Interview: David Veksler and Tim Swanson discuss Bitcoin, Litecoin, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity in China

Last night I spoke with David Veksler (the founder of Crypt-A-Byte) about cryptocurrencies and cybersecurity.  Below are some of the notes from the podcast.  Let us know what kind of feedback you may have (yes, I did eat a snack midway too… faux pas #1). [Note the audio was originally hosted at Buzzsprout but have been republished at YT]

References and concepts mentioned in the show:

• Economics of Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin an Alternative to Fiat Currencies and Gold? by Peter Šurda.
• Mt. Gox (largest Bitcoin monetary exchange) and Google Trends
• Bitcoin / Litecoin / List of all cryptocoins
• Commodity money / Fiat money
• Cold storage (keeping cryptocurrencies offline)
• Hash / SHA-256 / Block timestamp
• Zero-day exploit (like its name suggests, hacking attack of a previously unknown hole)
• Subjective Theory of Value (monies are ultimately subjective)
• XKCD on Security (theory versus reality)
• Zerocoin (proof of concept for making BTC anonymous)
• Cloud computing / decentralized computing / utility computing / software as a service
• Bitcoin Watch (major exchanges and their volumes)
• How to set up a secure offline savings wallet (Bitcoin wiki)
• Network effect (the more people use a network, the more useful it is)
• Bruce Schneier (IT security expert) / Best practice
• Multi-factor authentication / Single point of failure
• Jim Cramer’s criticism of BTC / Paul Krugman’s criticism of BTC
• Dr. Strangelove (“…the human element seems to have failed us here.”)
• ASIC (Application-specific integrated circuit) and Mining hardware comparison
• Bitcoin’s kryptonite: The 51% attack. (theoretical)
• PLA Unit 61398 (also known as APT1 or Comment Crew) — see Chapter 13
• Denial-of-service (DDOS)
• Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) report on alternative digital currencies
• Stuxnet / Flame / Botnet / Zombie computer
• FLOPS / Siri / Watson
• Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and cui bono
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) / FUD / Baptists and bootleggers
• CISPA Sponsor Tweets, Then Deletes, About How Much More Lobbying Dollars Have Come From Pro-CISPA Groups from Techdirt
• A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. / Napster shut down from BBC
• IsoHunt Forced to Shut Down in the US from TorrentFreak / The Pirate Bay trial
• PayPal says it stopped Wikileaks payments on US letter from BBC / Visa, MasterCard Move To Choke WikiLeaks from Forbes
• How Data Dies (and How It Can Be Saved) from Gizmodo
• The New Diamond Age from Wired
• Diamonds: Driven by market forces for the first time in 100 years from Resource Investor
• Phishing scams target China’s growing online population from Xinhua
• Chinese lost US$46 billion to cybercrime last year from Shanghai Daily
• Will China’s Renminbi Replace the Dollar as the World’s Top Currency? from Chinafile
• The Mechanics of Moving Cash Out of China from The Wall Street Journal
  — see Chapter 10
• Winklevoss twins amass huge Bitcoin haul as bubble bursts from Los Angles Times
• The Race to Kill Kazaa from Wired
• The Economics Of Bitcoin – Challenging Mises’ Regression Theorem by Michael Suede
• The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig von Mises

Price volatility from Ludwig von Mises in Human Action:

“If the memory of all prices of the past were to fade away, the pricing process would become more troublesome, but not impossible as far as the mutual exchange ratios between various commodities are concerned. It would be harder for the entrepreneurs to adjust production to the demand of the public, but it could be done nonetheless. It would be necessary for them to assemble anew all the data they need as the basis of their operations. They would not avoid mistakes which they now evade on account of experience at their disposal. Price fluctuations would be more violent at the beginning, factors of production would be wasted, want-satisfaction would be impaired. But finally, having paid dearly, people would again have acquired the experience needed for a smooth working of the market process.”