Bitcoin Price Spikes Amid Positive PayPal News

 

The price of bitcoin on the CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) rose more than 10% today to reach a press-time high of $443.69, its highest total since 18th September.

Prices on the USD BPI were up 11.12% at the time of publication, rising from an open of $398.89 and a low of $391.46 observed at roughly 10:10 BST.

Though there has been much speculation regarding bitcoin’s most recent price downturn – with debates raging as to whether widespread merchant adoption and increased industrial mining were adversely affecting price, the latest increase has largely been attributed to a single news event.

Increases in price across nearly all major exchanges were observed from roughly 13:15 BST to 14:30 BST, starting just minutes after news from PayPal, which today revealed that online merchants may now accept bitcoin via digital currency payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin on its PayPal Payments Hub platform.

The price had been floating upwards of $460 throughout the month, before a sharper drop on 18th September brought it to a low of $387.76. Until today, the price had hovered around the $400 mark for most of the week.

Raffael Danielli, who follows bitcoin price movements on his personal blog Matlab Trading, suggested that the correlation between the news and the price upswing was inarguable, as evidenced by data charts from major exchanges.

He told CoinDesk:

“The spike today is a nice example of news hitting the market and how the market reacts.”

Similarly, the price of bitcoin on the CoinDesk CNY BPI rose to a ¥2,717.18 high, an approximate 7.07% hike from the day’s opening price of ¥2,472.20.

USD prices rocket on news

Though most recent price fluctuations have only proved loosely correlated with news, the latest spike is notable as it seems to have directly followed the initial publication of PayPal’s partnership by publications such as CoinDesk, Forbes and TechCrunch.

The price of bitcoin on Bitstamp, the world’s largest USD bitcoin exchange according to BitcoinCharts, rose wildly from roughly $395.29 at 13:15 BST to $450.00 just one hour later at 14:15 BST.

Prices on Hong Kong-based Bitfinex rose similarly, climbing from roughly $397.06 at 13:15 BST to $445.27 over the next hour.

CNY prices follow suit

Prices on major CNY exchanges followed a similar trajectory as those on major USD exchanges, though prices had declined in the market since hitting peak as of press time.

For example, the price of bitcoin on Huobi rose to ¥2,735 at 14:30 BST, up from ¥2424.70 at 13:15 BST, when prices started to rise on the exchange.

Data from OKCoin, China’s largest exchange by volume, shows a similar trajectory.

Market shorting declines

As a positive sign that the latest increase in price may mark a reversal of the most recent downtrend, data from BFXdata showed that there was also a change in how investors were betting on the future prospects of bitcoin today.

Following a sharp uptick in active bitcoin swaps beginning on 20th September, BFXdata illustrated that this market behavior declined precipitously beginning at 14:15 BST.

Bitfinex is one of three major bitcoin exchanges, including BTC-e and OKCoin, that offer margin trading. The investment tool allows investors to short or long the market, effectively placing wagers on the future negative or positive performance of bitcoin.

The decline in total outstanding swaps suggests a number of investors may have closed their short positions on bitcoin, though since the data provides only the total sum it is not known how many traders have closed those positions.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

CoinJar to Charge No Fees for New Bitcoin Debit Card

Australia’s CoinJar has announced pricing for its new ‘Swipe’ debit cards, which allow users to load and spend funds from their bitcoin balances at any business in Australia’s widespread EFTPOS electronic debit network.

CoinJar, which launched the trial of its regional-first card product last week, is promising “no activation fees, no load fees, no conversion rates (subject to CoinJar Fair Rate policy), [and] no inactivity fees”.

Users will still face some costs, however. Ordering the card initially costs AUD$29 ($26). Additionally, cash withdrawals from ATMs on Australia’s ‘Redi-ATM’ network incur a AUD$2 ($1.78) fee, but users can withdraw cash for free if using the cards at either of the nationwide Coles or Woolworths supermarket chains.

CoinJar is waiving the $29 initial fee during the trial period.

“CoinJar will be absorbing these costs because we want our users to experience the power of bitcoin and spend it freely,” the company said.

