View source for User:Dusan Barok/Bitcoin bits, trivia and anecdotes

This document includes notes from my research on Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency (May-July 2011). The structure resembles Wikipedia article, but the content does not at all serve purpose of presenting the coherent image of Bitcoin technology, nor community. I included things and anecdotes which are not widely known, or which i simply found interesting for my writing ([[User:Dusan_Barok/Bitcoin:_censorship-resistant_currency_and_domain_name_system_to_the_people|you can read it here]]). For futher reference see [[#Resources|Resources]] section.

==Numbers==
50 mil USD & 6 mil BTC & 20k users (5/2011). [http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/]

100 top Btc addresses own 30% of economy (2 mil BTC, 36 mil USD); 5 addresses are USD millionaires (6/2011). [http://bitpoint.pl/bitcoin/100-najbogatszych-adresow/]

210.000 = 50 coins * 10 minutes (6 per hour) * 4 years.
The number comes from the combinations of the initial block reward (50 coins), the target blocks per hour (6) and the halving period (4 years).  There will be 10.5 million created in the first four year period, and then the reward will be halved while all other metrics remain the same. 
As the reward continues to half again with each four year period, the total number of coins issued will trend toward the mathmatical limit (as in a logrithmic) of 21 million.
The numbers that define the outcomes are the initial reward, the target block interval, and the halving term.  All of these were design decisions that resulted in the outcome of 21 million, not the other way around.  [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=3366.msg47522#msg47522]

==Terms==
* Fiat money: money legalised by state by linguistic act; since 1971 when Nixon ended the backing of USD by precious metal.
* Ponzi scheme: pyramidal financial games, since early 1900s.

==Technology==
The main properties [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html]:
* Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network.
* No mint or other trusted parties.
* Participants can be anonymous.
* New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work.
* The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the network to prevent double-spending.

Nakamoto "Bitcoin's solution is to use a peer-to-peer network to check for double-spending.  In a nutshell, the network works like a distributed 
timestamp server, stamping the first transaction to spend a coin.  It takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread but 
hard to stifle. The result is a distributed system with no single point of failure. Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the P2P network to check for double-spending." [http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-February/001347.html]

http://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0287/sn0287_h264b_640x368_256.mp4 (from 41:00 till end)

===Byzantine Generals Problem===
====Two Generals Problem====
Important in epistemic logic; and to understand the importance of common knowledge.
Tought in introductions of computer networking (mainly TCP), but can be applied to other type of communication too.
Generals are camping on the hills facing over the city they plan to attack. They have to communicate through messengers passing through the city where they can be caught. They must communicate with each other to decide on a time to attack and to agree to attack at that time, and each general must know that the other general knows that they have agreed to the attack plan. Because acknowledgement of message receipt can be lost as easily as the original message, a potentially infinite series of messages is required to come to consensus.
Solutions via number of accepted messages don't work.
Engineering solution: we must not eliminate uncertainty, but lower the risk of failure, so let's send 100 messengers, at least one has to come back. With this approach the first general will attack no matter what and the second general will attack, if any message is received. [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem]

====Byzantine Generals Problem (Byzantine Fault Tolerance)====
Szabo: "Exercise about liars in government [..] The basic idea of a Byzantine fault tolerant protocol is that it is a highly distributed peer-to-peer protocol robust from a certain fraction or less of its participants lying about information originally observed or created by one or a small subset of them. The fraction varies based on various assumptions of the model, but common figures are 1/3 and 1/2 for information originating from one node assuming that node is truthful. If the fraction required for successful collusive lying is not achieved (and such an attack requires either informed negotiations occurring before this protocol step or negotiating the collusion in a single step, the latter possible to avoid by assuming fraud if messaging is abnormally delayed), the liars are detected and can be excluded from future participation in the network." [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2009/05/liar-resistant-government.html]

BGP is an agreement problem (first proposed by Marshall Pease, Robert Shostak, and Leslie Lamport in 1980) in which generals of the Byzantine Empire's army must decide unanimously whether to attack some enemy army. The problem is complicated by the geographic separation of the generals, who must communicate by sending messengers to each other, and by the presence of traitors amongst the generals. These traitors can act arbitrarily in order to achieve the following aims: trick some generals into attacking; force a decision that is not consistent with the generals' desires, e.g. forcing an attack when no general wished to attack; or confusing some generals to the point that they are unable to make up their minds. If the traitors succeed in any of these goals, any resulting attack is doomed, as only a concerted effort can result in victory. [..]
In 1999, Miguel Castro and Barbara Liskov introduced the "Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance" (PBFT) algorithm, which provides high-performance Byzantine state machine replication, processing thousands of requests per second with sub-millisecond increases in latency.
PBFT triggered a renaissance in BFT replication research, with protocols working to lower costs, improve performance, and improve robustness. [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance]

Nakamoto's BGP rephrased: [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09997.html]

System enables majority consensus without requiring anyone to trust anyone else.

