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Bitcoin Businesses The Almighty Buck

Kim Dotcom Announces New Bitcoin Venture For Content Uploaders To Earn Money (reuters.com) 38

Infamous New Zealand-based internet mogul Kim Dotcom plans to launch a Bitcoin payments system for users to sell files and video streaming as he fights extradition to the United States for criminal copyright charges. From a report on Reuters: The German-born entrepreneur, who is wanted by U.S. law enforcement on copyright and money laundering allegations related to his now-defunct streaming site Megaupload, announced his new venture called 'Bitcontent' in a video posted on YouTube this week. "You can create a payment for any content that you put on the internet... you can share that with your customers, with the interest community and, boom, you are basically in business and can sell your content," Dotcom said in the video. He added that Bitcontent would eventually allow businesses, such as news organizations, to earn money from their entire websites. He did not provide a launch date. Dotcom did not provide details on how Bitcontent would differ from existing Bitcoin operations or how it would help news organizations make money beyond existing subscription payment options.
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Kim Dotcom Announces New Bitcoin Venture For Content Uploaders To Earn Money

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  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @12:02PM (#54178389)

    "What crooked scheme did he come up with this time?"

    Quite seriously, did he ever even try a business that isn't at least shady if not outright illegal?

    • Considering he made all his money from screwing over other people? No.

    • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @12:09PM (#54178453) Journal

      Al Capone announces a new dividend program for people willing to stick bottles of gin in the trunk of the car and drive them across from Canada. Totally legit and totally risk-free!

    • Dotcom = Bust
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Like all his other ideas, the illegal part of the scheme is done by individual people choosing to do illegal things. Kinda like all the scams on craigslist and all the copyrighted stuff on youtube.

    • I don't think so at all. Mega is awesome, and of course he's the planner behind it even though it's his wife's company. I haven't found anything comparable to Mega yet in terms of usability, similar better known services like Dropbox are way worse in almost every respect. If this new venture is anything like Mega, then it's going to be great.

      It's kind of bizarre that the US is still successful in framing Megaupload as shady while Youtube always was and still is by far the largest copyright infringer on th

  • by BlueCoder ( 223005 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @12:13PM (#54178493)

    That's all I have to say.

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @12:17PM (#54178561)

    Generally speaking, a 'Bitcoin payment system' isn't. You pay a middle man money for 'bitcoins', the middle man pays a vendor with your money (less their overhead).

    For appearances, they'll handle direct bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, but the real business is all good old cash and the bitcoin part is pretend. (Note: this is often useful for claiming hacks and loss of client funds)

    You'll still get hit with exchange rate differences, and you can bet the payment processor isn't taking a bath on Bitcoin fluctuations, so there will be something in the TOS about your account being settled in real currency as calculated at some point in the transaction process that is favourable to the processor.

    On the other hand, once you've handed over your real money, you don't have to deal with Bitcoin transaction issues, encryption keys, etc. Because you're not really using Bitcoin.

    You get BINO, Bitcoin In Name Only. Because if it was really Bitcoin, it wouldn't fucking work.

    • by Troed ( 102527 )

      Your comment seems to have nothing to do with the article, and a lot to do with your own misconceptions about Bitcoin.

      • >Your comment seems to have nothing to do with the article, and a lot to do with your own misconceptions about Bitcoin.

        Your comment seems to have a lot to do with YOUR misconceptions about Bitcoin.

        • by Troed ( 102527 )

          Really? I've done public presentations on it since 2010. In what way do you believe Kim Dotcom's described venture wouldn't work completely within the Bitcoin network? Please be specific as to how it applies to what's described in this article.

          • Awesome. So, you've either gone full cultist or you have no morals and are fine encouraging the growth of the market so you can continue to leech off the rubes.

            Either way you're not much of a human being.

            • by Troed ( 102527 )

              I think your inability to point out any of the things I asked for, which would've been valid criticism of the article/subject in question, ends the thread nicely.

        • And your comment seems to have a lot to do with YOUR misconceptions about Dogecoin.

    • by PRMan ( 959735 )
      This is totally false. Bitcoin absolutely works. Just because they use a payment processor to avoid fluctuations doesn't mean that they can't instantly take payments for content from every country on earth the instant it goes up. What's wrong with a worldwide direct sales market for artists? Sounds great to me.
    • None of what you wrote is correct. Just so you know.
    • You do realize that blockchain transaction is on the public ledger that can be checked in near real-time?
  • DMCA issues and take downs how are they going to work that?

  • Most people will think of the nefarious ways he plans on doing this, but wouldnt this be a rather elegant way of doing micro transactions? I am not sure why micro transactions are not done already on a large scale other than it being a nightmare for the creditcard companies and billing statements so no one has bothered creating the infrastructure to scale it out.

    But, for example, a person could use their credit card to buy $20 worth of bitcoin and then use that little by little at news sites that charge a
    • by PRMan ( 959735 )
      Exactly. The problem is that dust transactions (pennies) are currently not getting picked up in the Bitcoin ledger, because there is not enough space in the transaction block for them. Miners choose the largest amounts of transaction payments, sometimes which go as high as 50 cents. Obviously, 50 cents is no big deal if you are moving thousands of dollars, but it's a huge deal if you are paying a penny for a listen.
      • I agree there is a real need for an online micropayments system, especially for musicians and content creators. As pointed out above it's not going to work in Bitcoins or paypal or any other existing online payment system I am aware of.

        "With PayPal Micropayments you’ll pay 5 percent plus 5 cents per transaction (for U.S. accounts)" - Paypal
    • We definitely need a simple, easy to use method to provide micro transactions.

      The problem is really banking regulations get in the way, as every country is different, and governments want to consider any form of online wallet provider as a bank.

      How I would do it, if regulations wouldn't squash it right away:
      - allow users to add "FunWebMoneyâ" to a deposit account, converted $1 USD to $1 FWMâ.
      - allow merchants to register and receive $FWMâ from users
      - create a really clean, easy to integrate A

  • by Drunkulus ( 920976 ) on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @01:37PM (#54179499)
    I'll wager 400 quatloos on the newcomer.
  • we need to decentralize our P2P commerce exhibit A: https://www.bitchute.com/ [bitchute.com]
  • The only thing keeping him out of the US, and entrenched in NZ, is by being able to pay role a never ending cycle of court appeals.
    That gets expensive. Really expensive.
    Only this week I was thinking "haven't heard from Dotcom for a while, I wonder when he's going to launch his next venture to keep his legal fees being paid?"
    Well there you go, he's done it again...

  • This is vaporware, but it makes the nes because there is "Kim Dotcom" in it.

If all else fails, lower your standards.

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