January 10, 2014

             Reporter: Claire Roberts     Editor: Claire Roberts         Photographer: Leander Hauri                   

President:  Hays Englehart 2013 - 2014          


A TWO-FER TO START OUR DAY -

 

Leander Hauri shared two thoughts - a lighter one and a not so light one...

Out from behind the camera! 

 

Life is like a camera...

Focus

on what's important,

Capture

the good times,

Develop

from the negatives,And if things don't work out,

Take another shot.

 

And a heavier one from George Washington Carver...

 

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

 

GUESTS

 
 

Maggi Kurimai - better half of the Kurimai family is here to support our speaker.

 

OCCASIONS & RECOGNITIONS 

 

Polly Bernson and husband Denny celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary in December, but with all of the holiday hoopla it was a quiet celebration.

 

Ernie Furtado celebrated his birthday with a dinner at Va di Vi while Jeff Hawkins celebrated wife Jenny's birthday with take-out, but everyone was happy so good celebrations all around!

 

Walter Nelson was a twofer with the recognition of his third anniversary with the club and his 31st wedding anniversary with Kathe!

 

Don Reichert and Ron Brown were each recognized for their birthdays...Don said he was in the lead as he celebrated his 85th birthday. Ron agreed that both were happy to be celebrating birthdays! 

 

 

 

 EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS 

  • Next Tues night Board meeting NEW LOCATION 6pm - Hays sent out an email with the details
  • Ron Melvin - Garden Park needs a couple of people to help with moving some stuff into the new Community Center and offices this Monday - please see Ron for details.
  • Pat Flaharty started with a Catholic joke ....thanked Club members for helping the Programs team, Pat, Marty and Chris - with ideas and for stepping up to speak.  Pat continued to announce...Feb 11th at 5:30 at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center - review and update the five- year plan 5:30-8:30pm (dinner will be provided) Laura Day and her team will facilitate
  • The Interclub Meeting is Wednesday, February 5, at the New Event Center in Rossmoor on Stanley Dollar Dr. John Blount (past RI director from Sebastopol) will be our speaker this year. Check Check in starts at 11:30 and lunch will be served at 12. There are three entr�e choices (beef, chicken and vegetarian).  Price is $25.00 per person.

 

No raffle today...Hays tried to throw Ron Melvin under the bus and both of them got caught in the crossfire - Mr. Hawkins came by to collect fines from both...

Pay Up Mr. Prez... 

 

VOCATIONAL MINUTE

 

I don't want to share...

Gary Fulcher tried to get out of it but he shared that he runs a couple of websites that sell tours of the SF Bay Area and hangs out in his shop and builds boats.

MONEY...MONEY...MONEY!!

 

Alex Arnold introduced our speaker....our own Dennis Kurimai! Dennis' topic is A Deeper Look at Money and Bitcoin. Dennis has a B.S. in Economics from UCLA.  Dennis has worked for Mitsui Operations Foreign Currency Exchange Options Desk in Tokyo; Research and Software quantitative analyst for FX Options Trading; Guest lectured at Harvard and Haas School of Business on Option Trading and Currency Hedging using MEstimate statistical methods. Dennis is a currency enthusiast and works full time at Oracle where he specializes in Enterprise software.

 

Looking good...

Dennis started with a song...and then introduced bitcoins by providing some background. Bitcoins (btc) were introduced in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto (probably a pseudonym) and are a digital currency. Btc uses cryptography for security and the blockchain is the overarching tracker of bitcoins and who owns them.  During a trade, validation can take up to 10 minutes. Bitcoins can be bought and sold on exchanges - MtGox & BTC in China are the two largest.

Counterfeiting is supposedly "impossible" as there are no physical bitcoins. Bitcoin 'miners' can mine them as individuals but can't game the system.

 

 
Bitcoin warnings:

  • secure your wallet
  • prices are volatile
  • transactions are irreversible
  • transactions are not anonymous
  • instant transactions are less secure
  • still experimental
  • don't forget government taxes (even though some may be attracted to avoid taxes)

Recently China cracked down...Chinese nationals were sending funds out of China via bitcoin purchases.  BTC was all but shut down (65% of users were Chinese nationals) and stopped Yuan deposits.

 

The US Congress started an investigation in November so we will have to wait to see how US regulations play out but Digital Currency will probably be big...

 

It has been used for illegal purposes as in the case of Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht who accepted bitcoin payments for illegal products/services. He is currently suing the US Gov't to get his bitcoins back.

 

Volatility and Illiquidity...big price swings based on last trade. In 2140, the numberof bitcoins will be capped - at just under 21 million worldwide. As of December 2013, there are 12 million in circulation and, according to lore, Satoshi has about a million of those.

 

You can buy bitcoins or you can accept them as a form of payment for goods or services: 

  •  new technologies like SlySoft.com that may have questionable business models
  •  Virgin Atlantic

 Why use bitcoins? One answer is freedom

  • no foreign exchange risk 
  • low transaction fees
  • security and control (no gov't intervention like Cyprus situation where they closed the banks and confiscated funds)
  • private and secure commerce
  •  value is transparent

Wrong reasons to use btc

  •           to launder money
  •            to engage in criminal activity
  •      to try to transfer restricted assets
  •      to avoid taxes

Bigger question....what is "money"??

"Money is any form of payment that is accepted by both the payer and the payee."

The Exchanges will post the last trade value but to get rid of a bitcoin you need to get someone to buy it or exchange good/services for it.  A "good" currency must be portable; readily recognizable; be fungible so transactions of all sizes can be executed; can't be manufactured for a cost less than its free market value.

Anthropology and the history of money...

  •  started with barter
  •  then Grains and Foodstuffs were currency
  • coinage usually backed by precious metals
  • paper money - bank notes were given as a receipt for precious metals on deposit and those were traded
  • digital money - is already here, what % of US dollars is actually in a note or coin??

Currency by Fiat - money has value by decree of the government. Every major currency in circulation today is a fiat currency...including the U.S. Dollar but bitcoin is not. Why do we even use money? The barter "thing" was working so well.  Governments want to control fiat currency so it is easier to tax it.

Digital Currency is here to stay...

  •  it is portable
  • authenticity can be validated
  • can serve as a store of value
  • fungible and divisible

But

  • btc can be created for less than its value
  • btc operates "outside" of fiat currency systems

Does btc pass the 4 way test?? Does the US dollar??

Currency creation is no longer in the sole domain of governments as mankind continues to seek solutions.

Dennis ended with a quote from Rothschild: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws"

CALENDAR

 

Friday, Jan 17 - Eddie Hart - Lessons learned from gold medal downer

 

Friday, Jan 24 - Paul Fillinger - Why people join, stay and/or leave Rotary 

 

Saturday 1/25/14, 8AM - Home Team, Gary's shop

Tuesday, February 11 - LSR 5 year plan update - 5:30pm Lafayette Library
Lamorinda Sunrise Rotary Links

Lamorinda Sunrise Web Site

Lamorindan Archives


ADDITIONAL PHOTOS OF THIS AND OTHER LSR EVENTS MAY BE FOUND AT WWW.LSR.SMUGMUG.COM. SHOULD BE YOU SMITTEN BY A PARTICULAR IMAGE, PRINTS MAY BE ORDERED FROM THIS WEBSITE. (THE QUALITY IS EXCELLENT.). 
Contact Us

Rotary Club of Lamorinda Sunrise
PO Box 1491
Lafayette, California 94549
www.lamorindasunrise.org
E-Mail Us