What makes it different from normal currencies?

Article written by Riya Thakur

Bitcoin can be used to buy things electronically. In that sense, it’s like conventional dollars, euros, or yen, which are also traded digitally.

David Zimbeck says that, Bitcoins’ most important characteristic, and the thing that makes it different to conventional money, is that it is decentralized. No single institution controls the bitcoin network. This puts some people at ease, because it means that a large bank can’t control their money.

What is bitcoin based on?

According to David Zimbeck conventional currency is based entirely on belief and politics. Theoretically, you might think that if you handed over a dollar at the bank, you could get some gold back but history shows us that is not always the case. But bitcoin isn’t based on gold or politics or law; it’s based on mathematics and peer to peer networks.

Around the world, people are using software programs that follow a mathematical formula to produce bitcoins. The mathematical formula is freely available, so that anyone can check it. Everything is open source. This may be the first time in history where forgery is not possible.

What are its characteristics?

Bitcoin has several important features that set it apart from government-backed currencies here are some of them told to me by David Zimbeck.

1. It’s decentralized

The bitcoin network isn’t controlled by one central authority. Every machine that mines bitcoin and processes transactions makes up a part of the network, and the machines work together. That means that, in theory, one central authority can’t tinker with monetary policy and cause a meltdown – or simply decide to take people’s bitcoins away from them, as the Central European Bank decided to do in Cyprus in early 2013. And if some part of the network goes offline for some reason, the money keeps on flowing.

2. It’s easy to set up

Conventional banks make you jump through hoops simply to open a bank account. Setting up merchant accounts for payment is another Kafkaesque task, beset by bureaucracy. However, you can set up a bitcoin address in seconds, no questions asked, and with no fees payable.

3. It’s anonymous

Well, kind of. Users can hold multiple bitcoin addresses, and they aren’t linked to names, addresses, or other personally identifying information. However…

4. It’s completely transparent

…Bitcoin stores details of every single transaction that ever happened in the network in a huge version of a general ledger, called the blockchain. The blockchain tells all.

If you have a publicly used bitcoin address, anyone can tell how many Bitcoins are stored at that address. They just don’t know that it’s yours.

According to David Zimbeck there are measures that people can take to make their activities more opaque on the Bitcoin network, though, such as not using the same Bitcoin addresses consistently, and not transferring lots of Bitcoin to a single address. Also trading from one currency to another is a simple way to remain anonymous.

5. Transaction fees are miniscule

Your bank may charge you a £10 fee for international transfers. Bitcoin doesn’t.

6. Its fast

You can send money anywhere and it will arrive minutes later, as soon as the Bitcoin network processes the payment.

Simple approach to secure wallets

Article written by Riya Thakur

BitHalo and its sister-client, BlackHalo, allow for the creation of secure multisig wallets that then form the basis for the platform’s extensive smart contract applications. It was the first software in the world to use and implement multisignature wallets.

Decentralized contracting

BitHalo’s design carries implications for peer-to-peer and marketplace-style e-commerce, enabling buyers and sellers to exchange goods and services using secure, unbreakable contracts. As well, BitHalo gives parties who may not trust or even know each other the ability to engage in fair exchange without the risk of financial loss or fraud.

In order to enforce accountability between two parties that want to establish a contract, BitHalo requires proportional escrow deposits that act as a form of personal insurance.

As shown below, the user interface allows those drafting the contract to set the amount they want to put in escrow and the length of the contract duration. Each party puts in an equal amount, making one side just accountable for the success as the other.

As David Zimbeck explained:

“Lets say you wanted to employ somebody at $30 an hour. Employees have been known to not work hard and have been known to flake and conversely in many cases, employers don’t pay and hold power over employees. So to solve this both employee and employer put up $60 in escrow (a joint account with two keys). Then the employer can pay on the hour or on the milestone for work completed. If either party tries to cheat the deal then they actually lose money.”

BitHalo is set for an expansive period that will see the completion of BlackHalo’s public beta and the completed development of the BitHalo program. Once finished, the application of smart contracts will be available to both bitcoin and blackcoin users.

