Episode: 788
Title: HPR0788: Bitcoin
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0788/hpr0788.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:31:21

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Well, have a great day!
Good day, my name is JWP and I wanted to do a hacker public
radio episode in response to the Linux outlaws Bitcoin show on the hacker public
radio. I was concerned because I heard on the Linux action show that what the
Linux outlaws guys put out in their very nice podcast about Bitcoin wasn't a
true representation of the facts and I'm a pretty simple guy and I was like
wondering what is what are the facts of Chris and Brian they didn't really go
into the facts. I just said that Fab and Dan didn't cover the facts and it
wasn't a very factual thing and they were upset that the that the outlaw
team was the number one Linux podcast for the year and I wasn't sure if it
was factual or not what they said and they concerned me so I decided that I
would do some research on my own. You know one of the things that you know
it's great about the podcasting is that you know that if you hear the if you
think it's crap you really don't have to listen to it very much. You can get
the next button on your MP3 player pretty nicely and pretty quickly and so I
really like structure in my podcast and so I usually tell people exactly what
I'm gonna do when I do a podcast straight up I don't go into like you know
three-hour thing where no structure whatsoever that we don't know what's
gonna happen or what we're gonna talk about. I'd like to be more precise. I also
like to have an agenda at the beginning of it but I regress and I need to stick
to the topic. Okay so what exactly is a Bitcoin? Well a Bitcoin is a form of
currency that's online and whether it's legitimate or not that I can't really
say there's there's several things. I went to the WiiU's coins.com website
they had a very nice video it looks like it's pretty legit they have a it's
just a YouTube video and there's another site from Cornell University that
talks about the legality of it and I'll share that with you in just a sec. So is
it legal in the USD's Bitcoin? I went to the form at its form Bitcoin.org
slash question mark topic equals 227.0 and under title 18 part one
chapter 95 of the 1960 law there it the there's a prohibition of unlicensed
money transmission businesses. Whoever knowingly conducts controls manages
supervises directs our owns all are part of an unlicensed money
transmitting business shall be fined in accordance with this title and a
prison for not more than five years or both. Okay so that's that's pretty
scary and then it says the term unlicensed money transmitting business means a
money transmitting business which affects interstate or foreign
commoners in any manner and degree is operated without the appropriate money
transmitting license in a state such as the operation is punishable by Mr.
Meanor or a felony under state law whether or not the defendant knew that the
operation was required to be licensed or not was so punishable fails to comply
with the money transmitting business registration requirements under section 5330
of title 31 of the United States code or regulations prescribed under such
section or otherwise involves transportation transmission of funds that are
known to the defendant to have derived from a criminal offense or intended to
promote unlawful activity. The term money transmitting includes transmitting
funds on behalf of the public by any means including but not limited to
transfers within this term money transmitting includes transferring funds on
behalf of the public within this country to locations abroad by wire check
draft accidentally or courier and the term state means any state in the United
States District of Columbia Northern Mary Islands or any commonwealth or
territory in the possession of the United States so it's it's really really
it's written in 1960 but it seems to affect the Bitcoin right away so in
response to the law a guy named Gavin Anderson who is an administrator and
hero member of this form Bitcoin.org said that as long as you're not
running a business a transmitting money transmitting business you know if you
want to make your own Bitcoin you're not in business it's your computer you
can make a Bitcoin if you want it's only a business if you charge someone for
making the Bitcoin right according to him now he's not a lawyer so you probably
have to get a lawyer if you're in the States but he went on to say that if he
were gonna start a business he lives in Massachusetts that he would have to
jump through all of the hoops to get that started you'd have to be bonded in
Massachusetts and a license would you have to pay a fee and then you'd have to
post a $50,000 bond in order to have a Bitcoin company in the state of
Massachusetts and the United States so it is possible to have it you just have
to be licensed by the state where you are it looks like okay so I think that it's
okay if you live in America or your U.S. citizen if you personally have a
Bitcoin I don't think that it's against the law but I may I may write the U.S.
