ChangeTip Announces ChangeTip Wallet, a Blockchain-powered Decentralized Platform

February 26th, 2016: San Francisco, CA — Today, social tipping industry leaderChangeTip announced ChangeTip Wallet, an exciting addition to their suite of tools that make Bitcoin, the most popular digital technology, easy and convenient to use.  The Silicon-Valley company boasts an impressive lineup of respected investors, including Gil Penchina, Pantera Capital, and 500 Startups, and hasraised over $ 3.5 million in funding to pursue micropayments and Bitcoin technology.

 

ChangeTip Wallet users enjoy the convenience of ChangeTip’s social media integrations to instantly send money to friends, family, and even people users don’t know personally. The cross-section of social media and finance gives users an easy way to transact online. The ability to send payments over social media without requiring complex payment information is a huge benefit of usingChangeTip.  Powered by Bitcoin, ChangeTip is used to express appreciation,unlock ad-free content, deliver delightful well-wishes, repay small debts, reward excellent content, and also introduce others to Bitcoin.  However, many Bitcoin users in the ChangeTip community have been asking for the platforms’ decentralization and it is for this reason that the company is now offering a decentralized ChangeTip product, which allows users to manage their own private keys and to more fully experience the many benefits that bitcoin offers. The product is currently in closed beta and will be available by invitation only.  Interested parties can join the list by entering their e-mail address here.

ChangeTip Wallet is a decentralized version of the popular, centralized product,ChangeTip.  ChangeTip’s social media integrations make the service the easiest and most convenient way to move money on the Internet. Unlike users of ChangeTip, Users of ChangeTip Wallet will hold their own private keys, and be able to initiate and approve payments using a web and mobile app. Users of ChangeTip Wallet will enjoy more financial freedom as compared to ChangeTip, as account sizes, transaction amounts and user locations are unrestricted and unlimited. Unlike ChangeTip, users from any place can use the service and send any amount they wish.  “We’re really excited to launch something that’s pure bitcoin,” said Nick Sullivan, Founder and CEO of ChangeCoin.  “Many in our community like ChangeTip, but shy away from the service because it’s centralized.  We talked for a while about creating this product, and ultimately, we decided it was something we really wanted to build.”

The first release of ChangeTip Wallet is being demonstrated in-person to limited and select parties February 27th at a resort somewhere in North America.

 

ChangeTip Wallet is offered to the community as a product for the community to use, and will be used as a way to display the incredible benefits of Bitcoin technology to people unfamiliar with the system. The company’s main goal is to introduce a product that fills a need in the ecosystem, that is useful, fun and easy to use, that keeps partnerships in mind by allowing others in the industry to leverage and integrate with the technology, and that incorporates thoughtful feedback from the community into its development as a product and service. The purpose of the product is to introduce people to Bitcoin.

ChangeCoin has been exploring the feasibility of launching on a Lightning Network payment channel or a sidechain, and will continue to explore and experiment with emerging technology.  Given the benefits of remaining on-chain and the positive developments in the Bitcoin industry, the timing is right to build a decentralized platform, empowering users to hold and manage their own funds.

About ChangeCoin

ChangeCoin is a company focused on providing fast, frictionless payments to anyone or any organization in the world. ChangeCoin’s flagship product,ChangeTip,  allows people to express appreciation and pay other individuals or organizations via monetary “tips.” These tips are sent within the context of each social platform and thus allows users to transact seamlessly in the normal course of their Facebook, Slack, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and other online interactions. In this way, ChangeTip represents not only the next generation of financial payment infrastructure, but also the next iteration of the Internet of Value.

Built using Bitcoin blockchain technology, the company’s platform allows instant transactions between two parties without inconveniencing either user with formal sign-up processes and days-long waiting periods for bank account and other traditional user validations. Learn more about ChangeTip on AngelList and at .

ChangeTip Wallet is offered to the community as a product for the community to use, and will be used as a way to display the incredible benefits of Bitcoin technology to people unfamiliar with the system. The company’s main goal is to introduce a product that fills a need in the ecosystem, that is useful, fun and easy to use, that keeps partnerships in mind by allowing others in the industry to leverage and integrate with the technology, and that incorporates thoughtful feedback from the community into its development as a product and service. The purpose of the product is to introduce people to Bitcoin.

ChangeCoin has been exploring the feasibility of launching on a Lightning Network payment channel or a sidechain, and will continue to explore and experiment with emerging technology.  Given the benefits of remaining on-chain and the positive developments in the Bitcoin industry, the timing is right to build a decentralized platform, empowering users to hold and manage their own funds.

Built using Bitcoin blockchain technology, the company’s platform allows instant transactions between two parties without inconveniencing either user with formal sign-up processes and days-long waiting periods for bank account and other traditional user validations.