===Proof-of-work===
Nakamoto: In Bitcoin, "everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust." [http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-February/001347.html]

Bitcoin network works in parallel to generate a chain of Hashcash style proof-of-work. The proof-of-work chain is the key to solving the Byzantine Generals' Problem of synchronising the global view and generating computational proof of the majority consensus without having to trust anyone.

"We have earlier seen two proposed cryptocurrencies, and proof-of-work was one of the most common proposals to deal with the rising tsunami of spam. (Although ironically, proof-of-work never seemed to go into widespread use because of general inertia and because to deter large amounts of spam, proof-of-work would deter legitimate users under some models; spam seems to have been kept in check by better filtering techniques (eg. Paul Graham's "A Plan for Spam" using Bayesian spam filtering) and legal action against botnets & spammers.)" [http://www.bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-is-worse-is-better]

===Free software===
Very first bitcoin client v0.1 was for Windows only (open source C++). Linux version launched only on 17.12.09 [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html]

===Non-trust-based system (No third-party; No central authority)===
Nakamoto: "You know, I think there were a lot more people interested in the 90's, but after more than a decade of failed Trusted Third Party based systems (Digicash, etc), they see it as a lost cause. I hope they can make the distinction that this is the first time I know of that we're trying a non-trust-based system."

"These ideas were in contrast to credit cards, ACH, Chaum's e-cash, PayPal,  etc. that try to copy the characteristics of various kinds of paper money or credit and in particular rely on monolithic trusted parties." [http://174.143.149.98/smf/index.php?action=profile%3Bu=6924%3Bsa=showPosts]

===Anonymity===
"While bitcoin addresses are randomly generated cryptographic signatures, not obviously associated with any one person, the entire block chain is publicly readable, and you can readily see transactions between any bitcoin address: [http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe]. Thus, 'anonymity' must be in quotes. Even if one follows the recommended practice of using a new bitcoin address for each transaction, statistical analysis can be performed on the public transaction data." [https://lwn.net/Articles/414452/]. Andresen: [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15787.msg207683#msg207683]

Jeff Garzik wrote that all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, concluding that "Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb". [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/libertarian-dream-a-site-where-you-buy-drugs-with-digital-dollars/239776/]

Matonis critises JGarzik: We should "resist digital money unless anonymous" and don't give up paper cash if the future is even more traceable and intrusive. Jgarzik wrongly stresses that Bitcoin is traceable and not anonymous, and that money can and should be used for identity tracking. [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13077.msg184200#msg184200]

===Privacy===
Matonis: "The way things are being positioned by the [Bitcoin] establishment --- 'give up the privacy and untracability elements of the $100 bill and we will give you the nirvana of a digital, cashless society.' This is such bullshit! Bitcoin needs to be positioned as a way to restore financial privacy to the individual: 1. Secrecy does not equal concealment, but rather secrecy equals privacy; 2. Large-scale private value transfer should not be impeded across national boundaries (money laundering is a pejorative term); 3. Individuals should have freedom from confiscation and immoral tax levies; 4. Individuals should have freedom from money being used to track identity; 5. Individuals should have protection from the depreciating nation-State political currencies." [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8940.msg164099#msg164099]

===Vulnerability===
====Overpowering the network====
Unk: "The attack is not expensive, nor does the fact that mining is profitable mean that a strategic attack on a valuable block chain won't be far more profitable. this neglect of the strategic value of an attack is the only well-known significant mistake in Satoshi's original paper, one that the analyst going by the name 'computerscientist' in various online forums has pointed out in detail." [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12435.msg178151#msg178151]

