Best posts made by chrisj

Hey guys, long time no speak.

Is there a Mac binary or Linux version one can download? Also I notice that the download button on the feathercoin homepage is giving off a horrible virus warning in both chrome and firefox.

[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“36061” timestamp=“1385249210”]
Best thread yet. +1, everyone.
[/quote]

Cool, I’ll send you my invoice 8)

First of all hello and welcome to the forum.

TL;DR
Like Kris this is just my opinion and I would say the answer to your question is that it’s the wrong question. This is because:

[list]
[*]You will never get a straight answer since most people in the crypto scene speak from a position of self interest.
[*]It’s a false dichotomy because you can invest in a range of coins proportionate to your investment hypothesis (and betting against yourself is not a bad idea)
[*]This is a giant lab, virgin territory - nobody knows anything especially me
[/list]
[hr]

I never tell anyone to invest in any of these coins because I think it’s irresponsible, this is like a giant laboratory and all of these coins are highly speculative when looked at from a financial perspective as many people are trying increase their purchasing power by buying low selling high. The trouble with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium]that strategy[/url] is that you are trying to second guess the behaviour of a large group of individuals, an equation that goes something like:

“If other people have the same information I do will they buy this asset? If yes then buy”.

You’re anticipating the demands of future investors and buying what they want ahead of time with the intention of selling in to their buy orders for profit later.

The second part to this strategy involves making predictions on what information future investors will interpret as strong buying signals. Your hypothesis is technical features, other people might prefer survivability or stewardship of the coin by its founders, some might see marketing as the deciding factor. The point is nobody knows anything because this is virgin territory and while there’s no downside to having a hypothesis what you do with yours must be your decision and yours alone.

I can speak from my personal standpoint which is that I chose to invest in a diverse range of coins for the long term (years) with a modest amount of profit release in the medium term to cover my initial investment. I mostly look for:

[list]
[*]The people behind the project and their capabilities
[*]Their ability to understand respond to problems
[*]Their ability to survive and grow from failure (commitment over long term)
[*]Their ability to communicate to new people entering the market and recruit new people on to their team
[*]Marketing and strong leadership
[*]Their intentions - people don’t buy [i]what[/i] you do they buy [i]why[/i] you do it
[/list]

I chose Feathercoin to invest my time in to because it was a group of friendly proactive people who put community at the heart of the project. Since I believe in the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value]subjective theory of value[/url] I also think all of these coins are propped up by perception, therefore the most important investment must go in to the people behind the project since they are the ones who shape the perception. But this is just my hypothesis and I am just one voice in the market among many.

I also think there’s something that a lot of other coins, including Bitcoin, haven’t taken in to consideration which is the marginal profitability of mining over the long term. Payment processing (the mining) is a huge profit centre at the heart of the global banking system but the question is should it be? With Bitcoin the mining profitability over the long term is marginal, therefore what are we going to do when if many miners decide to switch off their rigs when they start counting losses?

Do we need a new class of worker to provide payment processing not simply for profit but also as a vocation? This is an unanswered question but one that comes up very often around here so I want to be part of this dialogue, I want to surround myself with the most interesting people asking the most relevant questions.

Blockchain projects that I like are: FTC, BTC, NMC, XPM, Gridcoin, Bitmessage, Zerocoin, Dark Wallet, [url=http://invictus-innovations.com/]Invictus Innovations[/url].

Like I say just my opinion, others are sure to disagree which is half the fun.

Looks like it’s being sorted.

Hello friends,

As some of you may know MadBitcoins has been raising funds for me to go to Bitcoin in the Beltway in Washington DC next week.

I am not very good at asking for money so some kind people who seem to like what I have to say about all things crypto have sent me 2.82 Bitcoins which should be enough for me to book some tickets.

When I am there I am available for requests, we have some interviews lined up with people like Andreas, Will, Kristov and the usual suspects but this will be the first time all of us will be together in the same place.

I think one of the things Feathercoin needs is more of a presence outside of this forum. I know this has been said before most recently by Svenn. That is why I regularly appear on World Crypto Network often with the Feathercoin logo. I try to tweet out the link out on @Feathercoin. I appear most Friday’s on the Bitcoin Group which is like a panel discussion. But my favourite format is the Bitcoin Talk Show on Wednesdays which is more interactive and involves audience participation.

Thom (MadBitcoins) has offered us a slot on the weekly network, something like This Week in Feathercoin, I would prefer it if it were more open ended and supportive of all crypto network but feature members of this community. One of the things I love so much about this place is that we don’t hate on other coins. So if anyone would like to collaborate or fancies a go at a live hangout please shoot me an email.

In what way does the ego impact on Satoshi’s Incentive Engineering?

Mining is a zero sum game. The only way to profit is by being first in line, to get your rigs started before everyone else and to sell just before that difficulty jump. You can eek out a profit but not without someone else losing out. It’s all about timing. Time. When is it time to start mining? When is it time to stop? When is it time to hold the coins? When is it time to sell?

What role does the ego play in all this?

My ego tells me that I know just the right time to buy the rig, and just the right time to sell. “Surely”, my ego says, “I am smarter than the market and surely I am clever enough to anticipate other people’s demands and decisions before everyone else.”

But when it comes to mining it isn’t just the ‘lucky’ that make the money it’s also the ones selling the shovels and spades. I’m talking about the manufacturers like KnC and Butterfly Labs; the ones who escape the rate race by giving the rats what they want. Surely that’s where the profit lies. They take your money up front (like the banks) and they teach you a lesson but you don’t see any profit until you learn from it.

Hello everyone.

Following a conversation on The Bitcoin Group on Friday I got a comment from @Coin_Artist on Twitter saying that we were showing hostility towards altcoins, in particular Dogecoin. I felt that the way the thread was going that this topic of whether alt coins end up getting used as pump and dumps, and managing people’s expectations was in much need of debate.

So tonight at 8pm BST / 12pm PST we will be doing a show live to discuss the ethics of alt coins. The intentions of the founders and how to manage the public relations.

Is it time we started being more honest with ourselves about what we are really trying to achieve with these blockchains? I think you all know how I feel about it. Whether the altcoin developers intended it or not (mostly not I suspect) the way it seems to me is that most altcoins are just glorified slot machines and the people who make the money are the ones who are able to control the information with paid articles in the press, shills on the chat rooms and painting pictures on the charts to reinforce all of those messages.

This is the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCryptoNetwork

Let’s keep it civilised and constructive. We all have good experience here and we still have a well deserved reputation for being the nicest bunch of people in Crypto here at Feathercoin.

Your opinions and views, as always, are much appreciated.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #29

Tuesday 22nd April 2014

Celebrations

Feathercoin Key Stats

370 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 40,600,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 17 days behind target generation rate

We have just departed a big milestone and how better to celebrate than with a mandatory software update and a celebratory drink at the Oxford Blue.

