Join us on October 7th for Here’s To You Day. ChangeTip invites you to help us make tomorrow, October 7, extra special for someone who is special to YOU. Join us on Twitter and let someone know that you appreciate them by tipping them a beer or a bite to eat, and then let them know why. Not only will this make their day, but it could also make yours. Just complete this Tweet on October 7 with the person’s Twitter handle, your preferred tipping moniker, and why you think they’re special: .@ChangeTip I think **@myfriend** deserves a **moniker** today because… #HeresToYou And if you include the hashtag #HeresToYou, you’ll be entered to win one of these three special prizes! (Contest rules apply; winners will be contacted directly and announced on social media.) Dinner for four ($100 value) Round of drinks for you and your friends ($50 value) Snacks for your favorite primetime season premiere ($30 value) Show the people in your life that they deserve more than a like and are better than a share. Join us tomorrow in saying “Here’s to you!” Learn more about Here’s To You Day

ShapeShift.io Releases Skeleton Exchange Tool for In-site Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Websites owners can now offer buy/sell option to users straight from their site

SWITZERLAND (09/30/2015)  ShapeShift.io has released the ShapeShift Skeleton tool, enabling any website to allow instant purchase or sale of digital assets and cryptocurrencies. The tool allows for exchanges to be made by a site’s users without them leaving the site.
Skeleton’s code is free and open-source and offers a template that is customizable, giving integrators the ability to brand the tool with their own assets and colors.
CoinCap.io, a market data website, used Skeleton to let users buy leading cryptocurrencies directly from its list of coins on the homepage. See this example here.
All information needed to utilize Skeleton can be found on the GitHub link: https://github.com/Shapeshift-Public/ShapeShift-SkeletonShapeShift adds Skeleton to a suite of innovative tools that includes the Shifty Button, a merchant processing widget, and the Lens Plugin, a web extension enabling leading cryptocurrencies to be paid to any Bitcoin address on a webpage.
For more information on how the ShapeShift Skeleton tool works, watch the short demo video here.
About ShapeShift.io
ShapeShift is how digital currency exchange should work. From start to finish users can convert digital currencies in seconds, with no account required. No emails or passwords. No lengthy sign­up process. No accounts. No friction. ShapeShift's goal is to be the fastest, safest, and most convenient way to trade digital assets. See more at: https://shapeshift.io/new.html

The Responsibility of Decentralization 

Posted by Sambiohazard

Yesterday I watched a live episode of “Chris Before Coffee” on Youtube. It turned out to be a class on social and political aspect of Bitcoin. This Hangout was broadcast from a “bitcoin squat” in London. Among other developers and bitcoin enthusiasts, there was Amir Taaki. He is the developer behind Dark Wallet. He is an Anarchist and has pretty different, or should I say, a more true perception of what bitcoin is. He shared lots of his thoughts and I recommend everyone to watch this podcast. In my opinion, it is the answer to the most important question of all “What is Bitcoin?” I asked two questions during the podcast. Amir’s answers helped me improve my understanding of how decentralization works and why this experiment in decentralization called Blockchain will fail or succeed. 

My first question was about “Mining Centralization”. Pretty much anyone who cares about Bitcoin is worried about 3-4 major pools accounting for majority of mining power. I am worried that as merger & acquisition in the industry grows, we might see a lot of hashrate in the hand of people with lots of fiat money. Although, Amir’s answer showed me how a minority of miners can be manipulated/coerced for attacking the network. 

The biggest takeaway for me from his answer was that Bitcoin protocol or Blockchain is only a set of rules that shows you the way, but it is you, a participant in the network, who have to apply these rules to achieve decentralization. The decentralization gives you the power to own yourself but it also comes with responsibilities which you have to take. The responsibility to secure your own money/data, responsibility to keep the network alive. So, to keep decentralization and your freedom alive, you have to leave the comfort and ease provided by centralized power structures along with the loss of liberty and own up to the responsibility that comes with power of decentralization. 

My second question was about “Decentralized Decision Making”. The idea in my head was voting on features through our wallet softwares. But Amir’s answer opened my eyes. It drew me out of my comfortable assumption that if enough people want a feature then developer has to implement it or developers can decide on which features people should vote on. That is democracy, a broken system as all of us know. He said that development is a process and an iterative one. If you want to influence the development then you have to get involved in the discussion via various channels. Decentralized decision making can work only if you are ready to invest time and resources into the process. 

