Highlights from the Ethereum Update

Excitement over the Ethereum project continues to grow. Speaking in front of a packed room at the Toronto Decentral meet-up, Paul Paschos delivered the latest news from the team.

 

According to Paschos, the projected launch date for Ethereum is still on track for this winter: between December 21st, 2014 and March 21st, 2015. Here are some of the other highlights:

 

  1. A new, more navigable, user-friendly website has been launched for developers, containing a wealth of resources including tutorials, videos, and articles.
  2. Both Gavin Wood (ÐΞV) and Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum inventor) have emphasized that the project will not release the genesis block until they (and many others) are satisfied with the project’s security and reliability. “We will likely stick with ASIC-resistant proof of work…and look at moving to a more comprehensive proof of stake model over time.”
  3. So far:
    • PoC7 released
    • Protocol finalized and frozen
    • Alpha release series set to begin
    • Internal and External Security Audit set to begin in early December
    • Whisper, Solidity, Mist and other core Dapps are all being developed concurrently.
  4. Included at this point:
    • Ethereum Client (Basic contract development environment)
    • Mist – the Ethereum browser, based on Google’s Chromium browser
    • Several other core Dapps
    • Command-line tools (Paschos showed us what some of these would look like thus far)

Paul Paschos invited everyone to get involved in the project and stay on top of new developments through social media (r/ethereum, #ethereum, and #ethereum-dev) and by joining the Toronto Ethereum Meet-up Group (http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Ethereum-Meetup/).

 

For a better sense of all the exciting developments, watch the original presentation here: (http://youtu.be/BIrEnMbe4cA)

This Week’s Guest Speaker: Andreas Antonopoulos

Bitcoin ATM Toronto, andreas antonopoulos

Wed. Oct 29, 2014. 7pm

This week we are very excited to announce that Andreas Antonopoulos will join us via Skype. Andreas Antonopoulos is a public speaker, author, coder, entrepreneur, and one of the most prominent and well-respected figures in bitcoin. Of special note he recently appeared in front of the Canadian Senate and gave an exceptionally articulate and knowledgeable speech advocating for Canadian legislators “to resist the temptation to apply centralized solutions to this decentralized network,” and instead look into adopting decentralized regulatory tools like decentralized audits and algorithmic proof-of-reserves.

 

He is also the author of “Mastering Bitcoin”, currently available on github, and soon to be published in print by O’Reilly Publications.

 

Space for this event is limited to 50 people.

Andreas Antonopoulos on the Canadian Senate Hearings and Mastering Bitcoin

 
By 6:00 pm on Wednesday night, a small crowd had begun to gather on the front steps of 64 Spadina, as excitement built in anticipation of Andreas Antonopoulos’s Skype address. By the time the highly-respected bitcoin guru and advocate began speaking, the crowd had filled every one of the 40+ chairs and taken over most of the standing room along the perimeter. Another 80+ watched the feed online.
 
Host and moderator, Anthony Di Iorio, encouraged general participation in the Q&A, in keeping with the decentralized theme of the evening. He initiated the discussion by asking Antonopoulos about his recent address to the Canadian Senate Committee on Business, Trade and Commerce and how he prepared for the event.
 
Antonopoulos said that the Senate approached him to speak in the same way that anyone else would: through a link on his website that fields requests for speaking engagements. So he looked into the previous senate hearings on the topic, and was encouraged to see that they seemed to have a fairly “open-minded” attitude. Then, in true grassroots style, Antonopoulos took to social media to ask the Canadian bitcoin community if they thought he ought to go. “The overwhelming respsonse was yes!” he said.
 
<img src=”http://decentral.ca/content/images/2014/11/Andreas-2.PNG” width=”500″ />
 
As for preparation, Antonopoulos pointed out that his years of doing meet-ups and Q&As in front of community groups, bankers, developers, and newcomers to the bitcoin space had served as “continuous preparation” for addressing the Senate. None of their questions were surprising — he’d heard them all before.
 
As for follow-up from the event, he laughed about having to submit his expenses by fax (!) and then having to wait for someone in Ottawa to send him a paper cheque via snail mail so that he could deposit it in “an esteemed banking institution” where it would languish for 3-5 business days — thus poetically demonstrating the superiority of bitcoin as a payment system.
 
However, Antonopoulos later reminded the audience that because of infrastructure limitations, bitcoin isn’t ready to serve everyone around the world. This is especially true of developing countries where the disenfranchisement of the unbanked is most keenly felt. In order for a community to participate fully, it needs a decent infrastructure, as well as a certain level of economic and financial literacy. In turn, bitcoin technology itself needs to become less technologically complicated, perhaps following the mPesa model.
 
Antonopoulos described the way forward for bitcoin adoption as a continuous feedback loop. “We need to downtech bitcoin at the same time as these [developing] communities uptech.”
 
