Crypto S.I Blog

What will be 5 great Decentralised businesses in 2017, are these possibilities?

So while you fill your face with Christmas food, and start to look optimistically towards 2017, I've decided to analyse some businesses that would make great DAOs.

The technology already exists to run fully decentralised autonomous companies, but what is missing is the imagination and the integration with traditional entrepreneurs. Hopefully 2017 and projects like -wings- will start to bridge this divide.

So without further ado, Here are 5 company types that could benefit from becoming a DAO.

1 – Football Club/ Soccer club

Yes this can be extended to any sports franchise, but I’m English, so there’s only 1 sport

worth considering and that’s Football. There are already plenty of football clubs that are owned by fans, but the decisions are still made by a board. Fans would get an even better experience if they could vote on the next manager, major signings, ticket prices, kit colours and stadium names. This could all be done while sharing revenue directly with fans, giving them an even deeper connection to their favourite sporting heroes. I hope we see the first DAO owned sporting franchise, regardless of size during 2017, I feel its definitely possible, and I personally would love to back one with my hard earned crypto currency.

This could even be extended to a boxing/MMA type company, with matchmaking being made by fans, and sponsorship money and PPV being distributed amongst equity holders

PROS : Fans feel closer to teams

Club finances are more transparent

Anyone can become a stakeholder

Profiteering ceases to become a problem.

CONS: Difficult to regulate who owns stakes in which clubs

2- Crypto-currency Exchange

This is probably the most needed thing in the universe. There has been efforts to build decentralised exchanges, but unfortunately true decentralisation is very difficult to incentivise. What we now have is a few efforts with little activity meanwhile most of the volume is found on centralised exchanges. The problem is that these exchanges have to follow too many laws which actually exclude quite a great deal of the most promising crypto projects, this actually builds a greater barrier to adoption for some of the most promising projects such as DASH and NXT which are not allowed on some US exchanges because of dividend rules and anonymity features.

A DAO would be a perfect fit for a crypto exchange as its equity holders would be vested to provide a good service for the benefit of the exchange and the entire crypto community and by extension the entire world. Anonymity negates pretty much all laws, and with all profits paid out in crypto, it will be almost impossible to be forced into paying anymore taxes than the stakeholders agreed to pay. Advertising can be done with a portion of the revenues which will lead to growth, plus equity holders will actively promote the exchange via social media as it will directly benefit them.

PROs; Budget for lobbying

Power to negate some overbearing governments

ability to accept ALL cryptos

CONs : Most decision making will take longer than traditional exchanges

Some centralisation will be needed to secure balances

Language barriers may hinder international adoption

3- Social trading platform

One of Crypto currency’s main features is the ability to easily and cheaply distribute equity to anyone connected to the network anywhere in the world. Another main feature is immutability, the combination of these two things is a perfect breeding ground for a decentralised social trading platform.

This platform would record every members trades, and also their previous success rate. By then charging people to follow the trades of a certain member and allowing for proxy trading on centralised or even decentralised exchanges this could be an easy way to let known winners pick your stocks for you in an instant manner. Also the members could send out stock picks using the Daos messaging system to help people organise their portfolio.

Pros; Equity offerings and movement without massive regulation

Full immutable merit finding methods would be easy to implement

Equity pickers could still remain anonymous and trusted

Cons; Would certainly be outlawed anywhere in the developed world.

Could only be used for crypto related investments

4- Political Party

Imagine a Political party where EVERYTHING was transparent, where we knew exactly how much was donated, and when. Where all of those funds went and Where we knew exactly what was said by whom during meetings. This level of transparency is unheard of in our modern world and the corruption that follows the opaque nature of our current political systems is powerful. A Decentralised autonomous political party could change all of that.

The thing with Blockchain is that it affords privacy as well as transparency, but in very obvious ways. So the things which need to be conducted in private, such as members private details can be obscured and the things which should always be conducted in public, such as negotiations with private entities should be. Corruption would be a difficult thing to accomplish with such a party, joining would be easy and information sharing would be excellent. Voting on party business would be fair, but would rely on a system to link each individual to an account within the system.

Pros: Tackles many forms of corruption with plenty of transparency

Cons: Relies heavily on a technology to link every human being to a single account.

5- Movie production company

This is by far the one I feel could be implemented the soonest and if I don’t see one implemented by summer I’ll have to try and build one personally. A decentralised movie production company would be perfect. Basically it would be like an extension to the crowdfunding method of producing films, but with token holders able to vote on what actually gets produced and what portion of the profits would be split among shareholders and what should be put back into the development pot. There have been many notable successes in crowd funded movie production. And with the falling price of media production, and new revenue models, I believe a decentralised approach would be perfect.

People would vote on which pitches received funding, but could also strike deals with distributors to show their films, this could be done in private by elected officials on behalf of the DAO, and sponsorship and native advertising could also be negotiated both in private or in public.

If you use this idea and launch it, please let me know. I’d love to be involved!

Pros: Community funds movies that community wants, or feel would be successful

Advertising can be publicly negotiated, or privately as needs dictate.

If banned in Places could easily move production anywhere worldwide.

Could be easily expanded to video game and mobile app production.

Cons: Proposers could vanish with production budget,

May be seen as equity in some places (USA) and subsequently banned.

So here’s my list of DAOs I think could change their respective games, This is just my own personal view of opportunities that lay ahead for blockchain based business.

I’m extremely bullish on DAOs, I think they could have a similar impact to what Bitcoin has had on money, and possibly even a bigger impact, as we develop better and more efficient governance models and methods, we will build smarter and more nimble companies and harness the collective intelligence of our members even better as time goes on.

Feel free to follow me on twitter

feel free to follow me on instagram

check out the website,

And look out for my future blog posts here and on steemit.

Sunday 24th July 2016

This morning I had the brilliant idea of putting together a team of writers then publishing our content on steemit.com

Steemit.com is a crypto currency related social network, very similar to reddit, with the difference that good content gets paid in actual money, albeit Steem dollars. Easily convertable to Bitcoin or Fiat.