Loading the cards

Users top up their debit card accounts from their CoinJar account dashboards. After the customer selects the required balance in AUD, CoinJar handles the conversion from BTC.

There are two options for loading: manual or automatic. Manual loading enables users to choose a time and thus exchange rate most favorable to them.

With the automatic loading option, which aims for convenience, users set a minimum balance (in dollars) for the debit card account that, when reached, will trigger an automatic trade for a pre-set amount (also in AUD).

Automatic loading provides a ‘live feel’ to the spending process, despite direct bitcoin-to-debit card spending in stores not yet being an option.

Adoption in daily life

CoinJar representative Samual Tate told CoinDesk the company was “making a point” rather than profit with its debit card infrastructure.

Bitcoin debit cards also aren’t just about bolting bitcoin features onto existing financial and banking systems, he added.

“We want to show that bitcoin can not only fit into legacy systems, but actually make them more efficient.”

Consumers outside the bitcoin universe would “follow the path of least resistance” when choosing to adopt new systems, Tate continued. It would be a matter of who could make the transition to bitcoin-based savings and spending easiest.

Tech-savvy testers

CoinJar operates what it calls a ‘DNA program’, where customers identified as power users are granted beta-testing access to new features. The company says it is planning to launch “a suite of new features” for testers and that it has about 40 customers participating in the program at present.

CoinJar is seeking to build a demographic mixture of user-testers who also have a strong understanding of bitcoin and technology in general. Users can apply to be part of the program on CoinJar’s dedicated web page.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

US Government Shuts Down Embattled Mining Firm Butterfly Labs

Mining hardware maker Butterfly Labs has been shut down by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which accused the embattled company of fraud and public misrepresentation.

On 18th September, the agency was granted permission by the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri to freeze Butterfly Labs’ assets and close the company pending trial, according to documents released by the FTC.

The move comes months after customers began sending complaints to the federal agency, a process that produced nearly 300 filings accusing the company of delaying shipments and refund payments.

Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said that the focus is now on seeking restitution for Butterfly Labs customers, adding:

“We often see that when a new and little-understood opportunity like bitcoin presents itself, scammers will find ways to capitalize on the public’s excitement and interest. We’re pleased the court granted our request to halt this operation, and we look forward to putting the company’s ill-gotten gains back in the hands of consumers.”

‘Threat to public interest’

The FTC filing centered primarily on Butterfly Labs’ continued stonewalling of customers who did not receive mining products after the company announced that they had been shipped. It noted that during the last two years, Butterfly Labs consistently failed to deliver products or services that had been paid for upfront, including cloud mining contracts.

According to the agency, Butterfly Labs violated Section 5(a) of the FTC Act by engaging in “unfair or deceptive business practices in or affecting commerce”. The FTC said that in both its direct sales pitches and in all advertising materials, the company misled consumers on its ability to provide a legitimate service.

Combined, the agency wrote in its filing, these actions constitute a threat to consumer safety, justifying the closure of the company and the seizure of its assets.

The FTC said:

“Consumers have suffered and will continue to suffer substantial injury as a result of Defendant’s violations of the FTC Act. In addition, Defendants have been unjustly enriched as a result of their unlawful acts or practices. Absent injunctive relief by this Court, Defendants are likely to continue to injure consumers, reap unjust enrichment, and harm the public interest.”

The agency requested that Butterfly Labs be placed in receivership and its operations be suspended in order to cease all activity.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Bitcoin Processors: PayPal Integration Was Months in the Making

PayPal revealed a series of groundbreaking partnerships earlier today when it announced a broad move to allow digital goods merchants to accept bitcoin payments via its PayPal Payments Hub service.

The move has so far proved to be an expected though undeniable boon for bitcoin as it pushes toward mainstream acceptance. For example, the eBay-owned payments giant has 143 million registered users as of 2013, though only North American merchants are able to access the new payment methods.

Larger effects on the ecosystem aside, the announcement is also a validation of the major bitcoin payment processors serving the ecosystem – Atlanta-based BitPay, San Francisco-based Coinbase and Santa Monica-based GoCoin – all of which PayPal lauded for their commitment to consumer protections and business models that focus on compliance.