Another aspect of the overall project is NightTrader. Currently under active development and part of the BlackHalo beta, the decentralized exchange and trading platform gives users a marketplace for conducting contracts and performing trades of any two currencies.

According to David Zimbeck, NightTrader is an idea of decentralized exchange based on microtrading. Similar to his proposal for barter. Both parties form a Halo contract in Blackcoin and then trade smaller amounts of any two currencies of their choice. A simple yet elegant solution that does not require trust.

For more information about David Zimbeck click here or visit at: https://twitter.com/dzimbeck

How to Buy a Bitcoin

Article written by Riya Thakur

There is no doubt in the fact that bitcoin trading is slowly taking the world of trading by storm. There is some hype, which says that bitcoin trading can be dangerous and difficult but honestly, it is a lot easier to get bitcoins, even easier than you think it is.

David Zimbeck provided below some simple steps to buy bitcoin:

• Find a Wallet

First of all, you have to find an e-wallet such as Coinbase or BitHalo. It is basically a store or a provider that offers software from where bitcoins can be bought, stored, and traded. You can easily run it on your desktop, laptop, and even smartphones.

• Sign Up

Next, you have to sign up with e-wallet. You will make an account that will let you store your bitcoins. The e-wallet trader will offer you a chance to convert your local currency into bitcoin. Therefore, the more local currency you have, the more bitcoins you can purchase.

• Connect Your Bank Account

After signing up, the trader has to connect his bank account with his trading account. For this purpose, some verification steps are to be performed. Once the verifications are performed, then you can start purchasing bitcoins and get started.

• Buying and Selling

Once you are done with your first purchase, your bank account will be debited and you will get the bitcoins. Selling is done in the same way purchasing is done. Keep in mind that the price of bitcoin changes time after time. The e-wallet you are working with will show you the current exchange rate. You should be aware of the rate before you buy.

Mining bitcoin

There is another way through which you can purchase bitcoins. This process is known as mining. Mining of bitcoins is similar to discovering gold from a mine. However, as mining gold is time consuming and a lot of effort is required, the same is the case with mining bitcoins. You have to solve a series of mathematical calculations that are designed by computer algorithms to win bitcoins for free. This is nearly impossible for a newbie. Traders have to open a series of padlocks in order to solve the mathematical calculations. In this procedure, you do not have to involve any kind of money to win bitcoins, as it is simply brainwork that lets you win bitcoins for free. The miners have to run software in order to win bitcoins with mining.

David Zimbeck says that Bitcoin is a digital currency that is here to stay for a long time. Ever since it has been introduced, the trading of bitcoin has increased and it is on the rise even today. The value of bitcoin has also increased with its popularity. It is a new type of currency, which many traders are finding attractive just because of its earning potentials. At some places, bitcoins are even being used for purchasing commodities. Many online retailers are accepting bitcoin for the real time purchases too. There is a lot of scope for bitcoin in the coming era so buying bitcoins will not be a bad option.

For more details about David Zimbeck visit at: http://bitcoinwarrior.net/2014/09/talk-david-zimbeck-bitcoin-2-0-bithalo-blackhalo-nighttrader/

Merits of Bitcoins

Article written by Riya Thakur

Most people have heard of the term Bitcoin but don’t have a clear idea of what it really is. Simply defined, Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer to peer, digital currency system, designed to give online users the ability to process transactions via digital unit of exchange known as Bitcoins. In other words, it is a virtual currency.

The Bitcoin system was created in the year 2009 by an undisclosed programmer(s). Since then, Bitcoin has garnered huge attention as well as controversy as an alternative to US dollar, Euros and commodity currencies such as gold and silver.

As a new and growing virtual currency, Bitcoin has certain distinct advantages over the conventional government flat currencies. David Zimbeck explains following benefits that you will enjoy when using Bitcoin

1) No Taxation

When you make purchases via dollars, euros or any other government flat currency, you have to pay an addition sum of money to the government as tax. Every purchasable item has its own designated tax rate. However, when you’re making a purchase through Bitcoin, sales taxes are not added to your purchase. This is deemed as a legal form of tax evasion and is one of the major advantages of being a Bitcoin user. Some places do however now require a commodity tax if you plan on selling large amounts of coins for fiat.