Update Your Wallets Please

by @Uncle_Muddy

It’s not a drill friends, Feathercoin 0.8.6.2 has now been released and it is a mandatory upgrade! You can find it on the homepage. Not only for the wallet application but for all pool software. The new release also uses the latest version of OpenSSL so has the fix against the Heartbleed vulnerability.

The aim of the new version is to limit the effect of multipools, they are currently mining Feathercoin in such a way that leaves no room at all for people who want to solely mine us. Our last effort to fix this issue worked for a while but the multipools figured out a way to use the last change against us and manage to mine us without moving the difficulty as much as they should but leave the difficulty higher overall. Considering this Wrapper and Wellenreiter have put months into analyzing our current difficulty and multipools including how they mine other coins, not just us.

The new update is available to download from the front page of the website. The changes are already live on GitHub in the master-0.8 default repository. This update is mandatory and involves a hard fork on block 204,639 to add the following features in a defence against strip mining.

1. Block times.

The Feathercoin Transaction block time will be reduced from 2.5 minutes to 1 minute. The miner block payment will reduce to 80 FTC to compensate for the increased frequency but maintain the same coin supply…

2. eHRC or enhanced Hash Rate Compensation,

eHRC uses the standard Bitcoin protocol to calculate the the next block difficulty, but adds 2 extra historical block lookups, or block average times to calculate the new difficulty more accurately. The difficulty ReTarget has been increased to every block.

Please help us make the move as simplistic as possible, by upgrading now and making sure the pools you are using are aware of the upcoming hard fork.

Birthday Bash

by @ChrisJ

It’s someone 's birthday party this Saturday and it would be great if you could join the fun at the Oxford Blue.

Don 't worry if you are not in our region of the globe there may be a live linkup on our Youtube Channel and by the way, remember our video that we made back in the summer? It now has now received over 36,000 views and I still get people coming up to me in London telling me how it inspired them to get in to crypto.

On a personal note I would like to say that being here in this community with you all has had a very positive impact on my life. This domain certainly sucks you in to a time warp and I feel that right now there is more that we are thinking than we are saying and often we forget to speak our minds. But I think I speak for everyone who has been in to crypto-currencies for more than 12 months that it can be exhausting, in a good way. Not just in terms of work but also it movement really hijacks the mind, I cannot stop thinking about all of the ideas and possibilities this technology could have.

Feathercoin came in to my life and it gave me a purpose. I was just a troll in the Trollbox, unsure of what to do with my life. I had been sitting on my hands for a year after quitting my job. Then I saw FTC float on BTCe, I watched it go up to 1 Bitcoin and crash back down. I noticed what Bush was saying on the forums and admired the way he just pushed himself out there, doing something he was afraid of and doing, what at the time, few people dared to do but that in the end his courage paved the way and now everyone does it.

Feathercoin set the standard, we made it safe for other people to enter the market. I get more and more emails with every week from people entering the space asking me for advice, asking me what it was like. Right now I feel that the more educated public are waiting for the next big rise in popularity. I have been penciled in to give another talk at Hull City by David Gilson in a few months.

Thank-you very much to all of you for making this experience so memorable. It has taught me a lot not least because we tend to learn the most when we are surprised.

Let 's Talk Bitcoin with Andreas

by @ChrisJ

I was pleasantly surprised when Andreas approached me to appear on Let 's Talk Bitcoin back in February. My calendar got so full I completely forgot about it and then people on Twitter started sending their thanks.

I hate listening to myself so I have not had the courage to listen back yet but if you would like to take a listen check out Episode 101 - The Why of Bitcoin.

I want your feedback, questions and critique. You are free to challenge me here in the forum or on Twitter @MrChrisEllis. I am still trying to develop my understanding of this technology and its underlying philosophy so I welcome any intellectual testing.

Merchant Watch

by @Ruthie

Last week Bush and I with kiddies in tow met up with ChekaZ and his friend Sven to visit Dahms Vineyard in Germany.

Jürgen Dahms gave us all the pleasure of a tour of the vinyard where the wine is grown and historic castle buildings where they have the wine tasting events.
After the tour of the castle and surrounding vinyard we also got to take a tour around the shop and where they produce their wine.

Peterstirn, the castle of the Marquis Berthold from the 10th Century is the landmark of the city of Schweinfurt and the winery Dahms.
Here, in the castle, family owned , the wine tastings and the annual wine festivals that take up an old tradition of the city . On the grounds of the castle today is also the home of Jürgen Dahm family , which was restored in 1999.
The castle can only be visited as part of wine tasting .

The Castle above the Main River is nestled in 2.5 hectares of vineyards, where the classic Franconia grape varieties are grown:
Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Bacchus, Scheurebe, Traminer and Riesling and red wine as the interspecific varieties Rondo.

Most importantly Dahms winery shipping deatils:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxuembourg, Netherlands, Spain, France, GB and Italy.
If your country is not listed, just drop them an email for shipping in your area.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Rewarding the Loyal. Today special thanks go to @Chrisj, @Ruthie and @Uncle_Muddy for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #28

Tuesday 15th April 2014

Rewarding the Loyal

Feathercoin Key Stats

363 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 39,800,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 17.1 days behind target generation rate

One of the biggest challenges we face in this emerging digital economy is striking the right balance of incentives between the loyal miners and those who mine for nothing but short term profit, sometimes referred to as strip mining.

Those who believe in the idea itself and continue to secure our blockchain deserve the ongoing commitment of the developers to ensure they are fairly rewarded for their effort.

Profit cannot be the only goal, it must be the result of getting things right. The ability to relate the long term to the short term. And showing up is half the work which is why this week we must pay special thanks to @Bushstar, @Wrapper, @Uncle_Muddy, @Wellenreite, @kstenson and @llocans who continue to chip away at the code meaning we continue to make an impact even during a time when the public attention on crypto-currency is waning.

The public may not realise this but the work taking place right now is probably some of the most important work going on when it comes to the long term survivability of a blockchain based currency. The people we need to be celebrating are the ones honest enough to realise how little they know and determined enough to do the work necessary to find out what works.

Feathercoin 0.8.6.2

_by @Bushstar_Feathercoin 0.8.6.2 is now released and is available to download from the front page of the official Feathercoin website. This update is mandatory and involves a hard fork on block 204,639 which will happen roughly at 12:00GMT on the 24th April. The new release uses the latest version of OpenSSL so has the fix against the Heartbleed vulnerability.

Wrapper and Wellenreiter have made simulations to see the effect of multipools on us and can see how bad their impact on us is. They have also been able to use these simulations to work out the best possible defense against these pools. After months of analysis the best possible solution was chosen and we have spent the last month running this on the testnet in various forms to gather as much data as possible. The testnet showed that the changes performed exactly as the simulations predicted and that the difficulty closely follows the network hashrate. This is a sign of quality in the simulations that were created, we have powerful tools for developing Feathercoin.