While Antonopoulos is now known as the fellow who “wrote the book on Bitcoin,” (literally — Mastering Bitcoin will be in stores in January 2015), his focus for the future seems to be shifting to accessibility and promoting educational opportunities around digital currencies. He spoke of the need to integrate cryptocurrency technology and coding into post-secondary and advanced degree programmes — even into high school curriculae. Some of his future projects might include working with the boards of educational organizations and curriculum developers. He was excited about the work of C4 — the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium with its mandate to provide guided education and continuous learning for aspiring cryptocurrency professionals. A repeated motif throughout the evening focussed on the importance of “investing in skills to develop for the future.”
 
“The most important investment you can make in digital currencies and decentralized currencies…is a skills investment, and that investment will generate a significant return on investment for many years to come.”
 
He added that “any time spent on developing skills is an investment” since no matter what turns the technology takes down the road, those skills will be universally applicable.
 
When asked earlier about the lack of developers in the space, Antonopoulos had stressed that those who develop these skills, especially new tech developers and engineers, will find themselves in high demand as start-up companies expand, creating more and more job growth opportunities.
 
The event concluded on a high note of optimism which continued in various conversations among meet-up guests who mingled and networked late into the evening.
 
If you want to attend one of Decentral’s future meet-up dates, please be sure to join the Bitcoin Decentral Meet-up group and reserve your spot, due to their increasing popularity.

Michael Perklin: All about security

buy bitcoin toronto

In 2010, Michael Perklin was a digital forensic investigator who focused his efforts on computer security and security theory. He first came across the term “Bitcoin” on a security mailing list. It was being touted as a “totally secure digital money system.”

 

“I scoffed at it,” says Perklin. As a graduate of Sheridan College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Sciences (BaISc) and a Masters degree in Information Assurance (MSIA), he and his classmates had toyed around with notions of digital currencies and decide that they weren’t feasible because a central ledger was always required.

 

“So I set out to prove how stupid it [the Bitcoin protocol] was.” At that point, bitcoins were selling for around $1.00. He spent the next few months reading everything he could about Bitcoin, and trying to find ways of discrediting it, drawing on his background in classical security. Over the course of that one long winter, he exhausted as many strategies – covering all seven classes of attacks – as he could.

 

Perklin’s conclusion: “I went from thinking it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard to thinking it was the most brilliant thing I’d ever heard.” In the meantime, the price of one bitcoin had gone up to $4.00.

 

As Bitcoin research started to consume all his off-hours after work, he began reaching out to the local bitcoin community and attended an early Toronto Bitcoin meet-up with his friend and colleague, Josh McDougall. Their first meet-up featured Peter Todd as a guest speaker who spoke about off-chain transactions: Perklin and McDougall peppered him with questions, challenging his points throughout the presentation. At the end of the session, meet-up organizer Anthony Di Iorio approached Perklin with a proposition.

 

“Anthony thought I made some good points and got the impression I knew what I was talking about. He told me about the new Bitcoin Alliance of Canada that was in the works — maybe I should run for a board member position.” Eventually, in June of 2013, Perklin was indeed elected as one of seven inaugural Alliance board members.

 

By that point, Perklin had begun to combine his two specialized areas of interest — Bitcoin and cybersecurity — and started up Bitcoinsultants in 2012. The company draws on the talents of a pool of professionals, including developers, cryptographers, source-code auditors, and penetration testers who are well-acquainted with the nuances of cryptocurrencies and their cybersecurity needs.

 

The company offers tech advice and consultation for companies who want their developers to integrate Bitcoin into their current ways of doing business. “People who know Bitcoin don’t always know classical security,” says Perklin. They may know that they want to integrate Bitcoin into their general payment processes, but they might not have considered storage options once they’ve collected the payments, for example. Bitcoinsultants can help companies create all the necessary related policies and procedures surrounding these integration issues.

 

They also offer investigative services, law enforcement support, and government/regulatory advice. Perklin himself is a popular and well-respected speaker on all things Bitcoin. He has spoken at conferences and information seminars, educating “anybody who needs to understand what [Bitcoin] is and how it works.” In October of 2014, he was one of three representatives who spoke before the Canadian Senate on behalf of the cryptocurrency community in Canada.

 

What began with Perklin approaching various exchanges and offering his services, has now grown to a business with a sterling reputation. It works with a number of gambling websites, but also counts CaVirtex and Ethereum among its most prestigious clients. Bitcoinsultants has operated out of the Decentral co-work space in Toronto since it opened in January 2014.

How Dell, Expedia and Others Accept Bitcoin Payments

Dell recently announced that they are accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment. Expedia announced last month they’ll start rolling out Bitcoin payments for their services. How are these companies implementing Bitcoin payments online?

