Why New Forms of Spam Could Bloat Bitcoin’s Block Chain

New technologies bring the promise of exciting new services, but they also encourage those looking to make a quick buck at the expense of others.

Email is a prime example of this. When the Internet began its rise to popularity in the 1990s, it was obvious the technology could be utilized to provide an easier way for people to communicate.

However, email’s no-cost model enticed many people who saw it as a cheap advertising medium, quickly creating a plague of annoying spam messages that advertised often-undesirable products.

More recently, bitcoin’s public ledger, the block chain, has been recognised for its potential to serve as a low-cost means of recording cryptocurrency transactions and also other types of digital information.

Some, though, fear that unscrupulous actors will leverage this feature to turn the block chain into a cheap place to publish new types of spam, and that it could become ‘bloated’ as a result – in effect, overloaded with data that has nothing to do with its primary purpose.

Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer sees the issue as a potential problem:

“I believe that it’s a big waste of resources to bloat a public ledger with information that’s irrelevant to that specific ledgers purpose. If the ledger’s purpose is to facilitate high-speed, transparent transactions online, then that should remain the sole purpose of that particular ledger.”

Junk in the block chain

The block chain’s ability to use cryptographic hashes as a permanent and public way to record and store information is impressive.

This, in turn, has attracted the efforts of projects such as Monegraph and Proof of Existence, which provide software to help people hash things such as art or software to prove authorship of the works.

Now there is concern that, while the above concepts are being created to utilize the block chain in a positive way, others might try to use it as a wasteful advertising method.

Marcell Ortutay, a developer who has built an open-source bitcoin microtransactions platform called Coinwall, thinks that some efforts to exploit the block chain may go too far:

“I remember on Valentine’s Day this year, someone made a cute site at thenoteblock.com. The idea is to embed messages into the block chain, encoded in the transaction output addresses.”

Sample hashed messages. Source: thenoteblock

While that website’s ability to hash messages to significant others is an interesting experimental use case, the application of such probably doesn’t justify merit on the bitcoin block chain.

Technical solutions

Ortutay dismisses sites like thenoteblock as a problem that will just go away on its own: “No special action is needed to prevent these messages; they will stop once demand dries up,” he said.

In fact, some kind of protection is built in to the bitcoin system too. One effort made known on Reddit regarding the sending of 0.00000001 BTC to addresses advertising a bitcoin gambling service did not receive confirmations from the network because miners received no fees. 

 

 

The amount of total transaction fees miners make per day the last six months. Source: Blockchain.

What may be considered more problematic are tokens that use the bitcoin block chain to gain some measure of legitimacy, and some people already consider these tokens as a form of spam.

“Most controversial [are] things like Counterparty and Mastercoin”, said Coinwall’s Ortutay. “They try to use the block chain as a datastore for various protocols, where things like bids/asks are embedded in bitcoin transactions.”

Scott Li, a co-founder of block chain API company Hello, block!, agrees:

“Mastercoin and Counterparty, especially, uses hacky ways to insert data into the block chain and [this] is seen as spammy.”

Changes are afoot, however, and the ability to store data in the block chain was actually reduced by the bitcoin core developers earlier this year with the release of the Bitcoin Core version 0.9.0.

Li says experimentation into these types of data storage concepts could be tested via side chains – linked ‘shards’, or copies, of the block chain that provide the same functionality, but avoid inundating bitcoin’s only public ledger.

“I’m optimistic about side chains, which could be a clean experimentation ground for ‘bitcoin 2.0’ protocols and remove the spam,” said Li.

Applying disincentives 

Bitcoin, in particular, has a system in place that discourages people from spamming the block chain. Attacks can be carried out via a variety of methods, including one known as a ‘dust attack’, in which the many transactions sent are so small that miners have no incentive to hash.

Bitcoin’s transaction fees were actually lowered earlier this year, due to the rise in price, but even that has not invited spammers to think the block chain is a place for unsolicited advertising yet.

After a spike in price, transaction fees were lowered. Source: Blockchain.info

There have been rumblings that, eventually, a floating fee structure may be put into place that will create a kind of market around the confirming of transactions, thus further preventing spamming.

Additionally, some, like Palmer, don’t believe that bitcoin’s proof of work (which creates the need for bitcoin mining) is the best way forward, and all sorts of different scenarios could be introduced to replace it.

Palmer told CoinDesk:

“I’m quite openly against [proof of work] mining as the future of digital currencies.”

This could usher in more experimentation with consensus, using totally different incentive structures, and could even include the creation of specific disincentives for data that bloats a ledger.