consulate in Frankfurt and ask them if it's legal to own a Bitcoin to make a
Bitcoin I may do that but I don't know it's like asking a policeman if it's legal
to do something they're not really the experts on law they just arrest you if
they think you broke law so I guess you'd have to ask a lawyer if it's legal to
have a Bitcoin or not but I think as long as you don't sell a Bitcoin for
profit then then you're then you're okay now it's see one of the things that I
really like to use is a thing called Wikipedia and they have a Bitcoin so it's
site and the Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 based mainly on a
self-published paper by Saroshi Nakamoto and a Bitcoin enables rapid
payments and micro-payments at very low cost and avoids the need for central
authorities and issuers it's digitally signed transactions with one node
signing server over some amount of currency to the other node and they're all
broadcasts on a peer-to-peer network proof of work system and used measurement
against double speeding double spending and currency distribution mechanism and
so it instantly works as a sort of like what Fab said you know you generate
the Bitcoin if you get lucky then you get the thing a Bitcoin if you don't then you
don't there's a there's some there's in the Wikipedia there's a lot of things
there and let me read this one US senators have written a letter to
attorney general Eric holder the cheat and the chief of the DA regarding use
of Bitcoin black market transactions consequently Bitcoin the UK exchange put
on a statement calling for regulation of Bitcoin exchanges by law enforcement
and so it looks like they're concerned the it looks it looks to be that they're
they're concerned that the that the that the senators are concerned enough to
write Eric holder the technology it it looks to be exactly the way that the
Linux outlaws described it doesn't look to be any different than than any
than any other than any other thing it looks like there was an unfair initial
distribution so a common criticism is the initial Bitcoin distribution is
heavily advantaged toward early adopters right so if you were doing it when it
first came out in 2009 and you set up a server and you started making your own
money you had a higher propensity to be the one that gets the the Bitcoin then
the other person had that if you would have known 10 years ago that Google is
what it is then you would have been doing a lot better too so that's sort of
crap technical complexity I don't think that it's really that technical I think
you can put it on any Linux box and on it malware and theft a bit
can be compromised if a computer with a wallet file can be remotely accessed
by hackers I don't know haven't heard anything about that but it's in the
Wikipedia and it's criticized because there's they can be used at the Silk
Road marketplace and of course the Silk Road is what they do use on the
Internet to get drugs to your home in the United States that are legal in
several other countries covert mining and due in 2011 synaptic warned about
possibly a botnets engaging in covert mining of bitcoins unauthorized resources
of computers to generate coins now that's an idea make a botnet that uses a
small percentage of someone's CPU because they don't have a good security on
their system and and use their system that you hacked to to make you a Bitcoin
that's that's pretty good and they actually have a
worried about use of electricity and there was an Australian broadcasting
corporation caught one of their workers using the company servers to generate
bitcoins without permission so of course you know if you want some bitcoins
and you've got a big server farm and you know Australian broadcasting
corporation and you launch the Bitcoin thing of course you know but that's the
actions of one individual doing that to a corporation not not you at home
making your own Bitcoin so moving on the next site that I found that was pretty
interesting and look pretty professional was a Ian dot Bitcoin dot IT slash
wiki slash main underscore page and it says welcome to Bitcoin wiki and it has
the same thing basically as a Wikipedia page and it has a small fact but over on
the right hand side of the page it says getting started so I'm clicking that
button on getting started and so so how do you get started this was something
that fab didn't cover or the the other people didn't cover so getting started so
you an account can efforts to effortlessly be created using an E wallet
service an E wallet services provide online wallet to hold your bitcoins this
guide covers installing a Bitcoin without needing a third-party wallet
service and so you if you you have a Windows one they have a example of how to
install Bitcoin and then the first time you use Bitcoin it needs to download all
the blocks to set up and then if you already have a Bitcoin address at this
point but you don't see any transactions before the initialization completes
it can take from a half hour to a few hours it says and then they have it for
Mac but they didn't have it for Linux so I don't know how to do it for Linux so
they have it for Mac but they don't have it for Linux I don't know hold on just a
second okay so it looks like the you do you get a Bitcoin client and the
original Bitcoin client is it's the comes in under the MIT license it's 32
bit 64 bit and G and you Linux based on OS's and Mac OS the it looks like you
can download it from sourceforge.net and so I'm going to source forage and it's
coming up and I'm on source forage it says Bitcoin is a decentralized P to P
electronic cash system without a central server or trusted parties users hold
