A short documentary on the effects of the newish but controversial currency known as Bitcoin.Bitcoin is a distributed peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the intermediation of any central authority.The concept was introduced in a 2008 paper by a pseudonymous developer known only as “Satoshi Nakamoto”.266 Newz Streams Active From Around The World | Streaming:On | Newz:Continous| Message:none Newz On The Economic Collapse, Stock Market Crash, War, Terror, Central Bank, FBI, CIA, NSA, Spying, Unexplained, Global Warming, Government, Violation Of The People’s Rights,  No Corporate Newz Allowed, Continous Real-Time Newz As It Happens – AboutThe People’s Bank of China announced on Wednesday that it is probing the major bitcoin exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai – BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin – for a list of violations, including market manipulation, money laundering, and unauthorized financing.This is part of the PBOC’s efforts to crack down on capital flight, a major escalation from last week, when Chinese officials warned investors – if you can call them “investors” – to be careful with bitcoin.

That warning came at the peak of the spike and tipped the whole thing over.Ironically, China’s many other crackdowns on capital flight have pushed the hapless Chinese, who want their capital to flee, into bitcoin.bitcoin tauxIt was seen as a way of converting their yuan into something other than yuan, which they fear will depreciate relentlessly.bitcoin kurs ein jahrThe yuan lost 6.5% against the dollar last year, its worst year since 1994, which is nothing compared to some other major currencies, such as the British pound which lost 16.3% against the dollar, and the Mexican peso which lost 17%.bitcoin 2048 paymentBut the Chinese are not used to getting whacked by a depreciating currency.bitcoin master seed

So the promise of convenient capital flight along with the lure of bitcoin’s semi-anonymity and the hope of quickly doubling their money have just been too much to resist.bitcoin ragThe rest of the world lost interest in bitcoin after it transferred a lot of money to those that got in early and got out in time from the latecomers that ended up holding the bag when it began to crash in late 2013.bitcoin haram halalIt went from over $1,100 to a range of around $250 in 2015.bitcoin assassination marketBut recently, the Chinese have picked up the baton and in an insane frenzy drove it to $1,140 all over again.bitcoin word originAnd just in time, bitcoin crashed again.bitcoin downside

As of Wednesday evening, as I’m writing this, it plunged 14.5% to $772, just in one day.In the five days since its peak of $1,140 on January 6, it has crashed 32% against the dollar.What a crazy spike!In terms of yuan, it’s even worse: It plummeted 19% against the yuan on Wednesday and 41% over those five misbegotten days!Trading between the yuan and bitcoin accounted for about 98% of the total market over the past six months, Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency analytics firm Cryptocompare, told Reuters.And so the Chinese authorities have trotted out their big stick.Reuters: The PBOC in Beijing, where officers visited the offices of OKCoin and Huobi on Wednesday, said in a statement that “spot checks were focused on how the exchanges implement policies including forex management and anti-money laundering”.Separately in Shanghai, the PBOC said it visited BTCC, noting its checks “focused on whether the firm was operating out of its business scope, whether it was launching unauthorized financing, payment, forex business or other related businesses, whether it was involved in market manipulation, anti-money laundering or (carried) fund security risks.” Hayter of Cryptocompare put it this way: “This is a ratcheting up of the rhetoric from the Chinese authorities – instead of ‘we’re watching’ you, it’s now ‘we’re investigating’ you.” No one is going to bail out these folks that got in late and are losing a ton of money on their bitcoin bets, or those that tried to catch that knife and got their fingers sliced off.

Learn your lesson – that’s what Chinese authorities seem to say with an inscrutable smile on their collective face, same as central banks elsewhere in 2014 as bitcoin jockeys in the US and other countries were losing their shirts.This episode shows once again that bitcoin, with price fluctuations of 10% or even 20% in a single day, up or down, is not a practical currency that is usable for legitimate commerce, nor will it ever be, despite the hype that one surrounded it.Sure, just to make a point, there were some legitimate commercial transactions a few years ago that were touted endlessly in the press.But that has since stopped.With these kinds of price variations, forget it.Bitcoin is just an online gambling and wealth-transfer mechanism.And for the Chinese, it has a special additional role: to get their money out of the yuan.But this role too has now been obviated by events, and for many folks, “capital flight” has taken on a bitterly ironic meaning.The circuitous hidden wonders of “excess reserves” on the Fed’s books have consequences for the US taxpayer.

