Comment Re:Almost interesting, but actually ilegal (Score 1) 165
Yeah it's an interesting question. Reading through their twitter etc. they claim they did actually transmit all keys for decoding their transmissions, and the transaction was "demonstration" and "experimental" rather than an actual commercial transaction (whatever that means). So I suppose they are attempting to follow the *spirit* of the laws as best they can while still conducting the proof-of-concept experiment. Whether the folks at ISEC and FCC would agree or not is another question, but I doubt anyone will even notice.
Really the only thing that makes this at all questionable is the fact that they're sending bitcoin, which nominally has some value. If they're transmitting the encryption keys and the protocol is also not secret, they're likely in the clear on the "codes" part of it.
Anyway I think it's a worthwhile experiment, and seems to be exactly the sort of thing the amateur bands should be used for, bitcoin transaction notwithstanding. Now.... should this actually become an actual transaction system, it would obviously have to move off to some other non-amateur band.