Nakamoto: "Even if a bad guy does overpower the network, it's not like he's instantly  rich.  All he can accomplish is to take back money he himself spent, like bouncing a check.  To exploit it, he would have to buy something from a merchant, wait till it ships, then overpower the network and try to take his money back.  I don't think he could make as much money trying to pull a carding scheme like that as he could by generating bitcoins.  With a zombie farm that big, he could generate more bitcoins than everyone else combined. The Bitcoin network might actually reduce spam by diverting zombie farms to generating bitcoins instead." [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09967.html]

Nefario: "We suspect that within the next 6 months many if not most bitcoin exchangers will be shutdown by various authorities around the world." (6/2011) [http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/06/global-bitcoin-stock-exchange-on.html]

===Mining===
Bitcoin's feature: mining is not in feedback with supply. "Unlike gold, where the cost of mining effort is relatively stable and the market price fluctuates around it, in case of BitCoin, mining effort follows market price without any feedback. If gold becomes too expensive, more effort will be put into mining thereby increasing supply, while if gold price falls, people stop mining. With BitCoin, there is no such feedback: no matter how much effort is put into BitCoin mining, the rate at which BitCoins emerge is near constant." [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html#4030634241199385500]

jgarzik's CPU miner: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cpu_Miner]. Making use of the new 'getwork' RPC command. Intended largely to demonstrate a 'getwork' miner.  It is written in straight C, with minimal dependencies (libcurl, jansson). Getwork or Share Efficiency is defined as: (The # of getwork requested) / (The number of submitted shares) * 100.

===License===
Btc client is released under MIT license. The FSF acknowledges that the MIT license is compatible with the GPL. You can fork an MIT project into a GPL project if you like, after which your GPL fork is copyleft. 

==Ideas and properties==
===Financial crisis===
Nakamoto included information in the Genesis Block that pointed to The Times article “Chancellor Alistair Darling on brink of second bailout for banks” as a clue to his motivations for creating Bitcoin. [http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5434660.ece]

All Bitcoin technology ingredients were in place 8-12 years before Nakamoto's publication. Financial crisis in 2008 occurred to be ideal opportunity to launch the system.

===Freedom===
Nakamoto: “[we will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography,] but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.”

===Censorship-resistance===
Nakamoto: "Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own." [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09971.html]

===Incentive-to-market===
Szabo: "There's nothing like Nakamoto's incentive-to-market scheme to change minds about these issues. :-) Thanks to RAMs full of coin with 'scheduled deflation', there are now no shortage of people willing to argue in its favor." [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html]

Falkvinge: "The total money supply in the world is about 75 trillion US dollars. Estimates say that between 5% and 30% of this supply is in the black market with illicit work and services. Let’s be conservative and pick 5%; let’s assume cautiously that four trillion US dollars worldwide is in the black market. [..] That brings us to 15% out of 10% out of four trillion USD, coming to 60 billion USD that will enter the bitcoin system in cautious estimates. I expect those savings to get three more zeroes after them in three to four years." [http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/]

Gwern: "It may be that Bitcoin’s greatest virtue is not its deflation, nor its microtransactions, but its viral distributed nature; it can wait for its opportunity. 'If you sit by the bank of the river long enough, you can watch the bodies of your enemies float by.'" [http://www.bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-is-worse-is-better]

===Long tail===
Finney: "Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker. It is a very modern notion that exploits the power of the long tail." [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09975.html]

===Pure money===
Andresen: "Bitcoin is really a pure money. It's a store of value and a means of exchange and that's all it is. It's almost a plutonic ideal of what money is, in that there is nothing backing it beyond the fact that it's useful as a money." [http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3240179.htm]

===Mutualism===
====Bitcoin-specific stock exchange====
Bitcoin-speficic stock exchange: Conventional stock exchanges are available only to corporations big enough to go public, while small businesses must usually be bought out, either entirely by big businesses or partially by big angel investors and venture capitalists. This encourages aggregation of business ownership into centralized elites. On the GLBSE, in contrast, there is no regulation and thus no minimum size. Thus, the stock exchange replaces not only the function of exchanges like the NYSE and NASDAQ, but also venture capitalism; small businesses, just like large ones, would be able to take advantage of public investment, allowing innovative new businesses to far more easily attack entrenched monopolies with huge economies of scale keeping them in power. This creates quasi-mutualism rather than big-business-capitalism. Mutualism is a 150-year old economic philosophy which describes a type of society in which economic activity is done entirely bottom-up, with no big business or government interference, and where the means of production are controlled by individuals and, where necessary, cooperatively run factories. There are few regulatory differences between mutualism and big-business capitalism; they can both occur in a society without regulation. The difference between the two is divisibility. Proudhon (first person to call himself an "anarchist") @ Theory of Property, 1862: 'Imagine now that property and all the domains of the nobles could be divided and sold like chunks of beef, that they enter into an exchange and are paid for with products, since they are nothing but products: soon you would see inequality decrease, and property, by the same quality it had to monopolize, become an institution of equalization.' It is divisibility that is the difference between property ownership leading to accumulation in the hands of the few, and therefore oligarchy and despotism, and property ownership leading to equality, and a stock exchange embodies the very definition of divisibility." [http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-glbse-and-decentralization]