Again, you have to take responsibility and get involved in the good, the bad and the ugly of a development decision. You cannot sit in comfort of your twitter feed and just click on a button to take decision or influence others to tag along with you. You have to reason with the community, listen to their feedback, and reason again until it is proven that what you are proposing will take everyone forward. You have to fill your place in the decentralized whole. 

So, if you want to claim that you have a right to freedom that comes with decentralization, then you also have to fulfill the responsibility that keeps that freedom alive. As Uncle Ben said

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Thank you for using bittrex.com.

We will be removing the following wallets on November 1st, 2015. Once removed, we will not be able to retrieve your funds. Please remove all coins ASAP. Note, that some of these coins have broken blockchains where we will not be able to send coins.

No exceptions will be made once the wallets are removed.

Symbol	Coin Name
16BIT	16bitcoin
BOOM	BoomCoin
BTM	Bitmark
BUCKS	GorillaBucks
CAM	CamorraCoin
CHASH	CleverHash
CXC	CheckOutCoin
CYP	Cypher
DCC	DarkCrave
DOX	DoxCoin
EKN	Elektron
EPY	Empyrean
EQM	Equalibrium
EVENT	EventToken
GIZ	GizmoCoin
GPH	GraphCoin
GRID	GridPay
GSX	GlowShares
HAL	Halcyon
HAP	Hashpay
HUGE	BigCoin
LUX	BitLux
MNE	Munne
NANAS	BananaBits
PRE	Premium
QTZ	Quartz
RZR	Razor
SFR	SaffronCoin
SIGU	Singular
SMAC	SMAC
STV	SativaCoin
SYNC	SyncCoin
WATER	CleanWaterCoin
XMS	MegaStake
ZRC	ZiftrCoin

If you have coins in these wallets, please remove them by that date. Coin retrieval after the removal date will not be possible. Thank you for your time and for trading at bittrex.com! 

Best regards,
Bittrex Team

San Francisco, September, 22nd 2015

Stampery has been chosen to participate to the main Tech event in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, the “Tech Crunch Disrupt” Battlefield.

“We are very proud to be able to launch Stampery, the XXIst century’s notary, in the US in

such a prestigious event. Stampery solves data certification problems, let them be documents

emails, contracts, creations etc.. with a technology developed on the bitcoin blockchain

protocol, one of the most advanced technology today” says Luis Ivan Cuende, startup co founder and CTO.

Stampery allows individuals and companies to certify any type of data generating accurate, reliable and immutable proofs of existence, integrity and ownership. The product is a HTML5 service, a native iOS app will be launched shortly, and an API. Anyone can access, register and use the service for free, and Premium customers have access to the PRO plan at 9,99 euro a month that enable them to certify up to 1.000 documents per month. Larger companies have tailored plans per users and certificates.

The first users teststing the service, currently over 700, principally in legal departments, creative economy, marketing and creative agencies, are able to use the platform as a certification base or use the storage service offered in each plan.

“The bitcoin/blockchain as of today is regarded like the internet was regarded in the 90’s, with 

great potential. Our product is a non financial bitcoin application because it uses its 

extraordinary features to generate reliable and unforgeable proof of anything that

has occurred and that has generated a digital register. The proof of existence

integrity and ownership that Stampery generates is valid globally, unchangeable, and can be

verified by any independent third party in a question of seconds. This is revolutionary because today maths and not trust in a central authority allows us to verify that something has 

occurred in a certain moment in time. Because of its decentralized characteristics, the 

blockchain is completely safe being protected by the most powerful network of computers in the

world” explains Daniele Levi, the company CEO.

Stampery has developed a unique technology for scalability that is in the process of 

an international patent. This will permit millions of certifications per second.

“Our original scalability solution - says Luis Ivan, 19 years old, and one of the most recognised

hackers in Europe - allows us to be extremely ambitious and to integrate Stampery’s 

functionality with hundreds of other services, like for example with Dropbox who already has

400 million users”

The team that created Stampery is now on their third project in the bitcoin/blockchain

field, and they have been selected amongst more than 1.000 startups to be presented in 

San Francisco´s TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield. A beta of the product was launched in May this year, and has participated in the 

international intensive acceleration programme Menorca Millennials in its first edition. 

“Thanks to Menorca Millennials we have had made some incredible contacts - Daniele 

says - and this is bringing forward new interesting business. With Menorca Millennials a new 

model, very innovative, open to the world is being created, it puts together international talent

with mentors on the highest levels and investors from all over the world.”

