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When 21 Inc. introduced its first product, the 21 Bitcoin Computer, it was targeted at developers who could use the company’s hardware and software tools to create applications built on Bitcoin infrastructure. And since the company launched the product in November, there has been a vibrant community in the company’s Slack group , with developers exchanging project ideas and tips.

Hackathons are one of the most common events that developers participate in because it creates an exciting, competitive atmosphere. Last night, for close to nine hours, developers from the 21 Bitcoin community participated in the first ever hackathon.

Boilerplate

Leading up to the hackathon, several of the participating developers offered up a $400 bounty for the first person to build a way to order pizza through the Bitcoin Computer. This challenge was significant because the first recorded purchase with bitcoin was a transaction to buy two pizzas. Ultimately, the team realized that the Dominos APIs were antiquated, so pizza was ordered the old fashioned way.

The hackathon started with the goal of creating a graphical user interface to allow developers to quickly get started with the 21 Bitcoin Computer, also known as a boilerplate.

“If you think of it like a starter kit for people that want to make apps on the 21 BTC computer. It’s a really quick way to get up and running to build an app that sort of leverages the 21 libraries and brings up that functionality into a GUI that you can feel and touch,” said Mason Borda, a software engineer at BitGo.

Right now, when a developer wants to use the 21 Bitcoin Computer, he has to use a command line interface. For many, that’s ideal; however, for other developers, having a nice graphical user interface makes it easier to get started.

Bitcoin Trades Power for Privacy

After getting started on some tasks for the graphical user interface, the conversation changed from projects to the philosophy of bitcoin; not as an economic innovation, but a technological one.

Right now, when we visit a website, we are inundated with ads and cookies, resulting in a slower Internet. Bitcoin creates the potential for a user to reclaim their privacy so that they don’t have to be tracked around the Internet.

“In the developing world, you will see all kinds of opportunity to open up new commerce and create micropayments for digital services that weren’t previously possible,” said Will Binns, a member of the 21 team.

But it was another developer—who requested to remain anonymous—that focused on how commerce was going to become bidirectional once bitcoin became more widely adopted. Whereas now, users are tracked, in the future, consumers will be able to charge companies for their information. “The companies will ask for information to make the apps stronger and the consumers can demand payment for that,” he predicted.

Git Money Bounties

But all of this discussion ultimately culminated in the creation of a brand new project called Git Money. As the night went on, one of the users brought up the potential of crowdfunding projects. His hope was that people might be able to fund other people’s ideas around the world.

This concept evolved into Git Money , which converts issues on GitHub into payable bounties. A bounty could be anything from a piece of code, to a graphic or an article. Every issue that is created on a GitHub repository could have a bounty associated with it. Utilizing a bitcoin address, anyone from around the web could help crowdfund it if they felt that the issue was important.

Another use case would be a repository owner offering a bounty for a particular issue to be fixed. A company might not have the development resources for a project, so the company could post a bounty on their repository with people sharing their code.

“It’s not about where you are from as a developer. It’s about how good your code is. With this system, your code speaks for itself,” said one of the participating developers.

With each pull request submitted to that issue, the contributor would include their bitcoin address. If that request was merged into the project, the bitcoin in the issue address would be transferred to the bitcoin address of the contributor automatically.

Ultimately, the goal of a hackathon is for developers to get together, share ideas, and work on projects. And last night, developers from all over the country and world shared their ideas on projects that could be built over the 21 Bitcoin Computer.

Jacob Cohen Donnelly is a consultant and journalist in the Bitcoin space. He runs a weekly newsletter about bitcoin called Crypto Brief.

The post 21 Bitcoin Community Holds First Hackathon; Develops Bounty Project Git Money appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin Press Release: Blockchain Development Platform Tendermint Partners With The Vanbex Group. TENDERMINT TURNS FOCUS TO MARKETING AND PR Vancouver, CAN – Tendermint, an open source blockchain platform project, is moving into deployment phase with the help of top Bitcoin 2.0 marketing and public relations firm, The Vanbex Group. Tendermint removes the previous complexities associated […]

The post Tendermint Gets Ready for Launch appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Former bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn has issued a follow-up post in response to his controversial farewell letter to the industry.

Coinsecure, an early Bitcoin-based startup in India that functions as a trading platform and a secure wallet is looking to scale its operations in India and beyond. The company has announced Elizabeth McCauley, as its Head of Global Business Development. Bitcoin has previously seen its regulatory challenges in the second most populated country in the […]

The post Indian Bitcoin Startup Ramps up with a New Global Head for Business Development appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

CoinDesk interviews LHV Bank's new cryptocurrency product manager to learn more about its blockchain experimentations.

The Japanese government plans to begin disassembling parts of the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant next year, beginning with the removal of some 566 fuel rods from the crippled number 3 reactor. But rather than send human technicians into the radiation-...

This post is by Evander Smart.