crypto keys to make their own money and transact directly with each other with
the help of the network check to check for double spending and you can get it
it's on it's it's on source forage it appears to be only an EXE file though from
source forage which means it's only Windows but if you click the other versions
button and you go to 2.34 and they they do have under under 0 3.24 there is a
tar file for for Linux interestingly let me see if I can type it into Debian I
have my Debian up that I just got to building and putting in my password and I
got the semantic semantic up and let's see here let's go to system administration
semantic manager okay and then let's type in bit so Bitcoin isn't in the Debian
standard repositories and let me go to Google again and I've been Bitcoin
Ubuntu and in the Ubuntu forms on 17 May they say that on 17 May they they talk
about it and what you have to do is you have to add a ppa to your Ubuntu the ppa is a ppa
colon stretch slash Bitcoin and then you do update and then you do apt pseudo apt get install
Bitcoin and there it is on your system and you can Bitcoin yourself pretty pretty pretty
pretty well and so it looks pretty well so you can get it on Ubuntu it looks like there's a
form posting on there for Bitcoin and then let's see how do you stay factual okay there appears
to be several exchanges out there and there's the thing called Bitcoin watch and it has a trading
for all the bitcoins and it has a data thing and I'm looking for an about about on there
and about service on there and I press the home button and market overview and it doesn't say anything
about about us so it's just a website it says bitcoin watch.com and it has all of the prices and
all the major currencies for Bitcoin to dollar it's $14 for Bitcoin for Bitcoin right now and
but there's there's no way to really do that and then there's a site called Bitcoin minor
I'm mine for Bitcoin I show that I run under the hood and what others who mine Bitcoin are up to I'm
also on Twitter and you got something to add you can say it and the
and the Bitcoin minor is the a project to create the first decentralized Bitcoin mining pool
and you can sort of get in there ptp works different from existing mining pool technologies
each node works on the block and includes payouts to previous share owners and the note itself
99% of the block award is distributed evenly so you wonder what happens if you don't you know
if you try to make your Bitcoin and you know you want to run an old laptop or something
you know and you don't get anything well this looks like this Bitcoin minor.com looks like
he pulls your resources together and you get a share of the Bitcoin right to sell but I don't know
how that works how that works and he's got a YouTube video of him building actually a physical
server that does the Bitcoin minor minor there and he also has it looks like he has a rack of servers
in the garage no less to do that it looks it looks interesting I'm not sure if it's legit or not
here's another one that says Bitcoin market.com and this looks like some kind of trading thing
and it does have an about us button so it bit it Bitcoin bitcoin market.com let's click again
on the about button Bitcoin market aka bcm was first operational in March of 2010
and it's gone through several iterations and improvements that are made are made and experience
gained it was the first to offer a free floating exchange rate and escrow trading system
and in September 2010 Bitcoin market LLC was organized to become a member of the Bitcoin market
website an all related material in October 2010 a new web site was put into production
and the result and this is the result of that endeavor
just in dollar aka bw dollar is the developer of the Bitcoin market website and owner of
Bitcoin market LLC normally LLC means that you're in the UK I think I'm not for sure I'm not
for sure on that and the the on the Bitcoin we use coins.com website they have a Linux
a Linux download page I'm clicking that right now just to see so you can get it it's installed
I really don't know how to do it I'll probably go home find an old notebook that I've got and
put for door on it and see if I can get Bitcoin installed and you know maybe make a couple of things
I hope that this is a little more factual to me now after I've gone through a couple of websites
and everything it looks you know maybe like it could be used for some illegal activity
it also looks like if you were a smart person you could take an old computer and try to
get some bit coins made it looks like I don't think fab and Dan were as it is not accurate as
as the Linux action show thought they were but at the same time I'm probably pretty sure I probably
wasn't very accurate either because I just used websites and you know I've never really talked
to a real person that made a Bitcoin that's probably what we're missing here is we don't have a
person that really made a Bitcoin yet and they have them talk us through that you know and it's
pretty scary you know the US Senate write in a letter about it and everything and you know
in a warning signs go off about all that you know I'm not sure why you wouldn't use a
you know PayPal or something like that but I think it's no different than then selling silver
maybe in Utah now there's a bill before the state house in Utah that they're going to
accept silver and market rates at the at the convenience stores and gas stations and things
and I thought that that was pretty novel a pretty novel idea already well again I hope your day
goes really well my name is my email address again if you need to contact me is jwp5 at hotmail.com
thank you very much bye
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