===Anarcho-capitalism===
[[File:Anarchocapitalismsymbol.png|thumb|right]]
Poll: Which of these most closely resembles your political position? [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13646.0]
* Anarcho-Capitalist 	- 31 (40.8%)
* Left-Wing Anarchist 	- 9 (11.8%)
* Classical Liberal 	- 6 (7.9%)
* Socialist 	- 11 (14.5%)
* American Liberal 	- 4 (5.3%)
* American Conservative 	- 1 (1.3%)
* Other (please specify) 	- 10 (13.2%)
* Apolitical/Non-Ideological 	- 4 (5.3%)
Total Voters: 76

==Timeline==
* 1979: Hash tree
* 1980: public key cryptography. (This is Satoshi's citation date; Diffie-Hellman, the first published system, was in 1976, not 1980.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_cryptography#History]
* 1991: cryptographic timestamps
* 1992-1993: Proof-of-work for spam ("Pricing via Processing, Or, Combating Junk Mail, Advances in Cryptology", Dwork 1993, published in CRYPTO'92)
* 1999: Byzantine-resilient peer-to-peer replication
* 2001: SHA-256 finalized. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2]
* 2002: HashCash. proof-of-work system designed to limit email spam and denial of service attacks. 3/97 (pdf says 2002?!) by Adam Back. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HashCash]
* August 18, 2008
** bitcoin.org registered, via louhi.net (helsinki), 82.197.131.24 
* August 19, 2008
** bitcoin.net registered, via Administrative Contact: AnonymousSpeech.com, 1-3-3 Sakura House, Tokyo, TOKYO 169-0072, JP [http://www.bitecoin.com/online/2011/05/57.html] [http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/What-is-Satoshi-Nakamotos-background]
* October 31, 2008
** [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.general/12588/ Bitcoin design paper] published. From: Satoshi Nakamoto <satoshi <at> vistomail.com>; Subject: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper; Newsgroups: gmane.comp.encryption.general; "The paper is available at: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf". Nakamoto: "I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper.  I think I will be able to release the code sooner than I could write a detailed spec." [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09980.html]
* Nov 1, 2008
** paper discussed [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09959.html] .. [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10014]
* November 09, 2008
** Bitcoin project registered at SourceForge.net
* January 3, 2009
** Genesis block established at 18:15:05 GMT; includes link to article "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." 
* January 9, 2009
** bitcoin v0.1, Windows only [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html] + discussion
* January 10, 2009
** Hal Finney, author of RPOW, tests Btc v0.1.0 [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=21295694]
* January 11, 2009
** Bitcoin v0.1 released and announced on the [http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html cryptography mailing list]
* February 11, 2009 and on
** Satoshi on p2p-research list, hosted by Bauwens [http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-February/001347.html]
* December 2009
* community moves from Btc Sourgeforge mailing list to Btc forum, http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/ 
* December 16, 2009
** Bitcoin v0.2 released
* December 30, 2009
** First difficulty increase at 06:11:04 GMT
* February 6, 2010
** Bitcoin Market established
* February 24, 2010
** Nakamoto makes new bitcoin logo [http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=64.0]
[[File:Bitcoin-pizza.IMG 0988.small.jpg|thumb|right]]
* May 22, 2010
** Laszlo first to buy pizza with Bitcoins [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=137.msg1195#msg1195 agreeing] upon paying 10,000 BTC for ~$25 worth of pizza courtesy of jercos
* July 7, 2010
** Bitcoin v0.3 released
* July 11, 2010
** Bitcoin v0.3 release [http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/11/1747245/Bitcoin-Releases-Version-03 mentioned on slashdot], bringing a large influx of new bitcoin users.
* July 17, 2010
** MtGox exchange established
* July 18, 2010
** ArtForz generated his first block after establishing his personal OpenCL GPU hash farm
* August 15, 2010
** Value_overflow incident
* September 14, 2010
** jgarzik [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=133.msg12921#msg12921 offered] 10,000 BTC (valued at ~$600-650) to puddinpop to open source their windows-based CUDA client
* September 18, 2010
** puddinpop [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=133.msg13135#msg13135 released] source to their windows-based CUDA client under MIT license
* September 29, 2010
** kermit [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1306.0 discovered] a microtransactions exploit which precipitated the Bitcoin v0.3.13 release
* October 01, 2010