Speaking to CoinDesk, representatives from the three companies confirmed that the PayPal integration had been in the works for months, and that the decision was representative of PayPal’s dedication to working in the space.

Coinbase director of business development and strategy Adam White, for example, said that he has been impressed with PayPal and its ability to recognize the value in bitcoin’s technology, a sentiment echoed by his peers.

White told CoinDesk:

“When we were working with PayPal, it wasn’t ‘What’s square one?’ It was a team that understood bitcoin, and recognized the potential benefits as well as risks.”

All three companies framed the news as another key step on bitcoin’s road to mainstream adoption, and further proof of the digital currency’s continued popularity as an emerging payment method.

PayPal’s latest advance

Though important for all three of the companies involved, Coinbase’s inclusion may be most notable given it made headlines with PayPal subsidiary Braintree earlier this month.

White told CoinDesk that both announcements were developed in tandem, and that the deals arose from the positive statements representatives from eBay and PayPal have issued in the media.

Addressing the existing partnership with Braintree, White indicated he doesn’t expect the services to take away from each other. Rather, he said the goal of bitcoin payment processing providers should be to provide their services, wherever merchants are operating.

White said:

“We think this will build on the partnership we have with Bill Ready and team at Braintree.”

The news marks the first time PayPal or its subsidiaries have worked with either BitPay or GoCoin. However, both reported that they, too, had been engaged with the company’s representatives for some months before today’s announcement.

GoCoin CEO Steve Beauregard indicated that the news was supposed to be announced in tandem with the Braintree release, but that the decision was held back by the company.

Praising PayPal

BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin also stressed how impressed they have been with PayPal and its proficiency with bitcoin technology.

Speaking to CoinDesk, BitPay executive chairman Tony Gallippi, for instance, said that he was left with the impression that PayPal is cognizant of many of the issues in the traditional payments space, and that the company is keen to work with bitcoin as a way of opening up a new avenue of addressing them.

Gallippi told CoinDesk:

“[PayPal] really sees value in the technology, and they’re in the business of making payments easy. They’re probably just as frustrated with the barriers in traditional payments as anybody.

Gallippi further praised the end product produced by the PayPal team, adding: “They really understand what it takes and what a customer would go through when they want to make a bitcoin purchase.”

Reaching more customers

Of course, while all three companies have gained another way to enroll merchant customers, they must now compete for this business as well.

White indicated that Coinbase has already opened up conversations with merchants using PayPal’s Payment Hub, and that it believes the service will help it onboard clients that don’t have the time or resources to invest in a full integration, a sentiment echoed by Gallippi.

Rather than integrating with BitPay, Coinbase or GoCoin directly, for example, PayPal Payment Hub merchants can enable one or all of the processors.

“You’re looking at a product that they’ve launched that can accept 200 payment methods and you don’t have to do 200 integrations,” Gallippi said. “You just do it one time and you turn on the different features you want to turn on, so I think there’s tremendous value for the merchants to go with a platform like that.”

Beauregard suggested that PayPal’s decision to partner with all three companies was a calculated move that would foster growth and competition in the space through the service, creating a better end-product for users.

He added:

“My own opinion is they didn’t want to make a king out of one company.”

Bitcoin-only backing

Though overwhelmingly positive about the news, Beauregard voiced his disappointment that PayPal’s endorsement only extended to bitcoin and not any other alternative currency communities.

One of GoCoin’s core value propositions is that its service allows merchants to accept litecoin and dogecoin. This positioning has to date appealed to merchants such as BTCTrip, CheapAir and Hustler.

Framing the statement as part of PayPal’s decision to cautiously embrace digital currency innovation, Beauregard went on to reiterate his belief that the altcoin community will continue to develop and foster business interest.

Beauregard said:

“I contend that the altcoins that are coming out are far more advanced than what we’ve seen so far.”

Beauregard ended by reiterating his hope that PayPal will continue to pay close attention to developments in the digital currency space, and that this isn’t the last collaboration between it and the larger ecosystem.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

LHV Bank Talks Coinbase Partnership, Bitcoin’s Potential in Europe

New details have emerged about the underlying deal that helped bring Coinbase’s bitcoin buying and selling services to 13 European countries.