2) Flexible Online Payments

David Zimbeck says that Bitcoin is an online payment system and just like any other such system, the users of Bitcoin have the luxury of paying for their coins from any corner of the world that has an internet connection. This means that you could be lying on your bed and purchasing coins instead of taking the pain of travelling to a specific bank or store to get your work done.

3) Minimal Transaction Fees

Fees and exchange costs are a part and parcel of standard wire transfers and international purchases. Bitcoin is not monitored or moderated by any intermediary institution or government agency. Therefore, the costs of transacting are kept very low unlike international transactions made via conventional currencies.

4) Concealed User Identity

All Bitcoin transactions are discrete, or in other words Bitcoin gives you the option of User anonymity. Bitcoins are similar to cash only purchases in the sense that your transactions can never be tracked back to you and these purchases are never connected with your personal identity. As a matter of fact, the Bitcoin address that is created for user purchases is never the same for two different transactions.

5) No outside interventions

“One of the greatest advantages of Bitcoin is that it eliminates third party interruptions. This means that governments, banks and other financial intermediaries have no authority whatsoever to disrupt user transactions or freeze a Bitcoin account” David Zimbeck. As mentioned before, Bitcoin is based strictly on a peer to peer system. Hence, the users of Bitcoin enjoy greater liberty when making purchases with Bitcoins than they do when using conventional national currencies.

What Is Bitcoin, and Is It Right for Your Business?

Article written by Riya Thakur

OK, so what’s Bitcoin?

David Zimbeck  explains that it’s not an actual coin, it’s “cryptocurrency,” a digital form of payment that is produced (“mined”) by lots of people worldwide. It allows peer-to-peer transactions instantly, worldwide, for free or at very low cost.

This currency is not backed by a tangible commodity (such as gold or silver); bitcoins are traded online which makes them a commodity in themselves.

Bitcoin is an open-source product, accessible by anyone who is a user. All you need is an email address, Internet access, and money to get started.

Where does it come from?

Bitcoin is mined on a distributed computer network of users running specialized software; the network solves certain mathematical proofs, and searches for a particular data sequence (“block”) that produces a particular pattern when the BTC algorithm is applied to it. A match produces a bitcoin. It’s complex and time- and energy-consuming.

According to David Zimbeck only 21 million bitcoins are ever to be mined (about 11 million are currently in circulation). The math problems the network computers solve get progressively more difficult to keep the mining operations and supply in check.

This network also validates all the transactions through cryptography.

How does Bitcoin work?

Internet users transfer digital assets (bits) to each other on a network. There is no online bank; rather, Bitcoin has been described as an Internet-wide distributed ledger. Users buy Bitcoin with cash or by selling a product or service for Bitcoin. Bitcoin wallets store and use this digital currency. Users may sell out of this virtual ledger by trading their Bitcoin to someone else who wants in. Anyone can do this, anywhere in the world.

There are smartphone apps for conducting mobile Bitcoin transactions and Bitcoin exchanges are populating the Internet.

David Zimbeck explaining how Bitcoin is valued…

Bitcoin is not held or controlled by a financial institution; it is completely decentralized. Unlike real-world money it cannot be devalued by governments or banks.

What are its benefits?

There are benefits to consumers and merchants that want to use this payment option.

