There are many reasons why Merchants should accept bitcoin

Gallery: Inside a Top Bitcoin Mine in China

The profile of the average bitcoin miner has changed dramatically over the course of the currency’s short history.

Once the pursuit of hobbyists with powerful CPUs (and later GPUs), mining is now a highly competitive business performed on an industrial scale.

But what is life like inside one of these power guzzling giants? Blogger Bitsmith found out first-hand on a trip to a one of the world’s biggest facilities at a mystery location in China. Check out the scenes he witnessed in the gallery below:

As more mining firms pile in, bitcoin’s network difficulty is soaring higher and higher. Additionally, the price has been struggling to break beyond $600 for several months now, so the days of near-instant profit are long gone.

When these factors are combined, more powerful – and, crucially, more power efficient – hardware is needed for miners to make a profit.

The resulting ‘arms race’ is clear to see from these pictures: barely dry cement, giant racks of hardware and a mounting pile of empty cardboard boxes sat in a warehouse that took just fifteen days to construct.

Here, at least, these aggressive tactics appear to be paying off. With an output of several petahashes, staff estimate that the centre accounts for around 5% of the entire bitcoin network’s mining power.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Safello Announces Social Media-Inspired Bitcoin Wallet

Safello is now allowing users to request invitations to its newly launched bitcoin wallet service.

For the release, the Sweden-based bitcoin services company will leverage Blockchain’s API, though its wallet service will build upon Blockchain‘s basic offering, adding an additional social layer that will allow users to easily search for other users with whom they’ve previously transacted.

The news was released during a panel session at Sthlm Tech Fest, a Sweden-based conference featuring top talent from the payments world such as Stripe and iZettle alongside bitcoin companies such as Safello, Blockchain and KnCMiner.

Safello chose to take a decidedly under-the-radar approach to the release, opting against issuing a formal press release. However, news of the new service quickly found its way to Reddit, an event that CEO Frank Schuil cited as evidence of the demand for the service.

Schuil told CoinDesk that users may need to be patient, as not all requests to access the service will be immediately approach. He said:

“We anticipate to slowly let users in during this month or next month.”

Emphasizing ease of use

Safello framed its wallet service as one that aims to eliminate some of the more common pain points associated with bitcoin wallets, branding it as “so easy that even your mom could use it”. Notably, Safello’s wallet will incorporate features common to digital address books, allowing users to easily search for friends.

All transactions can be viewed in a timeline and if verified accounts are being used, bitcoin addresses will be replaced by user names, photos and comments. The end result is Safello’s wallet history being visualized more in the style of the social timelines that Facebook and Twitter users have grown accustomed to.

The Safello wallet also uses verified accounts to bolster security, a feature that allows users to confirm that the addresses to which they send bitcoin are the intended recipients.

Additionally, Safello does not store any private keys at all, as the wallet uses Blockchain’s API to create wallets.

Safello gains market momentum

The announcement was made at roughly 11:10 BST during a lunch panel session at the conference.

Speakers for the panel included Blockchain CEO Nicolas Cary and KnCMiner co-founder Sam Cole, whose bitcoin mining company raised $14m in Series A funding on 4th September.

The panel also include Erik Olofsson of Creandum, the Sweden-based venture capital firm that lead KnCMiner’s most recent funding round, and was moderated by 500 Startups venture partner Sean Percival.

The inclusion at the conference is the latest milestone for Safello, which launched in April to become the “Coinbase of Europe“. That announcement was proceeded by the company’s $600,000 funding round in February, a round led by Blockchain’s Nicolas Cary and bitcoin luminaries Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

How Bitcoin Brokers Trade Millions Without an Exchange

Exchanges are the most popular way to dispose of bitcoin holdings for fiat currency, with thousands of coins being traded daily. However, when one cryptocurrency startup founder needed to cash in his bitcoin quickly, he didn’t log on to an exchange to do it.

Instead, the entrepreneur started asking around for a broker who could settle the issue with an over-the-counter (OTC) trade. The broker he found, through mutual friends, was Jonathan ‘Jonny’ Harrison, who runs London bitcoin ATM firm Satoshipoint. The two struck up a conversation on Skype and soon agreed to do a deal.

“Someone told me that he wanted to sell 12 grand-worth, we had a chat on Skype and entered an agreement, and so that was the deal done,” Harrison said, recounting the trade.