Learn more about ChangeTip on AngelList and at .

 

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Why the Great Firewall of China Is Causing Serious Issues for Bitcoin Miners

What’s wrong with increasing the block size limit? This is the question that a portion of the Bitcoin community has been asking almost nonstop since the controversy around this possible alteration to the protocol went into hyperdrive last year.

In a recent appearance at Bitcoin Meetup Switzerland, Bitcoin Core Contributor Jonas Schnelli covered at least one possible issue with raising the block size limit too quickly: the effect larger blocks have on wasted resources for miners.

It should be noted that Schnelli has decided not to take an official, public stance on the block size debate.

In Bitcoin Mining, Every Second Counts

A key point to understand about bitcoin mining is every second of hashing affects one’s ability to turn a profit. New blocks are not received by all nodes on the network instantaneously, which means miners are, at least at times, wasting resources by building on an old block that is no longer the most recent. After all, a miner can only build on top of someone else’s found block after he knows that block exists.

Schnelli explained this issue during his recent talk in Zurich:

“There are consequences with 2-megabyte blocks. Chinese miners — they are now [for] 2- megabyte blocks, but maybe it will turn out to be a problem for them . . . Every second really counts . . . When you mine a block that is no longer valid and you don’t get the information that a new block is here, you’re wasting lots of energy. If it’s just ten seconds you mine on the wrong block, you lose energy, and you lose coins in the end. That’s why, with Chinese miners [especially], every second counts, and [with] 2-megabyte [blocks], it’s twice the bandwidth you need.”

This is not the first time a Bitcoin Core contributor has talked about the issue of block propagation in terms of the mining process. Multiple developers discussed this problem in interviews during the leadup to Scaling Bitcoin Montreal.

Do Bigger Blocks Mean Bigger Profits for Bigger Miners?

In the past, Bitcoin Core Contributor Peter Todd also has discussed this issue. During his presentation at Scaling Bitcoin Montreal, Todd explained how lousy block propagation becomes more problematic when the Great Firewall of China is factored into the equation.

Due to the way the Great Firewall works, miners in China often find out about new blocks before miners in other countries (especially across the world in the United States). Since China also currently holds a majority of the hashing power on the network, miners who are not in China end up losing out on a bit of revenue. This is due to the fact that, on average, miners outside of China will hear about new blocks later than miners inside of China, which means non-Chinese miners waste more resources on blocks that have already been found.

Todd pointed to some past research to illustrate his point during his Scaling Bitcoin talk:

“We’ve done various simulation results. A big one that works out very well is Pieter Wuille’s work where we’ve gone and shown that — and he actually used realistic mining and latency networks with this where when you look at the situation in China, for the amount of time it takes data to propagate over the Great Firewall of China and their relative hashing power percentage — people who are not part of that group are earning something about like eight percent less revenue.”

Todd noted that losses are lower in reality due to Blockstream Core Tech Engineer and Bitcoin Core Contributor Matt Corallo’s Bitcoin Relay Network, and it should also be pointed out that Pieter Wuille’s work was testing 20-megabyte blocks. 

The point here is large miners have an added advantage over small miners due to the time it takes for miners to learn about new blocks. If the block size limit were increased, it would take longer for blocks to propagate around the network, thus increasing this advantage.

One of the original founders of Bitcoin Classic, Jonathon Toomim, also presented on the issues related to block propagation with bigger blocks at Scaling Bitcoin Hong Kong. His testing focused on the now-withdrawn BIP 101 proposal, and he concluded that the increase to 8 megabytes would not be appropriate. During his tests, he found it took anywhere between 15 and 150 seconds to send block data to another peer when the two parties were on opposite sides of the Great Firewall of China.

At the Bitcoin Foundation’s DevCore Workshop back in October, Bitcoin Core Developer Gregory Maxwell explained that the second-to-last mining pool to learn about a new block is currently dealing with a 5 percent orphan rate.

On a related note, there’s a theorized vulnerability in Bitcoin mining, known as selfish mining, where a miner may decide to not let others know about a block they found in order to give themselves a head start on finding the next block.

Possible Solutions to Block Propagation Issues

There are a few proposed solutions that could solve the issue of slow block propagation on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Core’s current roadmap includes two such solutions: invertible bloom lookup tables (IBLTs) and weak blocks. According to the Bitcoin Core website, these two features can offer a 90 percent reduction in critical bandwidth when relaying blocks, which should allow for a safer increase of the block size limit.

Two possible solutions recently brought up by Bitcoin Classic Developer Gavin Andresen on this issue are UDP broadcast of block headers and validationless mining. Bitcoin Security Consultant Sergio Lerner recently wrote a blog post on the latter of the two options.