** First public OpenCL miner released
* October 04, 2010
** Original Bitcoin History wiki page (this page) established (ooh so meta) on Bitcoin.org's wiki.
* October 28, 2010
** First bitcoin short sale transaction initiated, with a loan of 100 BTC by nanotube to kiba, facilitated by the #bitcoin-otc market.
* November 6, 2010
** The [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1672 Bitcoin economy passed US $1 million]. The MtGox price touched USD $0.50.
* November 9, 2010
** EFF adds btc on their "ways to help" page
* November 14, 2010
** Bitcoin And The Electronic Frontier Foundation [http://www.bitcoinblogger.com/2010/11/bitcoin-gains-legal-protection-through.html]
** Hacker News: EFF Begins Accepting Anonymous Donations via Bitcoin [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1905522]
* December 5, 2010
** Satoshi makes a plea to Wikileaks not to try to use Bitcoin [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=1735.msg26999#msg26999]
* December 7, 2010
** Bitcoind was compiled for the Nokia N900 mobile computer by doublec. The following day, ribuck sent him 0.42 BTC in the first portable-to-portable Bitcoin transaction.
* December 9, 2010
** The generation difficulty passed 10,000.
** First bitcoin call option contract sold, from nanotube to [[User:Sgornick|sgornick]], via the [[Bitcoin-otc|#bitcoin-otc]] market.
* December 11, 2010
** http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/213230/could_the_wikileaks_scandal_lead_to_new_virtual_currency.html
* December 12, 2010
** Nakamoto's last post at Bitcoin Forum. [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=2228.msg29479#msg29479]
** Slashdot: WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul [http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/12/0647203/WikiLeaks-Money-and-Ron-Paul]
* December 14, 2010
** EFF's call to action [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/constructive-direct-action-against-censorship]
* December 16, 2010
** Rainey Reitman/EFF (activism director) talks in SF Wikileaks rally about Dot-P2P, Tor, Bitcoin, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ti5O3TI3iw]
** [http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ Bitcoin Pooled Mining], operated by slush, found its first block
* January 2, 2011
** Tonal BitCoin units standardized.
* January 8, 2011
** Bitcoin Pooled Mining reached a total of 10,000 Mhash/s
* January 20, 2011
** http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/bitcoin-step-toward-censorship-resistant
* January 27, 2011
** Largest numeric value ever traded for bitcoins thus far occurred on this date. Three currency bills from Zimbabwe, known as Zimdollars, were traded on #bitcoin-otc at the rate of 4 BTC for each of the one-hundred trillion dollar ($100,000,000,000,000) Zimbabwe notes (Serial numbers for Zimdollars sold: AA1669317, AA1669318 and AA1669319)
* January 28, 2011
** Block 105000 was generated. This means that 5.25 million bitcoins have been generated, which is just over one-quarter of the eventual total of nearly 21 million.
* February 9, 2011
** Decimal Bitcoin reached parity with the US dollar, touching $1 per BTC at MtGox.
* February 10, 2011
** Bitcoin.org website struggles to handle [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=3444.0 traffic] resulting from mentions on Slashdot [http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/10/189246/Online-Only-Currency-BitCoin-Reaches-Dollar-Parity Online-Only Currency BitCoin Reaches Dollar Parity], Hacker News and Twitter following the news that parity had been reached.
* February 14, 2011
** A vehicle was, for the first time, offered in exchange for a certain number of bitcoins [http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=3485.0 Car for Sale - Australia].
* Feb?, 2011
** David Forster, 29, convinced his parents Jim and Nancy, owners of Green Hill Alpacas in Haydenville, Mass., to accept Bitcoins for alpaca socks. Technically, the younger Forster buys the socks for dollars and resells them for Bitcoins. "They said it sounded like a Ponzi scheme but that as long as I wasn't risking their money for Internet coins it was fine," he says. Sock sales have risen to between 75 and 100 since the experiment began from four dozen during all of last year and orders have come from as far as Finland and Russia. More remarkable is what has happened to pricing. Forster began charging 75 Bitcoins for each pair in February and has since had to lower the price to 5 due to extreme appreciation in the currency's value. "I wish I had kept all of them," says Forster, who traded his Bitcoins on the way up for cash and web services.
* March 6, 2011