A hard fork can only mean one thing… an excuse to reuse this cool graphic!_
After block 204,639 the following changes will come into effect._

• Block time reduced to 1 minute. We handle more transactions and reduce the window for double spend.
• Block reward is reduced to 80 coins a block to maintain the same inflation model. 80 coins * 2.5 minutes = 200 coins
• Retarget every block compared to every 126 block currently
• _Use combined average from 15, 120 and 480 block averages with .25 damping_The new Mac client has been built with QR code support. Note that there was a 0.8.6.1 release that had an issue with full blockchain sync, you are having trouble synchronizing the blockchain please download and install 0.8.6.2.

Android Feathercoin Wallet 2

by @Uncle_Muddy

You may remember a couple of weeks ago we reported that the Android version of the feathercoin wallet had stopped working. Well I’m very pleased to say that thanks to the hard work of Wellenreiter, kstenson, and llocans we now have a mobile wallet app back!

_
_The new wallet available now on the Google Play store__Further development work is planned for the app in the near future, if your interested in getting involved please put a post in the original development thread.

___Link to the App in the play store and Android Wallet App Upgrade/Install Guide

We also owe thanks to David Gilson for reporting on this in his article in Coinbuzz._

Merchant Watch

by Ruthie

bitbooks.co

BitBooks.co is a marketplace for self-published authors (or their agents) to sell books directly to readers using nothing but digital currency. We currently accept Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Feathercoin and Litecoin.

Not only can you buy books from us, if your a budding author you can publish your books with them too, more information can be found here

This now regular section of the news letter, is not far away from getting a new section of the site to provide a merchant directory, we hope to have the work completed and the new section setup by the end of April so keep your eyes open for even more places to spend your feathers.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Progressive. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy, @Bushstar & @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #27

Tuesday 8th April 2014

Progressive

Feathercoin Key Stats

356 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 39,000,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 16.27 days behind target generation rate

Feathercoin is almost a year old, we said from early on that we believed the most important feature of any currency was survivability. People want to know that you’re going to stick around because if their currency doesn’t hold its value it’s not much use as money.

I don’t think a crypto currency is about trying to take over the world and become the new Dollar. The opposite of a global super power is not another global super power. I think a good crypto is backed against its people and their ability to care, a well distributed Blockchain can never die, the mathematics in the protocol gives it a resilience but it’s up to us to provide the passion and enthusiasm.

Feathercoin 1st Birthday Bash

by Uncle_Muddy

We want your ideas for our Birthday bash on 26th April at the Oxford Blue, tell us how we should celebrate over here on the thread. But just to wet your whistle, we have managed to secure a barrel of fine ale as part of the Prostate Cancer UK fund raiser, so will be selling FeatherAle over the weekend! So not only can you pay with feathercoins, you can also drink a pint of our very own beer!

There are a few of us going to get together for a quite drink on the Friday evening at the pub, and then the main event takes place on the Saturday. We are still working on some of the finer details of the Saturday but rest assured that we will have plenty going on. So please feel free to pop in and see us if your in the area, and if your not keep an eye open for information on live streams from the event.

Wallet Feature Enhancement

by @Uncle_Muddy
A conversation between Claire and Bushstar, came up with the idea of adding the ability to import a key via QRCode to the feathercoin-QT wallet via the webcam. Now for those of you that use paper wallets you’ll realize just how useful this can be. So Claire set about doing some work and here is the result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NCiHGIMB2c

Claire’s implementation using Legocoin via the screen capture
We are looking into adding this exciting new feature to the next wallet release and will keep you updated on the progress as it happens.

Brave New Coin

_by ChrisJ_The guys from Brave New Coin joined us this morning to tell us about their new website which tracks key economic data about crypto currencies. The goal is to create a platform which gives reliable information about a range of cryptos including Feathercoin.

Click on the arrow on the right column and it includes Market Cap, Price and Volume. There’s also a neat Export button on the top right of the graph.

The vision at Brave New Coin is to be transparent about the way the data is collected and displayed. Many other data aggregation services are not up front with way the data is sliced. They seem to have the team to support the project so I look forward to seeing how they progress with it.

For a long time sites like Crypto Coin Charts and Coin Market Cap have been the go to sources for information but I think it’s important that new entrants enter this domain as otherwise we risk centralising our information flow. I am sure the guys would appreciate some feedback you can hit them up on Twitter @bravenewcoin.

Merchant Watch

by Ruthie

newloge.com

Newlodge.com an on-line electrical superstore where you can buy the latest top brand electrical devices and appliances at the best possible prices. No matter whether you are a pro, a techie, a hobbyist or a business customer, when it comes to electronics and household technology, we provide ideas and practical solutions around the clock. We have a huge range of product, available by mail order.

Newlodge.com have always been a proud advocate and support of high quality open source systems and for this and many other reason we are pleased to announce the we now accept payment via crypto currencies. This includes feathercoin, so please show your support and consider them for your next purchase.

As promised last week this is now going to be a regular section of the news letter, we are still working away in the background to bring you a new section of the site to provide a merchant directory, and will keep you updated with progress as we work out some of the finer points.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Unstoppable. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy and @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #26

Tuesday 1th April 2014

Unstoppable

Feathercoin Key Stats

350 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 38,300,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 16.7 days behind target generation rate

The people worth paying attention to aren’t the ones who shout the loudest or who have the biggest advertising budgets and the person in the meeting doing all the talking probably isn’t the one with the best ideas.

We have from day one put the people first, the quiet ones who work hard in the background while everyone is looking the other way. It’s people like that who turn up every day and make the world go round. There’s no need for fancy introductions when the work just speaks for itself.

Hullcoin

_by @Ruthie_If you cast your minds back to earlier this year you may remember that Hull City Council came to our January meet up as they wanted to find out more about Feathercoin and what we were all about. They had already done a lot of research and we were impressed with their knowledge of crypto currency.

Several emails followed and Chrisj, Chris from The Oxford Blue and myself attended one of their local forum meet ups in early March.

Hull City Council’s aim is to mine crypto currency via multipools and buy Feathercoins to distribute as rebranded Hullcoins to people living in financial need, Hull City Council have provided a network of shops that will accept Hullcoin.

Hullcoin logo
Hullcoin is going to be a mix of 50:50 Feathercoin and Ven. David Shepherdson for Hull City Council says “One hullcoin is a hybrid of Feathercoin and Ven. This would be to potentially counteract issues with volatility. This would work by issuing one Feathercoin and the equivalent value in Ven. This would mean the ‘currency’ would remain digital but a combination of crypto and something that is pegged to a basket of trade-able commodities.”

I’m proud not only that they have made Feathercoin their choice of crypto currency, but that I have also been invited and accepted a position on the Hull City Council board of directors for this project. I will be acting as first point of contact for Hull, but hope we can all support them in making the change for people in need.
You can find the Coindesk article by David Gilson here.