Harrison charges a 5% fee for an OTC trade. Although he says he arranges such trades only occasionally, other brokers specialising in OTC trades have found a lucrative niche in the market. As the bitcoin price surged last year, wealthy holders eschewed exchanges and turned to brokers to lock in their gains with a single big trade.

Tricks of the OTC trade

Trading over the counter offers several advantages over placing an order on an exchange. For one thing, traders get to protect their capital from the effects of price slippage.

Slippage is what can happen when an investor sells a large block of coins on an exchange all at once. If the sell order is large enough, it can cause the price on the exchange to fall as it is filled. As a result, the seller can lose a substantial chunk of the proceeds by the time the entire order is filled.

Just how much of a trade is lost to slippage is difficult to quantify, according to George Samman, a co-founder of BTC.SX and a former portfolio manager at a New York investment firm. In a hypothetical trade where an investor sold 100 BTC on BitStamp at today’s price of about $490, he or she would stand to lose up to 10% to slippage.

“When someone is trying to put a block trade through and there’s not enough takers at a certain price level, then the price keeps dropping as bids keep getting lower and lower,” he said.

Other factors can come into play. Traders could be laying in wait with ‘false’ orders on the exchange to feel for large blocks coming to market. When some of those orders are filled, savvy traders could cancel the rest of their original orders, sensing that a big block is being traded, and quickly place new orders at lower prices, Samman says.

“Other traders will just snap it away and the price could drop $10, $15, off of 20 coins being traded in a 100-coin block. And they will keep snapping it up because it keeps slipping and slipping,” said Samman.

Trust in a trustless environment

Speed and privacy are the other advantages that OTC block trades offer. Sellers needing fiat currency in a hurry might turn to a broker, as would investors who prefer not to entrust their trading data with a large exchange.

In an ironic inversion of bitcoin’s trustless protocol, OTC trades are a throwback to markets operated by trusted intermediaries. Mark Lamb, chief executive at London-based exchange Coinfloor, who regularly conducts large OTC trades for clients, charging a fee of up to 1% of the traded amount, said:

“What you’re selling is trust. This OTC broker knows what they’re doing, vets the participants and knows the participants are going to settle and the trade is going to go through.”

When a call comes in to sell a block of coins, Lamb hits his address book to look for buyers. When a match is found, Coinfloor draws up contracts between itself and each party. The buyer and seller deal with Coinfloor, not each other. After the contract is signed, both parties must transfer their funds to Coinfloor immediately. Once the broker has received the funds from both sides, the assets are then sent to the appropriate counterparty.

While most of the OTC brokers for big blocks CoinDesk spoke to keep identification documents to comply with know-your-customer rules, OTC traders may believe that they enjoy a greater degree of privacy with their brokers.

“Customers want to do trade with someone they can trust; someone they trust more than an exchange. They might come to a broker because they may not trust the top few exchanges,” Lamb said.

Cashing in big blocks

Brokers are most in demand when prices are volatile. Investors are either rushing to lock in gains by selling a big block, or to accumulate more coins when the price plunges.

Harry Yeh, managing partner at hedge fund and venture capital firm Binary Financial, is a regular OTC broker and only carries out trades of at least 50 BTC. He recalled one episode of manic selling, as clients wanted to turn their bitcoin profits into millions of dollars of fiat, and quickly:

“When the price goes up, the demand for blocks goes through the roof. When the price crashes, everybody wants to sell. Around December 5th, when the whole China thing happened, we had people who wanted to sell $2m–$3m of bitcoin right away.”

Yeh was coy about who his OTC clients were, saying only that he has dealt with “high net-worth individuals and institutions”. When pressed, he gave up precious little information, saying that clients included “hedge funds, family offices and private wealth managers”.

According to Yeh, private wealth managers have been contacting him of late as they seek to diversify their clients’ holdings to include cryptocurrencies. Lamb was similarly vague about OTC clients, saying only that he served “high net-worth individuals”, adding:

“There are people who put a lot of value in executing a full block of 1,000 or 5,000 coins at once.”

OTC trades and the wider market

What effect does all this OTC trading have on the wider market? Brokers say that OTC trades protect the market from exacerbated volatility.

“The whole goal of the broker is not to disperse the coins into the market. It’s to move it between one seller who has decided to sell, to ideally one buyer who would like to get in to hold,” Lamb said. “It reduces volatility.”