So during my lightning fast brainstorm I came up with a name STEEM TEEM, and a idea of how we will divide our earnings from the platform. Firstly why is it better to collaborate on Steem?
Steem power gives the writer of a post more exposure similar to a higher google ranking. However steem power is not free, it can either be earned or bought. The thing about using a collective to publish your posts, is that you will have the visibilty of the group for each of your listings instead of just being one in an ocean of new posts each getting very few views. Its beneficial to have great writers, because that will bring more upvotes and in turn more steem power and in turn more visibility, can you see how the vicious cycle grows and grows?

So I decided quite quickly that the first 3 posts a writer donates to the STEEM TEEM will add exclusively to the steem power of the collective, After that the writer will keep 70% of the steem dollars earned, with the other 30% being divided between Crypto SI, Steem teem Shareholder (to be explored later) and more steem power, I really cant emphasise how important steem power is to visibility.

I thought also about selling upvotes when, the STEEM TEEM vote becomes powerful enough, this may take a while and has ethical implications, but all can be explored at a later date.

Shareholders, I thought of having an equity sale which can go towards purchasing steem power and reward the investors in the steem teem with a regular dividend (monthly) from a percentage of the money raised by our bloggers. This also gives the bloggers a chance to own a portion of the project if they can see a long term future for it.

I havent seen anything like this yet on steem, but its only a matter of time, the real challenge will be if its shunned on the platform or steps are taken to downvote collaborative posters. Its a small risk and worth taking in my opinion.

I currently have just over $1k worth of steem power, which is enough to get a small amount of traction, so I'm pretty much ready to get this project started tomorrow

If you'd like to recommend a blogger or vlogger to the STEEM TEEM, feel free to message me
cryptosixxx@gmail.com
or you can find me on twitter @crypto_si
instagram @mrcarlanthony

Let me know what you think of this musing in the comments below.

Adfete is a new platform I'm working on, It's pretty straight forward so I wont subject you to a tonne of reading before giving you the summary.......

Adfete will be a platform, utilising crypto currency, which will allow people to buy and sell product placement in any form of media. I'll let that marinade in your mind for a moment.

I had the idea when I learned of a story that the daily telegraph (big newspaper in UK), would not cover the HSBC drug cartel money laundering scandal, because HSBC were a major advertiser. I wondered who would cover this story? Young turks? Max keiser? A whole host of other shows with a tiny foloowing and almost zero advertising dollars behind them. Is this because they don't get the viewership figures? Is this because brands dont know where to go to contact these people to make proposals?

I watch a lot of music videos on YouTube, here's one I'd typically watch

5 million views over the course of a year - all with some very specific analytics. I'm pretty sure the uploader knows the ages and locations of most of the viewers, along with a whole host of other metrics. This is an independent video, shot by a couple of kids from london, on a budget that would rival my monthly petrol bill. The next time they shoot a video I'd happily pay them 1-2k to advertise my sneaker brand, knowing it'll have 5 million eyes on it (allbeit not unique hits), assuming they'll throw in a tweet to their 41k followers, and a link in the description to my website to buy the shoes. Perhaps I know nothing about product placement prices, perhaps that exposure is only worth 500 quid..... I'll tell you what, I bet these would of taken the money!

lets put this into context : The Great British Bake Off most-watched TV show in 2015. With more than 15 million viewers - The most watched show on commercial TV was the britains got talent final which had 12.51 million viewers, Just imagine how much you'd pay to have cups in front of the judges for 12 million viewers. In music video terms thats not close to the best of the year, Zayn malik will rack that up in a few hours, 6 months later he's at half a billion, what price for him to wear a certain watch in his next video? Or maybe sing about getting his girlfriend your fragrance? just a line has to be worth quite a bit, but its purely speculation, AdFete would build a market and let it decide.

Dash, (www.dash.org) for me was the first DAO, people may argue it was Bitcoin, but that's all happening in another blog post somewhere. Anyway...... For me it's highlighted exactly how easy it is to implement the wishes of the community with cryptocurrency. Nxt (www.nxt.org) makes it super easy to set up a mechanism for paying your share holders. So that could be incorporated also into the platform.

I've started building the platform, and I'm floating the idea about to see what people think, I've not even mentioned Porn yet, we'll save that for another post, when I've gotten my mind around the moral implications. So what do you think? A place to make the home twitch streamer a couple extra quid, or to fuel the next generation of investigative journalists, as long as they get views, they can engage in some native advertising.

feel free to check out the forums while they are being developed http://adfeteforums.com/
and the website http://adfete.com/

It's going to be a great journey

How to become a Millionaire from Dash

So I've held the digital currency Dash, since it was called DarkCoin, and it's just gotten better and better. So I decided to do a little Math and give my 'research' a click baity title.

I've decided that Dash is actually better than Bitcoin in almost ALL aspects, expect for the mighty NETWORK EFFECT, however what if Dash had this network effect, what if one day Dash became as big as Bitcoin is right now, in terms of Market cap, namely $6bn at the time of writing (20^th Jan 2016).

Lets see how we could become millionaires by investing in dash right now and allowing the value to just rise, as it inevitably will. (Dash shill much?)

So currently the market cap is 28.25 Million dollars, Whereas Bitcoin's marketcap is 6.213 Billion Dollars, So Bitcoin is roughly 220 times the size of Dash currently 219.920436102 to be precise.

This means that When Dash becomes the size of Bitcoin a mere 6billion, each Individual Dash Coin would be worth a staggering $1000 or $1009.43 to be exact, So if you had 1000 of them you would be a Millionaire!

Here's the interesting part, It costs 1000 Dash to Start your own masternode, which is an income producing asset, featured in my blog last year in this post, So not only would buying a masternode produce a steady income, it will also be the collateral for you to become a millionaire should Dash meet the underwhelming heights that Bitcoin has so far reached..... Money well invested if you ask me.

