Bitcoin Bolt

By Jon Matonis
Forbes
Sunday, April 14, 2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/04/14/flerovium-tangible-nanomoney/

I need a break from Bitcoin. Let’s discuss the real future of money.

Beyond stable isotopes and naturally-occurring materials are the superheavy elements or SHEs. Scientists have recently added
two new man-made elements to the periodic table — flerovium (element
114) and livermorium (element 116), with chemical symbols Fl and Lv.

After being created by smashing atoms together, these materials decay within seconds but long-lived SHEs are a theoretical possibility. This undiscovered
region in the periodic table where heavy elements become stable again
is known as the “island of stability,” first proposed by Glenn Seaborg
in the late 1960s. If individuals prefer something more tangible over an
amorphous cryptocurrency like bitcoin, then the edges of molecular
matter in a nanotechnology future may hold the answer.

If some form of physical specie is even useful in an era of
ubiquitous artificial molecular machine systems, money would still
require certain attributes such as being a store of value, divisible,
portable, safe, unable to counterfeit, and self-validating.

Nanotechnology scientist Robert Freitas suggests that the future of money lies with elements like flerovium, or what he refers to as tangible nanomoney. Flerovium
is a radioactive chemical element first created in 1999 at the Flerov
Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia by colliding
Plutonium-244 and Calcium-48 nuclei. Prior to May 30th, 2012, the
unstable isotope was known as ununquadium.

After restricting his analysis to ordinary matter, as opposed to
antimatter, Freitas compares the rarest elements along the natural
isotope spectrum of potential monetary candidates such as technetium,
helium, xenon, osmium, tantalum, and gold (however in a nano-age, easily
extractable inert rare elements will have alternatives).  Ultimately
concluding that a man-made superheavy element like flerovium best fits
the overall criteria for physical specie, he describes how the element
could likely be introduced into society circulating as coinage.

A flerovium coin would be fused with cheaper bioinert materials of
the nano-age such as gold, platinum or diamond. Such a coin would be
sufficiently costly to manufacture and have a relatively long half life,
possessing negligible radiation and biotoxicity risk due to the very
low concentration of SHE trace amounts.

These hypothetical SHE coins would be stable and long-lived. Freitas estimates that a coin with $1 million face value would only need to contain 10^⁹ SHE atoms worth $0.001/atom. Therefore, assuming a
10⁶-year half life, there would be only ~2 disintegration events per
day putting it well below the disintegration levels of today’s base
metal coinage. Rather than suffering from the insidious effects of
government-induced inflation and coin clipping, market-based nanomoney
would lose value due to radioactive decay. A million-dollar coin would
lose approximately ~$0.50 per year or ~$500 per millennium from
disintegration.

In addition to flerovium, Freitas admits that some other relatively
stable superheavy elements may also be “coined” for the ultimate
tangible nanomoney. So that’s the choice for our nonpolitical money of
the singularity — low radiation coinage or digital bitcoin, you decide.

The fourth largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, BitFloor, has announced that it is closing its doors, and will soon be refunding deposits to customers. The announcement has nothing to do with recent technical problems that all exchanges have been facing for the past week to due the sudden massive increase in trade volume; rather, the root cause behind the shutdown is the closure of BitFloor’s US bank account. Founder Roman Shtylman writes:

I am sorry to announce that due to circumstances outside of our control BitFloor must cease all trading operations indefinitely. Unfortunately, our US bank account is scheduled to be closed and we can no longer provide the same level of USD deposits and withdrawals as we have in the past. As such, I have made the decision to halt operations and return all funds. Over the next days we will be working with all clients to ensure that everyone receives their funds. Please be patient as we process your request.

– Roman

founder – bitfloor.com

Trading has been suspended, and BitFloor founder Roman Shtylman assures users that they will get all of their current deposits back over the next few days, including USD holdings which will be refunded directly to depositors’ bank accounts by ACH transfer. International users are asked to await further instructions.

The exchange was a very popular way of buying bitcoins in the United States, so BitFloor customers will now have to look for alternatives. Some BitFloor users will undoubtedly be picked up by the dominant exchange MtGox through its North American partner Coinlab, although other options include Coinbase, CampBX and BTC-e.