I appreciate there will be a lot of questions regarding this, as this project is in its infancy stages some of the details are yet to be confirmed but please be rest assured that once we have further details and answers to the questions we will update you.

Feathercoin Meetup 29th March

_by @Bushstar_A pleasant evening was had at the wonderful Oxford Blue. We were treated with some very interesting gadgets. The first was bought along by Uncle Muddy who has spent the last month building a Feathercoin ATM. We got to see it close up and give it a try. By putting £1 into the slot it printed out a QR code with 10 Feathercoins on. Watch this video for a demonstration of the Feathercoin ATM and Muddy’s engineering skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeGxEMHqmRA The next gadget we got to see in operation was the GridSeed miner brought along by the DemocraticRepublicOfDave. This is an incredibly neat gadget, it looks like a CPU heat sink and fan which connect to a computer by USB. It can mine either SHA-256 at 8GH or Scrypt at 320KH. That seems pretty magic in itself. Dave was kind enough to walk us through this low power magical device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji1EcRfHw5UIt is good to talk to people who share the same enthusiasms over food and beers. We meetup every month and the more the merrier, remember that our meetups are open to people from all walks of crypto life and not just for feathercoiners no matter what your coin is you will be made very welcome.

The next meetup is an extra special occasion as it is going to be our 1st Birthday bash. Some of the team are meeting up again this week to talk over ideas for the Birthday weekend, so if you have anything you would like to see included in the festivities please make a post in the thread and we will do what we can.

Prostate Cancer UK

by @Uncle_Muddy

We are well on our way to the 6,000 FTC goal. I’m currently working on a couple of ideas to get us over the finish line, and also talking to PCUK about making a presentation to them on the Saturday of the Birthday Weekender, but in the mean time if you would like to donate a few feathers to the cause then you can using the address below

6eshhwBr7W8ynbFobDyoMD5zPK9F5E5ghP

Feather Roller

_by @Calem_Inspired by a Flappy Bird clone and in homage to the original Sonic, Feather Roller is an infinite runner where the goal is to dodge the enemies and the collect the ftc. Controls and version updates can be found here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAtZ74BSbmU This is my first hand at making a game and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope in the future, the game will actually mine ftc for the player if they choose to do so. I’ll be making updates to the game at some stage that will add levels, animated character’s and buttons and many more idea’s. If there’s anything you think I’m missing, drop me a comment on the thread.

If you would like to try your hand at this fun little game you can download it, why not post your scores in the thread and let others see how you got on?

Merchant Watch

by @Ruthie

**buygolfshirts.com**We are proud to announce that as of the 30th March buygolfshirts.com have started accepting FTC as a payment method on their site.

From the sales floor to the construction zone, front desk to back lot, company picnic to charity golf outing, we’ve got the ideal sports shirt to fit the situation. Offering customisation on a huge range of product we are sure you will be able to find something to fit your needs.

So next time your looking for a customised sports shirt no matter what the occasion, why not contact the guys at buygolfshirts.com first and pay with some of your feathers?

From now on Merchant Watch will become a regular section of the news letter, and over the coming weeks we are intending to put up a new merchant section on the forum, making it easier for you to find places to spend your feathercoin.

Feathercoin Android Wallet

by Uncle Muddy
Some of you are aware that there is currently an issue with our Android Wallet app not being able to sync with the blockchain. It is based on the old way of using IRC to connect to the network. A couple of the devs have taken a quick look at this problem but are currently tied up on other projects so to this end we have raised a bounty of 5,000FTC for the development of a new Android wallet.

As a minimum the following features should include:

No cloud server or web service
Display of wallet balance in Feathercoin and various other fiat currencies (currencies selected via app settings)
Sending and receiving of Feathercoin via NFC, QR-codes or Feathercoin URLs
Address book for regularly used Feathercoin addresses
Enter transactions while offline, will be executed when online
Manages blockchain on the device
System notifications for Feathercoin connectivity and received coins
Private key import via QR Code scanning

The finished product needs to be available via open source so further development can be carried out by other people, all code should be made available via GitHub.

TL;DR

by ChrisJ
Many in cryptoland treat it like a big casino, checking the price all day, sitting back waiting to get rich fuelled by a relentless desire for future comfort and a final resting place.

This has created an opportunity for nefarious enterprising minds to make themselves the owners of this big casino. They set up exchanges, start online magazines, bribe shills on social media all so that they can control the information for all their new found customers.

They realise that if they control the information they control the beliefs and controlling beliefs means controlling the price.

But it’s not beliefs that make us who we are, our behaviour does. The reason people like Hull Council want to work with Feathercoin is because it’s full of good people who work hard and stay focussed long after it’s fashionable.

Don’t wait for permission to get involved just do it then talk about it. You can PM Ruthie or me and we will feature you in a future newsletter.

You can find the last official newsletter here: The Heroes. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy, @Calem, @Bushstar, @Ruthie & @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #25

Tuesday 25th March 2014

The Heroes

Feathercoin Key Stats

343 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 37,500,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 16.36 days behind target generation rate

Today’s news is brought to you by the heroes. The ones who stick by you through thick and thin, who know how to say ‘no’ to the time wasters because they already said YES to something more important. The people whose values are clear and who turn up everyday hungrier than the day before.

I’m a big fan of Authentic Enthusiasm. It’s about reaching a point in your life where you just understand what makes you unique, you finally realise what it is you are here to learn and have to give. It stands opposed to False Enthusiasm, which is an ego driven excitement. It’s getting caught up in general mood and being carried away by it rather than responding authentically and giving out what is uniquely yours.

When we first get excited about an idea it’s very hard to know whether the idea will still excite us tomorrow or next week. It’s hard to know whether we will be able to keep our energy levels up during the dip. I can’t lie, I don’t have a conclusive answer on how to tell the difference so instead I prefer to keep on learning from the experts who don’t need words to say everything that needs to be said…

OpenfeathercoinATM

_by @uncle_muddy_It’s been just over 4 weeks in the making, and all started in Kevlar’s post Open Source ATM But its finally finished, or at least this iteration is!

Excuse the photos, but I only have a phone camera here at the moment. The full write up of the finished version available in the Technical Development section of the forum, including all of the information you need to be able to make one of these devices yourself.

The ATM will be making its first appearance at the Oxford Blue this Saturday March 29th 3pm onwards, so bring your £1 coins and watch it in action.

One Year Anniversary / Birthday.