The comparison to email – again 

Marc Andreessen proposed in his widely-read New York Times piece Why Bitcoin Matters that bitcoin could help solve problems associated with email spam.

Ironically enough, though, bitcoin could have problems of its own in terms of being able to limit spam-like issues in the block chain.

Content types for email spam. Source: Trustwave

Interestingly, it has been the work of Google, in collaboration with non-profits like the Spamhaus Project, that has provided technology that can reduce the amount of email spam users actually see, making unsolicited emails largely an issue that only technology professionals must contend with.

As far as bitcoin goes, whether it is through a side chains or a brainwave from some startup developer, a method to eliminate the threat of cryptographic-based block chain spam will be developed.

Companies like BitHalo, for example, are already trying to avoid block chain bloat by using a peer-to-peer system to connect one party to another for the distribution of smart contracts.

This is an interesting idea, but, for bitcoin, the bigger problem to contend with right now is achieving mass consumer adoption. Of course, increasing user numbers could provide extra incentives for block chain spammers.

The question, in the end, may come down to the future of mining fees, given that they are what will end up supporting the future network when block generation is no longer a revenue stream for miners. This will likely be the ultimate factor in determining bloat, which transactions will be confirmed – and which ones will not.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

CoinOutlet Enters Bitcoin ATM Market With Low-Cost, Two-Way Model

Robocoin, Lamassu, BitAccess, BitXatm – the global bitcoin ATM market is already being served by a number of emerging manufacturers. But, that isn’t stopping new entrants from attacking the space.

With its late-August launch, CoinOutlet is hoping to make inroads in this burgeoning sector of the industry, investing now while interest in bitcoin ATM offerings remains high and new locations for bitcoin ATMs are still being discovered.

Following the announcement, CoinDesk spoke with CoinOutlet founder and CEO Eric Grill to discuss why he feels his company can succeed in the bitcoin ATM space given the challenges his company will face in the form of both competition and regulation.

Grill explained that his company’s advantage is in the buying process, saying:

“It’s pretty simple and straightforward. You get them right away, you don’t have to wait, you don’t have to give us your bank account information. I think these kiosks will become more than just kiosks as regulation becomes more clear.”

The anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) complaint, two-way bitcoin ATMs are now available for purchase to customers around the globe, and 10 units are already being prepared for shipment.

Priced to sell

Notably, each CoinOutlet bitcoin ATM machine retails for $8,000 and features both local currency and digital currency support.

The pricing means CoinOutlet offers a middle-ground option in the market. By comparison, Robocoin’s two-way physical bitcoin bank branches retail for $15,000, while Lamassu’s one-way bitcoin vending machines sell for $6,500.

Lamassu’s bitcoin vending machines can be equipped for two-way functionality, however, this requires operators to purchase a companion stand, which retails for $5,500.

However, CoinOutlet does have competitors in its price range. BitXatm offers its two-way models for €3,900, or roughly $5,100, though it recently inked an exclusive agreement to sell its US units to one operator.

The future of kiosks

Looking ahead, Grill said that the ATM space is still very much in its early stages and that the units could serve as the basis for new types of financial and wealth management.

For example, Grill suggested that a restaurant could offer a bitcoin ATM as both a teller machine for digital currency as well as a point of sale (POS) to facilitate bitcoin acceptance.

Grill explained:

“Any merchant that has this in their store can also use their ATM as a POS system. If someone wants to pay in bitcoin, they can ring it up on here. There’s no chargebacks – that’s one way we can get in the door with a lot of merchants is offering a free POS system.”

He added that on an international level, ATMs can be utilized as physical exchange points for commodities, precious metals and whatever else a user wants to trade.

However, Grill noted that given the regulatory uncertainty in the US, it’s likely that this type of functionality may not be mature for the market as of yet. As the technology is still in its infancy, it’s possible that the bitcoin ATMs we know today could be radically different tomorrow.

Regulatory hurdles

When asked about his experiences working with financial regulators, Grill said that nearly all the conversations he has held in the past year have been constructive and informative. While some have expressed a lack of understanding regarding both the purpose and the underlying technology of a bitcoin ATM, regulators – particularly state-based agencies – have been open to the concept.

Grill said that overall, many federal and state-level contacts simply want to learn more about digital currency. He also suggested that regulators don’t view bitcoin negatively, saying that they are more enthusiastic than many community members suggest.

He told CoinDesk:

“I don’t want to call them friendly, but I don’t think they’re looking to impose these harsh rules on us. They want to protect people.”

