Whenever Bitcoin breaks to an all-time high I like to find a Bitcoin related song I’ve never heard before and post it on my personal social media account. As today is the 7th anniversary of Bitcoin’s “Pizza Day” this song by Jonathan Coulton feels most appropriate even though it’s not specifically about bitcoin.
For those not in the know, May 22nd is the day that Bitcointalk user Laszlo Hanyecz became the first documented user to exchange Bitcoins a physical product(in this case 2 pizzas) with the Bitcointalk user Jercos.
At the time the 10,000btc exchanged were worth approximately $41, which is not an unreasonable cost for two delivered pizzas if you leave a generous tip, doubly so when exchanging with a new and untested digital currency. At the current exchange rate those 10,000btc would be worth 20 million dollars.
Ordinarily I would direct people to a far better explanation of the current incident than this Daily Dot Article, but I feel compelled to point out and make clear what this is.
This is a very blatant start to narrative building or just willful ignorance on the part of the writer. The problem is not that this makes it look like the CIA was being the DNC leaks, it is that these leaks call into question all evidence that Russia was involved. According to the press release these documents have been passed around for several years among former CIA operatives. In essence, the CIA lost track of their “how to frame Russia for a hack” handbook and then tried to blame Russia for a major hack.
Cyber weapons aren’t like a traditional weapons, you can’t make it weak when you need to get in but strong when everyone else needs to. A system is either secure from everyone, or weak from everyone. While your attack methods might be unknown now, once they are uncovered by a foreign power or malicious group you have put all politicians and citizens at great risk by allowing security holes to stay put. And if some attack methodologies are known to be commonly used by a certain group, them framing that group is pretty easy when the only evidence required to blame them is “well it looks like they made some grammatically incorrect comments in the native language of the people we’re blaming, case closed.”
Is this proof that Russia did not do the DNC hacks? Of course it isn’t, but it puts so many holes in the “evidence” that was presented that even the most convinced of media outlet(if they are truly honest and concerned about truth) must acknowledge that we don’t know and can’t know unless greater evidence is presented. Any outlet which does not acknowledge this is being willfully ignorant or choosing the wrong hill to die on.
On reflection, I have decided that for the time being, this is a service that I will offer without any additional fees beyond those currently implemented by the postal service. The Bitpay listings have been updated to reflect this change.
In limited runs I will now be offering Forever and Priority stamps for Bitcoin for a small premium to help pay for the business side of things on our end. Currently the USPS online charges $1-$2 overhead to purchase stamps, I will cover this cost through the listing. Selling ordinary Forever stamps(not ones that were custom printed with the bitcoin logo or anything is something that as far as I can tell, no one has really done with any degree of seriousness with Bitcoin. At the moment the process will be done manually through Bitpay and CryptoThrift.
For each BitPay listing below, when ordering you will be asked to fill out a field titled "Dropship directly from USPS?" If you would prefer your order be delivered to me first, and then mailed to you I will do so for no additional overhead, just be aware that this will drastically increase the ship time. There will also be an item titled "Shipping Charge Added?" This is to remind buyers to add the shipping charge explained below.
Please note: BitPay currently does not permit flat shipping fee for multiple items, so after adding stamps to your cart, please select this link to add the USPS processing fee onto your order.
A book of Forever Stamps through Bitpay will sell for $9.60 with $2.00 to cover the USPS.com handling fee. I am not currently taking requests concerning style but will do so in the future.
Four priority stamps through Bitpay are currently being sold for $22.40 with $2.00 to cover the USPS.com handling fee.
After adding the desired stamps to your cart, click here to add the USPS processing fee
Publishing Books Anonymously with the power of Bitcoin
We are a brand new startup called the Crypto Scriptorium that is currently looking for authors, both currently published and unpublished, who would like to publish anonymously while still getting paid for their efforts. For the vast majority of authors wishing to publish anonymously, maintaining their anonymity is a matter of reputation and/or public perception. Many brilliant stories go untold because the author is afraid of how publishing their work would affect their current or future career prospects or the feelings of embarrassment that being connected to a sensitive subject might make them. For some anonymous publishing may be a legal matter, perhaps due to their works containing information concerning breaches of the law in their countries whose statute of limitations have not yet or will not expire. There are many reasons to want anonymity when publishing a book, magazine, or newsletter; and that's where we come in to the picture.
Some of you may wonder why an author would want to publish like this as opposed to simply using a pseudonym. For authors looking for complete anonymity using a pseudonym through a traditional publisher or on services such as Lulu or Amazon simply isn't enough. *The Cuckoo's Calling* was originally published under the author name Robert Galbraith until a legal firm accidentally leaked that as the pseudonym for J. K. Rowling. The author's anonymity was not protected because of the flaw in the human element of security. We remove that flaw. Even under threat of legal action, the Crypto Scriptorium could not reveal an author's identity or personal information, because at no point do we assured even have that information.
Traditionally, publishing like this would require an author to forgo any potential income from their work in order to maintain their anonymity. However, thanks to technological innovations such as Bitcoin we are able to pay authors while not requiring us to know any identifiable information about them. For any authors interested in potentially using our service, please contact me at: [email protected], or Bitmessage: BM-2cUyWLsGvxPmkb7JKpZWrZHzxwxA9Gpm4a
Please be sure to visit our webpage for information concerning our service, as well as easy to follow step-by-step tutorials for using various anonymous communication tools and services.
* Home page *(all the below links and information can be found here)*
* Publishing contract
* Public Key Encryption Tutorial
* Tor and anonymous email tuTorial
* Bitmessage for anonymous communication tutorial
For anonymous communication Bitmessage is currently the most anonymous method.
Email requires centralized control and servers to store and send the messages out. On the other hand, Bitmessage operates on similar principles to that of Bitcoin in that every user is sent every message on the network(similar to the public block-chain). Each message is encrypted with the recipient address's public key, so even though every user has a copy of the encrypted message only the intended recipient can read it. Since every user is receiving every single message then it becomes extremely difficult to determine the actual intended recipient without having direct access to their computer already. Below you will find a tutorial for using Bitmessage
Using Bitmessage
Step 1:
To start using bitmessage, download it directly from the Bitmessage website here. Save the Bitmessage program on your computer and launch it
Step 2:
In the window that comes up, go to the "Your Identities" tab and click "New"
Step 3:
The window that opens up will request some information. I suggest checking the "Use a random number generator to make an address" box and give your address a label. Addresses are dozens of characters long, and trying to remember each one's purpose can get very tedious is use multiple. After you input everything, click okay.
Step 4:
Your new Bitmessage address will appear in the "Your identities" tab, and you are ready to send and receive messages. If you are unsure if you set up your client correctly you can create your own chan to message yourself from to confirm.
Creating a Chan with Bitmessage
Step 1:
A Chan in the context of Bitmessage, is a mailing list in which every user who is given the chan name is capable of making posts to and on behalf of the chan. Making it a kind of shared message board. To create one, go to the "File" menu in Bitmessage and select the option "Join / Create chan"
Step 2:
Check the "Create a new chan" box, type in a name for your chan, then click "OK"
Step 3:
Click OK on the dialog window that pops up.
Step 4:
Go to the "Your Identities" tab, right click on the chan you just created, and select "Copy address to clipboard."
Step 5:
Go to the "Send" tab, paste the address you just copied into the "To:" field, type a message, and change the "From" field to whichever of your addresses you would like to send from.
Step 6:
You will be taken to your "Sent" tab when the status of the message will be "Doing work necessary to send message." Once the work is completed, you will receive the message.
Step 7:
The message is now in your inbox. Congratulations.