_by @Ruthie_I want to draw your attention towards our one year anniversary, we want your ideas, how do you think we should celebrate?
Its coming up in April, which isn’t that long away, we are having a meet up at The Oxford Blue on April 26th, but want everyone to celebrate together Calem has started a thread for a Global Celebration have your say https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/6628-global-one-year-birthday-meetup/

Pock.io

_by @Rusty Nash CEO & Co-Founder_Our mission is to increase liquidity, stability and validity to cryptocurrencies by allowing people to spend them as they normally as they can spend fiat. Whilst retailers are still a bit wary of accepting bitcoin, let alone other digital currencies, we are bridging the gap for holders of currencies to spend where they want to. Currently you can spend via pock.io at a plethora of retailers:

• Amazon.co.uk
• ASDA (in-store only)
• asos
• Burton Menswear
• Debenhams
• Dorothy Perkins
• Evans
• Google Play
• Over 750 pubs across the UK via the Great British Pub Card
• Miss Selfridge
• Mothercare
• New Look
• Playstation - prepaid cards and PS+ subscriptions
• Spotify Premium
• Starbucks
• Ticketmaster
• Topman
• Topshop
• Xbox - prepaid and Xbox Live Gold subscriptions

We have also just gotten approval to sell Marks & Spencers gift cards (online and instore) bringing another option for the community to grab groceries (as with all the other goodies that M&S sell). We also have very exciting plans for the near future, but you’ll have to follow us on Twitter (@pockiouk) to keep abreast of the features and retailers we will be rolling out. Without saying too much, we have some innovations which should allow an even easier way to spend cryptos as you normally would spend fiat!

MinerX

by @Chekaz
MinerX is an automated MiningTool for newbies. Its Java based and its combinated with CgMiner and CudaMiner, enabling simple setup of mining using both AMD and nVidia cards.

Ready for release under the Alpha testing phase, this simple to use tool should get you up and mining within a couple of minutes. Development work on the project is on-going so let me know if you have any feedback.

I’m still looking for graphics to improve the user interface, so if your a budding designer theres a 100FTC bounty up for grabs donated by myself and Ruthie should your design be chosen.

Once your up and running the hashes go towards http://mine-ftc.co.uk:19327/static/index.html so all the time your mining your giving a little back to the community and helping us reach our fund-raising goal for Prostate Cancer UK.

All the information can be found here.

Tech Dev

_by @Ruthie_Well I know for sure that the Technical Development area is busy as I have barely spoken to Bush in a while, as you know I let the Dev’s get on with what they do but I think they should get a mention for working hard in the background : so thank you, ghostlander, Wellenreiter, wrapper and Bushstar and to all those that have input in the Tech Dev area.

TL;DR

_by Chris_Living life authentically and working towards truth isn’t easy and it’s not something that can easily be put in to words. Over the months I have tried to shape this newsletter in to a platform for those who are authentic, resilient and who push themselves in to new areas of learning and talents. It isn’t really the money we want anyway, it’s each other. And the people who will shape the future will be the heroes, the ones with grit, who turn their whole lives in to works of art, the ones who never stop learning.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Become Who You Want To Be. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy @Ruthie @Chekaz and @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #24

Tuesday 18th March 2014

Become Who You Want to Be

Feathercoin Key Stats
336 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 36,700,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 16.36 days behind target generation rate
Today we have special newsletter which for the first time features a piece written by a new team member talking about why he overcame his self doubt and committed to his passion.

Before I do I would like to situate it in context with a point that Adam B Levine made in his interview with Dogecoin tipbot founder Josh Mohland recently:

Adam:
The hope going forward then is that [Dogecoin] isn’t just a new currency thing because ultimately Doge is what, a little over two months old?… Doge blew up early but there are a lot of coins that really focus on the community and focus on ‘oh it’s such a great place to be’ and they give out lots of coins and everyone’s very generous at the beginning because you’re still trying to vest stakeholders… is there a certain point where you think that this dynamic doesn’t really grow anymore? Or do you think that the specific fundamentals of Doge lend it to a longer tail for this?

Josh:
You know I think it’s really too early to tell. Especially with the first block halving which is happening roughly around Friday of this week. I think after we see the first halving take affect there’s going to be there’s going to be kind of the, we’re going to see what happens to the network, see what happens to the hash rate, if it goes down, if it goes up. See what happens to the price. For a coin that’s two months old that has this amount of growth it’s too early to tell really.

Like in business with Cryptocurrencies failure is the norm. Not just with the adoption curve but with the blockchain itself. Only one miner can receive the reward per block. Having the courage to commit knowing that the odds are stacked against you takes courage and commitment to an identity you want to make for yourself. It’s about owning your decisions and every action you take and caring more than everyone else.

The market is there to test your resilience, it’s there to make you prove yourself. Being committed to the right values and helping relate your work the needs of others first is vital to success.

Feathercoin has some of the nicest people in the space, people who are here for all the right reasons not to score cheap PR points with faux gratitude so they can win over the masses, now it’s time to let them do the talking…

Getting your hands dirty

by @MyWyrm
I’ve recently joined the team and usually my first ‘default’ or ‘stock’ thought in these sorts of situations is one of extreme doubt in my own abilities. It is rarely a doubt shared by the people that know me best, it’s instead a less than useful self doubt. I’ve always attributed it to fear, a most illogical and very human of fears, it is a fear of starting something, giving it my all and it not being good enough. The active avoidance of difficulty for fear of failure is a common and ironic failing and one which I’d encourage everyone to actively beat off with a large and very positive stick.

The best stick is a project which you are passionate about. Feathercoin is my large stick and beating it back is honestly satisfying and enriching. Uncomfortable situations like writing this article? WHACK! Take that doubt.

The way I see it, communities are like floors held up by pillars, the strength isn’t in a single person it’s in the combined effort. If you have read Ruthie’s post asking for members to come forward and help with the team and talked yourself out of it, please reconsider, please get involved and please give it a go.

For anyone else, if you’ve considered setting up Crypto meetings in your area, outreaching to your local businesses or setting up a website, blog or business. It’s there for the taking.

Please check out Bre Pettis’s excellent ‘Cult of Done Manifesto’, it’s a fantastic motivational read.

CoinsManager

by @Adrien
CoinsManager is a free open source, multi-address, multi-currency Portfolio. You only need to add your public addresses to the application, and it will find for you the associated coin, the coin balance, and the total value in your favourite fiat currency. We only plan on adding a lot more features after the MVP, especially through gamification elements (example a game to learn more about crypto currencies?)

Feathercoin has been implemented a few days ago, so we’re hoping to get some love from the Feathercoin community :) Contributions and donations would be very much appreciated. You can read a lot more to understand the project at our press releases, and directly test the application at alpha.coinsmanager.com.

Thank you for your interest, and if you have any question, please ask me, and I’ll answer as soon as possible.

Charity Fundraiser

by @Uncle Muddy

So far we have raised a massive 4,502 FTC for Prostate Cancer UK and continue to push forwards to the 6,000 FTC goal. The Lottery will be running for a further 2 weeks before we park it and press on with the final push towards the end of April and the final presentation at the 1 year Birthday Bash where we hope to have a representative of PCUK to receive the final amount. @Ruthie has kindly sponsored the next two weeks of lottery to give you even better odds of winning! But you’ve got to be in it to win it.

