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“.)
Interesting things are brewing at the Ridley Report! In a recent video, Dave Ridley explains that he’s hired Free Keene blogger Garret Ean to target the NH state house in Concord with ambush interviews!
Ridley’s hiring of Garret marks a first, major expansion to the Ridley Report brand. I’m looking forward to seeing what the video activist duo does next!
On September 27, Mayor Kendall Lane and Robert Call faced off in a Mayoral Debate hosted by the Keene Liberty Alliance, moderated by Darryl W. Perry.
This debate will air multiple times on Cheshire TV channel 8 before the November 7 general election.
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!
Multiple full truckloads of garbage and junk were removed this week, totaling several hundred dollars in dump fees.
It’s been a crazy week, but major progress has been made turning a house that was trashed by its previous “libertarian” tenants into NH’s first full-time mosque. The Masjid al Latiff and Interfaith Community Center (MALIC Center) is Will Coley‘s vision that is becoming a reality, thanks to an interfaith group of people who have over the last week been removing junk, cleaning up a unspeakably disgusting mess, repairing damage to the home, painting, removing trees, and more. Whether Muslim, Christian, Panentheist, or even agnostic or atheist, it’s been awesome to see that the MALIC Center is already creating an interfaith community despite not having officially opened its doors.
When Will, who will be the future mosque’s Imam and caretaker, approached the Shire Free Church about property availability in Keene for a mosque, I’d have been excited about just that opportunity to help him with that idea, but his vision was much bigger than that. In addition to its full-time mosque function, as an interfaith community center, the MALIC Center will also be usable by other smaller area religions looking for a house of worship, like the Quakers. Plus, Will plans to operate a homeless warming center in the colder months.
As the Shire Free Church is an interfaith peace church, the MALIC Center vision dovetails perfectly with the mission of the Church. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to assist with this by both donating the property in question on behalf of the Church and helping clean it up. Thankfully we don’t have to do it all alone, as it’s a big job. We’ve had multiple libertarian community members from across the state come to help us including a mayoral candidate in Keene, Bob Call who joined us early on to help haul out the initial junk and trash, and Libertarian candidate for governor in NH for 2018, Jilletta Jarvis who today was helping scrub the floors.
The interfaith cleanup crew has included Christians working alongside Muslims, and others!
We’ve made great progress, as the video below documents, but one of the challenges beyond the cleanup effort itself has been fundraising. Will and his family have raised nearly 50% of their $11,000 goal at crowdfunding site LaunchGood.com and have made the move on faith despite not having reached their goal.
In order to assist further, the Shire Free Church is going to match donations from now until the $11,000 goal is reached! The fundraiser as of now has $5,256 raised by 93 contributors. Only six days remain. If you donate $10, the Church will double it to $20. If you donate $50, the Church will double that to $100, and so on. Please take a moment and give here at Launchgood. (Bitcoin and Litecoin donation QR codes are on the Launchgood page too!)