1. Fast transactions – Bitcoin is transferred instantly over the Internet.
2. No fees/low fees — Unlike credit cards, Bitcoin can be used for free or very low fees. Without the centralized institution as middle man, there are no authorizations (and fees) required. This improves profit margins sales.
3. Eliminates fraud risk -Only the Bitcoin owner can send payment to the intended recipient, who is the only one who can receive it. The network knows the transfer has occurred and transactions are validated; they cannot be challenged or taken back. This is big for online merchants who are often subject to credit card processors’ assessments of whether or not a transaction is fraudulent, or businesses that pay the high price of credit card chargebacks.
4. Data is secure — As we have seen with recent hacks on national retailers’ payment processing systems, the Internet is not always a secure place for private data.With Bitcoin, users do not give up private information
5. Convenient payment system — Merchants can use Bitcoin entirely as a payment system; they do not have to hold any Bitcoin currency since Bitcoin can be converted to dollars. Consumers or merchants can trade in and out of Bitcoin and other currencies at any time.
6. International payments – Bitcoin is used around the world; e-commerce merchants and service providers can easily accept international payments, which open up new potential marketplaces for them.
7. Easy to track — The network tracks and permanently logs every transaction in the Bitcoin block chain (the database). In the case of possible wrongdoing, it is easier for law enforcement officials to trace these transactions.
8. Micropayments are possible – Bitcoins can be divided down to one one-hundred-millionth, so running small payments of a dollar or less becomes a free or near-free transaction. This could be a real boon for convenience stores, coffee shops, and subscription-based websites (videos, publications).

How Bitcoin Works

Article written by Riya Thakur

Bitcoins are a decentralized form of crypto currency. Meaning, they are not regulated by a financial institution or the government. As such, unlike a traditional bank account, you do not need a long list paperwork such as an ID in order for you to establish what’s known as a bitcoin wallet. The bitcoin wallet is what you will use to access your bitcoins and to send bitcoins to other individuals.

How to Setup an Account

You can acquire a bitcoin wallet from a bitcoin broker such as Coinbase. When you open up a wallet through a certified broker, you are given a bitcoin address which is a series of numbers and letters, similarly to an account number for a bank account and a private key which is a series of numbers and letters as well, which serve as your password.

How Does Bitcoin Work as an Anonymous Payment Processor

You can do 3 things with bitcoins, you can make a purchase, send money anonymously to someone or utilize it as an investment. More and more merchants have been accepting bitcoins as a form of payment. By utilizing bitcoins instead of cash, you are essentially making that purchase anonymously. The same thing goes for sending money, based on the fact that you do not have to submit a mountain of payment in order for you to establish a bitcoin anonymously, essentially you can send money to someone else anonymously.

How Does Bitcoin Work as an Investment

According to David Zimbeck the price of a bitcoin fluctuates from time to time. Just to put things in perspective, back in the beginning of 2013, the average price of a bitcoin was approximately $400 per bitcoin, but by the end of 2013, the price for bitcoin rose to over $1000. This meant that if you had 2 bitcoins worth $800 in the beginning of 2013 and you stored it as an investment by the end of 2013 those two bitcoins would have been worth over $2000 instead of $800. Many people store bitcoins due to the fact that the value of it fluctuates.

Bitcoin Casino and Poker Sites

Due to the anonymity of bitcoin the gambling industry has taken up bitcoin as a payment method. Both bitcoin casinos and bitcoin poker sites are coming to life and offering their players to make deposits play with bitcoin at the tables and withdraw directly to their bitcoin wallet. This means that there are no taxes or possibilities for government control. Much like a regular Nevada casino where you don’t need to register anywhere and all your transactions are anonymous.

How Do You Send Bitcoin

In order for you to pay for goods and services or to send bitcoins to an individual, 3 things are needed. Your bitcoin address, your private key and the individual’s bitcoin address. From that point, through your bitcoin wallet, you will put 3 pieces of information, which are: input, balance and output. Input refers to your address, balance refers to the amount of bitcoins you are going to send and output is the recipient’s address.

For more details about David Zimbeck visit at: https://twitter.com/dzimbeck

About the Bitcoin Market

Article written by Riya Thakur

For those not familiar with what bitcoin is; it is basically a digital currency for which no banking system or even a government is needed. Open source software is used to operate the transactions. Many people are investing money in the bitcoin market because ever since it was introduced in 2009, it has become extremely popular among traders and investors. Even many merchants have started to accept bitcoins. For example, you can buy a web hosting service or even order a pizza with your digital currency.

David Zimbeck  says that when you are trading in the bitcoin market, you can trade anonymously. The currency is not tied to any particular country and there are even no regulations designed for it. Even small businesses are using bitcoins because there is no transaction fee involved in the exchange. If you have some savings, you can invest that money to buy bitcoins and to gain profit because the value of this digital currency is predicted to go up.

