interesting article, but again they miss out bitshares. odd.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113769/cyber-fund-report-daos-will-reach-mass-adoption-disrupt-politics-and-religion-by-2025

Cyber Fund Report: DAOs Will Reach Mass Adoption, Disrupt Politics and Religion by 2025

Cyber Fund says that Bitcoin will lead to a new cybernetic economy. In a quirky new report, the fund explores how far along this new economy has come and makes some interesting predictions.

“Cybernetic economy should multiply human wealth 10 times every 18 months,” cyber•Fund architect Dima Starodubcev said in the slide-show-style report. The report dives into the economy of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), defined as a company that makes decisions and leads itself—Bitcoin is an example, and so are projects like Ethereum and NXT. The authors say the economy in the early stages, but that it will grow rapidly. By the end of 2014 there were 86 DAOs, 3.3 times the number of DAOs in 2013. They predict that the growth will continue.

The report explores the Bitcoin economy based on 2014 statistics and finds that Ethereum and MaidSafe are the most promising DAOs. Ranking is based on a five star system, from “Garbage” to “To the Moon.” The bulk of the platforms fall into the former while four are in the latter category. The criteria included adoption, liquidity, and the science and innovations fueling the project, however the full methodology will not be released until later this year. Because of these competing projects, Bitcoin's share of the cybereconomy dropped by 9.71%.

Based on the growth of these self-organizing technologies, the report makes some bold claims about where the economy is headed. Starodubcev wrote:

“There is no need for the CEOs and the presidents anymore.”

Applications that rely on these autonomous platforms, known as DApps, increased in the past year as well. Interestingly, NXT has 16 DApps built on top of it, far surpassing any of the other platforms, including Bitcoin (2) and Counterparty (4).

Check out the report for graphs and diagrams illustrating these statistics. The offbeat report also features a quote from Al Gore admitting he's a "huge fan of bitcoin," pictures of President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin crying, and Big Bang Theory GIFs.

cyber•Fund claims it is the first distributed technology fund and has a mission of digital investments, like DAOs.
What's in store for 2015?

There are many trends to consider in 2015, according to the report. Currently there are 350 ATMs. They predict that the network will scale, perhaps to more than 10,000 ATMs in the years to come. Cyberlaw, which essentially means the use of smart contracts, will expand from an inner circle of geeks to early adopters, presumably following the pattern of diffusion of innovations.

And they make some other predictions as well, i.e. the “experimental transformations” of communities, like small islands, autonomous regions, and unbanked areas with uneducated populations.

By 2025, the report predicts that DAOs will reach mass adoption and will disrupt existing politics and religion. They go as far as to call the next evolutionary step “Homo Evolutis.”

Cybernetic economy: far beyond 2015

While cyber•Fund champions the simple goal of investments in the space, the report also suggests a more sci-fi-sounding economy down the line. The title of the report (Cybernetic Economy Report 2015) hints at this.

Starodubcev is writing “New generation cybernetic economic system,” an early draft of a white paper dedicated to the idea of an emerging cybernetic economy. (The authors caution that English is not their native language.) The chapter cybernetic economy vision predicts extremely high growth and disruption of everything from the government to the space industry. They predict the rise of some artificially intelligent network called the global brain.

The global brain is not a new idea and has been described in some capacity by a range of thinkers, from evolutionary biologist Herbert Spencer to World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The idea is basically that the world is growing more connected, with technology as a catalyst, and eventually all humans will be united by communications technology.

An emergent artificially intelligent network with Bitcoin at its core is surely a less familiar idea. With the world growing more and more connected, it's an interesting thought, if highly speculative. But the report doesn't dwell (or mention) these ideas, rather it uses graphs and statistics to build a case for the growth of so-called DAOs.

“Decentralized Application industry will be the fastest growing industry on the planet for the next 10 years,” said cyber•Fund creator, Konstantin Lomashuk.

Apologies if this has already been posted elsewhere.
M

ANU Professor: AusBit, not Bitcoin, Will Replace Cash in Australia within 10 Years:

While Australia holds off on removing the double taxation of digital currencies, researchers have said that they could in fact replace cash altogether in the country – in as little as 10 years.
‘AusBit’

While Australian Treasury Department representative Kate Preston went on record Wednesday to say that it has “no issues with the way that the ATO has dealt with [digital currency],” researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have concluded that it “will have to be addressed by federal government” and that Australia could be a cashless society within the next decade.

Speaking to ABC News, Professor Rabee Tourky said that government treatment reform was necessary “if it wants to maintain control over the financial side of the economy.”

“I'm sure the Reserve Bank of Australia is thinking about these things,” he added, on the back of a study which found that a state-sponsored digital currency would alleviate the concerns around currencies such as bitcoin while allowing the public to take full advantage of the advances offered by paperless money.

AusBit, the name given to this interim currency by Tourky, is similar in nature to possible systems suggested by the European Central Bank this week, but with a more emphatic Bitcoin link. Tourky commented to Vine:

    “In 10 years’ time there won’t be any paper cash. The big question is what’s going to replace it in Australia? Will it be Bitcoin? I don’t think so. More likely it will be ‘AusBit’[…].”

‘Taxed appropriately’

Tourky’s buoyant remarks do not echo those made by lawmakers to Wednesday’s Economic Reference Committee hearing. The director of the Attorney-General's Financial Crime Section, Daniel Mossop, urged caution with regard to Bitcoin-esque digital currencies, citing its “attractiveness” for criminals and the difficulty of tracking transactions.

“They can cross borders, and payments can be made directly to people anywhere in the world. We can see who's buying [bitcoins] and who's selling them, to a large extent, but we lose visibility of what happ
ens within the system,” he said.

