Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A stunning treaty on “What is Money” by Frederick Bastiat. From wikipedia: “Bastiat was the author of many works on economics and political economy, generally characterized by their clear organization, forceful argumentation, and acerbic wit. Economist Murray Rothbard wrote that “Bastiat was indeed a lucid and superb writer, whose brilliant and witty essays and fables to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control. He was a truly scintillating advocate of an untrammeled free market.”[1] Among his better known works is Economic Sophisms,[4] which contains many strongly worded attacks on statist policies. Bastiat wrote it while living in England to advise the shapers of the French Republic on pitfalls to avoid.

Links:
What is Money? – Frederick Bastiat
http://bastiat.org/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Justin from Voucher-Safe is back to discuss some Problems that Voucher-Safe is out to Solve, and some things that it has no interest in solving, namely the “better money” problem. Listen in to hear what Justin has to say about this. Also discussed are some early history of pre-internet days when the feds cracked down on an early barter network that exchanged warehouse receipts… Interesting stories…

Some more details on how Voucher-Safe has many layers with Zero-Knowledge like interactions. You can’t give up, what you don’t know. You don’t need to know, what is not necessary to know.

Justin also discusses his positive feelings about what a system like Voucher-Safe can do for Bitcoin, referencing the recent show with Mike Gogulski on Bitcoin laundry systems, and all remailer type mixing of transactions. How Voucher-Safe can fit right in with bringing many things to the Digital Cash/Value Transfer System talbles that Bitcoin by itself does not solve.

We then get into the XMPP infrastructure that Voucher-Safe uses for inter system communications and client comms with users. Interesting setup, we discuss how some elements of Voucher-Safe can be run on Low Trust Servers with an economic incentive for those that run them. We also talk about some “best practices” for RPC/Request-Response calls over XMPP, he talks about existing solutions and things like timeouts, queues, and callback ids can be used. First half non-tech, second half heavy tech. As a whole Good Stuff.

Voucher-Safe.com main website. Screencasts, Download the Software…
Voucher-Safe Community / Developer Site
Voucher-Safe System Architecture
http://www.pecunix.com/
Openfire XMPP/Jabber Server
Spark XMPP Client
Smack XMPP API/Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bill St. Claire of the great http://billstclair.com/blog/ and author of the Truledger Anonymous Digitally Signed General Ledger and Trading System joins us for an Intro to the System and a walkthrough where we cover many aspect of the system. We discuss the client software, the servers. Digital Signatures, Coupons, destruction of account history. Lisp, multiplatform binaries, the future for iphone and android. How to run a Client, a Multi-user client and more. Very informative and interesting.

Links:
Truledger Website
Bill’s Blog http://billstclair.com/blog/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Cypherpunk da2ce7 lays out the HOWTO for a Complete Government Takeover of Bitcoin, how they can lock out miners that are not registered with the Government and 0wn it. We get into the Bitcoin over Freenet Project which creates a parallel communication and Bitcoin network, adds an ANTI-DDOS layer, and Anonymity layer to Blockchain exchange, distribution, and updates and p2p Payments. He then tells us how Bitcoin could survive a complete internet shutdown, albeit with 2 day payment settlement times using a Freenet based data p2p distribution/sync system.

This episode is Pure Fun.

da2ce7 Bitcoin Forum Posts
BtcFN Bitcoin Forum Thread
Bitcoin on Freenet Spec Page
Freenet

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Community Currency Engineer Mathew Slater joins us to tell us about his Mutual Credit system. Some history and how Mutual Credit differs from LETS and Timebanks. His Drupal Module for Mutual Credit and the Community Forge project to provide a complete “Community-in-a-Box” system for users, messaging, forums, and an integrated community currency system. We cover some of the legal issues some of these systems are facing due to competition with traditional bankster/government monopolies. We talk a little of the international barter systems, internetworked community currency exchange systems, what is money and the difference between an IOU on a paper and other so-called “Stored Value” plastic cards, and the crushing regulation that is looming over these systems because of this. Matthew tells us his motivations and visions for these systems in Transition towns, Lifeboat solutions and the future of money. Very thought provoking episode for any aspiring Agorist and alternate money system creator and user.

