Why Blockchain.info is better than Coinbase or Circle according to Roger Ver

[Millard Baker]

Roger Ver, the majority owner of Blockchain.info, says his company has a better online Bitcoin wallet solution than Coinbase or Circle because it doesn't have to worry about responsibilities of complying with Know Your Customer laws and anti-money laundering regulations; plus the government won't be able to freeze accounts and seize Bitcoin assets at Blockchain.info (at least according to Ver).

Galt: You and some of your teammates, especially Andreas Antonopoulos, are outspoken when it comes to the illegitimacy of government regulators. Do you feel bitcoin can be regulated?

Ver: At the end of the day, no, Bitcoin the protocol can’t be regulated. Obviously, men with guns wearing costumes are scary, but a gun can’t change the mathematics behind Bitcoin.

Our goal with Blockchain is to provide the software tools that everyone on the planet can use to send and receive bitcoins to anyone else on the planet without needing permission.

Galt: But without regulations and integration with the financial system, do you think bitcoin can grow to mass scale?

Ver: I do, but it would certainly be a slower process. To be fair, Coinbase and others like them [that offer these regulated services] are incredibly valuable, and offer an easy user interface to buy and sell bitcoins. There’s definitely a need for things like Coinbase in the ecosystem, but at the end of the day I sure wouldn’t store my bitcoins in a system like that.

Galt: Why do you say that?

Ver: At some point, because of the way that systems like Coinbase are designed, it’s just a matter of time before the regulators come in and say “freeze this account” or “undo this transaction”.


At the instant people realize that their bitcoins can be seized or frozen while stored in a Coinbase wallet, they will flock to a service like Blockchain where accounts can’t be frozen. In the long-run, we think that will be the strongest selling point of Blockchain. We can’t help you recover your password, but nobody on the planet can take your bitcoins if you use a secure password and don’t forget it.

The bad case scenario is for an authority to come along and say “give me Roger Ver’s bitcoins”. But the worst case scenario, which is the scary one, is for someone to come along and say “give us everyone’s bitcoins”. That’s a real problem with “off-blockchain” systems like Coinbase. We’re totally “on-blockchain”.

Galt: What do you mean by “off-blockchain” versus “on-blockchain”?

Ver: We think the bitcoin industry will be split into two worlds. You’ll have “on-blockchain” businesses that stay true to the unregulated, decentralized principles of Bitcoin, and “off-blockchain” businesses with fiat business models that must comply with all local regulations as a result.


Apple’s iOS versus Google’s Android is a good analogy: the “walled garden” versus the truly open platform. The iOS ecosystem is closed, tidy, and sanitized. The Android ecosystem is disorganized, self-emergent, and messy. The market has room for both.

We’d compare Coinbase and Circle to Apple and Blockchain to Android. We think following “on-blockchain” principles is the best way to build a bitcoin business.

Source: Roger Ver: Blockchain “Will Continue to Dominate” Bitcoin

 

[pumpingiron22]

I transffer all my bits to there

 

[newbie23]

Blockchain is great.

Only advantage of coin base is you can buy BTC.

And depending on which side of the row you want to be on, the base is KYC and AML. The chain is not.

Just make sure you set up your 2 way if you use the chain and back up your phone just in case you lose it.

Hope this helps

 

[Millard Baker]

More about Roger Ver, majority owner of Blockchain.info: he's a major supporter of Ross Ulbricht (the alleged founder of the original Silk Market marketplace) and a staunch opponent of the war on drugs.

Ver has donated $160,000 to the Ross Ulbricht Legal Defense Fund and thinks Ulbricht should be applauded for creating Silk Road:

“Ross is accused of providing a platform that allowed peaceful people to engage in peaceful and voluntary trade with others, beyond the purview of the state. Serving even one day in prison for creating such a wonderful tool to advance human freedom would be unjust,” he said.

Ver also believes Bitcoin guarantees the "war on drugs" will be lost:

“Thanks to bitcoin, and blockchain technology, the war on drugs is 100% certain to be lost by the violent men calling themselves the state,” he said.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/ross-ulbricht-hero-villain/

 

[Millard Baker]

Roger Ver on the war on drugs:

"To anyone who is paying attention, Ross is already a hero. The FBI, DEA, and other law enforcement agents are committing evil when they violently interfere in the peaceful interactions of others. Historians of the future will look back on the drug war the same way we look back on slavery today."

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/whats-verdict-bitcoin-community-weighs-ross-ulbricht/

"I think that each individual owns their own body, and has the absolute right to put whatever they want into it.

The police, judges, and jail guards who lock people in cages for ingesting substances without the permission of strangers, are the ones committing evil and need to stop.