Read…  Fed Pays Banks $12 Billion on “Excess Reserves,” Taken from Taxpayer Pocketsblog.Decentral.ca Decentral.ca for more Share 2 years ago / 3 notes How Dell, Expedia and Others Accept Bitcoin Payments Screenshot of Coinbase merchant landing page.—-Dell recently announced that they are accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment.Expedia announced last month they’ll start rolling out Bitcoin payment for their services.Coinbase is a popular US service for buying, selling and storing Bitcoins (they’re an exchange and offer a wallet).BitPay is targetted at developers rather than business people.BitPay is like Stripe for Bitcoin./watch?v=rjkltZ_C6rU)Vault of Satoshi (the most complicated API)Stripe, a popular credit card payment integration service, has announced that they will soon offer a Bitcoin payment method but it’s currently in beta.Share 2 years ago / 1 note How to buy Bitcoins at Decentral At Decentral we have a convenient bitcoin teller machine that makes purchasing bitcoin easy.

To use the machine at our location, simply follow these steps: Click  "Start" on the main screen when you are ready to begin.The price per bitcoin displayed at this point will be your purchase price.Note, of course, that you can always buy fractions of a bitcoin, but the minimum amount per transaction is $5 Canadian.Enter your phone number and then the verification code that you receive by SMS message.Choose “Buy Bitcoin”Next, choose “Yes” if you already have a bitcoin wallet.Choose “No” if you would like the machine to print a paper wallet.Place the QR code for your wallet’s public receive address in the scanner; it’s the top-right horizontal slot.Start inserting your Canadian cash into the bill acceptor, which will have a green light activated to indicate that it is ready.After you’ve inserted your individual bills, click “I’m Done” to complete the transaction.Congratulations, you now have bitcoin!A confirmation of the transaction will be sent via SMS to your phone.

You can also print a paper receipt for your records.Note that the machine will read only the QR code for your public bitcoin address; you cannot type the address in manually.Fortunately, all bitcoin wallet systems on your phone or computer are able to display a QR code for the wallet’s public receive address.If you have any questions about the process, please come by Decentral and we’ll help you get started.Share 2 years ago Which country has the most bitcoin ATMs?No surprise here, it’s the Great White North – Canada – with 30 machines.Decentral had the 2nd in the world.Canada has generally been the leader in Bitcoin tech globally.Lagging some way behind is the United States with about two-thirds that number.And lagging way back are a clutch of countries from disparate continents: Singapore, Australia and the UK.FROM THE COINDESK ARTICLE: 7 CHARTS SHOW BITCOIN ATM GROWTH Share 2 years ago / 2 notes VICE MAGAZINE: Dark Wallet’s Developer Envisions ‘Startup Governments’ Run on Bitcoin& feature of Decentral & some of our media.

We are happy to see Amir Taaki talking on this subject which is emerging fast.“Amir Taaki is a busy guy.Between working on new Bitcoin technologies, the British-Iranian software developer finds time to churn out projects that could impact trade, communication, national security, transparency, and pretty much everything else, not to mention stir controversy.Taaki doesn’t see these as isolated projects, but as part of something bigger.“With the future we’re heading towards, we need to have these tools that we can use to live,” …READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE Share 2 years ago / 1 note Dealing with Cryptowall and Ransomware by Michael PerklinAs a digital investigator who spent years tracking cyber criminals online, and as someone who has launched a Bitcoin security consulting company, I’ve been contacted a number of times by victims of digital ransom, looking for ways out.The story is always the same: they see a warning on their computer screen telling them that their files are encrypted, and unless they pay a hefty ransom (with Bitcoin) before the clock runs out, they will never gain access to their files again.I’ve decided to write this blog post to answer some questions about this type of ransomware and help the thousands of Canadians who must be affected by it.Jump to the bottom to read the four suggestions on how to deal with this ransomware, or continue reading for more details about it.In late 2013, a new form of ransomware titled CryptoLocker hit the Internet, indiscriminately encrypting portions of every file it could get its hands on.