So how much will this investment cost me?

Well 1000 Dash at today's prices would cost you $4590, and produce a return of around 17.5% per year, not to be sneezed at :) plus in the back of your mind you will know that there's a decent chance you'll become a millionaire if Dash hits the Big Time.....Well more like Medium-Time, so what've you got to lose?

Happy St Duffield's Day!

Follow on twitter for more great articles @crypto_si

and keep up with the development of the long awaited AdFete

Let me know your views in the comments section

So this morning I woke up asking myself this simple question, If Bitcoin achieves mass adoption, how would we solve the problem of ever increasing debt?

This blog post is more the ramblings of a crazy man than a scientific theory, but bear with me as I elaborate.

I have been investing in p2p lending sites for almost 2 years now, and constantly been running into the same problem........ There is no rule of law. This means that people can borrow money and not pay it back with nothing to stop them except a loss of reputation, which is not always tied to a real human being anyway.
I often have told myself that this is fine and it's the way the world should work, in this way we can weed out the bad lenders and too much borrowing would naturally correct itself as lenders are more careful of who they lend to. But is this a good thing? And is this the only solution a market would find?
What has upset me about the situation with non-paying borrowers is the way lenders sometimes become very aggressive in their comments about them, you will frequently see the term 'scammer' being used for anyone who decides they are not willing to pay a loan back. Granted often these people never intended to pay back the loan, so the label is correct, but the blanket aggression is worrying. I've also seen individual lenders hoping that non paying borrowers get arrested and thrown in jail and things as extreme as that.

This has lead me to wonder, how much will the lenders, who after all are just regular humans like me or you (perhaps), exploit the borrowers and what types of laws or rules will be introduced regarding the non payment of P2P loans. Currently the world only functions because new money is created to pay down old debt, but with Bitcoin that's simply not possible, so what would be the alternatives?
furthermore, who would be incharge of these laws, given the international nature of the internet?

I'm sure someone will correct me, but wasn't this the problem that lead to interest being outlawed under the 'usery' laws in days gone by when Gold was used as money?

Most of the sites impose a fixed interest rate based on the users credit rating, but this is also wrong for so many reasons and instantly kills the short term loan market on any platform that introduces it.

So what is the answer? How can we lend to each other without asking the borrower to put up their liberty as collateral? QE is a dirty word in Bitcoin circles, but without it, is it possible for our money to work for us all?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below,

also check out my new site when you get a chance, and keep your ears peeled for more information about AdFete, It's a reallly interesting new project I'm currently working on.

www.cryptosi.com

2016 in Bitcoin

I think Bitcoin's killer app is Equity Crowdfunding, I heard Vinay Gupta equate investing in a startup to buying a lottery ticket, so when investments can be a small as 10p then you have a nice place for people to gamble on companies legally.

My Predictions for 2016 :
1) Augur Becomes a BIG player despite Ethereum making little headway,
2) NXT becomes Bitcoin's main rival purely down to its asset exchange and products developed from it.
3 )Shapeshift.IO takes Bitcoin to a much bigger userbase by consolidating the value of Altcoins
4) The fiat world continues to print money
5) England get knocked out at the group stages of the Euros despite winnning all the qualifiers
6) Mainstream media tries to convince the west to go to a war with Russia. Nobody agrees
7) Banks are exposed of corruption in a huge scandal, nobody goes to jail
8) Counterparty continues to exist, People Continue to overlook it. Nobody cares
9) Someone decides to sell equity in a documentary via Blockchain tech.
10) Bitcoin price doubles slowly up to $500+ (takes a big jump when halving occurs)

So there you have it, all these will become a reality, I'm going to try to produce videos next year, I've been planning it for some time now and never gotten around to it.

Feel free to share your predictions in the comments section below.

So you've heard about Bitcoin and you are wondering how you can make money from it?

The first thing you will read about is 'mining' and that is not nearly as productive as it used to be, also you need to take into account the price of mining equipment, then there is cloud mining which I've not yet invested in (and am very sceptical of). You could just hoard Bitcoin and wait for them to raise in value, but I think its a good idea to diversify.

So a good choice is to invest in assets which produce a dividend, these assets are 5 that I personally have invested in and would recommend for various reasons, but the main things to be considered when buying an asset are : The development team behind the asset, The ROI, The ease of use, Potential for capital gains. I have rated each asset on these factors.

So without any further adieu and in no particular order here are the Crypto S.I Top 5 for Autumn 2015

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Dash Masternode

At a cost of 1000 Dash which is the equivalent of 10.2369BTC ($2405), This is by far the most expensive asset on this list, however it also has the best development team behind it. Dash formerly known as Darkcoin is the 6th most popular of all the alternatives to Bitcoin and has remained popular thanks to leading features such as DarkSend and InstantX which provide anonymity and near instant transactions respectively. Also bear in mind that (allegedly) Bitshares and Ripple both have the means to manipulate their market value so that would make Dash 4th.

A Masternode is an integral part of the network and can be set up quite easily by following one of the various tutorials that can be found online (Here's the best one), once you have staked the needed 1000 Dash you can expect to earn DASH daily, The figures vary depending on many things but I calculate it to be around 15-25% per year.

There are some people who are getting together on the Dash Forum here and sharing the cost of a masternode, so you could own a 10th of a masternode for 100Dash, this is a good idea, but you need to be aware of who you are investing with and do your due dilligence.

The development team behind the asset : 8/10

The ROI 6/10

The ease of use 3/10

Potential for capital gains 8/10

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BtcPop are a UK based P2P lending company, but that's not anything unique. The Thing about these guys is that they offer shares in their own platform, This is exciting, as short term loans is a massive industry in UK let alone worldwide.

On the BTCPop platform you can buy shares in both BTCPOP and Ardeva (A well known ID verification company), The dividend is paid directly into your btcpop wallet on the 1st of every month and you are free to withdraw it immediately or buy more shares. Since being introduced the shares have risen in value, and in a blossoming industry I can only see this trend continuing.