That being said, Grill believes that the regulatory environment remains very fluid. He cited a recent decision by financial regulators in North Carolina to utilize existing legal frameworks to oversee bitcoin rather than adopting an approach akin to New York’s BitLicense proposal.

Grill added:

“We can’t comply with [the BitLicense] as a company. We could do it technically, but the burden – that expense is humongous. That’s gonna keep us out of New York.”

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

CheapAir Now Accepts Litecoin and Dogecoin for Flight Bookings

CheapAir.com has announced that it will now accept dogecoin and litecoin as payment for flight and railway bookings.

The online travel booking website began accepting bitcoin for flight bookings in November, and subsequently expanded its bitcoin payment service to include hotel and railway bookings. Since adding bitcoin as a payment option, CheapAir has seen a positive response from its customers, recently announcing that it had passed $1.5m in total bitcoin sales.

Speaking to CoinDesk, CEO Jeff Klee said that the decision was encouraged by grassroots support from its customer base, noting that the same demographics that made its bitcoin integration a success inspired the company’s latest move in the digital currency space.

Klee explained:

“We’ve had some success with bitcoin, we’ve gotten some new customers there – enthusiastic customers. We’ve gotten a great response since we began accepting [bitcoin], and we had some requests for dogecoin and litecoin. We figured why not?”

Notably, GoCoin will serve as the company’s altcoin payments processor, enabling the company to accept litecoin and dogecoin in addition to bitcoin. CheapAir will continue to accept bitcoin through its existing partnership with Coinbase.

Altcoin strategy

Klee told CoinDesk that CheapAir will utilize the same deployment strategy for dogecoin and litecoin as it did for bitcoin. This means offering altcoin support for plane and train ticket purchases and, pending on the success of the initiative, expanding from there.

Klee stated:

“It’s the same pattern we went through with bitcoin. We launched it first for flights, and, assuming that goes well, we’ll roll out [altcoin support] for hotels pretty quickly, too.”

CheapAir is also extending its stable price guarantee to dogecoin and litecoin customers, offering $100 – in dollars – to those who see the price of a fare fall after they buy a ticket.

Klee said that the company is working to streamline its existing system for this service, adding that it helps customers who may see some volatility in the value of their coins.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Top US Colleges Begin Offering Bitcoin Courses

Two top-ranked US universities, New York University and Duke University, are offering courses on cryptocurrencies for the first time.

Professor Geoffrey Miller taught the first class of NYU’s new course, The Law and Business of Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies, yesterday.

35 students attended the session which covered the fundamentals of money, according to the course syllabus.

Miller, a faculty member at NYU’s law school, teaches the course with Professor David Yermack, who is on the faculty of the university’s business school.

Yermack says the course aims to examine the impact of cryptocurrencies on the fundamental principles that underpin current notions of law and finance.

“The course is not so much about teaching a knowledge of bitcoin, but it’s to show how some of the issues about property, finance and contracts are going to change very quickly in the next century. The technology is forcing people to reexamine long-held assumptions.”

Blockbuster class

Yermack and Miller are joined by Duke University Finance Professor Campbell Harvey, who is preparing a course on cryptocurrencies that will be offered to students next spring.

Both schools at NYU and Duke are ranked in the top 10 of their respective categories in the US News and World Report college rankings. Notably, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ersham graduated from Duke in 2010.

Harvey’s course at Duke is titled Innovation, Disruption and Cryptoventures and will focus on the potential of businesses that use the block chain.

The course will be offered to students at Duke’s computer science department and its law and business schools. Harvey is confident that the course will be a hit with students.

He said:

“I think it’s going to be a blockbuster. The problem will be turning people away.”

For Yermack, teaching a course on bitcoin is a departure from a career spent studying corporate governance and executive compensation issues.

Last autumn, he gave an impromptu speech about bitcoin at a finance conference in Puerto Rico, having “torn up” his original keynote address as the bitcoin price soared.

“It was very well received. The phones kept ringing after that, and I haven’t really been able to research much else since,” he said.

Academics need to step up

Even as the NYU and Duke professors gear up with new digital currency classes, they say that not enough academics are currently engaged in research on cryptocurrencies.

Yermack said that coming up with a syllabus for his course was challenging, due to the small number of published peer-reviewed articles on bitcoin.

Similarly, Harvey said that the block chain’s potential is stifled by a lack of basic understanding of its potential uses, and that it is up to academics to “step up” and present the information.