Freedom of association. Privacy. Free speech. Basic rights that many of us take for granted are under increased governmental scrutiny in today’s digital age. Private emails, phone calls and now web-based video calls are all routinely inspected in the name of national security, at least in Western cultures like the U.S. and Great Britain. The Guardian reports that Skype has provided “backdoors” to state-run surveillance programs like PRISM for years. In light of these disclosures, the tech and cryptography communities have stepped in to develop encrypted alternatives designed to preserve privacy, such as encrypted messaging like Telegram and Signal or financial privacy with Bitcoin and the blockchain.

BitPhone has started the new year off with an encrypted video “Web Call” feature that may help users beat the Skype surveillance blues, letting freedom ring once again.

Via BitPhone’s encrypted Web Call system, Bitcoin Magazine caught up with founder Gavin Stephens. The discussion focused on how quickly BitPhone has grown since the public launch of Bitphone Beta in July. With the new year, the company has already unveiled new BitPhone features based on customer demand. For example, besides encrypted video web calls, BitPhone now allows users to pay with altcoins in addition to bitcoins to stay in touch wherever users have an online connection.

“BitPhone calls have been placed to over 55 countries, and users have paid for calls with Bitcoin and a variety of cryptocurrencies, thanks to our ShapeShift.io integration,”Stephens told Bitcoin Magazine .“Many users were concerned about their privacy because public switched telephone networks are susceptible to snooping and eavesdropping. Our new Web Call feature connects users peer-to-peer and enables fully encrypted audio and video conversations. These Web Calls can be an audio conference bridge, a streaming video platform, a paid video broadcast or a private conversation. Your video calls never go to any server, so they cannot be monitored or eavesdropped on.”

Web Calls are currently two cents per minute for the caller, and the caller can set the receiver to either get the call free or be charged, a benefit for business applications. This means Bitphone users can build a business around a pay-per-minute or pay-per-call service. Whether it is a legal practice that wants to provide a preliminary consultation to tech startups or a new business with partners and customers on opposite sides of the globe, the possibilities are endless for this sort of paid, online functionality.

User safety and security are paramount in the value equation, or callers might as well use a centralized service like Skype or Google Hangouts. The contents of Bitphone’s Web Calls are not accessible by any potential government agency since these encrypted files don’t have a centralized server, much like Bitcoin.

“Collecting Bitcoin from Web callers is an excellent way to make money without subjecting your users to endless commercials and ads,” says Stephens. “We’ve also added a Web Call widget that enables users to call you using Bitphone technology from your own website. Web visitors can simply click a ‘Click here to call me’ link that uses their browser to call your private number. For a limited time, all Bitphone users who register and maintain a private URL will get free Web Call hosting for life.”

Bitphone’s fully encrypted phone calls and web video calls seem like a great option for the growing digital currency community, either for business or personal use. Who couldn’t use a little more privacy?

The post BitPhone Offers Encrypted Voice and Video Calls Paid with Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This post is by Evander Smart.

Freedom of association. Privacy. Free speech. Basic rights that many of us take for granted are under increased governmental scrutiny in today’s digital age. Private emails, phone calls and now web-based video calls are all routinely inspected in the name of national security, at least in Western cultures like the U.S. and Great Britain. The Guardian reports that Skype has provided “backdoors” to state-run surveillance programs like PRISM for years. In light of these disclosures, the tech and cryptography communities have stepped in to develop encrypted alternatives designed to preserve privacy, such as encrypted messaging like Telegram and Signal or financial privacy with Bitcoin and the blockchain.

BitPhone has started the new year off with an encrypted video “Web Call” feature that may help users beat the Skype surveillance blues, letting freedom ring once again.

Via BitPhone’s encrypted Web Call system, Bitcoin Magazine caught up with founder Gavin Stephens. The discussion focused on how quickly BitPhone has grown since the public launch of Bitphone Beta in July. With the new year, the company has already unveiled new BitPhone features based on customer demand. For example, besides encrypted video web calls, BitPhone now allows users to pay with altcoins in addition to bitcoins to stay in touch wherever users have an online connection.

“BitPhone calls have been placed to over 55 countries, and users have paid for calls with Bitcoin and a variety of cryptocurrencies, thanks to our ShapeShift.io integration,”Stephens told Bitcoin Magazine .“Many users were concerned about their privacy because public switched telephone networks are susceptible to snooping and eavesdropping. Our new Web Call feature connects users peer-to-peer and enables fully encrypted audio and video conversations. These Web Calls can be an audio conference bridge, a streaming video platform, a paid video broadcast or a private conversation. Your video calls never go to any server, so they cannot be monitored or eavesdropped on.”

Web Calls are currently two cents per minute for the caller, and the caller can set the receiver to either get the call free or be charged, a benefit for business applications. This means Bitphone users can build a business around a pay-per-minute or pay-per-call service. Whether it is a legal practice that wants to provide a preliminary consultation to tech startups or a new business with partners and customers on opposite sides of the globe, the possibilities are endless for this sort of paid, online functionality.

User safety and security are paramount in the value equation, or callers might as well use a centralized service like Skype or Google Hangouts. The contents of Bitphone’s Web Calls are not accessible by any potential government agency since these encrypted files don’t have a centralized server, much like Bitcoin.