Dividends are a direct portion of the revenues that these companies make.

The development team behind the asset : 8/10 (ArdevA 9/10)

The ROI 4/10 (ArdevA 2/10)

The ease of use 8/10

Potential for capital gains 8/10 (ArdevA 9/10)

*between starting this article and publishing it I realised Btc pop shares had almost doubled in value during the month of September, and Ardeva shares had quadroupled, Looking at the lack of shares for sale I can see the prices only rising especially when Ardeva start paying a worthy dividend (although exactly how they will monetise is a bit of a mystery to me, the same was said about Google in 2001)
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These next two assets come from the NXT ecosystem, which as far as I'm concerned is the first and still the best Bitcoin 2.0 project. NXT is the only real competitor to the much anticipated Ethereum, although they are quite different, NXT benefits from having a fully functional decentralised platform, There are loads of features of NXT that you may find interesting such as proof of stake, NXT-Freemarket (which is a working competitor to OpenBazaar) and the amazing 'Supernet'.

The best thing about NXT is that it is decentralised, but you do not need to download an entire blockchain to use it. The 2 assets that I've chosen on the Nxt platform are both available on the asset exchange and they are:
MMNXT 979292558519844732 assetid - A market making assets which makes a steady daily profit, dividend is paid weekly every friday. It's around 0.5%-1% depending on how much money the fund has generated.
Coinomat 7474435909229872610 assetid - A rival to the heavily funded Shapeshift.io, Coinnomat is a simple hassle free way to trade crypto currencies without having to sign up and trades are completed within minutes. The interface (website) is arguably not as slick as Shapeshift, and the platform definitely has less funding, but we can all buy into this platform for as little as we like, whereas Shapeshift is having funding rounds via Bnktothefuture with a much higher minimum buy-in. A small fee is charged per transaction and a percenttage of this is is given as a dividend to shareholders, this is not always paid on time and obviously would change depending on the success of the service.

The development team behind the asset : MMNXT 7/10 (Coinomat 6/10)

The ROI MMNXT 7/10 Coinomat(6/10)

The ease of use 8/10 -- tutorial can be found here

Potential for capital gains 8/10 (Coinomat 9/10)

* I have given Coinomat a 9/10 mostly based on my view that trading between cryptocurrencies in this frictionless way will see a huge explosion in traffic sooner or later, no matter which altcoin comes to prominence, even if one of these recently touted nonsensical bank sponsored blockchain projects achieves critical velocity

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So that's my top 5 for autumn 2015, this is by no means an exhaustive list of whats available, and I invite you to comment on any that I've missed out, I also want to give a special mention to SuperNet and CounterParty as they are introducing plenty of new assets, It's also worth noting that Some very exciting projects Pangea, Augur and Ethereum are nearing completion and may well feature next season, if you want to be ahead of the game then check out the links.

I also have not included BTCPop trusted investment pool, which is guaranteed and pays out every few days.

This is my own personal view, I do hold shares in each of the assets, and you should take financial advice before risking your funds as their value can go up or down. I think that qualifies as a responsible disclaimer.

Follow us on twitter @crypto_si

Thanks for reading and good luck!

What is MIM? It's known by various acronyms, and it means Man In The Middle.

MIM is a type of scam which some clever idiot decided to attempt to use against me. I was quite lucky not to get caught out as it was only the local bitcoin feedback system that saved me from losing £2000.

So here's how it works,
The scammer makes a request with me at the same time they contact someone else and offer to sell them something, they then tell their buyer to deposit the payment into my account, Once the money has been deposited into my account I will send the scammer Bitcoin thinking that everything is fine and it's just another trade, however the scammers buyer will never recieve the goods they have paid the scammer for, and when they go to the police to get some much deserved justice, they only have my bank details as evidence, I dont know what happens to me after that but I'd assume I would have to re-imburse the scammed buyer and try to get my Bitcoin back from the scammer, which as we all know is nigh-on impossible.

So how did I avoid it?
I was fortunate that The LocalBitcoin Platform is very difficult to scam with, There were a few factors in the trade which raised my suspicion, firstly the scammers account was under 24hrs old, a big red flag. Secondly The scammer seemed very very keen to do the deal off the localbitcoins platform, and wanted the bitcoins released extremely quickly. Finally during the negotiations of the deal, an alert appeared above the users name stating that they had violated terms of service, Together all these factors are enough to alert a seller to be EXTRA vigilant, and usually it would spell the end of any negotiations for most traders. On this occasion I was too fast to hand over my bank details so the scammers buyer did actually deposit £2000 into my account, she had no clue what bitcoin was!

How did things end?
My situation got particularly complicated because the scammers buyer actually paid the money to me, at this point I needed to find the buyer and return their money, When I asked the scammer for ID they sent me the victims passport so luckily I had enough information to actually find the victim and contact her, the problem was that she was not home when I called but I was convinced at this point she had been scammed. I then had to be certain that whoever came forward claiming to be the victim was indeed the victim and not the scammer.

How can this be avoided in the future?
I'm not too sure it can be stopped fully, but I think a good way to protect yourself is to ask for the 'buyer' to send you a picture of the receipt used to deposit funds, and have this receipt say TO PURCHASE BITCOIN, surely no 'victim' will be silly enough to buy something and write something totally different on the receipt when requested to. In this situation personal ID is really no protection at all.

I am thinking of making a video to help people with lending techniques for both btcjam and bitlending club. They will be based on the techniques that I'm using which have been successful for me.

I had a conversation about it with someone on google hangouts just now, so though I would share my advice via my blog for the rest of you:

yes, ok I was thinking of making a little video for youtube on the subject

my methods were initially to follow some of the top investors, then I started to follow everyone I invested in, spending 0.01 on each investment (1BTC total -100 loans)

Avoiding rep-loans and people with accounts less than 3months old

people who paid on the due day would be unfollowed and people who paid far in advance would be noted and I would continue to follow them.