** Total Bitcoin network computation speed for a short time [http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin.png reached an all-time high of almost 900Ghash/sec], dropping to 500Ghash/sec soon after. Some speculate that this was due to some supercomputer or bot-net that joined the network ([http://bitcoin.atspace.com/mysteryminer.html mystery miner]).
** MtGox sells his MtGox exchange to MagicalTux [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4187.0]
* March 18, 2011
** BTC/USD exchange rate reaches a 6-week low point at almost $0.70/BTC, after what appeared to be a short burst of, possibly automated, BTC sales at progressively lower prices. BTC price had been declining since the February 9 high.
** article in Slate
* March 25, 2011
** Difficulty decreased nearly 10%.  A decrease has only occurred once before, and this decrease of nearly 10% was the largest.
** article in Gizmodo
* March 26, 2011
** Britcoin launched
* March 27, 2011
** The first market for exchanging bitcoins to and from the British Pound Sterling BTC/GBP, Britcoin, opens.
* March 31, 2011
** The first market for exchanging bitcoins to and from Brazilian Reals, Bitcoin Brazil, opens.
* April 5, 2011
** The first market for exchanging bitcoins to and from the Polish złoty, BitMarket.eu, opens.
* April 12, 2011
** First bitcoin put option contract sold via the #bitcoin-otc market.
* April 16, 2011
** TIME does [http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governments/ an article on Bitcoin].
* April 18, 2011 
** First version of namecoin, [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6017.0]. Nakamoto's mentions it 12/10: [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28696#msg28696]. How it works: [http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=6017.msg93333#msg93333], [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=2072.msg123624#msg123624]. .bit won the poll: [http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7459.0;viewResults]
* April 20, 2011
** http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0509/technology-psilocybin-bitcoins-gavin-andresen-crypto-currency.html
* April 23, 2011
** BTC/USD exchange rate reaches and passes parity with the Euro (EUR) on MtGox exchange.
** BTC/USD exchange rate reaches and passes parity with the British Sterling Pound (GBP) on MtGox exchange.
** Value of the Bitcoin money stock at current exchange rate passes $10 million USD threshold.
** First tweet @namecoin (by community member Sgornick) 
* April 27, 2011
** [[VirWoX]] opens first market to trade bitcoins against a virtual currency on BTC/SL (Second Life Lindens) exchange.
* April 28, 2011
** Block [http://blockexplorer.com/b/120630 120,630] is first to be mined using split allocation of the generation reward.
* April 29, 2011 
** First .bit DNS server 
* April 30, 2011
** The generation difficulty passed 100,000.
* May ??, 2011
** GLBSE - bitcoin stock market launched; first 2 legitimate assets being traded: UBX (Ubitex), an in-person Bitcoin exchange, and DISHWARA, a mining company. UBX: The idea is for users to enter their locations, as well as a buy or sell order for bitcoins and a maximum distance. If two users have compatible orders and are close enough to each other, Ubitex connects the two together, taking in a 0.5 BTC fee from the seller. [http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-global-bitcoin-stock-exchange-and-why-it-matters]
* May 10, 2011
** The exchange rate at MtGox touched 6 USD per BTC.
* May 17, 2011
** Ben Laurie: Bitcoin is nothing new. There are cheaper ways than #proof-of-work to limit supply. [http://www.links.org/?p=1164] [http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/ben-laurie-blathering-on-bitcoin.html]
** Adam Cohen's answer to [http://www.quora.com/Bitcoin/Is-the-cryptocurrency-Bitcoin-a-good-idea] which was elegantly refuted by Sean Lynch and Brandon Smietana
** Victor Grishchenko's critical piece on bitcoin, which was slowly negated on the Bitcoin Forum. [http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/%7Evictor/bitcoin.html]
* May 18, 2011 
** 500 .bit domains reserved 
* May 25, 2011
** Technology Review: What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters, [http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37619/]
* May 27, 2011
** Gwern, "Bitcoin is Worse is Better". [http://www.bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-is-worse-is-better]
* May 28, 2011
** Nick Szabo, "Bitcoin, what took ye so long?". [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html]
* May 29, 2011