Samman, of BTC.SX, said OTC brokers have a role to play because bitcoin investors are too green about managing their trading risk. Instead of using a sophisticated combination of trading orders to reduce price slippage for a big block, for example, traders may try to offload a big chunk of coins with a market order, which is filled at the prevailing price.

“Some of the traders are very inexperienced [...] they’re throwing in market orders and thinking that just because they see the price at one level, they’re going to get that price,” he said.

While many exchanges, including the current top exchange by volume, Bitstamp, offer stop-loss orders which can help mitigate slippage, one exchange has gone further. LakeBTC has released a ‘hidden’ orderbook feature that it calls its “darkpool”, designed to protect investors against ‘financial predators’ waiting to exploit the price distortions created by big trades.

LakeBTC’s darkpool works by hiding big trades of 50 BTC and up from the public order book. Although the rest of the market can’t see the trade, the exchange continues trying to fill it with outstanding orders on the market at the time, the firm’s communications director Lisa Li said, adding:

“You might buy 100 BTC in a single order, but it may get matched with multiple smaller orders, or one single big sell order – it really depends on the sell orders at the time.”

OTC is here to stay

In the opaque world of OTC trading, it’s unclear just how much money is changing hands each day. One gauge might be the activity on LocalBitcoins, which essentially functions as an OTC market.

According to Coinometrics data, LocalBitcoins accounted for up to 5% of daily traded volume in the last year. Contrast this with Bitstamp, has accounted for up to 40% of daily traded volume at times this year.

Physical markets, like the Satoshi Square events, and the Bitcoin-OTC IRC channel are other platforms where OTC trading takes place.

As the bitcoin markets continue to mature, it appears OTC trading is here to stay. As Samman points out, trading volumes have shrunk, even in the established equity and commodities markets, as big trades are increasingly done over the counter.

“The problem with OTC trading is that they are private. People get upset about that and they think there is some kind of manipulation going on. But in the markets today, there is less and less volume. Even in the equity markets, institutions are trading with each other and taking trades offline.”

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Crypto 2.0 Roundup: Block Chain Bloat Solutions and a Crypto Football Team

The last few weeks have provided evidence that the emerging crypto 2.0 community is moving to integrate more fully with the mainstream bitcoin industry.

The trend is evidenced by projects such as DigitalTangible, a gold and bitcoin exchange that uses tokens in an effort to bring gold trading into the 21st century. The project was backed by major partners Amagi Metals and Agora Commodities.

However, the increased interaction between these two industry sectors has not been without controversy.

The block chain bloat debate

 

An increasing number of bitcoin industry observers now fear that the digital currency’s block chain may soon become ‘bloated‘, suffering from an information overload that weighs down the network with information that falls outside the network’s primary purpose: validating bitcoin transactions.

In other words, if bitcoin is the new email, experts are predicting it may soon face a problem from its own type of spam.

However, two notable names from the crypto 2.0 industry emerged as partial scapegoats for the situation: Counterparty and Mastercoin, projects that use bitcoin’s block chain to create new decentralized networks – in this case, networks that aim to enable more complex financial functions via the block chain.

Unsurprisingly, the crypto 2.0 industry has moved strongly to counter this viewpoint.

Counterparty co-founder Evan Wagner told CoinDesk that his project adds only a small amount of data to the bitcoin block chain. He estimates that in its nine months of operation, Counterpary has added only 15 MB of information to the bitcoin block chain, which is now 22 GB in size.

Wagner also moved to dismiss the idea that Counterparty’s data is spam, saying:

“Counterparty data serves a useful purpose, unlike true spam. Counterparty is first and foremost a protocol for financial tools, like bitcoin itself, and its use of bitcoin makes bitcoin both more powerful and more valuable.”

Shawn Wilkinson, founder of distributed file sharing service Storj, echoed this sentiment, telling CoinDesk:

“The underlying question is: how do you use a block chain as a public ledger, not just for cryptocurrency, in a way that scales and avoids problem? I reject the current ‘this is bad’ and ‘get off my block chain’ approaches. Block chain bloat is just something that can and will be solved.”

Solutions ahead

 

Wilkinson is not alone in his assertion, as others have suggested that if crypto 2.0 projects are posing an issue for the bitcoin block chain at present, these problems will likely be overcome through innovation. For example, representatives from Mastercoin pointed to the Notary Chains project, which is in the middle of rebranding as Factom.