Preston meanwhile kept to the tax agenda, stating that “[t]he Treasury view would be that, taxation is not where you start.” However, some unlikely support came in from Brett Peterson of the ATO's Tax Council Network, who told the hearing that “if another country unilaterally adopted bitcoin as its official fiat currency, then it could be treated locally as foreign currency, and taxed appropriately,” ZDNet reports.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113615/anu-professor-ausbit-not-bitcoin-will-replace-cash-in-australia-within-10-years

- personally, i think that bitassets such as oil, gold, silver, wheat etc will be our biggest advantage (especially agriculture and precious metals). Bitfiat  may come from IBMs innovation.

http://www.coindesk.com/one-startup-will-use-blockchain-disrupt-online-gaming/

Bitwage has announced the beta launch of a new service that allows employees and independent contractors to receive part of their paycheck in bitcoin, even if their employers don’t offer the option.

”One of the good things about the system is that, unlike a lot of other wallet providers and exchanges, you’re trusting them to hold on to their bitcoins. We’re just a conduit to make it so USD will flow into whatever wallet you chose.”

I have tweeted them about our BitBTC to allow users to save and earn interest.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitwage-now-lets-employee-get-paid-bitcoin/

http://btcgeek.com/bitcoin-trading-without-centralized-exchanges/

... He gets it wrong with the 200% remark instead of 300 but I like that he promotes it as the most promising option out there 

Bitcoin Trading Without Centralized Exchanges

With the ongoing Bitstamp saga, where hackers seem to have taken off with a sizable portion of the exchange/consumer funds, the debate is back to the question of how safe centralized exchanges are. After all, you’re trusting your Bitcoins to a third-party that is now in full control of your Bitcoin (and just issues you an IOU). Single points of failure are scary, irrespective of how noble the intentions and how competent the people running the system. It’s likely that Bitstamp customers will not see a loss of funds. However, this brings us back to the question of what the best ways to trade Bitcoin are, without entrusting your private keys to a third-party.

Unfortunately, centralized exchanges are very efficient and easy (relatively) to implement, so the alternatives will always seem to lack something. However, some of you might prefer these alternate routes.

LocalBitcoins: This is perhaps the best and easiest way to get around the problem of central Bitcoin exchanges. Local Bitcoins has grown by leaps and bounds and there are thousands of listings especially in major cities where you can buy and sell Bitcoins. The trades are completed relatively quickly and the persons interact with each other in-person while handling cash and Bitcoin, so the risk is minimal at best. This options depends on your geography of course. If you’re in San Francisco or New York, it’s relatively easy to find people willing to trade here. If you’re in different smaller town in a developing country, it might be much harder.

Bitshares (BitBTC): There are several ideas floating in the cryptocurrency space dealing with making a fiat equivalent of a crypto, but Bitshares seems to be the most promising and has taken the lead in creating a system without counterparty risk. To be sure, Bitshares isn’t a true currency exchange (in that there is no real transfer of Bitcoin or fiat between parties) but instead more akin to a CFD (Contract For Difference) which tracks the price of the underlying (Bitcoin and USD or EUR) through a mixture of market incentives and price feeds. It is still possible to speculate on the currency pair BitBTC/BitUSD which tracks the price of BTC/USD. The main disadvantage is that there is low liquidity in the system right now, but should be improved as more people enter the system. Of course, there is also a high amount of systemic risk inherent to such a new idea, although there isn’t any counterparty risk since all ‘BitAssets’ like BitBTC and BitUSD are fully collateralized up to 200% through Bitshares (BTS), the native currency of the system. One additional advantage of the Bitshares system is that it is possible to short BitBTC, which should track the equivalent of shorting BTC.

Trading Events: Trading events are actually a fun way to meet more Bitcoin enthusiasts, swap stories and trade in-person. There is no centralized exchange, and the transfers happen peer-to-peer. One person hands over cash, the other person transfers Bitcoins directly to the trader’s wallet. No counterparty risk. One example is the New York Bitcoin Center in New York City, right next to the New York Stock Exchange that holds trading events quite often. Of course, the limitation is geography – where you live might not have these types of events.

Decentralized Exchanges: There are several ideas of decentralized Bitcoin exchanges, and some of them seem promising. It is hard to say how successful they will be though. BitSquare is one of the projects that has a working wallet and is currently testing things on the Bitcoin test network. The system is decentralized and if you want to learn more, you should read their whitepaper. Open Bazaar is another project that is coming along nicely, and although it is a marketplace for things, paid for in Bitcoin, there is no reason why it cannot be used to buy fiat currency instead of iPads. The built-in reputation system and dispute handling should be valuable.

Hi,

From listening to bytemaster's mumble on the 19th it sounds like the 1.0 will be ready at the end of january, at least i think thats when the lightweight client to scheduled to be released.

So, my 2 cents is that now Brian is no longer with us and it is up to all of us to push/promote bitshares i think we need a battle plan - a essentially a list of tasks or ideas that need to be completed so that we dont all duplicate effort and look unprofessional.

I'm not really technical, so i am willing to step up and put my hat in the ring to do other stuff but i there needs to be a at least some sort of loose structure so that the message is consistent, polished and not duplicated.

Thoughts?
M

Sony leaks reveal Hollywood is trying to break DNS, the backbone of the internet
A leaked legal memo reveals a plan for blacklisting pirate sites at the ISP level.

Makes me wonder if bitshares could be vulnerable to this sort of thing as it becomes a threat to traditional banking.

Just an idea
M

"U.S. debit and credit cards to be allowed in Cuba as part of plans to normalize relations". Wouldn't it be nice to get the word out about bitUSD in Cuba or on the Cuban community websites/twitter?

Thoughts/strategies