 

Dell and Expedia use Coinbase.com. Coinbase is a popular US service for buying, selling and storing Bitcoins (they’re an exchange and offer a wallet). Unfortunately Coinbase is not available for Canadian customers.

 

NewEgg and TigerDirect (online electronics stores) use BitPay.com. BitPay is targetted at developers rather than business people. BitPay is like Stripe for Bitcoin. BitPay can be used by Canadian businesses.

 

The three main Canadian exchanges have their own merchant integration services (with varying ease of use):

 

CaVirtEx (the largest exchange in Canada)

QuadrigaCX (here’s a video aimed at merchants that they published today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjkltZ_C6rU)

Vault of Satoshi (the most complicated API)

Stripe, a popular credit card payment integration service, has announced that they will soon offer a Bitcoin payment method but it’s currently in beta.

 

Screenshot of Coinbase merchant landing page.

Buying Bitcoin at Decentral

At Decentral we have a convenient bitcoin teller machine that makes purchasing bitcoin easy. To use the machine at our location, simply follow these steps:

 

  1. Click ”Start” on the main screen when you are ready to begin. The price per bitcoin displayed at this point will be your purchase price. Note, of course, that you can always buy fractions of a bitcoin, but the minimum amount per transaction is $5 Canadian.
    Enter your phone number and then the verification code that you receive by SMS message.
  2. Choose “Buy Bitcoin”
  3. Next, choose “Yes” if you already have a bitcoin wallet. Choose “No” if you would like the machine to print a paper wallet.
  4. Place the QR code for your wallet’s public receive address in the scanner; it’s the top-right horizontal slot.
  5. Start inserting your Canadian cash into the bill acceptor, which will have a green light activated to indicate that it is ready.
  6. After you’ve inserted your individual bills, click “I’m Done” to complete the transaction.
  7. Congratulations, you now have bitcoin! A confirmation of the transaction will be sent via SMS to your phone. You can also print a paper receipt for your records.
    Note that the machine will read only the QR code for your public bitcoin address; you cannot type the address in manually. Fortunately, all bitcoin wallet systems on your phone or computer are able to display a QR code for the wallet’s public receive address.

 

If you have any questions about the process, please come by Decentral and we’ll help you get started. 64 Spadina Ave. Toronto, ON. Canada.

How Dell, Expedia and Others Accept Bitcoin Payments

image

Screenshot of Coinbase merchant landing page.

—-

Dell recently announced that they are accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment. Expedia announced last month they’ll start rolling out Bitcoin payment for their services. How are these companies implementing Bitcoin payments online?

Dell and Expedia use Coinbase.com. Coinbase is a popular US service for buying, selling and storing Bitcoins (they’re an exchange and offer a wallet). Unfortunately Coinbase is not available for Canadian customers.

NewEgg and TigerDirect (online electronics stores) use BitPay.com. BitPay is targetted at developers rather than business people. BitPay is like Stripe for Bitcoin. BitPay can be used by Canadian businesses.

The three main Canadian exchanges have their own merchant integration services (with varying ease of use):

  1. CaVirtEx (the largest exchange in Canada)
  2. QuadrigaCX (here’s a video aimed at merchants that they published today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjkltZ_C6rU)
  3. Vault of Satoshi (the most complicated API)

Stripe, a popular credit card payment integration service, has announced that they will soon offer a Bitcoin payment method but it’s currently in beta.

How to buy Bitcoins at Decentral

At Decentral we have a convenient bitcoin teller machine that makes purchasing bitcoin easy. To use the machine at our location, simply follow these steps: 

  1. Click  "Start" on the main screen when you are ready to begin. The price per bitcoin displayed at this point will be your purchase price. Note, of course, that you can always buy fractions of a bitcoin, but the minimum amount per transaction is $5 Canadian. 
  2. Enter your phone number and then the verification code that you receive by SMS message. 
  3. Choose “Buy Bitcoin”
  4. Next, choose “Yes” if you already have a bitcoin wallet. Choose “No” if you would like the machine to print a paper wallet
  5. Place the QR code for your wallet’s public receive address in the scanner; it’s the top-right horizontal slot. 
  6. Start inserting your Canadian cash into the bill acceptor, which will have a green light activated to indicate that it is ready.
  7. After you’ve inserted your individual bills, click “I’m Done” to complete the transaction. 
  8. Congratulations, you now have bitcoin! A confirmation of the transaction will be sent via SMS to your phone. You can also print a paper receipt for your records.

Note that the machine will read only the QR code for your public bitcoin address; you cannot type the address in manually. Fortunately, all bitcoin wallet systems on your phone or computer are able to display a QR code for the wallet’s public receive address. 

If you have any questions about the process, please come by Decentral and we’ll help you get started. 64 Spadina Ave. Toronto, ON. Canada. 

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