I then invest more in early payers and nothing in late payers, after 1-2 months of this I have a core investment base of about 50-60 borrowers, and when I get an email about their listings I invest in them. once per week I may look for new borrowers.

I was hit by investing in people in ltcGear, so in future I will be wary of going too heavily into one loan type. I hope this helps.

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This of course is just the tip of the Iceberg of my investing knowledge, so I will try to get a video together sometime this month, if there is anything in particular that any of you would like to learn about, dont hesitate to drop me a message and I will add it to my plans.

I have been meaning to blog about BTCJam for some weeks now, but i've been to interested in funding loans and watching payments come in to bother to share my experience with you all.

I do somewhat regret my decision not to blog earlier as since I've started to use BTCJam I've also found out and started to invest in Bitlending club. It does mean that I will be giving a slightly less glowing reference to BTCjam in light of using it's far superior rival BitLending Club.

Anyway let my critique begin........

BTCJam is a crowdfunding platform for people and organisations to take out loans. These loans are funded by the crowd, made up by investors (like me) who are willing to invest and wait for the repayments (with interest of course). The beauty of this concept is that it means that the banks and payday loan companies can keep their noses out of our financial affairs, and hopefully people can borrow at lower than loan shark rates and people can invest with a better return than the nonsense 5% you will get on an isa this year. Of course holding an isa is a lot easier than searching through the bogus loans on BTCJam to find the gems, but in the last 2 months (which was also my first two months) I've made over 30% ROI, unheard of in banking terms and possibly a little far fetched in stocks and equities. also take into account i'm not an experienced lender and i've fallen foul to plenty of fraudulent loans.

Fraudulent Loans......
I don't want to harp on about the level of fraud found on this site, because it really isn't a deal breaker for me, there a few really annoying things about the site which I will get onto in a bit, but generally, the fraud loans are quite easy to spot and haven't proven enough of a problem to take my impressive earnings down too badly. Let me clarify a fraudulent loan is a loan made by a fraudster impersonating another person, not a loan where the person loses interest and leaves the site or doesn't bother to return, or where they run into trouble and then simply run away. Often investors on BTCJam label people as fraudsters just because the loans gone bad, I call that being a sore loser. :)

The main problem with BTCJam is that the site itself takes payment from the moment the loan is activated, so even if the loan is fraudulent then BTCJam get paid, this is obviously bad as it means they have less incentive to weed out the bad loans before they are offered and financed. Not to suggest that BTCJam don't care if it's users get defrauded or not, but it's clear that they still get paid.

Censorship.......
The biggest bug I have to bear with Btcjam is the level of censorship on the site, they won't allow the sharing of websites or the use of certain words in your comments and loan applications, while they will cite that this is to 'protect you', it's clearly just a way of them trying to have a little more control over users communication than they should be attempting to gain, this for me is the single reason for me to ever leave the site (won't happen anytime soon though, the profit is too good). I get the feeling that if BTCJam become successful they will go the way of Apple, Paypal and HP and but users a distant second to profits. But that's all speculation.

Verification.................
BTCJam does the usual KYC stuff, I've already uploaded enough information to them to make stealing my 'identity' a piece of cake, I'm not to clingy with my 'identity' so it's ok, but it may prove a problem for others who want to borrow on the site. however I cannot see a way around this style of verification and the BTCjam system is quick and painless, I had my documents verified within 48 hours.

All in all BTCJam has become one of my most used sites, and a great place to meet new people and learn about what's happening in the crypto world, and while I don't feel it's the best in it's genre, I feel you should all definitely sign up and make a bit of interest on there. So from me it gets a solid 3/5

So you've decided to buy Bitcoin, and you have no idea how to get your hands on the stuff?

I was thinking about this today and decided to write a quick blog post to explain to people (beginners in particular) what they should expect from the journey into Bitcoin.

This is only for people in the UK, if you are based outside of the UK then I suggest you google 'BUY BITCOIN in xxx' obviously replace xxx with your country :) Also this has been written for OCT 2014, things change, and they change quickly so I will try to blog about this once every few months.

Buying Anonymously......

1)LocalBitcoins.com

If you don't want to give anyone your name, address, date of birth, bank details, D.N.A or shoe size, then simply open an account with these guys. you can chose to verify what you want and you can use TOR with this website. Look for adverts selling via cash deposit or cash in person. Once you've opened a trade you can talk to the seller and arrange to meetup or get their bank details to make the deposit. Crypto S.I sell on this platform and haven't had any problems buying and selling via this method. If you don't want to meet anyone then cash deposit is perfect.

2) BitBargain

The main issue I have with BitBargain is that there are not enough sellers and so prices are not quite as competitive as LocalBitcoins, however I've not personally used this service so I can't really comment, but as far as I know it's good and worth checking out.

Forfeiting your privacy...

If you are prepared to part with your privacy then there are some very good services available, usually these are not instant like the anonymous options but prices are usually slightly better 5%-10% discount roughly. There are some very professionally run exchanges available to use, I have picked out 3 which I am signed up to. Be ready to sign up and upload your personal identification documents. Also at the moment there are no UK banks taking payments on behalf of exchanges so you will have to pay SEPA or international transfer fees to upload your money.

1) Coinfloor

My last blog post was all about these guys, this is my usual exchange of choice, almost 1 year old and a really good service. The 2 best features are the simple clean interface, and the decent order book size.

2)Bitstamp

The Standard by which ALL exchanges are set. As far as I'm concerned Bitstamp was the first serious Bitcoin exchange, does that mean it's still the best? It definitely has the biggest order book of the 3 exchanges I use, and has all the security features that you would expect from a Bitcoin exchange. The only thing I'm not comfortable with is that the exchange is not UK based which does make me wonder what would happen if you had a problem with the service, but saying that I'm not aware of anyone who has had any problems with them, and considering how well used they are this is a great achievement. Sign up, upload your docs and buy or sell bitcoin.