Files stored in “My Documents” folders, external drives and even shared folders hosted on other computers in the local network had portions of the contents encrypted using an RSA encryption key.The decryption key was made available to victims of this attack for the price of $300, paid in Bitcoin.Although the CryptoLocker’s command and control servers were taken down in May 2014 thanks to a joint US Department of Justice raid on servers hosted in Kiev and Donetsk, this hasn’t stopped ransomware from spreading.A new piece of ransomware has made its rounds lately: CryptoWall.My research into CryptoWall shows it is essentially the same code as CryptoLocker, but is designed to use a different command-and-control methodology to hopefully outlive its CryptoLocker predecessor.It also asks for $500 in ransom instead of CryptoLocker’s $300.Thankfully, this newest variant seems to use much of the same code as the old one, including all of its flaws.The older CryptoLocker software had a few flaws in how it a) chose encryption keys to encrypt the victim’s files, and b) how it used these keys to encrypt the files in the first place.Performing cryptographic operations with software in a secure manner is not easy.

Care must be taken when using the encryption key in software to ensure it is only used to encrypt, and is removed from the system immediately afterwards.If this care isn’t taken, the encryption key can linger in a few places including RAM, pagefiles on the hard drive, and even cached locations on disk.These can be written inadvertently by the application, the application’s framework (.NET, JavaVM, Rails and other frameworks) or by the Operating System itself (in this case, Windows).This is one of the services that my company, Bitcoinsultants, provides our clients: advice on using cryptography properly to ensure their applications don’t succumb to any of the 7 classes of attacks on information systems (Information Leakage being one).In a true case of irony, this difficulty of securely using encryption keys has left CryptoLocker insecure, leaving copies of the key on victims’ computers.Where this would normally be an example of an Information Leakage vulnerability, in this case it is a bastion of hope for all of CryptoLocker’s (and CryptoWall’s) victims.Dealing with RansomwareThere are a few suggestions that I regularly give to people looking for help.

I’ve listed them here:Keep a backup of your data before you get hit.This may seem like a cop-out suggestion, but the fact is if you have a safe copy of your encrypted data you don’t need to pay a ransom to recover the files; you already have them.External hard drives and large USB keys make this easy; simply drag and drop your files to your external drive, and unplug it when the copy is finished.This hard drive can be used to recover your files in the event your system becomes infected;Try to decrypt the files on your own.If you have experience with programming and are an advanced technical user of computers, you may want to visit these technical resources which can help you understand and decrypt the files on your machine.Keep in mind this will take a significant amount of time and experience with the more technical aspects of computers in order to execute.//kyrus/crypto-un-lockerTake a look at the contents of your %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA folderAs much as I hate to suggest this, consider paying the ransom.

Every case I’ve helped with has had their files decrypted after paying the ransom.As dishonourable as the attackers may be in writing this ransomware, they at least keep their word when it comes to decryption.I’ve had people offer to pay for my services to decrypt their files for them out of principle - they’d rather pay a whitehat hacker than a ransom - but the fact is the amount of time and effort required costs more than the ransom.I believe the authors of this ransomware priced the ransom purposely to ensure that it will always be cheaper to pay than to hire professionals to decrypt it on their own.Canadians can report the incident to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.They keep tabs on scams affecting Canadians and coordinate resources where necessary to combat them. website in the United States;One of the victims that I’ve helped made a comment regarding this virus and its use of Bitcoin:“This just proves that Bitcoin is illegal, and it’s only a matter of time until governments ban it for taking advantage of people like me.”I sympathize with all of the victims of this ransom, but personally I feel that blame should be placed squarely on the attacker and not on the medium of payment demanded.

