New Hampshire’s Committee to Study Cryptocurrency meets for its required 2017 meeting. They question state regulators after the Cryptocurrency Protection Act has been in place for a few months. They ultimately decide to recommend no further actions against or for cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Here’s the full hearing video:
I explained to the panel that Bitcoin businesses had opened or moved to NH because of the buzz about the cryptocurrency protection act that passed this summer. Regardless of whether the statutory change would have affected those businesses, the publicity surrounding it was good for NH’s image in the crypto-sphere.
Looks like it’ll be a while before New Hampshire has financial freedom across-the-board. When I offhandedly suggested to the panel that all money transmitter regulations should be repealed, they unanimously acted like their rules somehow stop terrorism and drug dealers. Pointing out that South Carolina has no money transmission statutes made zero impact.
It wasn’t the place to take the discussion any further, but it’d be great to see a libertarian state rep introduce such a repeal. South Carolina doesn’t have any more drugs or terrorism than anywhere else.
Corner News’ owner Roberta Mastrogiovanni poses with her store’s brand new Bitcoin Vending Machine!
Big news for Bitcoin fans in Manchester and Keene – we’ve got competition in the bitcoin vending space! As of yesterday, Blackfrog became the first real Bitcoin Vending Machine company to install units in New Hampshire!
As one of the admins of the existing non-profit Shire Free Church-run Bitcoin Vending Machines in Keene and Manchester, I’m super-excited about the competition. Why? Simple. The goal of the Church’s bitcoin outreach project is to get bitcoin into more people’s hands. The new company in town (which also operates more than 20 bitcoin BVMs across Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland) is making bitcoin even more accessible in New Hampshire than it was before!
While we’ve had a Bitcoin Vending Machine at Route 101 Local Goods in Keene for years, it’s only been available Tue-Sun. Therefore bitcoin was not available in Keene on Mondays, or after Route 101 Local Goods closes at 6pm each day (5p Sundays). Now that the Blackfrog BVM is online at Corner News, bitcoin’s availability in Keene expands to all seven days a week and late into the night, as Corner News is open until 10pm Mon-Thu, until 11pm Fri and Sat and 9pm on Sundays. Corner News is located at 67 Main St. and is a Keene landmark, established over 100 years ago. It was also the first brick-and-mortar business in Keene to accept bitcoin, way back in 2013!
Corner News’ owner, Roberta Mastrogiovanni, who recently was able to pay for her hotel stay during a vacation with her bitcoin, when asked why she’d decided to host the new BVM told me, “Corner News has been accepting bitcoin for several years without any problem, in fact we have seen a huge gain in the last year, so when asked whether we would consider renting out a small square foot of our store for a Bitcoin ATM we thought why not, especially since the coins can be spent right in store…just seemed like a good addition.” (more…)
Bitcoin’s Price and Market Cap Over the Last 12 Months
It has been a crazy last year for Bitcoin, for better or for worse. One year ago this month, Bitcoin’s “market cap”, the total global value of all the bitcoins in existence, was at 10 billion dollars. This week, after passing the $6,000 price per bitcoin mark for the first time ever, Bitcoin’s market cap hit 100 billion dollars!
A market cap of $100 billion makes the total value of Bitcoin larger than financial behemoth Goldman Sachs (and others). This is major news and an incredible run up in price over a year. It definitely deserves celebration – bitcoin is truly a phenomenon, overall.
Behind the scenes, however, things have gotten ugly. The bitcoin network has been full of transactions for many months now. That’s resulted in delayed transactions and wildly varying fees on the Bitcoin Core network. Despite Bitcoin’s first-ever schism in August, which resulted in two competing Bitcoin networks, “Bitcoin Core” and “Bitcoin Cash”, infighting within the Bitcoin community continues unabated regarding how bitcoin should scale to the increasing consumer demand.
As was recommended on this blog at the time, everyone who held their bitcoin through the August schism came out on top. Bitcoin Core’s price held steady then went up and Bitcoin Cash created billions of dollars worth of new value in the marketplace in an instant. It was really quite a success. However, Bitcoin Cash was a minor schism compared to what is coming up in November. (more…)
A customer purchased a “Live Free or Die” wood plaque and a “Legalize Gay Marijuana” bumper sticker at the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire using an encrypted digital currency called ZCash. The cryptocurrency is the most private money ever created, relying on a complex mathematical principle called a “Zero-Knowledge Proof”. Essentially this customer took some digital cash, locked it in a box with a secret key, and sent the shop the key. There is no discernible trail left. No observer can look up the transaction on the blockchain, not even those who know the sending/receiving addresses. Pretty slick! Here’s what it looked like:
This marks yet another turning point for human freedom. An evolution on the creation of bitcoin, this new cryptocurrency offers features and advantages that bitcoin simply doesn’t. While many are still holding fast to the promises of failing Federal Reserve Notes, others are seeking alternatives and building more reliable systems that make extortion far more difficult. Learn more by following the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe on Twitter and by joining their email list.
After the screening, we gave away one of the few existing DJVCS movie posters to a lucky attendee and then director and star of the movie, Derrick J Freeman and I took a bunch of questions from the audience. We reflected on the last five years, where we are now, and looked to the future of the exciting, growing New Hampshire Freedom Migration.
What a pleasure and an honor it has been to executive produce this movie, working with the amazing talents of Derrick J Freeman and editing pro Beau Davis. I’m especially grateful to all the people who love and share Victimless Crime Spree with their friends and family. The pro-freedom message and spirit of the movie is infectious and fun, despite its ultimately sad ending. It’s an important documentary, and the first to come out of the community of libertarian migrants to the Shire. (In case you haven’t seen it, the second such documentary, also edited by Beau Davis, is “101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire“.)
The crypto-economy grew a little bit larger today when the popular downtown shop Portsmouth Smoke and Vape started accepting Ethereum, Dash, ZCash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin. Customers can now buy all the glass, incense, vaporizers, cleaning kits, tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and accessories they could possibly want — all using digital cash.
They sell online too, so if your current local shop won’t take your litecoin, consider getting your items sent right to your house instead by buying at their website! You can keep the same privacy you would get from a cash transaction as your local shop, plus you get the advantage of online shopping.
My partner and I learned that the owner was looking to take bitcoin due to increased demand from customers asking if they could pay in the digital currency. He thought it was a great idea and stopped into our shop to ask how he would get set up to take it as payment. We met the next morning, and it took less than an hour from start to finish. All it took was downloading an app and clicking through a few prompts to set up 5 different secure digital wallets. Now his business can take payment in 5 popular cryptocurrencies.
One cool and unique thing about the way they set it up is that the owner linked his store’s crytpo wallets with his phone. That enables him to see when a payment has come in, no matter where he is, plus he can then send the coins to a secure wallet that employees can’t access. Try doing that with a traditional cash register!