Representatives from Estonia’s LHV Bank confirmed that it is serving as Coinbase’s banking provider in the region as it seeks to further its own interests in the digital currency space. Notably, LHV Bank had previously announced a project aimed at exploring the potential of block chain technology.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Andres Kitter, head of retail banking in LHV Bank, framed the partnership as one that finds the bank exploring ways to leverage payments innovations.

Kitter told CoinDesk:

“Coinbase has a very strong team and we have been encouraged with their approach to risk management and how carefully they manage other sensitive issues. We have been approached by different bitcoin and cryptocurrency companies, however at this stage we still have to be very selective and rather conservative.”

Founded in 1999, LHV Bank’s relative newcomer status in country’s financial services industry is one of the key reasons it has been more willing to engage the burgeoning bitcoin ecosystem, Kitter said.

To date, LHV Bank has been outspoken about the partnership, first breaking the news via major Estonian daily newspaper Posttimees.

Coinbase has not responded to requests for comment, but has previously suggested it may have more than one banking relationship in the region.

Building on the block chain

Revealing details about its ongoing bitcoin research, Kitter indicated that LHV Bank is seeking to learn what types of services may be built on bitcoin’s underlying block chain technology.

The bank is currently experimenting with Colored Coins technology, he explained, a process that allows small amounts of bitcoin to be used as a token that represents an asset, such as a specific investment.

Kitter said:

“When we started our project, we decided not to focus on bitcoin as a currency or trading asset, we started to explore what could be built on top of the underlying technology. Colored Coins looked most relevant for the use cases we wanted to solve first, although we looked at the other possibilities as well.”

Still, he cautioned that the bank’s exploration of the technology is still in its very early stages.

Bitcoin in Estonia

In the interview, Kitter was keen to frame Estonia as a high-tech market that could serve as a great incubator for new technologies, such as mobile payments and digital currencies.

He indicated that domestic lawmakers, as well as agencies such as the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) are taking a careful approach to bitcoin. Consumer transactions, Kitter noted are subject to VAT, while those who promote and provide bitcoin services need to follow strict trading regulations.

However, the country could benefit from dedicated domestic support groups, organisations comparable to the Bitcoin Foundation, Chamber of Digital Commerce and Coin Center in the US, he suggested.

Kitter said:

“As a country, we are at the beginning of the cryptocurrency journey and there isn’t yet a single organization who would step up and drive the conversation with regulators and lawmakers, focus on education, etc. Once that organization is in place, we would expect improvement.”

Kitter concluded that LHV Bank is still monitoring the local landscape, but that it is committed to working with digital currencies.

“We are taking small steps and working with strong partners like Coinbase,” he said.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Bitcoin Is Going From Deceptive To Disruptive, says Peter Diamandis

 

Renowned futurist Peter Diamandis, the author of Abundance – the Future is Better Than You Think and founder of the XPrize and the Singularity University, believes that Bitcoin is “going from deceptive to disruptive.”

Writing on Forbes, he says:

“At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency, designed by very forward-thinking engineers. It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit card fees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions… all good things. Most importantly, it is an “exponential currency” that will change the way we think about money. Much the same way email changed the way we thought of mail. (Can you remember life before email?)”

“Bitcoin is living on Moore’s law and hopping on the exponential curve,” says Diamandis. It follows “the 6 Ds” – Digitized, Deceptive, Disruptive, Dematerializing, Demonetizing, Democratizing – and is beginning to disrupt finance on a global scale by dematerializing (read: eliminating) the need for central banks, lawyers and currency exchanges, and making currency and capital available to anyone with a connection to the Internet.

Exponential Finance

CNBC and the Singularity University presented Exponential Finance in June, a two-day conference in New York City that addressed upcoming, game-changing technologies and their imminent implications for the financial world. Besides “Singularity technologies” such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and synthetic biology, the conference addressed digital currencies and smart contracts.