** Falkvinge: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin [http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/] Probably 80,000$ around 20.5.; even took a loan to buy more bitcoins. [http://thebitcoinsun.com/post/public/releases/edition_004/TheBitcoinSun_Edition4.pdf interview]. "Investing was as much a financial decision as it was a political statement and provocation." "Legal weaknesses are largely irrelevant for P2P networks."
* May 31, 2011
** The Next Web: Bitcoin, the Peer-to-Peer Currency that Hopes to Change the World [http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/05/bitcoin-the-peer-to-peer-currency-that-hopes-to-change-the-world/]
** Max Keiser introduces btc on Russia Today TV (via Jon Matonis), [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rhLfw4YT5A]
** http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,765382,00.html
** Jon Matonis, "Bitcoin: Timing is Everything". [http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-timing-is-everything.html]
* June 2, 2011
** BTC hits $10.
* June 3, 2011
** Gawker, Wired, Forbes, ..: Silkroad: Amazon for drugs [http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/] [http://blogs.forbes.com/benzingainsights/2011/06/03/how-to-purchase-guns-and-drugs-anonymously/]
* June 3, 2011
** Yahoo! Finance: The Currency That's Up 200,000 Percent [http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112854/currency-up-200000-percent-smartmoney]
* June 5, 2011
** 100 top btc addresses own 30% of economy (2 mil BTC, 36 mil USD); 5 addresses are USD millionaires [http://bitpoint.pl/bitcoin/100-najbogatszych-adresow/]
** slush on Czech news TV, [http://www.ct24.cz/vysilani/2011/06/05/211411058050022-20:00-horizont-ct24/ od 14:00]
* June 6, 2011
** FT Alphaville: Virtual money, from real central bank mistrust [http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/06/06/585756/virtual-money-from-real-central-bank-mistrust/]
** LulzSec, "Someone just sent over $7200 worth of BitCoins. Whoever you are... thank you... Balance: 7853.35 USD." [http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/77771916794011648]
* June 7, 2011
** jgarzik about Btc and Silkroad on CBS [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20069780-10391715.html]
** Bitcoin.org moved to sf.net hosting, which unfortunately doesn't support https. [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13375.msg184002#msg184002]
* June 8, 2011
** Btc hits $20 at MtGox (someone bought 5000 btc in 4 transactions in several minutes)
** Senators seek crackdown on "Bitcoin" currency, [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-financial-bitcoins-idUSTRE7573T320110608]
** TradeHill currency exchange launched (company based in Chile). by Jered Kenna. tradehill.com; [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13650.0]; [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=14010.0]
** Ars Technica: Bitcoin: inside the encrypted, peer-to-peer digital currency [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/bitcoin-inside-the-encrypted-peer-to-peer-currency.ars]
** "Senators draw a bead on BitCoin. Shock: people buy drugs with currency" [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/bitcoin_under_attack/]
* June 9, 2011
** Wikileaks approves of Bitcoin and Namecoin. "Namecoin and Bitcoin will be revolutionary http://is.gd/8zKOTT see "Orwell's Dictum" http://is.gd/2hsOWh" [https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/78906603948093440]
** Wall Street Journal: Bitcoin: On Line Currency Taking Off [http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/09/bitcoin-on-line-currency-taking-off/]
** Spiegel Online reports on Schumer, Silk Road and Bitcoin (the 3rd time in 10 days). [http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,767557,00.html]
* June 10, 2011
** LulzSec Hackers Using Digital Currency: DEA Crackdown Soon? [http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/230500206]
** Falkvinge about Bitcoin on Keiser Report [http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/11/falkvinge-on-the-keiser-report-this-week/]
** DailyTech: Digital Black Friday: First Bitcoin "Depression" Hits [http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21877]
[[File:Mtgoxcoaster.jpg|thumb|right]]
* June 11, 2011
