Digital currency advocate Mathias Sundin has become a member of Sweden's parliament after funding his election campaign solely in bitcoin.

Now, and for the next four years, Sundin will represent the constituents of �sterg�tland in the parliament, which has 349 members from across the country.

Outlining his political agenda on his blog, Sundin made it clear that he would oppose "knee-jerk regulation" of bitcoin and disruptive technologies in general. Taking the advice 'put your money where your mouth is', the politician also made a point of accepting campaign donations solely in bitcoin.

On more wide reaching topics, Sundin promised to back educational reform, defend privacy rights and work toward developing a tax system that promotes innovative, fast-growing companies.

Read More...

Zied Hosni is 32 years old. Working in Tunisia as a web developer in a large French group, he has always been passionate about computers and the Internet:

I love what I do: the Web is truely my passion. With the Internet and now Bitcoin, it is once again proved that anything is possible in this area, provided you behave ethically and responsibly.

The young man used to contribute to sites selling themes for websites (also called templates) such as ThemeForest or WrapBootstrap. Then he decided to launch his platform, amazed by the impressive growth in this industry that came with the democratization of web development and web design. HTML5 Ninja, his marketplace, was born.

The principle is quite simple: a template seller registers on the marketplace, uploads a theme and indicates the selling price. Zied and his team review and publish it online while hosting the theme on their servers. A commission is then taken by the website each time the theme is sold.

Today I will extend to you three key reasons why the Bitcoin value versus the "Almighty Dollar" is of little significance, and may be totally irrelevant both now, and in the future.

One reason can be from distilled from lessons learned in our history of decentralized networks versus other centralized networks. One can be realized through the present day landscape, and one looks into the future of money as we know it. So let's begin with our ability to learn from history.

Twenty years ago, when the Internet was just starting to gain momentum, it was in a similar state of development as Bitcoin is in today. "The Web" was replacing ancient communication methods like typewriters and snail mail at a slow, but steadily increasing rate. These  wouldn't be instantly replaced, but would be one day irrelevant. As we moved along a few more years, and the 21st century dawned upon us, mainstream news magnets like CNN and the Washington Post joined "The Online Revolution." This caused newspapers to shrink in size, number and demand. As The Internet grew in scope, was it ever compared directly, on a daily basis, to the New York Times or Time Magazine in its relevance?

Read More...

 On Friday secret tapes of correspondence from Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve were released. The truth is not pretty and it may be even more shocking than you think

Observers of the Fed have long known that the Reserce is extremely secretive. What they haven't known is what it is secretive about. Much of the work is guess work. Now we finally know what is actually going inside the Fed.

For those who don't know, the Federal Reserve was set up as a private entity in the early part of the 20th century, a sort of superbank to regulate America's money supply.  It is supposed to oversee the big banks, including those that were "too big to fail," but these disclosures diplayed that it's been doing just the opposite.

Something like a Randian soap opera, the Federal Reserve apparently operates on a consensus model where anyone who disagrees with what currently is going on is pushed aside. If you agree, you may get promoted and go off to work for a better salary in a big bank. If you ever disagree or suggest that the Federal Reserve should perform its job, you are likely to be unceremoniously fired.

In one curious case, some upstart who thought that Goldman Sachs should be held accountable for its many conflicts of interest was one of those who "didn't fit in," and was summarily dismissed. The difference was that she disappeared with many privately taken recordings of what really happens inside the Fed. Which is, apparently, a whole lot of nothing at great cost to the American taxpayer

Read More...