3)Netagio

Netagio, the new kids on the block, but the first to have recognised standards implemented and audited, a very professional service, based in the UK. A decent sized order book considering how new they are, and they sell both Bitcoin(XBT) and Gold(Xau) on the same platform which is a nice twist considering most Bitcoin believers are also fans of gold. I rang these guys to ask a question, Local rate number and somebody answered, and to top it all off she answered my question, no holding or transferring or answer machines. I will do a full review on these guys soon.

4)Bittylicious

Bittylicious is not an exchange, but it is a way to buy Bitcoin quickly and easily. Unfortunately you do need to part with privacy for many of their options, but they provide so many different ways to pay, and most of them will have you receiving your coins very quickly. If you only want a small amount then you can buy anonymously. The prices are not as good as the exchanges, but for beginners Bittylicious is a good place to start. They also allow you to buy quite a few altcoins.

Best of the REST...

Basically, there is no 'rest'! Apart from mining (which is pretty much for hobbyists only), the only other ways of buying Bitcoin are usually too expensive for what they are worth or are provided by smaller lesser known companies. Other companies like Circle, don't accept deposits from UK. There are new companies cropping up all the time, so if I've missed anyone you feel is worth a mention then feel free to message me, or comment below.

Buying from Crypto SI

I Have an advert on Localbitcoin, you can buy from me directly here: Or click the advert on the right

For latest news, follow my twitter here: https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI

Thanks for reading and welcome to the wonderful world of Bitcoin!

So we've been using coinfloor for the past week and so far so good!

While we were hesitant with bit121, Coinfloor has got a slightly more polished look, and it seems that they have learned from bit121's mistakes and also have joined the market at a more stable time.

Opening our account was easy, and we immediately added 2 factor authentication, which is now a must have for any site we use. After opening, we needed to upload our I.D documents.......this is always a bit of a sore point when dealing in Bitcoin, but for the time being the masters must be placated, so we uploaded the relevant passport and utility bill and within 48hrs our account had been verified. We recieved an email saying that we were accepted to the party and off we went.

One of the bad points about coinfloor is that you need to fund your account with over £500 to use the domestic faster payments service, this was no problem for us, but for smaller buyers it may be an issue. To avoid this you can use the SEPA option but this does take longer, we haven't tried the SEPA method so cannot comment on the length of time it takes to load. We used the domestic capital account details and our deposit was showing by the close of the next day. We were pleased with this and immediately got stuck into the trading.

Each trade comes with a small fee something like half a percent possibly less, either way the fees are negligible and Coinfloor do not charge for deposits or BTC withdrawls.

Withdrawing was a piece of cake too, all you have to do is add your BTC wallet address and withdraw, and although your bitcoins are held in cold storage the withdrawl process only takes a few hours during office hours, we were very impressed with this also.

Overall Coinfloor are doing a great job, with a simple easy to use site that works perfectly, trades are instant if you want them to be, withdrawl is fast and deposits are secure. of course they have not been around for long enough to really be called reliable, but they are off to a great start and we would like to recommend them to anyone looking for a UK based BTC exchange.

So all in all Coinfloor gets a massive THUMBS UP from us!

oh on another note, Coinfloor use the new Bitcoin abbreviation XBT which is set by the international standards organisation ISO, From now on we may start using it too as all sensible argument points to it becoming the new standard, so adios BTC, and welcome XBT.

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been looking into SWARM, and it's well worth investigating when you've finished reading about me and LBC of course. I will actually blog about it next week infact, because it shouldn't go unreported,it's kinda a big deal :)

So, on with my tale of woe and joy. For this story In will not use the name of the seller on LBC because I don't want to ruin his business, despite the fact that me and this person had a dispute over a sale which lasted the best part of a week, It's important to note that I had conducted loads of trades with this person in the past.

What is LocalBitcoins.com? Basically it's a marketplace for Bitcoin only, think of it as an ebay where all you sell is Bitcoin(Btc) and you have various ways to buy or sell the scarce currency. I sell via Bank deposit and cash in my CryptoS.I HQ and I usually buy via the bank transfer option. I realise that some people want anonymity and this is not possible with bank transfer for obvious reasons. I don't want such anonymity. Different strokes.

On a wednesday evening I sent money to buy Bitcoin, I transferred online using my bank account and faster payments (UK ONLY), so the seller would of got the money within moments (2hrs maximum), Usually at this point the seller would release the bitcoins from 'ESCROW', and I would have them in my btc account on lbc. However on this occasion the seller did not reply. The following morning I chased the seller asking when he would release the Bitcoin and he replied that he had not recieved the payment. I messaged him a few mor time during the day asking him to re-check his account to be sure he hadn't overlooked the payment. I also verified the sort code and account number just in case I had sent it to the wrong place or he had given me incorrect details. Finally that night he replied to say he hadn't recieved the money.

At this point, the money had definately left my account so I was wondering where it had gone, however I was not worried at all about losing it because I have quite a lot of faith in LBC and more importantly in the people who use it and swear by it. The next day the seller opened a dispute, I had tried to open one incorrectly through the support page on the website. I attached screenshots from my online banking and he done the same. It's important to note that screenshots from your account contain a decent amount of information which could be used for identity theft, for this reason it's always good to use a seperate account for all your btc activity.......However I don't bother doing this :)

After looking through his screenshots I saw the payment showing clearly my payment being recieved into his account, by this point 3 days had passed since my initial payment, pretty standard for cheques I guess. We both had the chance to give dialogue and reasons that we felt we should win the dispute. and so the situation remained for a further 2 days, when LBC weighed in saying that the seller had 24hrs to respond else the dispute will be resolved in my favour. There was no reply from the seller and I was credited with the bitcoin the next day, 6 days after the opening of the dispute.

Now there are 2 ways to look at this, 1 way is that it shouldn't take 6 days to recieve Bitcoin, The other is that if this was a dispute using fiat currency and going through the courts it would likely take 6 months and cost a lot of money, this dispute process is free, and out of the hundreds of trades i've done on LBC this is the first one ever to go to dispute so I'm very pleased.