After all, people have held others hostage in demand of $1000s of dollars in unmarked bills; should the Canadian or US dollars be banned for taking advantage of people?Making these counter-arguments helped this victim see that the payment processor was not at fault, however I imagine many others who are less familiar with Bitcoin have jumped to the same erroneous conclusions, making the job of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada that much more difficult.The fact is, the easiest way to deal with these types of attacks is to be prepared in advance.If you don’t have a backup of your data, now is the best time to make one.Until next time,Michael Perklin Share 2 years ago / 3 notes INSTRUCTIONS : Using A ‘Paper Wallet’ with the Decentral Bitcoin ATMOne of the most secure ways to store your bitcoin is in an offline physical wallet.Here at Decentral we offer the option to print out a paper wallet from our machines.This paper wallet contains printed QR codes of a public (share) key and a private (secret) key.

To load bitcoins (or partial bitcoins) on to this paper wallet, have the machine scan only the public (share) key, and be careful to keep your private hidden from view (fold it over or place your thumb over top of it so that no one can see the private QR code address).After you’ve scanned the public (share) key, you can start inserting the amount of cash into the machine that you want exchanged for bitcoin.After clicking the “I’m done” button, your cash will be converted automatically into bitcoin and sent to your paper wallet.To spend or transfer your bitcoin from the paper wallet, you will need to import the paper wallet’s private (secret) key using a digital wallet.Although you will have to do some research to find a digital wallet that works best for you, there a few programs that you might want to consider first: Electrum, Multibit, Mycelium, Kryptokit, Blockchain.info, Pheeva, and Armory.Most of these programs offer an “Import Private Key” function, and that is what you’ll need to select in order to access the bitcoin on your paper wallet.

– this site also lets you generate an encrypted (password-protected) private/secret key, and this is a good option for extra security.The process for loading bitcoin, of course, is the same: bring the public/share key QR code in to Decentral and scan it into our machine; your private key can remain at home or in a secure location.VISIT 64 Spadina Ave (at King) and the Decentral Bitcoin ATM Share 3 years ago This Wednesday (June 25th) Joel Dietz will join the Toronto Bitcoin Meetup at 7:30pm via Skype to discuss Swarm.Swarm is a crowdfunding platform powered by Bitcoin 2.0 technology that allows the purchasers of a product to be its investors.Everyone benefits as the platform grows.Come join us to learn more about this exciting decentralized technology.The Toronto Bitcoin Meetup meets every Wednesday from 7 - 9pm at 64 Spadina Ave (just south of the King/Spadina intersection) in Toronto.Our goal  is to attract enthusiasts, merchants, finance folk, bitcoin miners, developers and anyone else interested in learning more about Bitcoin and decentralized system.

While you’re here be sure try out our Bitcoin ATM, the first to be installed in Toronto.Share 3 years ago What You Need to Know About the New Canadian “Bitcoin Law” This post was written by Addison Cameron-Huff, a tech lawyer who works for Decentral.Addison is a lawyer but he is not your lawyer.You should seek legal advice before acting on any of the legal information presented in this article.Photo by @spettacolopuro.What’s Happened?A Canadian federal law affecting Bitcoin passed last Thursday.Bill C-31, an omnibus budget act, contains provisions that will eventually bring certain Bitcoin businesses into Canada’s anti-money laundering regime.The new rules are not in effect yet.Who Will Be Affected?In short: anyone engaged in the business of buying or selling of virtual currencies and who has Canadian customers.Any person or business who “ha[s] a place of business in Canada and that [is] engaged in the business of providing … the following [service]: … dealing in virtual currencies”.