One of the Exponential Finance speakers was Barry Silbert, the creator of SecondMarket and the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a private, open-ended trust that is invested exclusively in bitcoin and derives its value solely from the price of bitcoin. Silbert is also one of the most prolific angel investors in the bitcoin space via his personal investment vehicle, the Bitcoin Opportunity Corp. (now , with investments in over 20 bitcoin-related companies, including BitPay, Coinbase, Gyft, BitPremier, Coinsetter, itBit, Ripple Labs, Korbit and BitPagos.

Diamandis reports that Silbert outlined five phases for Bitcoin that help explain where it’s been and where it’s going:

“Phase 1: The period 2009 to 2011 was the early ‘experimentation phase’ for bitcoin (i.e. deceptive). Here the software is released to public and most technologists and hackers started playing with the code. During this phase, there was no apparent value to currency yet; mining bitcoin was easy and could be done by a single person on a MacBook or PC.

Phase 2: 2011 marked the beginning of the ‘early adopter’ phase (still deceptive). There was a lot of early hype and press around Silk Road (where you could buy drugs). The value went from less than $1 to over $30, then crashed. This spurs the first generation of bitcoin companies to build basic infrastructure: wallets, merchant processors, mining operations, exchanges, etc. – i.e. the early user interfaces.

Phase 3: 2012 thru mid-2014 marked the beginning of the ‘Venture Capital Phase.’ Folks like Marc Andreessen, Google Ventures, Benchmark and others have begun investing in Generation 2 Bitcoin companies. We are right in the middle of Phase 3 right now. Thousands of bitcoin companies are getting funding. Many of these are trying to create the ‘User-Interface Moment.'”

The disruptive phase of Bitcoin

What will come next?

“Phase 4: Fall 2014 thru 2015 will like see the start of the Wall Street Phase. Here we will begin to see institutional money acknowledging digital currencies as an asset class, and they will begin trading it, investing it and creating products around it. This marks the start of the disruptive phase.

Phase 5: Finally will come the ‘Mass Global Consumer Adoption’ phase – this is where bitcoin becomes a major player in the global economy. When consumers feel it is easy, safe and secure to use bitcoin.”

Diamandis believes, as does Silbert, that Phase 5 is only 1-2 years out.

Source : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Bitcoin Price Surged On PayPal Acceptance – Now Falling Again?

In a double-whammy of price-meets-trendline and a catalytic announcement of Paypal enabling Bitcoin payment, the Bitcoin price surged over $50 in a few hours during yesterday’s US trading session.

Steady Advance or Swift Correction?

Bitstamp 4-Hour Chart

The chart shows yesterday’s surge from $394 (at the orange trendline) to $452. The last price candle on the 4-hour charts across all exchanges shows a trading gap – clearly inaccurate – but a strange anomaly, nonetheless.

The Fib extension tool has been adjusted to fit the resulting price action, as well as the presence of existing support and resistance overhead.

The first interesting outcome of readjustment of the Fib extensions is that the 2.618 extension (last night’s price target) overlaps with a long-standing trendline that connects the decline lows of December 2013, February 2014 and the support zone of April/May 2014. The trendline is annotated by the light blue thick dashed line.

The prospect of continuing advance has an immediate target at $465 (the 4-hourly 200-period moving average) and beyond that the 3.618 Fib extension at $474. Eventually, we would expect the Bitcoin price to attempt $500, then $600, and then the tough resistance at $680. Easy as phi, right? Not so.

Easy Does It

Upside potential, at this stage of wave development, is limited by the 200-period moving average. The 200 MA is currently declining slowly toward $465 and may eventually intersect with the rising light blue dashed trendline that halted last night’s advance. All things remaining equal, and with the advance continuing in its usual stair-step fashion, the 4-hour chart would soon see price reach the 200 MA, but with the companion 20 MA lagging below. This set-up, namely price frontrunning the 20 MA whilst below the 200 MA, typically forces correction. Weekend analysis will explore this phenomenon in greater detail.

 

However, before we get fixated on immediate advance, let’s remember to cover our trading backside and consider what downside potential still exists.