If bitcoin is to serve as the ledger of record, Factom aims to use the bitcoin block chain to provide a record of its own record of provable events.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Factom’s Paul Snow described how his project could ensure that small amounts of information end up on the block chain, saying:

“Mastercoin’s Omniwallet could run its decentralized exchange protocol on Factom. Thousands of transactions – bids and asks – could be secured with just a handful of entries into the bitcoin block chain, eliminating the bloat issue.”

He added: “Metadata in the block chain is not detrimental to the network, just inconvenient. There are already solutions to the bloat problem, but they just haven’t been implemented.”

More on Factom and its potential uses for smart contracts, securities and tokens can be found in its full white paper.

Crypto’s first football squad

 

In our last roundup, we profiled Mypowers, a marketplace for premium access rights that allows artists to create digital coins as a way to allow fans to invest in artists while improving the overall fan experience.

Now, the Jetcoin Institute has launched a similar service, albeit one focused specifically on allowing sports teams to reward their fans for loyalty. Called jetcoin, the offering is billed as a digital loyalty coin for sports fans. In turn, jetcoin aims to provide users with a way to invest in athletes and their contracts, thereby securing a stake in their future performance.

To kick off the project, the Jetcoin Institute partnered with startup incubator Seedcoin to sponsor Chievo Verona, an Italian football club based in Chievo, a suburb of Verona.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Seedcoin‘s chief startup officer Eddy Travia, framed the partnership as one that allows his firm to capitalize on its long-held idea that sports could serve as a great onboarding tool for new cryptocurrency initiatives.

Travia told CoinDesk that one of the players the project had aimed to enlist was recruited by Chievo Verona this summer, but that interest in jetcoin at a team management level quickly grew.

He added:

“[Jetcoin] explained the concept to the team management and they liked it. They embraced it and are open to have players and fans use jetcoin, and let their merchandise be traded for jetcoins, branded products, etc.”

Going forward, the Jetcoin Institute plans to name certain fans ‘Jetcoin Champions’, who will become goodwill ambassadors for jetcoin and be supported by the jetcoin community.

Notably, jetcoin is not yet released, and it could be issued on a number of different platforms including bitcoin, Counterparty and Dogeparty. Once the coin is launched, smart contracts would be introduced on a block chain for players, with jetcoin users investing for certain revenues and rights.

Travia explained that he believes the project could gain widespread support as it provides athletes a new and novel way to secure financing based on a contract.

Ethereum’s record-setting fundraising

Ethereum’s much-discussed ether presale effort concluded this week with the successful sale of 60,102,216 ether, the fuel for its distributed application software platform.

While the exact fundraising for the project is difficult to quantify given the fluctuating price of the bitcoin it raised over the course of its ether sale, observers on Reddit estimated the final total in the $15m–$18m range.

Using figures from Wikipedia, the community suggested this would make Ethereum’s crowdfunding round the second-highest ever recorded, trailing the Star Citizen video game crowdfunding, which raised more than $50m through Kickstarter.

With these estimates, Ethereum would notably have also outraised the Ubuntu Edge smartphone, the Coolest Cooler and the Pebble smartwatch, all products that have garnered significant mainstream media attention for their efforts.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Yuan Trades Now Make Up Over 70% of Bitcoin Volume

The majority of bitcoin transactions carried out over the last 30 days came from yuan trades, it has been revealed.

China-based exchange BTC China tweeted that a total of 71% of bitcoin trades last month could be attributed to yuan users – the Chinese market, in other words.

The exchange cited data from bitcointy, which indicates that the majority of transactions were carried out in yuan. Second place goes to the US dollar, with euro transactions trailing at a distant third.

Turning the tables

This particular chart does not paint the full picture, however. To better illustrate China’s impact on the market, it is necessary to look at data prior to September 2013. A year ago the dollar was the dominant currency, but that started to change in late 2013, as the volume of CNY transactions exploded.

In September 2013, approximately one CNY trade was carried out per three USD trades. At the moment, the situation is quite different, as CNY accounts for more than two thirds of all deals and on most days it outpaces the dollar by a ratio of at least 1:3.

It should be noted that BTC China launched USD and HKD trading accounts last July.

Further, most of China’s exchanges have adopted 0% fee models for trading, which provides a potential explanation as to why yuan trade may be disproportionately high.

China’s impact on bitcoin

China’s effect on bitcoin prices and the network itself should not be underestimated. The nation is home to some of the biggest bitcoin exchanges on the planet as well as a number of industrial-scale mining operations.