The Rules
All stakes need to be received by 17:00 UK time on a Saturday Night, the reported confirmed transaction time on the wallet will be used to monitor this
Max 5 entries per person
www.random.org will be used to select the winning numbers
20% of all stakes will go to the charity fund, the rest will be awarded as 1st Prize

The Prize Fund - Saturday 22nd March 2014
1st Prize will be 80% of all stakes received
2nd 20FTC
3rd 10FTC
4th 5FTC
5th 5FTC

How to Join In
If you have an address from the raffle you can use that to send in your stake, if you don’t or you need it again drop me a PM and I’ll send you one over. I will post up a list of names for the lottery draw by 18:30 on the Saturday night in the post just below this one. I will video the draw taking place around 19:00 and the winners will be paid out shortly afterwards.

Other ways to donate to the cause
You could always just donate by sending coins to the charity pot using the address 6eshhwBr7W8ynbFobDyoMD5zPK9F5E5ghP (coins sent here will not be included in the lottery!)or you could donate some hashing power to the community paybackP2Pool node. Keep your eyes peeled on the forum, for the next big event due to be announced soon, once we have finalised the details. Thanks for your support once again, and massive thanks to Ruthie for sponsoring the lottery!

Feathercoin meet up Oxford.

by @Ruthie
We’re holding the next Feathecoin meet up on Saturday March 29th at The Oxford Blue, 32 Marston Street, Oxford from 3pm onwards. Would love to meet new comers so all are welcome. If anyone would like to set a meet up in the their local area I encourage you to do so, if you meet up on the same day we can link up online.

With our one year anniversary coming up could I also draw your attention to the One Year Birthday Meetup thread, feel free to post with your ideas.

TL;DR

by @ChrisJ
This project of ours is about debt extinguishment, about $16 trillion or so globally. Crypto is not free money, it’s money backed by energy, commitment from caring individuals and a global self stabilising consensus. The first of its kind in human history I might add. Being part of one of the first ever global currencies gives you the chance to tell others how they can be a part of something bigger than themselves and maybe, just maybe we can stop talking about the price and start talking about what really matters.

Slowly, day by day become the person you want to be remembered as.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Listen. Time Passes. Today special thanks go to @MyWyrm, @Adrien, @Uncle Muddy, @Bushstar, @Ruthie & @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #22

Tuesday 4th March 2014

One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Feathercoin Key Stats

321 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 35,300,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 14.67 days behind target generation rate

Bitcoin isn’t just an opportunity, it’s an obligation. The biggest threat we face isn’t fraud, it’s the unwillingness of good people to question their previous assumptions and search themselves for their true values. In many ways frauds act to keep us honest because money isn’t just a tool we use to get our needs met, it’s a site that brings together both honest and dishonest intentions.

Last week I felt compelled to comment on what was going on a Gox so Thomas (MadBitcoins) and I made some videos in response to the enormous amount of FUD and confusion surrounding the story. I apologise for not being able to bring you the newsletter as normal but I felt that there was an urgent situation that needed addressing.

And so now it’s over to you. The team at Feathercoin have decided that we would like you to write the Newsletters in the future as a collaborative effort. I will be on hand to write any content for the intros and TL;DRs but I will have no more say over the direction than anyone else. We feel it would be good to hand over the body of the News to the people in the community and it could give you the chance to get noticed and discover your voice.

One of the things I have tried to do with this Newsletter is to use it as a platform for all the hard working people who make Feathercoin what it is today. I think having a platform comes with a duty to help serve others so that they can see how they can help each other. I would like to see this Newsletter continue to shine a light on the people who perhaps aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

Oxford Meetup #4
_by @Uncle_Muddy_We has a meetup at the Oxford Blue, the local Feathercoin watering hole. It was a good evening for all who turned up with several members from the Oxford Crypto Group arriving to the meet as well. All members of crypto are welcome to attend so please do not think this event is for Feathercoiners only. There was a lot of discussion over the merits of Dogecoin and the disaster that is MtGox.

Back to the Oxford Blue
As you will know we as a community have been working together to raise funds for Prostate Cancer UK, and with your help we smashed our original target of 3,000 FTC and have set our sights on doubling that goal. Again I would like to say thank you on both behalf of Prostate Cancer UK and the Feathercoin Community. Some of these funds were raised through a raffle which was drawn at the Oxford Blue, congratulations to all the winners.

A massive thank you has to go to the following people for donating prizes:

• Netnerd
• MTRinser
• Matl
• HopeStillFliesAnd whilst I have Netnerd in my mind he brought along a few of his new Gold Edition cold wallet coins and they look fantastic! Complete with Certificate of Authenticity, to show where in the limited edition run of 100 your coin is. These unloaded, DIY cold storage wallet coins will soon be available on the Feathercoin Market for purchase.

Gold Edition Coin
by @Bushstar

Warwick University Talk

_by ChrisJ_Last Thursday I had the pleasure to attend Warwick University’s Economics Society on a debate entitled The Future of Finance. I was expecting to met with skepticism as I was the only person there representing a crypto currency but to my pleasant surprise everyone was very curious to learn more with some of the students already mining!

The students or as I like to call them The Future
This talk made me realise something. The real battle ground isn’t about winning over governments or pandering to regulators. A Cryptocurrency is already regulated in the code. The code is the law. The real battle ground is with the young as they are the ones who are going to inherit the system we leave them with.

The real battle lies outside of these chatrooms and forums, it’s out there in towns and cities all over the world, it’s with the people on the fringes.

My plan for the future is to spend more time pounding pavement and meeting people; there is plenty of awareness about Bitcoin but not very much understanding. This Friday I will be at Hull City Council to talk about how their local needs can be supported the power this technology provides and I would really appreciate your support.

Feathercoin 0.8.6

_@Bushstar_Feathercoin has now been updated to 0.8.6 which fixes a bug experienced by some Mac users and other fixes included in Bitcoin 0.8.6. We are also including some of the excellent features that have been included in Bitcoin OMG. These include Disable Wallet Mode which allows you to run the client without a wallet attached and Coin Control so you can specify where the funds come from when sending and where the “change” should go. More control for the users is always a good thing.

Coin control gives you more choice over how your funds are moved in the wallet
To update to Feathercoin 0.8.6 please head over to the download section at the Feathercoin website. This includes the Windows, Mac, Linux wallets and a link to GitHub for those who want to compile their own.

MtGox

_by @motherlode1_The MtGox fiasco has left the Crypto community shocked and confused. The exchange that started it all turned around and abandoned us. Not something anyone would have foreseen. Some members of the community are rethinking their stance on Crypto and one can’t blame them for it. A lot of them have potentially lost a fortune. Add to that all the other incidents that have happened, anyone would have second thoughts. These are truly trying times for us.Those of us who were not invested in Gox can only offer our sympathy.