If Ross Ulbricht is DPR and helped facilitate the these voluntary interactions, he is a hero for helping provide the technology that allowed peaceful people to ignore the violent threats from strangers calling themselves politicians and law enforcement.

If Ross is falsely accused, and was not DPR, then he deserves the best defense money can buy.

Either way, he deserves the support of anyone who is opposed to the war on drugs."

Source: http://cointelegraph.com/news/11201...te-165k-on-twitter-for-ross-ulbrichts-defense

 

[Millard Baker]

Roger Ver explained, in his own words back in 2012, his libertarian philosophy, his entrepreneurial success as a college student who founded MemoryDealers.com, his short-lived political experience as a Libertarian candidate for the California State Assembly, his characterizations of ATF agents as "murderers", the 10-months he spent in federal prison (for selling firecrackers), the judge's assurance that the prison sentence had nothing to do with his "political views", his move to Japan and his goals for Bitcoin.

To help spread the ideas of liberty at the age of twenty, in the year 2000, I became a Libertarian candidate for California State Assembly. I vowed that if I were elected I would not accept any salary considering the money would necessarily have been taken from others by force in the form of taxation. I also promised to cut as many taxes and repeal as many laws as I could.

As part of the election process I was invited to participate in a debate at San Jose State University against the Republican and Democrat candidates. In the debate, I argued that taxation is theft, the war on drugs is immoral, and that the ATF are “a bunch of jack booted thugs and murderers” in memoriam to the people they slaughtered in Waco, Texas. Unbeknownst to me at the time there were several plain clothed ATF agents in the audience who became very upset with the things I was saying. They began looking into my background in the attempt to find dirt on me. I had already started a successful online business selling various computer components. In addition to computer parts, I, along with dozens of other resellers across the country, including Cabelas, were selling a product called a “Pest Control Report 2000.” It was basically a firecracker used by farmers to scare deer and birds away from their corn fields. While everyone else, including the manufacturer, were simply asked to stop selling them I became the only person in the nation to be prosecuted.

The reasoning for the prosecution became crystal clear after a meeting with the US prosecuting attorney and the under cover ATF agents from the debate. In the meeting, my attorney told the prosecutor that selling store bought firecrackers on Ebay isn’t a big deal and that we can pay a fine and do some community service to be done with everything. When the prosecutor agreed that that sounded reasonable one of the ATF agents pounded his hand on the table and shouted “…but you didn’t hear the things that he said!” This summed up very clearly that they were angry about the things that I had said, not the things that I had done.

After being told by the US attorney that I would be sent to jail for seven or eight years if I took my case to trial I signed a plea agreement.

...

Bitcoin totally strips away the State’s control over money. It takes away the vast majority of its power to tax, regulate, or control the economy in any way. If you care about liberty, the nonaggression principle, or economic freedom in general you should do everything you can to use Bitcoin as often as possible in your daily life.

Source: http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/11/12/bitcoin-venture-capitalist-roger-vers-journey-to-anarchism/

 

[Millard Baker]

When Paul Krugman complains about Bitcoin's "obvious ideological agenda" and "libertarian anti-government fantasies", he is probably thinking of Roger Ver / Blockchain.info.

Blockchain.info is the world's most popular Bitcoin website and the online wallet service with the most users

Do the controversial political views of its majority owner hurt the advancement of Bitcoin?

 

[Millard Baker]

Blockchain closes $30.5 million funding round. It's the first funding from outside investors.

Blockchain announced today that it has secured a record $30.5m Series A funding deal, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Wicklow Capital.

Such a figure would be one of the largest ever single investments in a bitcoin company, after BitPay announced a new record with its $30m Series A round in May and Xapo set the current gold standard with $40m in July.

...

The company, which was a one-man operation from its August 2011 beginning until the spring of 2013, and operated with only a handful of employees as recently as seven months ago, now has a total 21 employees in various locations around the world.

It recently announced its two millionth wallet account (there are now 2.3 million), more than half of which are from sign-ups this year. At the beginning of January 2013 it had just 110,000 accounts and by the end of October that year it had 500,000.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/blockchain-grow-further-closing-30-5-million-funding-round/

As a reminder, Blockchain recently updated its two core open source wallets on Android and iOS. “Overall our growth on mobile is very strong,” Smith said. The startup wants to make it as easy as possible to manage your bitcoins without relying on a central service like Coinbase or Circle.

The company only stores encrypted files on its servers as a backup, but it doesn’t actually hold your bitcoins. When you log into a Blockchain wallet, the wallet fetches that file and decrypts it. It means that Blockchain is immune to hacker attacks and can’t take transaction fees.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/07/blockchain-goes-from-bootstrapping-to-scoring-30-million/