Also affected: any person or business who “do[es] not have a place of business in Canada, that [is] engaged in the business of providing at least one of the following services that is directed at persons or entities in Canada, and that provide those services to their customers in Canada: … dealing in virtual currencies.”Citations for above: Bill C-31, s.164-165).What is “Dealing”?Dealing isn’t defined in the act but generally means buying or selling.Coupled with the requirement that someone be “in the business of”, it’s likely that this law won’t affect people buying or selling for personal use or merchants using Bitcoin.The law can be expected to be similar to how car dealing works: selling your own car doesn’t require a license but running a car dealership does.What is “Virtual Currency”?The new law doesn’t define “virtual currency”.The definition will be in the regulations that will eventually be passed (see below).What Will the Rules Be?Anyone covered by the new rules will have to register as a “Money Services Business” (MSB) and comply with the anti-money laundering regime (please see previous Decentral blog posts).Probably the most significant MSB rule is that companies may only do business in amounts up to a certain threshold before requiring that customers provide identification.

The threshold will likely be either $1000 (current MSB rules for the money transmission/remittance category) or $3000 (foreign exchange category).The exact rules won’t be known until the corresponding regulations are published (here).The final rules will probably be preceded by a notice of proposed regulation posted in Part I of the Canada Gazette.When Will the New Rules Take Effect?The new rules won’t take effect until the government declares them in effect.Section 298(3) of the law states that s.256(2) (the key Bitcoin-regulating part of the law) will “come into force” (become a law people are required to follow) “on a date to be fixed by Order of the Governor in Council”.What is an Order in Council?An Order in Council is one of the pathways by which laws can come into force.They are published on the Orders in Council site (hard to navigate/monitor) and in the Canada Gazette Part II (easier to monitor, it’ll be published as a “Statutory Instrument” [e.g.The only way to know that an order has been published is to check every day and see if something’s been published.

What Should Bitcoin Businesses Do?Find a lawyer and attempt to understand how money laundering rules apply to your business and what the registration/compliance steps are.FINTRAC (the regulatory agency for anti-money laundering) offers some guidance for money services businesses on its website: http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/msb-esm/intro-eng.asp.Registering as an MSB is free and quite straightforward.Compliance is complicated and will likely affect involve hiring a lawyer.What’s Going to Happen?1.Canadians may be banned from some online virtual currency services.Although Canada is a base for many Bitcoin businesses, Canadians are a small market.The money laundering rules have such severe penalties that probably services will just not allow registration by Canadians rather than attempt to comply.Some Bitcoin businesses may have business models that aren’t compatible with the new regulatory regime.They’ll have to adapt their model to the new environment.Small businesses may not be able to afford the compliance costs.

This may lead to consolidation in the industry.4.The new regulatory regime may provide a big boost to the Canadian Bitcoin industry.Canada will soon have the world’s first nationally regulated virtual currency industry.Share 3 years ago / 3 notes Why Bitcoin Address Typos Aren’t Fatal Great /r/bitcoin post about why an address typo won’t result in you losing your bitcoins: “Not all bitcoin addresses are valid.If you try to send money to an invalid address your bitcoin client, or the website hosting your wallet - assuming it’s been built competently - won’t process the transfer and no funds will be moved.”READ THE REST HERE Share 3 years ago Three Sources for Bitcoin News /// Share 3 years ago Decentralized Bitcoin Exchanges: A Solution with Three Big Challenges The author, Addison Cameron-Huff, is a lawyer who serves as part-time in-house counsel for Decentral.Decentral is Canada’s main decentralized application business development centre.Flickr photo shown on laptop is by @jalavegaBitcoin ExchangesBitcoin exchanges are businesses that connect buyers and sellers of Bitcoin to each other and the banking system.

Exchanges pose three problems: 1. they sometimes go out of business and lose everyone’s money + bitcoins (“counterparty risk”); and,2.they are easy targets for regulation that can be easily and suddenly shut down by authorities (they are “centralized”); and,3.they have a limited number of options for accepting payment (e.g.a US exchange is unlikely to support M-Pesa transfers).Decentralized Exchanges: Solution?Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts think decentralized exchanges are the solution to the problems that Bitcoin exchanges currently pose.A decentralized exchange is an exchange that uses peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology to enable users to directly trade with each other.Although a regular Bitcoin exchange allows users to trade with each other they can only do so with the exchange as an intermediary.When thinking about the difference between a decentralized exchange and today’s exchanges, it’s helpful to think about the difference between Napster and BitTorrent.