Our @ChrisJ is now a regular on the Bitcoin Group and the new World Crypto Network
We are limited by what we have and who we are but that does not mean we cannot push ourselves further. Bitcoin is not just an amazing piece of software, it’s more than that. It’s an ideology that has brought like-minded individuals together, it’s an ideology that has spurned the growth of start-ups, and it’s an ideology that has given us what we lost during the industrial revolution. It has given us control over our financial future and given us the freedom of choice. And it is our duty to ensure that this piece of software lives on.

To those who are having second thoughts about Bitcoin or feel that it may not survive. I want to borrow some lines From Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses.

We are not now that strength which in old days _
_Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Take from this what you will.

Feathercoin ATM

_by @Bushstar_UncleMuddy our resident engineer has taken a thread started by Kevlar and turned it into a working ATM. This is excellent work and shows the talent in our community. This ATM should début at the next Feathercoin meet in Oxford where we can buy preloaded private keys for English pounds. If you want to know more you can contact Uncle Muddy over at the Feathercoin forum.

Working Feathercoin ATM. The private key is dummy data so no need to try and scan it, I already did!

New Team Members

_by @Bushstar_Please welcome to the Feathercoin team Uncle Muddy, Netnerd, MrWyrm, Draco and motherlode1. Uncle Muddy is the chap responsible for the ATM above and last weeks unofficial newsletter, you will have seen him on the stream from the Oxford Blue if you watched it, I put him on the spot by getting him to do it. He did great so do not let him say otherwise. Netnerd is a very active member of the community who has been producing physical Feathercoin wallets like the gold one pictured in the newsletter above. motherlode1 has been doing an excellent job running the Feathercoin Reddit community and has a critical mind to apply to Feathercoin. By popular demand MrWyrm has been added to the team, he is level-headed in times of chaos and we appreciate his high levels of sanity. Draco bring in years of marketing and promotional experience and plans to work in areas of general marketing, merchant adoption, brand recognition and organising charity events.

TL;DR

_by @ChrisJ_Communities form around a common need and it’s important to remember that fraud isn’t something that happens somewhere else, it’s a threat that everyone needs to aware of. MtGox provides us with an opportunity to show the world how to respond to dishonest behaviour in the financial system.

We have suffered many economic crises in the past but for the first time in history the people have the tools they need to fix it for themselves and take back control. If you work for someone who creates a climate of fear you have an obligation

You can find the last official newsletter here: Everything Points Towards Success. Today special thanks go to Uncle Muddy, Motherlode1 and Ruthie for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

I have been up for 38 hours. No newsletter today but am about to do a video with Andreas and some other Bitcoiners, just getting ready.

http://youtu.be/1mWkY5yIAnc

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #21

Tuesday 18th February 2014

Everything Points Towards Success

Feathercoin Key Stats

307 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 33,700,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

Or is it every-one? Nothing is just everything without direction and greatness cannot be achieved until we learn to love what it is we do. Today we show the power of execution.

Coinfest Success

And we begin with the powerful @Motherlode1 and @Lizardman aka Norman and David respectively. These guys put in a lot of energy in to the Coinfest expo in Vancouver Canada last weekend. Feathercoin had a stall and was met by lots of supporters; people who said they loved Feathercoin but for one reason or another just hadn’t stopped to say ‘hi’ on the forum yet.

Norman was kind enough to make note of their feedback so that we could continue to improve on the website.

Norman (who already brought us Feathercoin on Reddit) shooting for the Youtube Livestream at Coinfest Vancouver. Checkout the cool FTC t-shirt made by David

One of the things I really admire about Norman is his ability to take responsibility and fix problems. He said he was going to do something and then he did it. If there was a hiccup, even if it was outside of his control, he apologised anyway and found a workaround. He kept his focus and remembered what was important. To make no mention of all the work he did in the background to imagine the opportunity ahead of him and turn it in to a reality.

For a while before the Livestream it looked like we wouldn’t be able to do it. So he tried out the Hangout link on his phone, installed some stuff and just got it working and did an impromptu show with me. He then produced gems like this:

Nathan from Cryptominers and Corrina from Crypt0Youth are helping children at risk
We spoke to Nathan and Corrina (seek 13:12) who told us they are building a project that sees the proceeds from mining go towards helping children who are at risk so that they can fund scholarship programs. This is so beautiful I just had to pick this out of the lineup. Checkout CryptØYouth’s Facebook page and give them a Like or head over to their site http://crypt0youth.org. I will sort them out with some Feathercoins very soon using Michael Harrison’s Feathertipper, which by the way was also a star of the show and was used to send tips to some of the people who left us their Twitter @ tags.

Big thanks to Andrew on the mic for giving us the chance to join in at the Expo

The event would not have been possible without the hard work from the guys at Coinfest. We are in talks about hosting one in the UK as well and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

Prostate Cancer UK Goal Reached FTW!

Hey who moved the goal posts?

You did! That’s right, you punched above your weight and redefined a more meaningful goal because the last one was way too easy apparently. Well that is according to @HopeStillFlies who upped the stakes by matching all the previous donations with one big mega buy!

Hope does indeed still fly. Did I do any of that weird philosophical stuff in this news yet?

Memory is the eye of imagination but it is only hope that pierces through to create a path in to a future. A hope that dreams of a day that our past will be uncovered and understood differently and with compassion.

Yeah anyway to be specific this is a stretch goal. It won’t embarrass us if we don’t make it but wouldn’t be fun if we did? The Raffle will be drawn at the Oxford Blue this Saturday at 20:00 UTC. If you’re around we’d love to see you. Ruthie is planning on getting a livestream together.

Success is achieved when we learn how to enjoy what we do and @Uncle_Muddy is having a whale of a time.

New Website

As you may have realised by now we have a new website. Not that I would know but it was rather like giving birth.

It’s a launch!
Big thanks go to @Bush, @Sev, @Entimp, and Peter (@555) and all of the others who contributed to this project. We got there in the end and it has given us a platform on which we can grow. The main website is in Wordpress which means we can start adding you guys as bloggers. We want to use the main image on the home page to feature your projects. So get working and send us your pictures.

Note: we have had a few spambots reactivitate since installing the new forum. This should be sorted soon as the permissions were changed. We would love to get your feedback so that we can continue to improve it, this is for all of us so give us a shout in the comments.

One Year Anniversary of Feathercoin

Well not quite yet. But I am pleased to welcome back @Entimp, where would we be without him?, who has brought forth the idea of a one year anniversary celebration for Feathercoin this coming April. Now this is an plan I think we can all get behind. Head over to his thread and help him develop this worthy event.

TL:DR

The more you do the more you can do, procrastination is too much like hard work because you just end up getting in your own way. Sometimes we need to look to our heroes who can show us how to do it. They are doers, that is to say they are thinkers with the courage to commit.

I hope you will take the inspiration from these newsletters and show everyone what you can do with it.