There are also other proposed solutions for this issue, but the point is that plenty of smart people are working on potential fixes. Based on Bitcoin Core’s roadmap, it appears that IBLTs and weak blocks are the most likely solutions to get implemented first. 

It should also be mentioned that, as Blockchain Capital Managing Partner Brock Pierce recently pointed out, China’s control over the majority of hashing power may not last forever.

Scaling Bitcoin Is Not Simple

One of the last points made by Schnelli at Bitcoin Meetup Switzerland is that the issue of scalability is not as simple as some have made it out to be.

Schnelli noted:

“I don’t want to say I’m looking behind every curtain, but if you don’t really go down to the technical fundamentals it’s easy to say, ‘Increase the block size.’ Sure. Sounds nice. Everybody can understand it. But there are better solutions that maybe take more energy to think about.”

Like many other developers involved with Bitcoin Core, Schnelli views Segregated Witness (SegWit) as a viable alternative to simply increasing the block size limit. Bitcoin Core Contributor Eric Lombrozo recently outlined five benefits of the SegWit proposal at Blockchain Agenda San Diego.

Kyle Torpey is a freelance journalist who has been following Bitcoin since 2011. His work has been featured on VICE Motherboard, Business Insider, RT’s Keiser Report and many other media outlets. You can follow@kyletorpey on Twitter.

The post Why the Great Firewall of China Is Causing Serious Issues for Bitcoin Miners appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

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Coinbase is ‘Building a Retail Exchange’ Not a Wallet

The San Francisco-based Bitcoin exchange CEO Brian Armstrong recently wrote a Medium blog post called “Coinbase is Not a Wallet.” Armstrong believes some customers are confused about the company thinking of it as this type of service. In the beginning, the business originally set out to be a wallet service but over time has become a “regulated exchange.”

Also read: Bitcoinist Jobs: Accepting Applications For Sales Manager

“We set out to build a bitcoin wallet, but it turns out we were building a retail exchange.”— Brian Armstrong, CEO Coinbase

Coinbase Is a Regulated Exchange ‘Not a Wallet’

Armstrong is concerned that “hybrid wallet/exchanges” such as Coinbase and others have caused confusion within the industry. Lots of exchanges not only enable the purchasing and selling of the digital currency but also have a wallet within the exchange architecture. Currently, Armstrong’s company has 80% of its customer base using the service to purchase and sell Bitcoin. 20% of users are using it for day-to-day wallet transactions and storage. The Coinbase CEO says there is a strong difference between these types of services. Armstrong states in the blog, “I feel like a lot of confusion and anger has been voiced by customers who thought they were using us as a wallet, and didn’t realize they were using a (regulated) exchange. I want to make it perfectly clear going forward that Coinbase will focus on being an exchange.”

Retail exchanges are an easy way to convert government issued fiat in and out of Bitcoin says, Armstrong. This means less privacy and building relationships with “banks and regulators,” and wallets are meant for individual privacy. Armstrong explains, “they want to use all sorts of innovative apps that are emerging in bitcoin. Often they want privacy. And the way you’d measure success in a wallet is probably by the number of transactions sent per day.”

The company knows its service is a popular method of storage. Coinbase says it stores nearly 10% of all Bitcoin in circulation between its multi-sig vaults, and company controlled cold storage. Armstrong says that security is a top priority for the business and people will continue to use it as a wallet. However, he believes the 80/20% numbers in about five years could be “inverted.” This is why over the next year the CEO says Coinbase will be changing its focus. Armstrong says this entails:

• We will add as many payment methods as possible to make it convenient for people to get their money into and out of bitcoin all over the world. I think this will be an incredible force for good in the bitcoin ecosystem to help it grow.


• We will continue to be a regulated business and proactively work with governments, banks, and regulators around the world to educate them about bitcoin.


• We will continue to comply with financial services laws, and our customers should expect as much. You will not be anonymous if you decide to use Coinbase.

Not that this news should come as a surprise to hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts, but it does solidify the Coinbase company interests and goals within the industry. Users should understand that using the service will not be anonymous and will be regulated through government policies. Other cryptocurrency solution exchanges may not feel the same way and may want to cover both aspects of buying/selling with day-to-day wallet use as well. Coinbase is making its stance quite clear and wants people to understand exactly what they are.

What do you think about Brian Armstrong saying Coinbase is not a wallet? Let us know in the comments below.

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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, the Coinbase Website, and Wiki Commons

 

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Electrum Update Brings Tons of Improvements To The Table

Electrum is a very popular wallet solution for various types of devices, as it is much more lightweight than installing Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Classic. Since there is no need to download the entire blockchain – currently over 60GB in size and growing – Electrum provides a very valuable alternative, especially for mobile devices. The wallet has recently been updated to version 2.6, and several improvements have been made.