** mtgox usd rate storm. from 21 down to 14, then back to 20, now at 17.. mtgox was saying hello to tradehill, which appeared only a couple of days ago and which had a 'stable' USD rate bwn 19 and 17... now they have pretty much synced...
** Blackmarket started. "TOS": You can sell or buy whatever you want. You're sole responsible for what you sell or buy. Feedback is EVERYTHING there. [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=14586.msg0]
** LulzSec claims responsibility for Bitcoin Flash Crash - dumps 17,000BTC. "@LulzSec: BitCoins dropped from 32 to 11 in the last 24 hours, I wonder why? Bwahahaha." [https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/79678588407906304] "@LulzSec: Spot the lulz: [http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000007d6d8c9ccd1472df92b69ae8bf0d1a06f6f42df8d580a080f0e]." [https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/79689574313492480]. Is Lulzsec partly to blame for the bitcoin crash? [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15323.0]. 17000 BTC from 240 accounts [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15061.0]. "Look at MtGox trade data a bit after 12PM UTC today and prepare to be amazed... Someone cashed out nearly a quarter million USD" [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15061.msg202495#msg202495]. jgarzik: "Those coins in the LulzSec tweet have not been spent (ie. not sent to mtgox etc.).  The coins have not been sold, therefore those sales did not crash the market. Either they are taking credit for someone else's coin transfer, or they hacked into a miner and stole their wallet" [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15323.msg204118#msg204118].
[[File:Mtgox.down.20110612.png|thumb|right]]
* June 12, 2011
** Falkvinge: "Wow, #bitcoin is really a daytrader's wet dream. Doubles from 16 to 32, thirds from 32 to 10, and doubles again to 20 - in less than a week" [https://twitter.com/#!/Falkvinge/status/79911559568162816]
** Guardian: Bitcoin: the hacker currency that's taking over the web. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/12/bitcoin-online-currency-us-government]
** MtGox freezes bwn 4.30-8.30pm UTC
* June 13, 2011
** slush's mining.bitcoin.cz ddos'd
** The Economist: Virtual currency: Bits and bob [http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/virtual-currency]
* June 14, 2011
** Amir Taaki answers readers' questions on Slashdot, [http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/06/14/1357239/Ask-Amir-Taaki-About-Bitcoin]
** Gavin Andresen talk at emerging tech conf at CIA (paid $3000 fee), [https://twitter.com/#!/gavinandresen/status/80785477342478336], [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6652.0]
* June 15, 2011
** Wikileaks accepts bitcoins, [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17101.0], [http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/80774521350668288]
* June 17, 2011
** Technology review: "Crypto-currency Security under Scrutiny", [http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37835/]
* June 19, 2011
** MtGox - Leaked information includes username, email and hashed password.One account with a lot of coins was compromised and whoever stole it (using a HK based IP to login) first sold all the coins in there, to buy those again just after, and then tried to withdraw the coins. The $1000/day withdraw limit was active for this account and the hacker could only get out with $1000 worth of coins. Due to the large impact this had on the Bitcoin market, we will rollback every trade which happened since the big sale, and ensure this account is secure before opening access again. We will address this issue too and prevent logins from each users. Leaked information includes username, email and hashed password, which does not allow anyone to get to the actual password, should it be complex enough. If you used a simple password you will not be able to login on Mt.Gox until you change your password to something more secure. If you used the same password on different places, it is recommended to change it as soon as possible. [http://ifile.it/a3kl16j/accounts.csv]
* June 20, 2011
** MtGox is still down, Bitcoincharts blank
** EFF: EFF and Bitcoin [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/eff-and-bitcoin]
** Technology Review: "An Insecure Economy Built on a Super Secure Currency", [http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/26910/]
* June 22, 2011
** Guardian: Bitcoins: What are they, and how do they work? [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/22/bitcoins-how-do-they-work]
* June 23, 2011
** flexcoin.com, Bitcoin Bank announced. "This is the first bitcoin wallet that actually pays interest, hence looking more and more like a bitcoin bank. The site mines for bitcoins, anything found is then distributed to the account holders that have a positive balance of bitcoins in their account." [http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=8098]
* June 24, 2011
** Sydney Morning Herald: Mine your machines: ABC probes security breach [http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/mine-your-machines-abc-probes-security-breach-20110623-1ghhr.html]
* July 3, 2011
** NYT: Speed Bumps on the Road to Virtual Cash [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/business/media/04link.html
* August 18-21, 2011
** bitcoinconference.com NYC org by Bruce Wagner

{{:User:Dusan Barok/Bitcoin bits, trivia and anecdotes (cont.)}}