Napster worked by having a central server that every user’s computer checked in order to see what files were available to download from other users.Napster was shut down in 2001 by a court order that forced them to turn off the central servers.BitTorrent can’t be shut down because users connect directly to each other and not through an intermediate central server.A decentralized Bitcoin exchange would solve problem #2 (see above) because there wouldn’t be a central server.Problem #1 would be solved with respect to the exchange itself but a decentralized exchange would (depending on how it works) probably introduce a new form of counterparty risk: the risk of dealing with other users.Problem #3 would probably also be solved because users could find the payment methods that work for them in their jurisdiction.At a high level it would appear that decentralized exchanges are the solution to the problems identified at the beginning of this post but the devil is in the details.The devil lies especially in the details of how a decentralized exchange would handle the interface between “fiat” currency (e.g.

Canadian dollars) and Bitcoin.Canadian Dollars to BitcoinA hypothetical decentralized Bitcoin exchange would probably operate along these lines for a $ to BTC transaction:1.Alice and Bob agree on price and quantity (e.g.$3000 for 2 bitcoins) through the decentralized order matching system2.Alice sends $3000 to Bob3.Alice sends a message indicating payment sent4.Bob sends a message indicating payment received6.Bob sends 2 bitcoins to Alice7.Bob sends a message indicating the bitcoins have been sent8.The system marks the transaction as completeThe steps above pose at least three big challenges:1.What does step #2 mean?How will Alice send the money to Bob?Will the decentralized exchange interface with the thousands of payment systems around the world?2.How can Bob be sure that the money he receives in step #4 won’t be taken back by Alice after step #8?If Alice uses a payment method like a credit card then Alice can later reverse the transaction and potentially get back her money and keep the bitcoins.

There are very few methods of payment that can’t be reversed.How will disputes be handled?What if Alice didn’t actually send the money?What if Bob doesn’t send the bitcoins?How can Alice prove she sent the payment?What if Alice backs out of the transaction before sending payment?Who will be responsible for offline enforcement?Share 3 years ago It’s Legal to do Business Using Bitcoin This blog post discusses the legality of doing business using bitcoins.It was written by Addison Cameron-Huff, a lawyer who specializes in Bitcoin./ has mapped >3000 businesses).Despite the growing adoption, some people wonder whether “it’s legal”.This blog post takes a look at the legality of doing business with Bitcoin.The starting point for any discussion about what’s legal or illegal is this default principle in Canadian law: it’s legal unless it’s not.You are permitted to do anything so long as there isn’t a (valid) rule that prohibits/ regulates that conduct.There have not been any laws passed in Canada that specifically address Bitcoin (although there will be).

But there are laws of general application that apply to all transactions, and more specifically, barter transactions (trading good X for good Y).Canada has always taxed barter transactions and the Canadian Revenue Agency has provided guidance on bartering with digital currencies.Beyond tax implications, the question of whether it’s legal to use Bitcoin can usually be rephrased as whether the transaction is legal.The use of bitcoins doesn’t affect a transaction any more than substituting soybeans for dollars would.Legal business remains legal and illegal business remains illegal.The technology may be new but the legal principles are not.Share 3 years ago / 1 note A Smart Property Real Estate System for Ontario This blog post is about how the ideas of Bitcoin could be applied to Ontario’s land ownership records system (POLARIS)./photos/wwworks/2959833537/“Smart property” is a concept of great interest in the cryptocurrency industry.Smart property is property for which: the ownership can be verified through a decentralized trust system (like the Bitcoin protocol); and,transfers can take place using the electronic system.Could Ontario adopt a smart property system for land records?Knowledge of how Bitcoin works is a prerequisite to thinking about how a property system based on it could function.Explaining Bitcoin: Provable Transactions + OwnershipThe Bitcoin protocol allows anyone to verify the transactions that have taken place within the system (the “blockchain”).

