From: Andrew Poelstra To: info@libertarian.ca Cc: Bcc: Subject: Bitcoin donations Reply-To: Hey Libertarians, You may have heard of Bitcoin, a private cryptocurrency created in January 2009 in response to the banking crisis. It has been four years now, and despite much commentary to the contrary, Bitcoin is stronger than ever. I think it would bring good publicity to both the Bitcoin network and the Libertarian party, if we were to accept donations through Bitcoin. These donations would be received through the party web site, so we could collect all the information we need to comply with accountability laws, just as we do with traditional methods of donation. I suggested this at a barbeque hosted by Paul Geddes in BC a few years ago, but the consensus was that the technology was too new and had yet to prove itself. This is not the case now. The standard way to convert between Canadian dollars and Bitcoin its at the online exchange http://www.cavirtex.com. Its creator, Joseph David, is developing a merchant API which would allow us to accept donations in Bitcoin, while receiving (and accounting in) Canadian dollars. He can be contacted at admin@cavirtex.com . (There are obviously many legal issues to consider here, but I think this is worth pursuing.) No other political party in Canada accepts Bitcoin. For our party to be the first would reflect greatly on us, since we would be seen as actively working toward a free country, and embracing new infrastructure and technology to that end. See this recent article about the currency: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/02/why-bitcoin-is-the-banking-industrys-newest-biggest-threat/ I've typed up a brief summary describing Bitcoin: Technical Aspects ================= Unlike other private currencies, Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning that there is no central authority to manipulate the currency, act in bad faith, or get in trouble with governments. (We all remember the Liberty Dollar fiasco!) The Bitcoin network is secured by an innovative use of cryptography. Users transfer Bitcoin by digitally signing spending rights to each other -- rather than some central agency tracking balances, Bitcoin balances are associated to public cryptographic keys. Anyone can see what keys have what balances, but only the owner of the private half of the key can transfer the value to another key. A brief summary of the technical innovation of bitcoin can be found in the whitepaper, written by Bitcoin's inventor: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The inventor, going by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, disappeared over two years ago, and the currency didn't even flinch, a testament to this decentralized design. Nobody knows who he is, and nobody needs to. In fact, the Bitcoin protocol is much more powerful than just a raw currency. It supports ``shared money'' which can only be spent when multiple parties agree, escrow transactions which can be done or undone by 2/3 vote (or N/M vote, for any positive integers N and M), and dynamically changing charges (e.g., a wireless provider literally charging users by the minute, with both parties reagreeing each minute and nobody having room to cheat). All this without any need of human trust or legal infrastructure. It works across borders, without signatures, without faces. Robots can use it, and they don't even have rights. Such is the miracle of cryptography. Bitcoin supports very fast transactions (across the Internet in seconds, and complete irreversibility within an hour), very small transactions, and vanishingly low fees. (Right now, the typical fee for a Bitcoin transaction is zero.) Traditional online payment providers (Visa, Paypal, etc) support none of these things. Political Aspects ================ Bitcoin is a completely private currency. Rather than being minted and distributed by a central banking agency, Bitcoins are created as a reward to users who work to secure the network. This provides incentive for powerful actors to strengthen the system rather than attack it. Last year, the Bitcoin network became the most powerful distributed computing network in the history of the world. It has more than doubled in power since then. New technologies are on the horizon to multiply the network power by ten in 2013, without increasing energy consumption. This is a huge, global project. It's likely that anyone hoping to attack Bitcoin through technical means would be stymied by the fact that it would require -more computing power than actually exists in the world today-. (Of course, a motivated government could pay to build a competing network with which to attack Bitcoin. But this would be a serious effort, and they'd far better off spending money to destabilize exchange rates.) Just as cryptography gave us free communication, the Internet gave us free information, BitTorrent gave us a free distribution model, and the open source movement gave us free software, Bitcoin gives us free currency. Everywhere that there is technology, the power of the state is waning. There is no doubt that we are winning the war on statism. It is early to say that we have already won, but not too early to say that it's inevitable, as long as people continue to work toward it. Supporting Bitcoin is how we, the Libertarian Party, can do that. Because Bitcoin can be used on cell phones, and does not require any authentication or vetting of its users, we are seeing early adoption in developing countries which do not have entrenched currencies of their own. To own a Bitcoin means to know a public cryptographic key. There is nothing to be seized. Nothing to be registered or tracked or blocked. Because the network is built on top of the Internet, the currency can be transferred across the street as easily as across the world. It does not mean anything for a Bitcoin to cross a border, so it cannot be restricted or tarriffed. Because the protocol controls the rate of currency creation, any entity trying to "print money" by flooding the market with new currency, would be literally speaking a different protocol and Bitcoin would not even be aware of them. Wars cannot be financed with Bitcoin. Inflation taxes cannot be levied with Bitcoin. Bitcoin can be used on top of anonymity networks, such as Tor, and can be accessed this way by people in censored regimes such as Iran. The biggest problem for Bitcoin users is at the interface of fiat and Bitcoin, the currency exchanges. But as more and more trade is denominated in Bitcoin, these exchanges become less and less necessary. So just by using Bitcoin, by recognizing its value and increasing awareness, we can act to free the world. Thanks for your time. This message is longer than I'd meant it to be, but I strongly belief in this technology and the freedom it brings to the world. I'm a member of the party living in BC (mostly I am at school in Burnaby), and am happy to chat in person about any of this. Sincerely, Andrew Poelstra -- Andrew Poelstra Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net Web: http://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew "Not all who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien