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the avanti group prcode81345782170 TAG Bitcoin is a digital currency based on some fancy cryptography that is designed to facilitate anonymous transfers, and resist regulation by government. A Bitcoin is essentially a claim on a string of numbers (that take the place of a physical coin) that can be bought and sold. There are exchanges that will convert between bitcoin and other currencies, and even some merchants who will take bitcoin in cash. The idea of an anonymous digital currency itself is not new. David Chaum proposed the concept of electronic cash and developed a scheme in the 1980′s. Chaum's currency proposals never did really get off the ground, but his keynote address at the first World Wide Web conference had a major impact on the development of the Web. Bitcoin itself is largely based on hashcash, a 'proof of work' scheme proposed by Adam Back in the 1990′s as a way to stop spam. The idea behind hashcash was to increase the cost of sending email to the point that spam became uneconomic by requiring each sender to perform a quantity of computational make-work. Before the rise of Bitcoin in 2009, the most successful scheme of this kind was E-Gold, which operated from 1996 until it was shut down by the Secret Service in 2007. E-Gold tapped into the libertarian ideology of anonymous cash, but their technology fell far short of the rhetoric. E-Gold wasn't really anonymous, and wasn't even located outside US jurisdiction. The company was registered in St. Nevis and Kitts, the datacenter was located in Florida. The idea that E-Gold somehow operated outside the scope of US regulation was a spectacular example of self-delusion by their management. E-Gold wasn't an anonymous currency as such, it was an exchange that allowed customers to transfer ownership of gold between them. Which was sufficient to allow its use as a means of avoiding government controls on money transfers. When the system was shut down, some of the largest compl

the avanti group In the latest of our series commemorating the life and work of people honoured with blue plaques, Adam Sonin explores the fascinating history of soap manufacturer and philanthropist William Lever. Soap-boiler, social reformer, MP, tribal chieftain, multi-millionaire and Lord of the Western Isles. He employed workmen from the Mersey to the Congo and they all called him 'Chief'. His peers knew him as William Lever, later to become first Viscount Leverhulme. When he was made a Baronet in 1911 he chose the motto Mutare Vel Timere Sperno: "I spurn to change or fear." Throughout his life his favourite novel was Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1850). He owned a string of grand houses packed full of antiques, artworks and treasures, all "guarded" by tiger-skin rugs. He was known to often sleep outdoors, in all weathers, and on a simple iron bed. Evelyn Waugh, a near neighbour, described his house, then under construction, as "Italianite". His model village, Port Sunlight, near his soapworks in Birkenhead, ranks alongside Henrietta Barnett's Hampstead Garden Suburb as one of England's great experiments in town planning. Barnett was also a near neighbour. The food manufacturer, Sir Angus Watson (1874-1961), described him as "thickset in stature, with a sturdy body set on short legs and a massive head covered with thick, upstanding hair, he radiated force and energy". Sir Angus continued: "He had piercing, blue-grey eyes which, however, flashed with challenge when he was angry," and "the short neck and closely-set ears of a prize-fighter". William Hesketh Lever, first Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925), soap manufacturer and philanthropist, was born on 19 September, at 16 Wood Street, Bolton. Seven years earlier, writing in The Condition Of The Working Class In England, Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) described the town as "one of the worst in Britain... badly and irregularly built, with foul courts, lanes and back al