Notably, turbulence in China’s bitcoin market has been shown to have a visible effect on the wider industry.

Earlier this year, the market was affected by moths of uncertainty, as rumours mounted that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) would move to ban the currency. Although operations were disrupted, the fears subsided in April, but not before the price of bitcoin took a dive in late March as international traders reacted negatively to the news.

Though the PBOC took no formal action against bitcoin businesses, only reinforcing early December statements meant to separate the country’s bitcoin businesses from its financial industry, the uncertainty had a profound effect on domestic exchanges, with a few smaller startups closing their doors.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

ATM Industry Association releases position paper on Bitcoin, Bitcoin ATMs

 

Yesterday the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) released a global position paper on Bitcoin ATMs and the digital currency itself.

The association, which is composed of more than 5,000 members in 65 nations, states it does not consider Bitcoin to be a threat to cash or to established electronic payment methods. However, ATMIA does recommend increased support and supervision of Bitcoin ATMs to ensure they follow security best practices and maintain the ATM industry’s current high levels of consumer trust.

“The subject of BitCoin is a moving target as its development unfolds with a high and rapid rate of changes,” states the position paper. On the one hand, there is sometimes negative news, such as the collapse of Mt. Gox and the takedown of Silk Road. On the other, there is considerable good news, such as the rising number of retailers, such as TigerDirect and Expedia, accepting Bitcoin. Doing so typically translates into lower transaction fees as compared to credit card payments.

The value proposition for merchants, the paper notes, is that Bitcoin will not result in chargebacks for fraudulent transactions, as the digital currency is not insured. But the lack of insurance creates risk for consumers if their Bitcoin wallets were to be compromised. For example, under European Union law, consumers are not protected by any refund rights when using digital currency for commercial transactions.

The paper notes digital currencies are now being used for low-cost remittances. For example, ZipZap users can deposit cash for Bitcoin, whose value can then be cashed out across borders. The value of some local currencies may be more volatile than that of Bitcoin, which would make Bitcoin attractive for such cross-border remittances.

“In short, we are seeing signs of typical ‘creative destruction’ of a genuine innovation in the payments space. ATMIA anticipates an eventual stabilization especially after integration of BitCoin ATM operators into a broad payments governance framework,” the paper states.

The association notes that it remains to be seen whether Bitcoin will ever become a mainstream currency; however, Bitcoin does seem to be on track to become an important global currency. “Hence, the need to reach out to Bitcoin ATM operators,” says the position paper. “This is especially desirable given that a cash-to-BitCoin and BitCoin-to-cash loop has implications and opportunities for the ATM industry as the number of BitCoin ATMs proliferates.”

The paper notes that in today’s mobile-digital society, tech-savvy consumers have a wide selection of payment options, such as cash, debit, credit and prepaid cards, money transfers, online payments, and, increasingly, mobile payments. This year ATMIA commissioned two research papers exploring the rise of Bitcoin and Bitcoin ATMs to assess where and how the digital currency fits into this evolving payment environment and whether it poses any threat to payment governance.

The association observes that Bitcoin is:

• an Internet-friendly digital currency without any state governance or accountability
• a disruptive new innovation in the sense that it creates a different model of payment and a new global, decentralized digital currency, challenging some fundamental assumptions of established payment methods and governance of currency
• subject to considerable price volatility and uncertainty
• a potential target for cyber-crime and money-laundering
• a quandary for central banks and monetary authorities

ATMIA’s main conclusion is that there is currently inadequate supervision of Bitcoin ATMs. Such machines, states the paper, “should be brought into the fold of the wider ATM industry, becoming part of the industry, subject, in particular, to security best practices and other aspects of the industry’s code of conduct.”

The association believes Bitcoin ATMS “should be well-governed to ensure they provide trusted, secure, transparent transactions within the industry” and says it would “welcome a professional peer relationship with BitCoin ATM operators.”

ATMIA says it recognizes “the need for some sort of self-regulation at least for part of the BitCoin value chain. Examples of such self-regulation would include a registry of exchanges, with licensing powers subject to specific conditions being met, a Bitcoin version of PCI-DSS, commitments to reserve funds, or guarantees to protect deposits.”