Downside Potential For Bitcoin Price

Bitstamp 15-minute chart:

Last night’s enthusiastic surge catapulted price back inside the declining channel and, at the time of writing, price is testing the lower decline channel trendline (dark blue solid line). It cannot be ruled out that yesterday’s exuberance merely completed an upward correction before the market resumes decline to $200 as discussed in Sunday’s in-depth analysis.

Should price once again dip below the dark blue channel trendline, we would have reason to suspect resumption of the decline. However, it would be best to wait for confirmation of decline by seeing price break below the long-term orange trendline. Until then, any price action below the dark blue channel trendline should be interpreted as corrective wave action pending a move toward $465.

Economic Data and Announcements

Yesterday’s flash manufacturing data for China and France came in slightly better than expected and for Germany, less so. However, Canada released a poorer than expected Core Retail Sales figure. These numbers can be seen in the CCN Economic Calendar.

Paypal Payment Hub

Paypal’s Bitcoin acceptance is not total nor is it global – the Bitcoin payment facility being available only via the Paypal Payments Hub in North America. Nonetheless, this first tentative step is significant and is unlikely to be a temporary experiment: Paypal are, by their own admission, introducing the Bitcoin payment facility in stages and a region-by-region manner.

“PayPal has always embraced innovation, but always in ways that make payments safer and more reliable for our customers. Our approach to Bitcoin is no different. That’s why we’re proceeding gradually, supporting Bitcoin in some ways today and holding off on other ways until we see how things develop.”

US and Israel Strike Syrian Targets

The US military has launched missile strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, with Israel quickly downing a non-ISIS Syrian fighter in the excitement.

Meanwhile…

A Chinese naval destroyer is deployed in the Iranian port of Bandar-Abbas, and Russia began an unannounced military preparedness drill over the weekend. Either all parties had come to an agreement following their stand-off, last year, over US strikes on Syria – or – the US has just switched on the house lights at Fight Club. Bitcoin has yet to show its performance during open war.

Wednesday 24 September

14h00 US New Home Sales
expected: 432K (previous: 412K)

CCN hosts a summarized Economic Calendar showing the week’s main data releases.

Updates to this article will be made during the European and US trading sessions should any significant events come to light.

Ongoing discussion in the CCN Traders group. View our Bitcoin Price Chart here.

Source : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

TEDx Talk: Bitcoin Is Much More than Money

 

Bitcoin expert and activist Dug Campbell, founder of the Edinburgh Bitcoin Meetup and the inaugural Scottish Bitcoin Conference, gave a talk on “Bitcoin: More Than Just Money” at the University of Edinburgh TEDx 2014 Conference. TEDx events are local, independently produced TED branded events.

“It was an amazing opportunity to give a talk to a room full of intelligent and engaged individuals about what I’m certain will turn out to be one of the most significant developments in recent times,” says Campbell on his website.

“I believe strongly that the technology that underpins Bitcoin will act as a foundation for a fundamental restructuring of the society that we know today. We’re moving into a world that will be dominated by decentralized networks and the coming disruption will be felt in many areas – including finance.”

The talk starts with an important problem: migrant workers send a lot of money back to their families in developing countries ($414 billion in 2013, according to the World Bank), and often they must pay exorbitant bank charges, which can be as high as 25%. Bitcoin gives them, and all of us, the possibility to transfer value instantaneously with negligible cost, for the first time.

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“The stories that the press tend to publish about Bitcoin are often not the full picture. So sure, yes, they talk about it being a new form of digital money, kind of like email and cash combined, a way that you can transfer value immediately from one point to another, directly instantaneously across the web. And, sure, they might mention that in some cases the government and the banks have no control over this new form of currency. But that’s where they tend to leave it. And that’s a pity because, in actual fact, it’s far more than that.”

The traditional economy, based on local face to face contact and cash exchange based on personal trust, changed dramatically and irreversibly with the internet, because “personal trust could not scale” to a global networked economy. The situation changed after the seminal 2008 paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. Suddenly we could adopt a new currency, based on breakthroughs in computer science and a powerful, scalable network whose power increases with every additional computer that is added. It grows more and more powerful with the addition of new nodes, and each node has the complete record of every Bitcoin transaction ever made. The fact that every Bitcoin transaction is permanently recorded in the distributed Bitcoin blockchain creates scale-able personal trust.

