they operate in a closed loop Ven, Flattr, Amex Rewards or open nodal architecture Bitcoin, Ripple. This distinction determines to a large extent their ability to be managed.
On 4 July, , the social collaboration network I founded, Hub Culture , released the first application for Ven , a new type of digital currency. It was a watershed moment for us, and a confusing one, because the Ven had no value or exchange rate—it simply existed and could be issued and traded at will to friends.
The recent and very sudden infiltration of digital currencies into world markets has become a matter of exponential interest among those with a will to actually take part in the formation and circulation of a real alternative to central bank issued, government controlled fiat currency. Since digital currencies such as Bitcoin came into existence a few years ago, they maintained a very steady but loyal following, and were relatively unknown among the mainstream, however this year, especially in the aftermath of the Cyprus banking crisis which demonstrated that banks and governments have gained the powers to use depositors funds to extricate them from insolvency, and regimes such as that of Argentina whereby the government has implemented no less than 30 initiatives over the last two years aimed at tying the populace to an increasingly unstable, inflationary national tender.
With over 20 million exchanged since , Ven has evolved into a stable financial asset, a hedge currency linked to a diversified basket of underlying assets that include currencies, commodities and carbon futures. Ven exchanges instantly in a P2P format and has been the first currency used at device, individual, corporate and insitutional levels. In order to introduce yourself, please outline your professional career and background prior to joining Hub Culture, as well as how you arrived at Hub Culture.
In I published the book Hub Culture, which looked at the social side of globalization, and we started the network as a means of connecting global urban influencers.
That same year I moved to work across the Fortune Group based in Europe. In I left Time Warner to focus on building Hub Culture full time — as a collaboration network with a collection of spaces for our members. In the summer of we launched Ven to help our community exchange value more efficiently.
How did you go about implementing these goals and what has the overall result been? Over time Hub Culture has come to symbolize a modern and considered approach to the world, with a community of globally minded people intent on improving the world.
Our initial strategy focused on the development of Hubs as places for our members to gather and work, and recently we have been working hard to bring Ven to new heights as a truly beneficial digital reserve currency for the Internet.
What is the demographic of the user base and its requirement for such a service? The user base is very globalized and has grown into a community of all interests.
Members are able to trade Ven to others, but they also opt in to Ven whenever engaging with the community. Currently we are averaging over 1 Million Ven a month in exchanges between users. Increasingly, members are buying Ven to use for collaboration projects, membership asset pools and more, which provide new extensions to Ven liquidity.
Such members individually range from private bankers to singularity theorists to ordinary folks interested in collaboration. Digital currencies have become considerably more popular recently, especially in countries where there is uncertainty over the financial structure as pinpointed by the Cyprus banking crisis in which Bitcoin values reached Do you think such countries will be the first to move away from government-issued fiat currency into widespread digital?
In the case of Ven we have already held discussions with monetary authorities on three continents about the potential of using Ven. Ven for Foreign Direct Investment is already happening on a limited basis, and for commodity and carbon credit trades. Meanwhile, the bigger question is whether nations themselves will begin to launch their own digital currencies.
If the governments wanted to put a stop to digital currency, they could do so. Do you think that it is likely that governments could do this very easily and relatively cheaply, by buying all the BTC they can and use super computers to mine at a ferocious rate, thus damning it beyond revival?
I suppose this is possible, and have heard rumors of China already attempting to employ such a strategy. This is one of many issues that come from handing monetary policy over to an immutable algorithm.
In terms of mining, this is already becoming an expensive, and in some cases, a fruitless exercise. What is the future for mining, and do you think it is possible to conduct ASIC and GPU mining with a dedicated rig and still maintain sufficient production?
Bitcoin will eventually evolve into a transaction currency backed by demand. We have been very conservative to make sure Ven does not cross the line in terms of regulatory guidance, and that closed loop will remain until the right partnerships enable full Ven liquidity. That said, Secondaries are now emerging that allow users to trade Ven back into Fiat on a unilateral basis, and we see that happening fast as we build partnerships with regulated groups that can do this.
Until Ven becomes exchangeable, it most resembles a distributed, high-end proprietary currency, similar to a local arcade where games can only be played by purchasing tokens first. As such, should it really be discussed on the same level as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ripple? Ven was the original virtual currency to move into the real economy, the first to be priced in the financial markets, the first to be used for commodity and carbon credit trades.
It is the first to find adoption and use among Fortune companies, and through its carbon linked reserve paves the way for a completely new approach to saving the environment not based on penalties. It is the only real asset-backed virtual currency, and this makes Ven a serious option for mainstream financial institutions today.
Full liquidity for Ven is emerging, but its more important to do things right than to do them fast. A recent development of great interest is the formation of DATA, the self-regulatory organization for digital currency. DATA is a big development for the virtual currency industry and will set precedents that last a generation.
The ethos is about financial inclusion, and helping everyone prepare for the 2. Beyond that, machine led payments in the cloud present a huge opportunity for value creation in our society.
These two trends require virtual currency to be scaled and successful, and require an organization with the understanding and vision needed to help virtual currency reach its true potential. China's fascination with the currency upstart resulted in an estimated 40, client downloads a day and a burgeoning acceptance rate from online retailers down to physical traders standing in Tiananmen Square. The largest Bitcoin exchange in the world is located securely inside China, and one of the world's largest Internet companies, Baidu BIDU , is integrating and using Bitcoin.
It seems highly unlikely that Baidu would be able to integrate Bitcoin payments across its vast network of users without some sort of complicit nod from higher authorities. Chinese interest could play a huge role in turning Bitcoin into the first trillion dollar non-fiat currency.
China fuels Bitcoin surge to record high. So why has China been so quick to embrace the virtual currency? It has been down this road before. It was threatening to supplant the yuan in a viral tsunami that showed no signs of abating. At its height, people similarly gathered in public places to trade QQ, and shopkeepers began accepting it for payment. Because Tencent controlled QQ through central online reserves, the Communist Party's response was swift, hobbling QQ at its knees and bringing it well back into line overnight.
How did they do it? Since QQ was centrally managed, all the Chinese government had to do was tell Tencent to limit QQ's use or face a total shutdown of their business. So Tencent reeled it in. Such a move is not so easy with the decentralized cryptography of Bitcoin, and Chinese officials know that.