Mathew Slater Website Drupal Page
Complementary Currencies package for Drupal
Community Forge Website
Community Currency Magazine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A reading of a piece by Mark Herpel. Don’t confuse this with hysterics on the part of the author. Mark wrote this piece without commentary, only matter of fact, and only addressing FinCEN “concerns”. The issues raised are ones of Mega-Political, paradigm changing scope, clearly to be the single most Disruptive Technology seen to date. The issues are though, starting to cause hysterics, especially with those involved with wealth redistribution, asset confiscation, taxation theft, financial spy networks, and other financial/money monopolists i.e. Government thugs and their Big Bank/Corporate spouses.
Brief commentary and comments by Hiro at the end of the reading.

Links:
Original piece: Peer-2-Peer Digital Currency: The Long Road Ahead for FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network)
Digital Gold Currency Magazine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Justin tells us that Voucher-Safe has entered the building. Listen in and get a great overview of what Voucher-Safe brings to the Second-Realm and mucho info on the infrastructure. Operating in a P2P via Jabber/XMPP protocol from clients to servers to an entire infrastructure all the way to the actual Issuers of the assets. It has operational incentives built in at every level of the system. We hear how this system was conceived after the jackboots confiscated all the gold of the people using e-gold and prosecuted the operators, while they turn a complete blind eye to prosecuting Citibank for what its users do with their cash outside the bank. Cash is the way to go. Voucher-safe has no accounts… you have wallets, and exchange over a p2p network protocol xmpp these bearer certificates. We hear how close the system is to full production and the initial issuers. Justin talks about some of the protocol, how to integrate your own software in with the API. We get a little technical at times, but far from where we would have gone had time permitted, save that for the next episode. Check out the software, view the screencasts, join the forums and get some funny-money assets to test out the system.

Voucher-Safe.com main website. Screencasts, Download the Software…
Voucher-Safe Community / Developer Site
Voucher-Safe System Architecture
http://www.pecunix.com/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Nearly 10 years ago J. Orlin Grabbe wrote this excellent piece on Hawala. Now more than ever is this relevant. He pulls back the curtain on the propaganda put out by the U.S. Treasury Department and Western Union demonizing this agorist like competitive system of value transfer between voluntary associating individuals. His closing remark, classic as any famous movie quote, will strike a chord you will never forget.

See also:
In Praise of Hawala, by J. Orlin Grabbe
Featured Articles and Writings of J. Orlin Grabbe
Cypherpunkd Episode 003: “What is Hawala?” – Jonathan Logan

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Part 1 of our first Interview with Cypherpunk Fellow Traveler on the “Open-Transactions Financial Crypto System and Bitcoin Integration”. Traveler gives an intro to where this system came from from, motivations behind it, history. How to look at this system and what it does. Accounts transfers, Vouchers, Checks, Digital Cash, Basket Currencies, the Integrated Stock Exchange type Market features. …And drum roll… Integration with Bitcoin… to fulfill the other need for Bitcoin: Anonymous and Instant transaction settlement.

FellowTraveler / Open-Transactions Github and Info Site
https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions/

Nick Szabo — The Idea of Smart Contracts
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html

Lucre: Anonymous Electronic Tokens v1.8
http://anoncvs.aldigital.co.uk/lucre/theory2.pdf

Ricardian Contracts
http://www.systemics.com/docs/ricardo/issuer/contract.html
https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions/wiki/Sample-Currency-Contract
http://iang.org/papers/ricardian_contract.html

BitCoin Virtual Currency
http://www.bitcoin.org/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This episode special guest is mids, cypherpunk, digital currency fanboy, software engineer, privacy & anonymity software creator and project contributor, eurotrash turned turned AnCap by hanging out in the wrong online chat channels. Yes, its ‘mids’, lowercase ‘M’, cause this guy is L33t.

mids gives us the lowdown on this Bitcoin Mania that is exciting and confusing everyone. mids tells us the Cypherpunk Cryptocurrency invasion has begun.

Issues discussed include: What is Bitcoin? Why is Bitcoin Money? Can a tyrant in government seize the worlds Bitcoins? P2P Software/Network that makes up Bitcoin. Open Source Software. Bitcoin Mining. Past and Current USD value of Bitcoin. OTC Exchangers. Business opportunities in parts of the world for on the ground Over the Counter exchangers. The massive amount of developers creating systems for Bitcoin. The fast growing number of merchants accepting it. And… lots more. Enjoy and look forward to more episodes on Bitcoin and other topics with mids.

Links:
Bitcoin project: Bitcoin.org
Great charts on Bitcoin Market Prices: http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/
One example prominent Bitcoin Exchanger: http://mtgox.com/
Fascinating Bitcoin User Google World Map: Google Maps Link
Get free bitcoins: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/