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco (http://disrupt.techcrunch.com), was celebrated from the

21st to the 23rd of September 2015. TechCrunch Disrupt brings together more than 1,500

first level innovative tech and investors, as well as 150 startups, The format envisages 

conferences by top entrepreneurs and important figures that are creating the development

of emerging startups. Startup Battlefield is celebrated in the afternoons, 30 innovative 

companies, one of them being Stampery, are presented for the first time, competing over --

50.000 USD, exhibiting their capabilities along with another 120 startups in the Startup Alley.

LakeBTC: GBP, JPY deposits and withdrawals are available! 

May you know, LakeBTC had launched BTCGBP and BTCJPY trading a month ago, users can trade GBP and JPY even if they don't have the real GBP or JPY. So user also could't deposit / withdrawa GBP or JPY. 

But this bad experience ended today, LakeBTC has opened deposits and withdrawal for GBP and JPY. You can only use domestic banker transfer to do it for now, but more local payment methods will added in the future, like mobile pay, credit card pay etc, as long as they are popular/cheap/fast for certain groups of people, please tell us (@LakeBTC) what kind of payments are popular in place you lived. 

Also, not only USD, CNY, GBP, JPY, LakeBTC would also like to support more currencies in the world. For example, a small preview of LakeBTC next step, BTCEUR trading is coming!

About LakeBTC

LakeBTC project was started in early 2013 as a virtual bitcoin exchange initially for traders and other financial professionals. Now LakeBTC is run by a private company, Lake Investments Limited, and the financial status etc is not public information. Security, liquidity, and service are three strengths that make LakeBTC stand out of the crowd. 

Thank you for choosing LakeBTC.com!

LakeBTC.com

THE Bitcoin Exchange

ShapeShift Completes $1.6M Funding Round

Next-Generation Digital Currency Exchange Reports 100x Growth in Volume Since Opening Last Summer; Round Led by Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and Roger Ver, Participants Include World’s Largest Bitcoin Exchange and Prominent Angels

SWITZERLAND- September 9, 2015 – ShapeShift.io, a next-generation, non-custodial, instant exchange service for Bitcoin and digital assets, today announced the completion of its funding round of $1.6 million USD. The round was led by Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and Roger Ver, and included participation by leading exchange Bitfinex, Bitcoin Capital (Max Keiser and Simon Dixon), Mardal Investments, and top industry angels, including Bruce Fenton, Trevor Koverko and Michael Terpin.

Since its inception in August 2014, the cryptocurrency exchange led by CEO and Bitcoin industry pioneer Erik Voorhees has registered 100x growth, achieving over $2m USD-equivalent volume in July alone.  

“ShapeShift demonstrated an entirely new way to think about asset exchange,” said Zane Tackett, Director of Community and Product Development at Bitfinex, “It's like Google Translate for digital currencies. We've known Erik for a while now and he's knocked it out of the park with this one. We're very excited about the partnership.”

ShapeShift has positioned itself as the fastest way for humans and machines to exchange digital assets, and the company pioneered “consumer protection by design,” building the first exchange that didn’t require the deposit of user funds. Unlike every other exchange, ShapeShift is “non-custodial,” meaning it doesn’t hold customer money, a feature that is impossible in traditional finance.

Living up to its strict “No Fiat” policy, the company operates on cryptocurrency, paying all salaries, server costs, marketing, and legal expenses with Bitcoin.

At the moment, over 40 leading digital currencies and assets are available, including Bitcoin, Counterparty, Ripple, Monero, and the highly anticipated Ethereum. Over 940 direct trading pairs are supported, more than any other exchange.

The round includes convertible note contributions announced earlier this year.

About ShapeShift.io

ShapeShift is how digital asset exchange should work. From start to finish, users can convert in seconds, with no account required. No emails or passwords. No lengthy sign­up process. No accounts. No friction. ShapeShift's goal is to be the fastest, safest, and most convenient way to trade digital assets. See more at: https://shapeshift.io/new.html

About Digital Currency Group:

Digital Currency Group (DCG) is accelerating the development of a better financial system. We build and support bitcoin and blockchain technology companies by leveraging our insights, network, and access to capital. DCG has been an active seed investor in the digital currency industry with over 50 investments in 15 countries. Learn more at http://dcg.co

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

Media contact: Shapeshift@transform.pr, ShapeShift company contact: emily@shapeshift.io