This is possible because Bitcoin creates a snapshot every ten minutes of the last ten minutes of activity and adds that to the list of transactions that have happened since the start of Bitcoin (this is called “mining”).The records can’t be changed after the fact due to the use of hashing functions.Bitcoin allows the holder of bitcoins to prove that they are the owner because they are the only person with the password (see this explanation of public key cryptography for details).The person with the password can “sign” a transaction with their password to prove that they are the owner.If anyone can prove that they are the holder of a certain item and everyone else can see the history of transactions that led to them being the holder, then you have the basis of a system of provable ownership and secure transfer.Real Estate Smart Property: POLARISHow could smart property concepts be applied to real estate?At the heart of smart property is the idea of electronic records that prove ownership.

For most kinds of property there is no official record of ownership that can be consulted - it’s generally up to the buyer to ascertain who the owner of something is.One notable exception is POLARIS: the database of ownership of real property in Ontario.POLARIS is a part of the Land Titles System, the legal regime for property ownership that covers most land in Ontario.It is is the central repository for all records of who owns what real estate.You can read more about it here: http://www.teranet.ca/node/131.POLARIS and smart property are complicated concepts so the following discussion can only touch on a few points of comparison but will hopefully illustrate the contrast between the two systems.This blog post considers a block chain-based smart property system.POLARIS: DisadvantagesPOLARIS has a few disadvantages:1.it is centralized and access is provided only through a private company called Teranet (they bought the right to run the system until 2067 for $1 billion + royalties and are owned by Borealis, the investment arm of ); and,2.

it’s very difficult to prove that the person transferring land is the possessor of that land (the problem is currently handled by only lawyers doing transfers); and,3.it’s expensive to look up ownership of property (about $30 per search + $600 to register); and,4.it’s not possible to build new applications that use property records.Smart Property System: BenefitsA smart property system for land ownership could improve upon POLARIS in a few ways:1.anyone could inspect any property record in real-time (because everyone has an up-to-date version of all of the records); and,2.access to records would cost almost nothing (<1 cent); and,3.authenticating the holders of property would be easy (because the holder is the one with the password) so owners could transfer land without using lawyers; and,4.transactions fees could be very low; and,5.anyone could build applications on top of the property system to provide new ways of accessing records (e.g.an automated mortgage fraud detection system).Despite the upsides of a smart property system, changing the real estate database system would pose a number of significant challenges.Smart Property Real Estate System: ChallengesPOLARIS has been in place since the 1980s.

It may not be ideal but a new system is likely to introduce “bugs” that would have enormous costs for some people (e.g.a bank might foreclose on the wrong person).There would also be problems that are specific to switching to smart property:1.passwords would have to be distributed to the current owners of land; and,2.if a user loses their password they’d lose ownership of the land (and if they didn’t, the ownership database would be out-of-sync, defeating the purpose of having the system); and,3.theft of real estate passwords would become a massive fraud issue (although real estate fraud is currently a major problem for banks, consumers and insurers).Any sane system that follows smart property principles would have to figure out a method of “recovering” ownership when the password is lost.(This problem could be mitigated by implementing “multisignature transactions”).Although there would be advantages to a smart property system, many of them would be hard to quantify, such as the benefit from new applications that are impossible to create under the current system.

In 1980 no one could have calculated the value of the Internet (and what is Wikipedia worth?).Furthermore, many people misplace their car keys - they’re not going to be able to keep track of the password for their home ownership record.In addition to the practical issues of switching to smart property the province would be forced to pay billions to Teranet (the operator of POLARIS) if it cancelled its 57 year monopoly agreement.Conclusion: Looking Forward2014 isn’t going to be the year of smart property real estate records.That said, it will be a year where these ideas move closer to application, and the power of decentralized crypto trust systems gains wider recognition.By 2067 we’ll probably have something better than POLARIS.DiscussionSmart property and real estate are big, challenging topics.Please do contact the author (addison@bitcoindecentral.ca) if you think a mistake has crept in or there’s an aspect you’d like to see explored in a follow-up blog post.Share 3 years ago Canada’s Largest Bitcoin<->Dollar Exchanges /photos/78629042@N00/479370088/In Bitcoin parlance an “exchange” is an online service that lets customers buy and sell bitcoins from each other.