He added:

“It’s clear that cryptocurrency is not going to go away, and they might morph into something a little different than what we see today.”

Notably, several other universities already offer degree courses and other programmes around bitcoin. The University of Nicosia in Cyprus offers a masters in digital currency while the UK’s University of Cumbria offers two certificates on cryptocurrencies.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Coin Academy Launches Online Classes for Budding Bitcoiners

A newly launched learning site dedicated to digital currency, Coin Academy, says it is “the first comprehensive digital currency education site”, designed to bring both original courses and curated collections of materials together under the one roof.

Coin Academy co-founder, alternative economics expert Stephen DeMeulenaere, said, “The sudden emergence of digital currencies, like bitcoin, left the education and training market struggling to keep up”, adding:

“We found a number of good tutorials and interviews on the web, but we found a lot more poorly produced unprofessional pieces.”

The company currently offers three original courses on bitcoin and digital currency use aimed at beginner users and merchants. It also provides curated collections of materials from other sources around the web, covering subjects including digital currencies and value exchange networks, such as litecoin, dogecoin, peercoin, ripple and NXT.

All courses are free of charge and Coin Academy is currently using a donation model (via fiat, bitcoin or a selection of altcoins) to fund itself, but is also hoping to raise money from advertising and other sponsorships in future.

DeMeulenaere told CoinDesk:

“We know we need to generate revenue or we won’t last [...] It’s all about being able to source great content, so whatever it takes to make that happen is the bottom line.”

Expanding content

Coin Academy’s original courses consist of video tutorials with clear step-by-step instructions and plenty of visuals.

The course ‘Digital Currency Ownership: Before You Begin’ covers the basic concepts along with important security tips, through to setting up wallets and using exchanges.

DeMeulenaere said the company’s priority was to help people get into the digital currency world, but the team also want to be able to satisfy those hungry for more and who already have basic knowledge.

Coin Academy is exploring the idea of taking submissions from other content creators, bringing in experts on specific subjects.

“As we expand our teacher roster, we hope to be able to dive deeply into specific topics with subject matter experts. But, to be honest, at the end of the day, we’re looking closely at our usage stats to identity the areas that attract highest levels of interest and will prioritize those.”

While there are currently no assessment exercises upon completion of each session, each tutorial has a section for user discussion and interaction on that topic.

Collections sourced from elsewhere include video tutorials, podcasts, presentations, slideshows and documents that Coin Academy has deemed sufficiently high in quality. Coin Academy is also looking to supplement popular topics like bitcoin investing, mining, dogecoin and ripple with original work of its own in the near future.

Gathering information

Coin Academy’s other content creator and co-founder is Ric Shreeves, a web developer and author of a several books on open-source technology and content management systems like Joomla and Drupal. He also provides the voiceover for the firm’s original tutorials.

When asked why the company chose to include external resources in its offerings, Shreeves explained that, before Coin Academy, there was the problem of digital currency learning resources being scattered around various websites and video platforms.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest that this information be easily available,” he said.

“Stephen and I attended a number of bitcoin related events, only to see people struggle with the same basic set of questions every time.”

Other online materials

Other popular online learning platforms already offer bitcoin- and digital currency-related materials as part of their wider selection, including Khan Academy and Udemy, among others.

The University of Nicosia in Cyprus also offers a full online Masters degree in digital currencies – the first six weeks of which are available as a free MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).

Other sites, such as the venerable bitcoin.org, offer plenty of materials for bitcoin newcomers, though generally not in course form.

Source : http://www.coindesk.com

Alternet Systems Launches Worldwide Payment Processing Business Through Strategic Agreement With BitPay

Company to Generate Revenue From This Business During Fourth Quarter of 2014

MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Sep 3, 2014) -  Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTCQB: ALYI), a business to business facilitator for digital currency and mobile commerce services in the digital asset and virtual currency ecosystem, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Alternet Payment Solutions ("APS") has launched its worldwide payment processing business through a strategic channel partner agreement with BitPay -- the world leader in business solutions for the bitcoin digital currency.

Alternet Systems, Chief Executive Officer, Henryk Dabrowski commented, "Alternet is providing a next generation digital currency and payment ecosystem focused on three distinct segments of the marketplace which includes comprehensive currency processing, identification and transmission. Our strategic agreement with BitPay will allow us to initiate our sales process with several potential clients in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region. We believe that our backlog of opportunities will continue to grow globally and we will generate our first revenues from this business in the fourth quarter of 2014."