Also read: Bitcoinist Jobs: Accepting Applications For Sales Manager

What Is New In Electrum 2.6?

As is the case with most Bitcoin wallet solutions, Electrum version 2.6 is open source, and the code has been licensed under the MIT license. This gives developers and other interested parties a chance to review the Bitcoin wallet code and start creating their modifications if they so desire.

In previous iterations of Electrum, plugins and GUIs were located in the same packages. This is no longer the case, as the developers have separated both sides of the wallet solution. In the end, this will result in better responsiveness and an overall faster user experience on any device.

What makes the new release of Electrum even more interesting is how users can now select an alternative coin display. Not only is this a nice additional feature, but it will also help preserve user privacy. Enabling or disabling this setting can be done under the “Privacy” submenu, and updating the Coin Selection in the menu.

Any Bitcoin wallet solution relies heavily on the making the installation process as simple and straightforward as possible. Electrum has made significant process in this regard, as they have rewritten the entire install wizard. Even though not too many users reported issues with the precious install process, there is always room for improvements.

The biggest chance comes in the form of improved support for KeepKey and TREZOR hardware wallets. Electrum will not display the full device information, and users can change / set / disable existing pin keys through the wallet software. TREZOR users will be able to set their home screen as well, whereas KeepKey users will enjoy the benefits of the secure seed recovery feature.

Keeping in mind how this wallet is available to Android users as well, it only made sense for the developers to make changes to their code in this department as well. Old GUIs have been deprecated by the team and replaced by the Kivy GUI. This Electrum release update marks the first official release of this new GUI implementation.

Last but not least, the development team managed to add support for minikeys supported. Physical Bitcoin users will enjoy this functionality as minikeys are used in Casascius coins. This additional functionality will let Electrum users swipe and important private keys associated with these physical coins.

Are you excited about these new Electrum features? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Reddit

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Electrum

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Social Tipping Startup ChangeTip Launches Wallet Service

Social tipping service ChangeTip has announced a new wallet service, citing demand from the bitcoin community.
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Antpool Hashrate Drops While F2Pool Gains Close To 30%

An interesting shift seems to be happening in the world of Bitcoin mining, as one of the largest mining pools is going through a significant dip in hashrate right now. AntPool is one of the mining pools testing the Bitcoin Classic solution, although not in an official “live” capacity just yet. The recent drop in hashrate on the mining pool can be attributed to many possible factors, yet some people feel Antpool needs to switch to Bitcoin Classic before it is too late.

Also read: Philadelphia’s New Bitcoin ATM

The Antpool Mining Hashrate Drop

While it is not uncommon for mining pools to report variable hash rates on a 24- or 48-hour basis, a significant drop is a rather unusual occurrence. In the case of Antpool, their share of the total Bitcoin network hashrate has fallen from 22% four days ago to 17% right now, and they are slowly being overtaken by BTCC pool on the charts.

Whether or not this has anything to do with supporting Bitcoin Classic, or still running Bitcoin Core, remains anybody’s guess at this time. Earlier this month, Antpool announced they would start beta testing the Bitcoin Classic solution shortly, although very little information has been published ever since.

Some Bitcoin miners are worried Antpool will need to decide whether or not they will fully support Bitcoin Classic or Bitcoin Core as this in-between status is not helping matters much. Other mining pools are keeping a close eye on things, and BTCC pool is now on par with Antpool regarding mining power.

Even though Antpool is among the parties agreeing on the Bitcoin roundtable consensus, they were the ones holding out the longest. These decisions have to be weighed very carefully, naturally, but indecisiveness is nothing doing mining pools any favors. It comes down to either supporting Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin classic in this block size debate, as there is no middle road.

At the same time, the number of Bitcoin Classic blocks being mined on the network keeps increasing. Whereas there were only six blocks roughly 24 hours ago, that number has tripled to 18 at the time of publication. KnCMiner is still leading the charge in this regard, although Slush pool has started to add some blocks to the tally as well.

F2Pool Hashrate Increases By Nearly 30%

BTCC Pool is not the only mining pool seeing an influx of new hashpower, which seems to originate from Antpool miners. F2Pool, which has been the largest public Bitcoin mining operation for quite some time now, has seen a nice growth in hashpower as well, representing 34% of the entire network’s computation power, up from 26%.

If this trend were to continue over the next few weeks, F2Pool would be getting close to the 51% threshold. A solution has to be found to keep distributing hashpower on an even basis before one mining pool becomes too powerful. However, F2Pool has given miners the chance to make their voice be heard in the Bitcoin Classic vs. Bitcoin Core debate, which could be a driving factor as well.

What are your thought son the Antpool situation? Will F2Pool become a 51% threat in the coming months? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Blockchain.info

Images courtesy of Bitmain, Shutterstock

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