Bitcoin is Like the Internet

The Bitcoin economy shows a mirror of what is happening in the rest of society, where the advent of the Internet representsa fundamental shift, from centralized bureaucratic organizations and hierarchies to technology-driven distributed networks of individuals.

“We have discovered a financial system which is incredibly resilient because it has no centralized organization which can be vulnerable to attack, or influence,” says Campbell in the video.

“We have a technology that is incredibly powerful, and now we have to work out what we are going to do with it. Because it’s so powerful, it’s fundamentally changing the way we can approach the development of value.”

The Internet of Things brings digital identities to connected devices, and Bitcoin can add economic identities. We are approaching the age of autonomous agents – computers that own themselves and can buy and sell services. Self-driving taxis connected to the Internet, powered by Bitcoin, could be among the first autonomous agents.

Only one billion of the world’s seven billion + people have access to banking; the other 6 billion have no access. Bitcoin could bring the unbanked into play, which is truly revolutionary. In Africa, most people have mobile phones (7 out of 10 in Kenya). M-Pesa, a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service very popular in Kenya and other developing countries, includes a Bitcoin wallet.

In conclusion, the advantages of Bitcoin are far too powerful to ignore. Andreas Antonopoulos said, “Bitcoin is not money for the internet, Bitcoin is the internet of money.” Campbell adds that Bitcoin is much more than money, because “it provides mankind with the ability to reach agreement on a massive scale, never possible before.”

Source : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Bitcoin Wedding: Marriage on the Blockchain

 

Just last month CCN reported on the first ever Bitcoin wedding ring, which exists in the form of a wearable QR code, and now, one couple plans to become the first to use the Bitcoin block chain itself to register their marriage, where it will remain publicly visible for the life of the internet.

In what is being dubbed a “Block chain Marriage,” the wedding is taking place on Oct. 5 at the Disney World Coins in the Kingdom Bitcoin Conference, and is being performed during the Bitnation panel. Bitnation is a virtual nation of sorts, offering governance services via the Bitcoin block chain.

So who’s the lucky couple?

David Mondrus – serial entrepreneur, Bitnation advisor, and CEO of RedboxJewels.com – and his wife who he met in the Philippines, Joyce Bayo.

“We believe that like the block chain, our love and marriage are forever and that our relationship is not defined by governments or the church,”

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said Mondrus, who described himself to CCN as somewhat of a voluntarist.

“So enshrining our commitment to each other in the block chain in front of our friends is very dear to us.”

It turns out that after coming back from the Philippines with their freshly kindled love, for legal reasons, the couple was slightly rushed to get married the first time.

“Because we had to get married very quickly, it was a small wedding with not a lot of people, and her family wasn’t involved,”

Mondrus told CCN.

“And so when the opportunity came up to do our marriage again – and for me to do it better this time – as opposed to right, I jumped on it. And my saying is, I’ll marry her as many times as it takes.”

Mondrus continued,

“I talked to Joyce about it and she was excited because she got to trade in her old not very good ring for a nice bright and shiny one, so that wasn’t very hard to talk her into it.”

The couple will use a CoinOutlet Bitcoin ATM to initiate a .1 BTC burn transaction, and that transaction will contain their wedding vows, said Mondrus.

Bitnation: Governance 2.0

Bitnation, which is launching their crowdsale in 15 days, pins itself as a fully inclusive, borderless, decentralized, block chain-based governance service provider.

Also referred to as governance 2.0, they “offer a full range of services traditionally done by governments,” such as, secure ID system, block chain based dispute resolution, marriage and divorce, land registry, education, insurance, security, and diplomacy.

“The Bitnation platform is set-up to host an ID system based on reputation, a dispute resolution system, and places to store all your block chain based contracts, such as land deeds, wills, childcare contracts, marriage contracts, corporate incorporations, and more,” says their press release. “The ecosystem of secure identities, multiple contracts, and asset management makes it ideal for marriage – because it means a couple can tie their wedding contract to a shared savings account – a Bitcoin wallet – to a childcare contract, a land deed, or other relevant thing for a secure future together.”

Source : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com