APS has entered into a non-exclusive agent agreement to sell and support the BitPay platform into Alternet's customer base. APS will leverage its experience in the mobile and disruptive payments technology industry to focus on providing business to business Bitcoin payment methods such as converting local currency to Bitcoin and/or Bitcoin to USD in the Americas, Caribbean and Asia-Pacific.

Mr. Dabrowski continued, "With Alternet's experience in disruptive payment technologies and a network that spans many countries that contain leading mobile operators, financial service providers and banks; we believe APS will rapidly deploy BitPay's solutions in these markets. This will also broaden our global service offering related to facilitating transactions beyond utilizing Ven, a global digital currency traded on international markets and originally used by members of the social network service Hub Culture. We now have a reliable and secure partner to fulfill transactions with Bitcoin. Together, we will enable customers the ability to fulfill digital currency transactions online and through mobile devices."

Tony Gallippi, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of BitPay, stated, "Digital currency adoption and user demand for alternative payment methods continue to rapidly grow globally. We believe in the vision and successful past experience of introducing disruptive payment technologies that Alternet Systems possess, and look forward to working together to expand our global reach."

Bitcoin is an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. Companies such as Newegg, TigerDirect and WordPress have begun accepting bitcoin in addition to fiat currencies such as dollars or euros. BitPay specializes in allowing ecommerce and retail merchants to accept bitcoin payments with the option to receive settlement in either bitcoin, their local currency, or a mix of the two. BitPay provides payment processing services for over 40,000 businesses and processes over $1 million in bitcoin sales each day.

About Alternet Systems Inc.:

Alternet Systems Inc. (OTCQB: ALYI), headquartered in Miami, Florida, is an enterprise accelerator company focused on the complementary, high-growth markets of Digital Currency, Mobile and Internet Commerce and Cyber-Security products and services. Through its subsidiaries, Alternet captures and converts extraordinary growth opportunities surrounding the explosion of newly adapted Internet technologies and platforms. More information about Alternet and its subsidiaries can be found at www.alternetsystems.com and by following the company on Twitter www.twitter.com/alternetsystems.

About BitPay:

BitPay offers basic bitcoin payment processing at no cost, while offering paid business and enterprise solutions for larger businesses that need additional features and support. The payment processor offers in person and online payment solutions, combined with industry-leading support to their clients. BitPay has a strong track record in this growing digital currency market.

Safe Harbor Statement:

Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the Company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Source : http://www.cryptoarticles.com

Do These " Free Bitcoin" Sites Work ? 

Google the phrase “free bitcoin” and you won’t be disappointed with the number of results. What you will be disappointed with however is the nature of the sites claiming to offer “free” bitcoins. As the old saying goes: “Nothing in life is free.”

What these sites actually do is require you to perform time consuming tasks for a few measly satoshi (0.00000001 Bitcoin) which you will probably never see in any useable form as the sites have payout minimums that are impossible to reach. I decided to trawl through some of the top results for this search in an attempt to actually use them.

Bitcoin Reward (bitcoinreward.net)

 

First off this site is incredibly slow when browsing through the various tasks to earn bitcoin. It supposedly pays out every day if you have at least 10,000 satoshi earned on the site, which is around a measly $0.05 USD at the time of writing. But I could not confirm this as the only worthwhile tasks where surveys none of which would work. Watching videos only paid out around 3000 satoshi each, and there were only four available regardless.

Bitcoin Get (bitcoinget.com)

This site has a payout threshold of 6000 satoshi. I tried to complete one of their “tasks” which involved going to google and submitting to the site what recommended searching options I got for a particular search. But the task was incompletable and I wasted 15 minutes of my time as a result.

Bit Visitor (bitvisitor.com)

 

 

This site lets you earn Bitcoin by visiting a new webpage every five minutes between each you have to enter a captcha. The payout is 60 bits, and you get between 2 and 0.8 bits for each page. Not worth even the time you will spend entering the captchas.

Bitcoins 4 Me (bitcoins4.me)

 

 

Simple, just enter your address. But pay varies between 100 to 500 satoshi for every submit which is limited to once an hour, so unless your time is worth nothing and you can enter a captcha every hour this isn’t worth your time. On top of this you need 5500 satoshi earned to execute a payout.

FreeBitcoins.me (freebitcoins.me)

“Shut up and give me my free bitcoins”

That’s more like it! No more surveys/videos that don’t work right?

This site screams sham. It has two badges at the top of the page reading “secure” and “genuine 100% trusted website”, but with no indication of who awarded these accolades.