I thought I would blog so people have an idea of the dispute process and how it's actually worked out for me. Personally I've got plenty of faith in LBC, of course I don't leave loads of Btc on there as that's not advisable with any website regardless of how good they are!

Thanks for reading.

So this morning like most mornings I fired up the raspberry pi, and jumped into youtube through xbmc.
I often do this before getting out of bed, while my mind is still happy and not yet bogged down with the strains of daily life.

Paul_R_moore was a guest on the keiser report episode 601, I will link to it a little bit later on, and he was simply great. I can't remember the last time I saw max lost for words, It's definately not happened often.

(Image taken from twitter)

So todays blog post is really just a big THANKYOU to Paul for all of his work exposing big fraud.

It has however spurrned me to push a little harder on the cold storage portion of Crypto.SI and make services more readily available.

Also Paul has a book forthcoming called 'Crash Bank Wallop', I will make sure I get a copy.

Here's a link to the video. Enjoy

follow paul on twitter: https://twitter.com/Paul_R_Moore

It's been a rough time for cryptos over the past few weeks, IRS and PBOC (peoples bank of China) have been leading the way with the bad news.

However, It's all kinda irrelevant if you ask me and all it does is slow down the speculation. As we all know the main thing is adoption and the network effect that widespread usage will have. Anyway enough beating of the drums. This update is just bringing to your attention the 2 great new websites which I've found with short half reviews on both.

MintPal

This new crypto/crypto exchange has been around for a few months and somehow went under my radar. But it's not for a lack of quality. Ok so the orderbook and liquidity are not ginormous, but the site is clearly growing rapidly and the interface...... it's beautiful and so intuitive. It's been a while since I last got to grips with a site so quickly. I didn't see 2 factor authentcation but signup was a piece of cake, all I needed was a valid email address. They trade over 41 coins and have a clever voting section for the mobb to add new coins. Clean graphs, easy deposits and understandable wallets make this one site I can see myself using for months to come. Sounds like an advert but I promise you it isn't!

FollowtheCoin

I'm not really into the whole MTV generation and cool fast talking news shows. However, this content seems to get to the point really quickly and give viewers an overview of whats happening. The content does kinda assume you have a little knowledge about the crypto-currency movement, and is clearly aimed at the younger audience. Of course there was nothing in the weekly round-ups that I hadn't already read somewhere else, but then I am a paid professional. The only thing I found a little annoying was the over excitement the presenters seem to have for just about everrrrything. I guess thats just a sign of the times and I'm getting old! All in all a great site, and I'm sure they will build a big following among the younger audience soon.

And with that I must end another blog post, I hope you check out these two sites as they are well worth a few minutes of your time.

Don't forget to follow us on twitter @ https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI

Ok, It's been a while since my last blog, Quite a lot has changed....... My grammar is still terrible and Bitcoin is still awesome. I am blaming my absence on my new addiction to Raspberry Pi. It's just a great piece of kit, and along with meshnet will change the world, mark my words! :)

Anyway the topic of today's blog is HullCoin, The new crypto-currency which may well be backed by a local authority. At this point reports suggest that Hullcoin is still just an idea in it's infancy, and bearing this in mind all we can do is speculate to the effects it may or may not have on the local economy.

Hull is well known to people in the U.K for being cold, wet and poor mostly and it's this poverty that has allegedly inspired HullCoin. So the basic premiss is this: people set about undertaking voluntary tasks and are paid with HullCoin which they can then use to exchange for hot meals. This is just the starting model as I understand it, obviously in time more places will accept HullCoin and people will be able to pay rent, taxes and buy fuel with it.

The most exciting thing about this concept is that it empowers Hull to create value with it's homeless and unemployed, and the possibilities are huge, the first thing that springs to mind is what if they start building solar panels or processing Biofuel, then use this energy to raise the standard of living for the local people, and even sell the energy to neighbouring towns. They could get people to work building semi-permanent fixtures like hexayurts, and because the money used is not the watered down pound which is suffering from Q.E by Mr Carney, people would possibly get value for their work.

Of course this is all very far fetched and relies heavily on the dream that central government will not shut the project down once they realise that a local currency is a lot like local independence.

On a social level, I initially thought that paying for voluntary work would hinder drug abuse, as drug dealers don't usually accept crypto currency for illicit drugs. I then thought about Silk road and realised that criminals will adapt and when they do, HullCoin may well be the only type of money a drug dealer can accept that has already laundered itself, a quick trip to LocalBitcoins.com and you have your pounds sterling. So it's not a positive but it's no less of a hinderance than cash is. If Hull university then start offering some online courses paid for with HullCoin then things will really get interesting.

All in all it's a very very good idea as far as I can see, I had toyed with the idea of BedfordCoin long before reading about Hullcoin, and think that it may only be a matter of time till all regions have their own coins.

What can I see in the future? A local area adopts 2 things simultaneously, 1: a cryptocurrenty and 2: a rule on every individual only owning 1 property in that area, or maybe 2 or 3. It will be easy to enforce with the nature of blockchains and will stop the current capital based bullying of the lower classes. China have already implemented these capital restrictions in some areas.

On another note, I was looking through an old post, and I predicted BTC to go down to around $400 before the next upturn, I cannot remember the exact reasons why I made the predictions, but we are nearing $400 so lets see if I was right or not.

Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes peeled because the Cryptosi website will be up and running soon.

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, OH DEAR!

Mt.gox, which is still being called a 'Major' exchange by some sources, has now stopped Bitcoin withdrawls.