“Collecting Bitcoin from Web callers is an excellent way to make money without subjecting your users to endless commercials and ads,” says Stephens. “We’ve also added a Web Call widget that enables users to call you using Bitphone technology from your own website. Web visitors can simply click a ‘Click here to call me’ link that uses their browser to call your private number. For a limited time, all Bitphone users who register and maintain a private URL will get free Web Call hosting for life.”

Bitphone’s fully encrypted phone calls and web video calls seem like a great option for the growing digital currency community, either for business or personal use. Who couldn’t use a little more privacy?

The post BitPhone Offers Encrypted Voice and Video Calls Paid with Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin price continues trading sideways as the market ponders its next move. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3-hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a $29 discount using the code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 15h00 UTC OKCoin 3Months 1-Hour Chart From the […]

The post Bitcoin Price Goes East appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

If Bitcoin adheres to its Libertarian roots then it is doomed to failure. All is not yet lost, but the community as a whole must now make the most important choice of its short history: ideology or survival? There are 5.7 billion reasons to choose wisely.

The chairman of Russia's Investigative Committee has said bitcoin should be banned before it reaches widespread use in the country.

For the first time in the cryptocurrency’s existence, the total network hash rate of Bitcoin just crossed beyond 1000 PH/s, charting an entirely new milestone in mining rates. It has been a turbulent week for bitcoin. The cryptocurrency saw its price fall last week. Marvel Studios saw the term ‘Civil War’ snatched away by the […]

The post Bitcoin Mining Rate Sets a New Milestone Ignoring Bitcoin Gloom appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A high-profile Bitcoin developer says the crypto-currency has failed and he will no longer take part in its development.

The Leonardo da Vinci Engineering School (ESILV), a renowned academic institution in Paris, France will start certifying and issuing diplomas using Bitcoin’s blockchain, as early as April 2016. The École Supérieure d’Ingénieurs Léonard de Vinci, a top engineering school in France will soon be issuing diplomas certified by the blockchain. In doing so, the institution […]

The post Parisian Engineering School Will Certify Diplomas on the Blockchain appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Ryan Selkis of CoinDesk and Digital Currency Group asks 5 questions of bitcoin for 2016.

As the situation surrounding Crypsy continues to unfold, we saw the company post a blog entry stating that the majority of the funds within the company were stolen over a year ago and that that company  has been insolvent for quite some time for a variety of reasons, one mainly being the theft of 13,000 […]

The post Lawsuit Against Cryptsy To Proceed As Planned Despite Theft Claim appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Good morning! Here's what you need to know on Monday.

1. Three American contractors have been kidnapped by "militias" in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the pan-Arab news channel Al Arabiya reported on Sunday, citing its own sources. The Americans went missing two days ago, said a senior security official in Baghdad, CNN reports.

2. A bombshell report has been dropped on the world of men's tennis with a BuzzFeed News/BBC investigation uncovering secret files that point to widespread match-fixing in the sport and accusations that officials in the sport have largely ignored the problem.

3. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning and said that he didn't believe David Cameron would ever choose to fire nuclear weapons.

4. Crude oil, after falling to a fresh 12-year low on Friday, has continued to slide in early Asian trade on Monday. At one point earlier in the session front-month Brent crude futures – the global benchmark – tumbled as low as $27.67 a barrel before bouncing in recent trade.

5. The two largest American and European trade groups have warned of "enormous" consequences for thousands of businesses and millions of users if Brussels and Washington fail to wrap up talks on a data transfer pact by the end of the month.

6. A disillusioned high-profile developer has quit bitcoin —claiming in an explosive blog post that the "experiment ... has failed." Mike Hearn had been a prominent part of the controversial digital currency's community for years.

7. Share prices in the energy-rich Gulf states nosedived Sunday following the sharp decline in oil prices and the expected rise in Iranian crude exports after the lifting of sanctions. The plunge in the first day of trading in the Muslim week also follows heavy losses in global bourses on Friday, when Gulf exchanges were closed for the weekend.

8. Burkina Faso began three days of national mourning Sunday and the president said security would be stepped up in the capital and the country's borders after al-Qaida militants killed at least 28 people in an attack on a hotel and cafe popular with foreigners.

9. The richest one percent of the world's population now own more than the rest of us combined, aid group Oxfam said Monday, on the eve of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

10. A man left brain dead after a drug trial in northwest France died on Sunday, said the hospital where he was being treated. The Rennes hospital said in a statement that five other volunteers were in stable condition after they were admitted last week.

And finally ... A former MI5 agent told us why it's so easy for Islamic State terrorists to move around without being noticed.

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NOW WATCH: The median sale price of a Manhattan apartment is now $1.15 million

 “Let’s make a country,” my friend Rich said. He was serious. He and I were talking outside of a bitcoin conference in New York. It was April, 2014 and we were inside the Javits Center, the glass abomination on the Hudson that event goers hated. It was raining wildly and the crypto-folks were bumping into each other as they milled about talking about the future of money. I… Read More