The market places where digital currencies are exchanged are called bitcoin exchanges. They are the places where people buy and sell bitcoins by using the currencies of their respective countries. You simply need a wallet software, open an account, and then buy bitcoins from the money you have in your account in order to become ready for the exchanges. People are even transferring digital currencies through their Smartphones. There are mobile apps available for this purpose. You can either purchase bitcoins from online exchanges or get them from special ATMs.

Mining is another option used in the digital currency market. It is a process in which traders have to solve mathematical puzzles to win bitcoins. It’s a tough and time taking process, but if you get it right then you will win 25 bitcoins. This can just happen in 10 minutes.

Once you are into the trading game, you will get to store your digital currencies in a digital wallet. It will be your virtual bank account where you will store all your bitcoins. It is not necessary for you to disclose your name while you are exchanging bitcoins. You will trade with your bitcoin ID. It is meant to ensure privacy of the transactions. So, you can buy or sell anything and nobody can trace your transaction. The digital currency transactions are verified through cryptography. It is a series of mathematical algorithms, which can only be solved by powerful computing. That is what secures the system. So trading in the bitcoin market is purely safe and legal.

The system and the market itself have perfect control on how much bitcoins are being created. The system adjusts itself by making the mathematical problems difficult to solve and hence, only specific amount of bitcoins are awarded.

Bitcoin is not just some currency to invest your money in. In the near future, more and more businessmen are going to use it instead of credit cards just to avoid the transaction fee. It’s going to be widely used form of currency in the coming days.

To get more information about David Zimbeck visit at: http://bitcoinwarrior.net/2014/09/talk-david-zimbeck-bitcoin-2-0-bithalo-blackhalo-nighttrader/

About David Zimbeck

Article written by Riya Thakur

David Zimbeck, the creator of BitHalo and BlackHalo, is a man who’s worn many hats. David started out competing in chess tournaments and in one tournament in Europe took down 10 grandmasters. He also has his own film company and was one of the pirates in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2. As a real estate agent, David learned the ins-and-outs of escrow services, which would later help him understand escrow and develop his key Bitcoin and Blackcoin innovations.

BitHalo and BlackHalo are multipurpose wallets for Bitcoin and Blackcoin respectively that allow people to do now many of the things that have been long promised by Bitcoin 2.0: smart contracts, escrow, bartering, etc. David says that BitHalo and BlackHalo, which are already complete and ready to use, will revolutionize the crypto-currency world, fulfilling the promise of larger, more famous projects like Etherium, but without the blockchain bloat.

“Blackcoin is more secure than other coins, like Peercoin, in my opinion. It’s also the first 100% POS coin, which I believe is a good test of the security of the POS system. Pavel, the developer of Blackcoin, fixed some of the security flaws inherent to Peercoin with a kind of POS 2.0, something that’s been overlooked up to now. Because of its innovations, Blackcoin has been used as the basis for other altcoins twice as much as Litecoin, and this, in my opinion, makes it the most popular altcoin” David Zimbeck.

BitHalo as explained by David Zimbeck is that Halo is software that allows individuals to create unbreakable contracts and buy goods on fully decentralized markets. Our software can implement every single digital currency thus making it independent from one coin and easy to adapt to a changing and prosperous environment. Halo has recently revealed its newest feature: decentralized markets. You can compare these markets to eBay, but showing lots of improvements: Our markets don’t need a server as they are fully decentralized, users don’t have to store their personal information on a website, but keep it on their own computer (no data theft), there won’t be any chargeback and the currencies you can use on the markets are Bitcoin, BlackCoin and BitBay.

BlackCoin a NEW form OF CURRENCY by David Zimbeck

BlackCoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency with a distributed, decentralized public ledger; that unlike ones held at traditional banks, are view-able and easily audited by the people.

The ability to manage transactions and issue additional BlackCoins is all handled by the network of users utilizing BlackCoin. Because the BlackCoin network is run by the people, holders of BlackCoin receive a 1% yearly interest through a process called staking. This is more environmentally friendly than mining.

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