Blockchain bitcoin sms jokes
Using blockchain simply as an anti-hacking device means lopping off the mysterious currency party and just focusing on the record-keeping benefits to keep track of transactions. Once you forklift out the blockchain technology you have a financial transaction ledger that is extremely difficult to break or fool, providing details on everything that took place relative to a transaction or series of transactions, until your computer hard drive holding the ledger ran out of space.
And with the blockchain, everyone over a large number of computers has the same ledger, so no single person could fraudulently modify it without everyone else immediately knowing.
This also means computers could sit and monitor the blockchain for suspicious activity without needing to know any personally identifiable information. And it's fast enough that it could perhaps provide an accurate chain of events across multiple trusted institutions. It can catch in microseconds if something funny, like uncharacteristic account activity, raises suspicions. Taking a cryptographic "fingerprint" of a transaction and adding it to a ledger that everyone across the enterprise has is both accurate and virtually impossible to hack.
Not impossible, but so unlikely it would take, say, a thousand years and many rooms full of computers. Once you create a transaction fingerprint for every transaction that takes place across the whole enterprise, everyone gets a copy automatically of the updated crypto-ledger. Any future transaction associated with the same money would reference the last fingerprint, and so on, forming a really strong chain of events.
Knowing a whole history of transactions with a very high degree of certainty reduces the temptation for nefarious deeds by bad actors. You would no longer have to trust people to make nonfraudulent transactions. They couldn't commit fraud without everyone instantly knowing. Article Underwriting self-employed borrowers Freddie Mac helps lenders to better serve this expanding market segment.
But we were curious, not only of the prospect of using cyptocurrency as a fungible good for making purchases, but also of the promised ability to turn Bitcoin into real cash dollars. Both of those goals were theoretically possible in that week in Austin, which had hosted a recent Texas Bitcoin Conference --spurring several local businesses read: Austin was also home to one of the first Bitcoin ATM operators in the nation, with no fewer than three places in the city to make automated in-person transactions.
Yes, here was a machine that promised not only to slurp up your dollars to transfer fractions of Bitcoin to your digital wallet, but also let you cash out of virtual currency for Uncle Sam-backed bills.
Something we didn't really explain in the video because we frankly still don't completely understand it ourselves is how the Bitcoin ATM system worked. The ATMs are built by a company called Robocoin , a Las Vegas-based started founded by two brothers who were previously making Bitcoin-for-cash transactions locally, in person. According to a Wired report, Mark and John Russell, wanted to find a way to automate the process using a machine, while still working within the still-evolving regulatory guidelines set by US government for Bitcoin transactions.
Naturally, they teamed up with a Nevada slot machine maker to start making prototypes. Honestly, the warning signs were all there. Because of those tricky and still muddy regulatory requirements, Robocoin doesn't actually run its kiosks. Their first customers set up shop in Canada, where Bitcoin trading regulations are more lax--the machine doesn't need identification verification to take or dispense cash.
Handlebar was where we ended up buying our Bitcoin, and where I spent the next few days hanging out to try to get it give our money back. It happened like you saw in the video--I had to create an account with the Bitcoin Agents through the Robocoin machine, giving it my telephone number for SMS verification , creating a PIN, scanning my palm, letting it take my photo, and then also scan a copy of my driver's license.
That's a whole lot of personal information, which in retrospect was pretty stupid of me. Bitcoin Agents holds on to that identification data to comply with government anti-money laundering laws, but there's no promise that they can't be hacked or won't use that information for suspect ventures in the future.
Anecdotally, my identity hasn't be stolen yet, but I have received on average one strange telemarketing call a week since signing up for Robocoin--the first of which was from an adult chat service just hours after giving the Robocoin machine my phone number.
Robocoin operators make money from these fees, which they charge for both buying and selling of Bitcoins. These fees are just one of the sources of controversy regarding Bitcoin ATMs; in Vancouver, the Robocoin operator had to hire a part-time chaperone to watch over the kiosk and prevent other traders from intercepting customers with the promise of lower-cost or free transactions.
The biggest hassle was in trying to get our money out from the Robocoin machine, selling the Bitcoin back to Bitcoin Agents. The process here was incredibly convoluted and opaque. After logging back into the machine with my phone number, PIN, and palmprint, the kiosk spit out a receipt with a QR code representing the wallet address of Bitcoin Agents.
The idea was that I would use my wallet to send the Bitcoin value to the operator, with the promise that after receipt, the machine would dispense the equivalent in cash--minus the transaction fee.