Two things immediately spring to mind:
1. Are Mt.gox trying to play the good old fractional reserve dance made famous by the banks in the late 90's and early-mid and late 00's? This basically involves buying of Bitcoin with funds that they don't really own or some other simliar form of financial jiggery pokery. It's been well known for some time that something fishy is going on at Mt.gox, along with all their public fines they have had to restrict withdrawls for fiat for a while now, and had implemented long delays, but stopping Bitcoin withdrawls completely is something far more scary.
2. The second thing to spring to mind is: WHO was still using that platform? Surely only stuntmen, fighter pilots and base jumpers. I can't think of any other people who can live with this level of risk day in and day out

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Not a lot really, prepare for a short sharp fall in price and then the inevitable correction, possibly down to $580 at the lowest, but it's difficult to predict as the true volume of mt.gox is not information I'm privy to. Of course any official reports could be false as that's how FR works.
Does it mean Bitcoin is any closer to failing? NOPE, mt.gox will be replaced, there are plenty of budding entrepreneurs planning to set up exchanges as you read this. also you can now buy Bitcoin for cash using zipzap at over 28,000 UK shops, and Scan computers also accept the currency so bit by bit the need to convert bitcoin back to fiat is becoming both easier and unneeded.

What should you do.
If you held bitcoin on Mt.gox, just write it off. There is a good chance you will get it back but, also a good chance it's gone. If you had more than 0.1 on there then SHAME on you! please remember only store in online wallets what you are prepared to lose at a moments notice. If you're not a stakeholder in mt.gox then sit back and watch this rollercoaster that those poor souls have gotten themselves wrapped up in.

So what are the alternatives?
We use Bitstamp, and btc-e. we are planning on testing out bit121 but haven't gotten around to it.

Please remember that Mt.gox was never intended to be as big as it has gotten, it was originally designed to trade collectible cards or something random like that, then Bitcoin came on the scene and things got very real for Mt.gox very quickly. The sooner this company gets out of the Bitcoin space the better really as they are probably not designed to intergrate with the growning AML(anti money laundering) pressure. They need to close down, take check and start again. They have been great for years but this last year or so things have gone from bad to worse.

In other news, I found a great video yesterday from Real London featuring Vinay Gupta, it's very interesting and well worth a watch, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rys_saLiDA
it's about an hour long so get some snacks and turn your brain on.

So, a few weeks back we highlighted our concerns with the new UK bitcoin exchange bit121. To our surprise we received a prompt reply from the bit121 CEO. Of course as it was a private email, we won't publish the contents of the email, however we will say this. We were very pleased with what we read, and it was good to hear from the horses mouth exactly what the difficulties are with running an exchange in the UK and the reasons why their KYC measures are so rigorous.

Bit121, still resides hidden behind only an email address, but at least we now know that this email address is linked to the CEO and he has taken the time out of what must be an incredibly busy schedule to address our concerns, and we shall now take the plunge and give bit121 a go.

We will of course let you all know how we find the platform and also how quick the deposit and withdrawal methods are. A working bitcoin exchange in the UK will definitely be a big deal and with no competiton at the moment, we just hope that Jim Iddiols and his team are ready for the rush of traders.

Will this year be the year that hedge funds dip into Bitcoin and raise the market cap? If so will they add much needed liquidity to the Bitcoin economy?

So we were as excited as anyone else at the news of UK's newest exchange actually going live, with UK banking in the form of Barclays being touted as being involved according to early reports.

However before taking the plunge into dealing with the new bit121 exchange we decided to first do our due diligence and make sure everything was above board and that we wouldn't be simply plying money into a useless exchange. Despite what the title of this article says it's not all bad news from bit121 but they definitely do need to address a few issues.

Contact details

First and foremost any company you deal with needs to be contacted, if they are based abroad (outside UK) then of course a phone number isn't very practical, however bit121 are UK based apparently, however they don't have any address details or telephone numbers to be contacted on, the only point of contact is an email address which is simply not enough to inspire confidence. Having said that, we did email our concerns to bit121 and were very impressed to have a reply within hours albeit just a reply saying our message had been "passed to our CEO", It's still a good start. We will wait until they have at least a contact number or office address so they cannot vanish into the night.
We did a little digging on the CEO and found he is quite an experienced businessman according to his linkedin profile, which was also good sign.

Verification

In filling bit121's verification requirements you are actually giving them enough information to access your bank account which we are quite uncomfortable with and falling victim to identity fraud is then decided by how secure they
keep people's personal information. They could easily remedy this by simply
having their customers scan and send 2 pieces of i.d. No need for
mothers maiden names or length of time at current address or even home
telephone number. We do however really applaud their thorough attempts at adhering to UK's draconian anti money-laundering regulations, as we all know t
hat if there is a falling point for UK exchanges it will be red tape that shuts them down.

PacNet services

Though we had yet to hear of PacNet services, they seem to be the link to Barclays Bank and quite a tenuous link at that, They don't seem to be based in the UK either although payment to them is done through Barclays Bank, How much Barclays actually know about a crypto exchange is unclear at the moment. Our worry is that when the exchange gathers momentum as it quickly will, can PacNet keep up? PacNet does appear to be a very professional outfit. More to the point will Barclays Bank be the first to harbour the currency which some say will make banks obsolete (we do not share that view), Barclays are not exactly a bank of the people, (Libor scandal anyone?) It's highly unlikely they will endorse the Bitcoin unless they really had to. We would perhaps feel better if Barclays endorsed the exchange, evidence of this should be on the bit121 website.

All in all, as far as bit121 is concerned we are advising to approach with caution, much like all exchanges only leave in fiat what you are prepared to loose, and transfer Bitcoins out to your local/offline wallet after every session. If you are going to use an exchange bitstamp may have a rival in the UK, Although the £10 deposit and withdrawl fee are a bit steep, the minimum deposit has recently dropped from £500 to £50. Scouring the forums we are yet to find any reports on the exchange from users, which screams that it may not be very liquid as yet.

We really hope bit121 addresses these issues and grows to become a useful exchange. only time will tell, but we will keep an eye on them and when we feel safe enough we will use them and let you all know how it goes.

Good luck bit121 :)

follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI
add us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crypto.si.1
find bit121 exchange here: https://bit121.co.uk/

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