In the position paper, the association makes the following recommendations:

• clarification of conditions for a “license to operate” for Bitcoin ATMs
• greater integration and relationship-building between Bitcoin operators and exchanges and the wider payments industry, including ATM industry stakeholders
• the development of an international security best practices for virtual currencies to reduce the risk of cyber-crime attacks and money-laundering
• introductions of an international accreditation program for Bitcoin ATM operators, including ongoing education and training programs for the Bitcoin sector

Regulators worldwide are watching Bitcoin’s emergence with great interest, observes Simon Gentry, ATMIA’s public affairs adviser in Europe. “BitCoin will help address some of the valid concerns that regulators and politicians have by being seen to be part of the established and proven governance structures provided by the ATMIA.”

Source : https://coinreport.net

There are many reasons why Merchants should accept bitcoin

The demand for digital currencies is on the rise and there is already an estimated 80,000 businesses currently accepting Bitcoin throughout various countries.

Bitcoin is becoming progressively of mainstream use, and businesses who are still delaying bitcoin payments acceptance are falling behind from this digital currency revolution, that is surely is here to stay.
The Majority of forward-thinking business man around the world is hopping onto the Bitcoin payments trend; many of them are adopting digital payments to cut expenses and boost their bottom line.
Coinbase, the 1.6 million-customer San Francisco Bitcoin exchange and wallet service processes Bitcoin payments for some 36,000 companies and it says it is growing at a fast pace. Among these new adopters we can find companies like DISH Network, Overstock.com, 1-800-Flowers, OkCupid, and several other big-name firms and corporations.

So, it’s becoming inevitable for businesses to start coping with digital currencies while there is time. In less than a year the industry has grown beyond all expectations; its resilience and remarkable growth as shown to be unstoppable.

There are strong explicit reasons showing that businesses should start accepting bitcoin and that the ecosystem could deliver far more yields than the regular banking payment systems.

Reasons why businesses should accept bitcoin

Lower transaction fees

Fees for accepting Bitcoin are generally significantly lower than those charged for credit and debit card purchases. This is the major reason smaller merchants are latching onto Bitcoin payments.
It’s usual to see small businesses, paying higher credit card fees than bigger companies; these are large, enterprise level businesses that have a bigger scale and therefore can negotiate lower credit card transaction fees, which small shops and small businesses can’t.

Smaller merchants pay 2 to 4% per credit card transaction, often with some additional fees, so it’s preferable for smaller enterprises to accept bitcoin because it decreases their banking expenses; bitcoin, can reduce their credit card processing fees to less than 1 percent.
Expert estimates that small businesses can save between 3 and 5 percent of their revenues by starting to accept the virtual currency.

Regulation \ Fraud prevention

Users can privately pay businesses in Bitcoin without divulging personally identifiable information (names, billing addresses, etc.), and there’s no way it can be intercepted, and my identity can’t be disclosed. This can lead to scams and frauds. It’s important to note, though, that Bitcoin exchanges that operate in the U.S., including Coinbase, have to collect personal identifying information from their user names, addresses and applicable bank account numbers included in accordance with certain state and federal regulations. Regulations also give merchants operating with exchanges like Coinbase, 100% protection and insurance.

No chargebacks

Bitcoin purchases are final; unlike those rife in credit card dealings; there are no chargeback’s and no returns so merchants won’t have to deal with those time wasting issues.
Disputes over purchases made with credit cards, in most cases because of defective goods or items never received won’t have to be a problem for businesses anymore. Bitcoin puts all the power in the buyer and the merchant’s hands
People who purchase from you in Bitcoin generally have no recourse in a dispute. Transactions in the crypto currency are basically perceived as cash. They’re final, insulating merchants from the possibility of chargebacks and the fees associated with them. 

Instant payments

Accepting Bitcoin payments can put cash within businesses reach faster than it does when they accept credit card payments.

Coinbase, payouts arrive in merchant’s bank accounts typically in only two business days. Every payment sets at the moment of transaction, so when a customer pays in Bitcoin, the merchant receives it and immediately sells it to Coinbase to convert it to U.S. dollars, immediately guarantying their money.

International payments

Bitcoin relieves the costs of global transactions, making cross-border payments easier, faster and cheaper. Small online retailers and independent consultants will now have the chance to easily reach new markets and sell their wares and services internationally because the digital currency relieves 

them from expensive cross-border transaction fees. 