Particularly affected by the shutdown are those users who had lost their deposits when the exchange was hacked in September. BitFloor lost $250,000 from the hack, normally a fatal loss for an exchange of its size, but BitFloor soon came back online with the promise that it would eventually pay back its depositors over time. The exchange even started fulfilling its promise, paying back 1.7% of the money owed in November and another 1% in March, but the remainder of the debt remains unpaid, and although most people had already written off the loss in September, there is now no longer any hope at all that the money will ever be recovered.

The announcement is also an unfortunate one because it represents a step backwards in the progress of the exchange industry as a whole. BitFloor is far from the first Bitcoin exchange to fall victim to this kind of shutdown; many Bitcoin exchanges around the world, including several times even MtGox, have had their bank accounts shut down, although in MtGox’s case the exchange’s main bank account in Japan has remained unscathed. The number of shutdowns has waned in recent months, but the risk has remained as risk for every exchange in the industry since exchanges first began to appear en masse in 2011. Now, when the need for more exchanges is clearer than ever, a reinforced precedent of banks shutting down smaller exchanges may instead push more users to larger and generally more resilient exchanges like MtGox out of fear for the safety of their funds. Fortunately, today exchanges do place much more emphasis on maintaining a healthy relationship with their banks and ensuring legality, and new alternatives are constantly appearing. Tradehill intends to launch a new, high-quality Bitcoin exchange soon, the cash-based Bitcoin ATM continues to be under development as a completely fresh alternative, and we can be sure that there are other projects now under development. Although Bitfloor will certainly be missed, hopefully it will soon find an even better replacement.

The post BitFloor Shuts Down appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

UPDATE: See our analysis of this DDoS in our newer post: Have We Reached A Turning Point For Bitcoin Exchange DDoS?

Quite a day already for Bitcoin exchanges, but I want to remind anyone reading this: exchanges and other private companies are not bitcoin. We are in the infancy of what may be the greatest fundamental shift for human society of the 21st century. There are going to be hiccups as the market develops, that does make the underlying bitcoin protocol any less viable. In fact, there are even some glimmers of hope in the darkness. See below for an analysis of today’s developments:

Deja Vu: Gox DDOS’d

You can view live updates here: https://www.facebook.com/MtGox/posts/458672157550530

Gox has been DDOS’d again. For a more detailed analysis of what and how this is caused, see our post from the last time this happened. A Gox DDOS is barely news at this point, but I would like to draw your attention to something very different about today’s attack: the patience with which the market handled the news. Consider the B/A spread during the last DDOS vs. today’s. Objectively speaking, the latter looks like a far more mature market with less influence from buy-and-fly speculators.

DDOS on April 10

DDOS on April 18

Bitcoin-24 Trading Halted, BitFloor Shutters Operations

As you’ll see from the images below, Bitcoin-24 isn’t exactly living up to it’s name at the moment and has temporarily suspended operations. Not to be outdone, BitFloor has closed operations indefinitely and hopefully will settle all cash and BTC accounts with their users.

Not only will this cause a headache for the users of these exchanges, but we’re now also looking at a strong consolidation of trading volume to Mt. Gox, which is clearly a negative for the market in general, given their instability. Gox is already doing ~80% of total market volume. The other exchanges were doing just over 3% combined of the total market. That may not sound like much, but it’s 15% of the remaining market not currently on Gox – a far more disconcerting figure.

Ruh roh.

Update: Blockchain.info – one of the most robust sites for tracking bitcoin transactions, as well as a great host for a web wallet, is also down due to DDoS attacks (thank you to Reddit user BlacksmithTM for pointing this out and for those of you who brought it to our attention – we appreciate whomever is sharing our articles and readers keeping us informed).  Blockchain.info is aware of the situation and working with their service provider to update their server.

The post Tough Day For Bitcoin Exchanges: Gox DDOS’d, Bitcoin-24 Halted, BitFloor Shuts Down Permanently appeared first on The Genesis Block.