You can find last week’s newsletter here: Change Before You Have To Pt2. Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #20

Tuesday 11th February 2014

“Change Before You Have To”

~Jack Welch

Feathercoin Key Stats

300 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 32,900,000 Feathercoins created
Approx. 14 days behind target generation rate

Passion without purpose turns in on itself. And passion isn’t really a choice because suffering is not an option in life. Having too much of what is valuable to others has a tendency to corrupt when there is no clear direction of travel that accords with the underlying values we hold.

Our purpose at Feathercoin is to learn from the mistakes of the past so that we can have a future worth living for. It is our assumption that the reason the world got in this financial mess is because the people got lazy and outsourced their wealth to a small group who formed an industry without those underlying values and whose only purpose was to grow without any regard as to why.

We refused to understand the complexity of their financial instruments, we looked the other way while they gained huge cash sums on deposit that they had immediate access to leaving the rest of us with nothing but pixels on a screen showing numbers with nothing to support them.

Yes, we all know that if we turned up at the ATM tomorrow and tried to withdraw our hard earned cash we would soon realise the truth; that our time (the non refundable stuff) has been wasted, that all along we were working for someone else. So instead we choose denial. But denial is hard work because to stay there you have to know what the truth is; otherwise it’s not denial is ignor ance.

The people at the top may force us to look at history, it’s our responsibility not to ignore it. Our purpose is to educate and inspire people to understand the underlying technology so that we never have to repeat this sorry episode in the human story again. You never really understand something until you own it.

Prostate Cancer UK

That’s right and part of the story means honouring the origin of the word Currency which comes from the latin word currens to mean flow. But John Locke had more in mind than that back in 1699, the meaning of currency embraces the idea of extending the present in to the future. Having control of currency gives us the power in the present to communicate what is important to us, to help those around us and to have some impact.

Check out the neat banner by @Severino\ which we hope will be included on the Prostate Cancer website

Thanks must go to @Uncle_Muddy for putting in the time. He even got a response from Prostate Cancer UK who said:

Thank you also for this very unique opportunity. I must admit that I have not heard of Feathercoin, but it sounds very interesting and your fund-raising efforts would be the first of its kind for us.
I have passed your details to our digital team as I am sure that they would like to feature this initiative.

That’s wonderful. You can read it [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,7539.msg58309.html#msg58309]in full here.

How Can I Donate?

You can make a donation by sending your Feathers to the below address or scan the QR code

http://i.imgur.com/8CTuEK0.png

6eshhwBr7W8ynbFobDyoMD5zPK9F5E5ghP

See the [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,7362.msg56496.html#msg56496] Raffle Page here where you can claim your ticket.

Hey, how embarrassing would it be if we didn’t reach our target and I had to announce that?

Target is 3,000 FTC. That’s 4.45 Feathercoins for each person who read this newsletter last week on the forum. If there’s anything we can do to help you open up your wallets and give to this worthy cause please let us know.

There are also more prizes as well like this Will Work for Feathercoin T-Shirt donated by @MTrisner.

Nice!

Also big thanks to @Matl for donating 100 FTC for the 6th and 7th prizes. Who knows more on the way.

Coinfest

This Saturday it’s Coinfest and Feathercoin will be there. I am also hoping to do a Youtube Livestream, details to be arranged, and I will be talking to people live around the world.

Let’s distribute it : )

@motherlode1 aka Norman has made us proud sponsors of the Coinfest who now take Feathercoin as payment. We are planning on doing a Giveaway for anyone in Vancouver using Michael Harrison’s [url=http://feathertipper.com] Feathertipper who is able to meet Noran at the stall. We have had some banners made and will hopefully have some miners on show. If you are from Canada and would like to attend or help Norman out please get in contact with him. I am happy to take requests.

Feathercoin on Windows Phone

We were joined recently by [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?action=profile;u=24718]Joel who works at Microsoft in Richmond on the upper left hand side of the USA. He came [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,6252.msg56285.html#msg56285] to tell us about the CoinBank Wallet for the Windows phone.

I am loving the Feather in the background

Right now the app is available for beta testers from the [url=http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/coinbank/0cfc76cd-cb14-4ef7-87c2-a99c8bb914d4] Windows Phone Website. Quoting from the site:

[It’s] a simple multi-crypto currency storage tool with Live Tile support for use as a replacement for “paper wallets”

I love that it can import private keys. This is a feature that needs to be implemented in the QT Wallet as well which I have put in a request for as Paper Wallets are by far the safest method of crypto storage when done right.

It’s Something Kids Can Do

And finally, we all remember the famous words of Mark from our video back in the summer. Crypto currency is something kids can do and that is exactly what @new2crypto is discovering right now by turning that statement in to an experimental question of microeconomics by [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php/topic,7287.msg55828.html#msg55828] paying his kids pocket money in Feathercoins .

@new2crypto, real name Mark, says his kids love it. He looks after their coins on his phone but rewards them for chores. His son James who is 4 has 15 FTC and Zara, 6, has her own wallet and plans to convert her FTC so she can play arcade games on their next family holiday. She is even taking an interest in the market volatility; well that’s the retirement fund sorted out.

I think getting this technology in to the hands of kids is a vital part to the adoption. What are the feds going to do, lock up a bunch of a 11 year olds?

TL;DR

Those who do not learn from the past don’t have a future. Goals are not destinations they are starting points we move to in order to discover new opportunities in our lives.

You can find last week’s newsletter here:

Change Before You Have To Pt1

Today special thanks go to @Ruthie for her contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter @Feathercoin to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

About 6 paragraphs down, is this an accurate summary of the TX problem?

[quote]When you write an amount of money, say twenty-three thousand four hundred and twenty-two dollars and fifty-four cents, you typically write that as $23,422.54. But it would also be valid to write it as $0,023,422.54. Or $0,000,023,422.54. This fact – that one number can be written in many ways, all valid – is the malleability. (For the sake of completeness, it wasn’t the amount, but another number in the transaction record that was concerned.)
This was tightened in the bitcoin protocol to only allow the shortest version of writing a number, $23,422.54, in this specific code change, which happened a whole year ago.
This change was ignored by MtGox, if I may speculate, probably because â€Å"it kept working anyway”. That is, until bitcoin 0.8, when the core developers decided to enforce this change across the protocol, having had the tightening published for over a year. The moment bitcoin 0.8+ gained majority deployment on the network, such invalid transactions started getting rejected.[/quote]

This heap of mining equipment was termed “Great Wall of Bitcoin” recently, http://cryptome.org/2014/05/bitcoin-suicide.pdf

I have just skimmed through this, does the author understand how the longest chain rule works? It is the chain with the highest combined difficulty that is considered the longest and I don’t see him mention that anywhere.

Though he is right that the purpose of this movement as a whole is to discover the right incentive engineering and the problem with too many of these coins is that they have “blindly copied” Satoshi’s implementation as if it is perfect.

This heap of mining equipment was termed “Great Wall of Bitcoin” recently, http://cryptome.org/2014/05/bitcoin-suicide.pdf

Reading this now, it looks very interesting.