Fundraising Mechanism

Companies and institutions will also have various benefits in adopting the digital currency and applying it to fund raising and crowd-funding events or projects. This will enable them to gather funds much faster than other conventional methods of funding.
Bitcoin provides a perfect mechanism of fund raising, since it enables donors to send small quantities of money over the web.

The ecommerce payment structures are changing at a fast run. Digital currencies present an opportunity with promises of great advantages for small businesses and entrepreneurs. These indicators present strong evidences that more businesses are about to start considering digital currency payment integrations.

Source : http://bitcoinist.net

Blockchain.info Android Wallet App Gets Updated

This week, Blockchain.info announced the release of their updated Android wallet, allowing bitcoin users easy access to their bitcoin funds.

The update, which can be found on the Google Play Store, touts two new features, according to a blog post published Thursday by the Blockchain team.

The first and perhaps most prominent change is that there’s a new menu which can be toggled from the top left (three bars). Users are presented with the following options: Merchant Directory, Address Book, Price & Charts, Wallet Settings.

The Merchant Directory in particular is a great feature, allowing users to find businesses in their area that are bitcoin-friendly. These include retail stores, restaurants, bars, and so forth (an excuse to spend your bitcoin, really).

Other menu items are pretty much self-explanatory, but while on the topic of the Merchant Directory, that brings me to the next feature outlined by the Blockchain team, dubbed Suggest a Merchant.
You’ve probably already guessed what the Suggest a Merchant feature does. If there’s still some confusion, it’s an area of the app that allows you, the user, to suggest a merchant to be added to the Blockchain Merchant Directory. This is, of course, dependent on whether or not that merchant accepts bitcoin — so if they don’t, don’t bother.

So there you have it. If you would like more information on the app, you can view it on the Google Play Store.

Source : http://newsbtc.com

Alien Race Controls Banks and Religion But Not Bitcoin

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Former World Bank Senior Council, Karen Hudes, who earlier this year revealed that a “second species” controls the World’s banking and religious institutions, spoke today with Future Money Trends about Bitcoin, a digital currency apparently not yet controlled by this alien race. During the first portion of her interview (1:00 minute mark), she says that Bitcoin is both legal and flexible and gives people a new unrestricted way to make payments.

Bitcoin is a way of having a legal payment possibility. It’s a way of giving flexibility to people on how they’re going to make payments.

However, even though Bitcoin is apparently alien-free, the former World Bank council said the digital money does have its drawbacks.

But ‘a currency’ should also be a store of value, which is that it maintains its value. And that is where Bitcoin is not as secure.

Karen held her senior position at the World Bank for twelve years before deciding to blow the whistle on the World Bank and the aliens that control it. She studied law at Yale Law School and economics at the University of Amsterdam.

 

She worked in the US Export Import Bank of the US from 1980-1985 and in the Legal Department of the World Bank from 1986-2007. She currently runs her own private law practice.

Bitcoin is a software-based online payment system described by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and introduced as open-source software in 2009. Payments are recorded in a public ledger using its own unit of account, which is also called bitcoin.

Nakamoto disappeared in late 2009 with over 1 million bitcoins that he had mined while maintaining the lion’s share of the network hashrate.
Do you think the aliens might one day co-opt Bitcoin? Will Satoshi ever return the 1 million bitcoins he mined? Log in below using your favorite social network to weigh in on the discussion.

Source : http://altcoinpress.com

Charlie Shrem Guilty of Aiding and Abetting an Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business

Bitcoin pioneer and advocate Charlie Shrem pled guilty to the charge of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business in Federal Court in New York.  As part of a plea agreement, Shrem, along with Robert Faiella will pay $950,000 in penalties.
The charges stem from numerous business transactions originating with Shrem’s service, BitInstant, which would accept payment in US Dollars in exchange for Bitcoin, which in turn would be used in the Silk Road market to purchase illegal drugs.
Both Shrem and Faiella could face as much as five years in the federal prison system, in addition to the monetary settlement.
Shrem began his involvement in Bitcoins in 2011, and after suffering a loss of his investment in Bitcoins due to a unreliable service, decided to launch his own company, BitInstant.  At its peak, BitInstant is reported to have enabled its customers to make purchases using Bitcoins at over 700,000 locations on the web.

Shrem also served as a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation.  He is quoted as being determined to remain active in the Bitcoin community despite resigning from his position in the Bitcoin Foundation in January, 2014 after his arrest.  Sentencing is scheduled for January, 2015.

Source : http://cryptocrimson.com