The site turns out to be an elaborate ad for the Bitcoin faucet “coinbox.me” which your “instant bitcoins” are paid into. Apparently the faucet pays out when you get to 5500 satoshi but it appear that you only get 60 satoshi a day. Not worth your time.

Daily Bitcoins (dailybitcoins.org)

“Get BTC for free right now!” – Operative word being “now,” from my experience so far I am skeptical.

Once I submitted my address I was met with a message that read “Soon bitcoins will be sent!” and the promise of a measly 5 satoshi. But your balance has to exceed 5500 satoshi before payout can occur. Also, you can only submit once an hour, which earns you about five satoshi. That’s approximately 1100 submits to the site which would mean coming back and re-entering your address every hour for approximately 46 days for the equivalent of just under $0.03 USD worth of Bitcoin.

I don’t think there is a person on the planet whose time is worth that little.

Conclusion

Basically, for lack of better words, these sites are bad and you should never waste your time even entertaining the thought of using them. But then again I think two valuable lessons can be taught by sites like these. Firstly, nothing in life is free: there is a cost and/or reason attached to everything. Secondly, if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is and you should steer clear of it.

Source : http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com

BitcoinGet Helping the Homeless

Wired ran a story today about a group of homeless men living in Pensacola, Florida that are using sites like BitcoinGet to help them survive. If you haven't read the article yet, be sure to check it out here.

Our goal with BitcoinGet has always been to create an easy way for people to earn bitcoins, but never did we imagine it would be used as a replacement for panhandling. It was interesting to read that the homeless followed in the article actually preferred getting paid in bitcoin because of its ease of use and the protection it provides against getting robbed. Earning bitcoins has also spared them from a lot of the embarrassment that comes with panhandling.

Naturally, the argument that technologies like Bitcoin can "solve" deep-rooted socio-economic issues has stirred up some discussion on Reddit and Hacker News. We are happy that BitcoinGet and similar sites are part of this discussion, and that they might actually serve as small pieces of the puzzle.

Source : http://www.bitcoinget.com

Current Bitcoin Boom a Good or Bad Sign?

You've probably heard about the rising price of Bitcoin and wondered "What's going on?" The simple answer is that there's been a spike in interest, specifically from Chinese investors. China now accounts for about a third of daily Bitcoin transactions and hosts the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world.

So is it a bubble? There's no way to know, but if the intent of the big new investors is to speculate, i.e., make money off short-term fluctuations, which certainly could be the case, then it's possible we'll see Bitcoin come crashing back down again at any sign of a price falter be it a day or a year from now. The only way we'll see Bitcoin stabilize long term is if a larger proportion of investors hold it not with intent to speculate, but rather with intent to use it as a functional currency.

There have been some good signs of late on this front, from the Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver to China's search engine giant Baidu accepting Bitcoin for its firewall service. The importance of this cannot be understated: China has a massive internet market, and if we see other major Chinese internet companies mimic Baidu's move to accept Bitcoin, it may spur just the kind of heavy adoption Bitcoin advocates have been hoping for since its inception, which could in turn result in greater adoption around the world. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, but as of right now, we at BitcoinGet are feeling cautiously optimistic about the current price rise. There are more fluctuations on the horizon, but if adopters can manage to weather the speculation storm, the future is bright.

Source : http://www.bitcoinget.com

Online Education Meets Bitcoin with Skilljar

Skilljar (www.skilljar.com), a Seattle-based online courseware platform, announced today that instructors using its course platform are now accepting payments in Bitcoin.

Skilljar is used by online education instructors to deliver classes directly from their own websites, with topics ranging from yoga to computer programming.

Bitcoin Comes to Online Courseware

Instructors on Skilljar’s platform are automatically enabled for Bitcoin payments, in addition to accepting credit, debit, and PayPal. Bitcoin payments are converted to fiat currency at time of purchase, so instructors are protected from currency fluctuation risks.

“We’re really excited to accept Bitcoin for our Food Startup Branding classes,” said Danielle Gould, CEO and founder of Food+Tech Connect. “Because our goal is to decentralize and democratize learning, it’s important for us to align ourselves with innovative technologies that share our ethos. Skilljar’s platform has made it very easy.”

“The decision to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment was simple,” said Sandi Lin, CEO and co-founder of Skilljar. “It was driven by instructor requests, ease of integration, and the international nature of our business. Since we already use Stripe for payment processing, their beta program with Bitcoin made it easy to integrate while also leveraging our existing payments infrastructure.”

Source : http://onbitcoin.com