Bitcoin News
Daily diary of what's happening with Bitcoin.
A discussion on Bitcoin at the 2013 New Hampshire LIberty Forum, an annual gathering of voluntaryists and Libertarians, included panelists Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees), Roger Ver (@RogerKVer) and Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem).
All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews
Forbes contributor and Bitcoin Foundation board member Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis) introduces the Bicoin Foundation, a nonprofit corporation. Excerpts:
“The Bitcoin Foundation launches this week to accelerate the global growth of bitcoin through standardization, protection, and promotion of the open source protocol. As a nonprofit corporation and neutral forum for collaboration, the Bitcoin Foundation follows the successful model of open source bodies like the Linux Foundation and the Tor Project.”
-
“In addition to individual membership, the Bitcoin Foundation provides a way for corporate enterprises from all industries to participate in the expansion of the bitcoin network and platform.”
-
“The Bitcoin Foundation mission leads to the early specific goals of financially sponsoring the efforts of the core development team, funding core infrastructure such as a test network and a DNS seed node, publishing a set of best practices for bitcoin integration, coordinating responses to business and media inquiries, and organizing an annual bitcoin conference with the first one being held in Silicon Valley.”
-
“Initial board members include Gavin Andresen (@GavinAndresen), Mark Karpeles (@MagicalTux), Jon Matonis (@JonMatonis), Patrick Murck (@VirtuallyLaw), Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem), and Peter Vessenes (@Vessenes).”
- http://onforb.es/OXaZYA
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.0 (Further discussion about the Foundation announcement)
All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews
BitInstant’s Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) writes about last week’s development in which Bitcoin was introduced to bankers in Brazil. Excerpts:
“We discussed Brazil’s “boleto” system, which enables relatively easy payments between individuals and companies. BitInstant has plugged into this Boleto Bancario system via our partner, ZipZap, and has thus been able to help Brazilians easily acquire bitcoins for the past few months.”
-
“The modern global economy allows collaboration between people who have no idea they’re collaborating.”
-
“Luis Feldman from Chile’s Centro de Compensacion Automatizado gave a talk about his country’s internal bank payment network. The most interesting feature was the volume of internal payments – the entire country of Chile was doing only 5x the monthly volume of transfers via its banking network that BitInstant had now achieved.”
-
“Mark my words, sometime in 2013, the Bitcoin economy will be larger than that of a few small nations.”
-
“With Bitcoin, the [Remittance Payments System] “RPC” is not a company, but a decentralized computer network. The law states the RPC must do certain things, but the RPC in Bitcoin’s case is an inanimate, uncaring protocol. Bitcoin will not (indeed, cannot) respond to a Dodd-Frank summons when it fails to comply with the rule!”
-
“The [legal counsel to the Federal Reserve] didn’t yet comprehend the awesome power of Bitcoin. He didn’t realize there are no farms to seize.
- http://bit.ly/SQuIeg
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109856.0 (Further discussion of this article)
All News - Daily E-mail Subscription - Twitter: @BitcoinNews
John Greenwood, Financial Post’s bank reporter, gives an overview of Bitcoin for FP’s readers. Excerpts:
“According to [Charlie] Shrem, the sudden rise [in the Bitcoin exchange rate] has been driven by people in countries like Greece, Italy, Spain — and even the Netherlands — anxious to protect their savings.”
“Indeed, at a time when governments around the world are pumping massive amounts of so-called fiscal stimulus into the economy, potentially setting the stage for untold inflation down the road, it’s not surprising that Bitcoin is suddenly attracting a lot of attention, as are other digital currencies.”
BitInstant’s press release announcing their expanded service offering was published by various media today. Excerpts:
“By simplifying this exchange, customers now just visit BitInstant’s website, print out a receipt, and deposit physical cash for the virtual currency at their nearest retail or convenience location. Bitcoins are credited to their account within 30 minutes.”
“Bitcoin enables users to transfer funds instantly to any other Bitcoin account holder in the world. There is no middle-man or controlling entity.”
“Instead of waiting 3-5 business days for a wire transfer across an ocean, Bitcoin transfers are immediate and have zero fees (for the most part). They also prevent merchants from suffering costly chargebacks, or requiring customers to expose personal information.”
[Ediitor’s note: Through a partnership with ZipZap, cash deposits for processing through BitInstant can be accepted in the U.S. and U.S. Territories (e.g., Puerto Rico) at WalMart, 7-11, Moneygram locations (e.g., CVS) and many other locations. Boleto is the payment system for accepting payment from customers in Brazil.]
