Wall Street Gathers at Bitcoin Conference to Figure Out What Exactly Bitcoin Is | Bloomberg

August 6, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been to quite a few bitcoin gatherings, where the standard attire is a sweaty T-shirt and sneakers. This week’s Digital Currencies conference in New York was different. It felt more like a Wall Street confab than the usual fellowship of the neckbeards.

The suits were out in full force at the bitcoin convention on July 29, organized by American Banker. In attendance were representatives from Visa, Citigroup and other financial institutions.

The professionals there were by no means bitcoin faithful. Most bankers’ views on the digital currency — or virtual commodity, depending on who you ask — ranged from puzzled to noncommittal. Lester Joseph, manager of the global financial crimes intelligence group at Wells Fargo, said the bank doesn’t have a grand plan for bitcoin.

“We don’t really have a strategy,” Joseph said during a panel called the Nexus Between Banking and Bitcoin Companies. “We just try to understand it and try to manage the risk.”

Coinbase Launches A More Secure Bitcoin Storage Option Called ‘Vault’ | TechCrunch

July 2, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

One of the amusing things about the fast-maturing Bitcoin ecosystem is how the better-funded start-ups in the space are offering products that increasingly resemble services proffered by banks, the very entities they arguably are trying to disrupt.

With Bitcoin, transactions can be handled anonymously and irreversibly without the need for a third-party mediator. Yet that ability also has made Bitcoin historically prone to theft.

So many bigger Bitcoin start-ups have stepped up to offer different tiers of security. Today, Andreessen Horowitz-backed Coinbase jumps into the ring with a new product called Vault. It is complementary to Coinbase’s wallet, which is intended for day-to-day spending like a checking account.

My business accepts Bitcoins |money.cnn.com

April 7, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Bitcoin is coming soon to a town near you. Or, more likely, it’s already there.

The five-year-old digital currency is increasingly being adopted by brick-and mortar businesses, including dentists, pet boutiques — even a small honey business in Utah.

In 2012, about 1,000 businesses used BitPay, the largest processor of Bitcoin payments. Today, more than 26,000 businesses worldwide use BitPay, said Tony Gallippi, its cofounder and CEO.

Dwolla, The New E-Commerce Solution | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

January 30, 2012January 30, 2012 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

The recent outbreak of alternative financial transaction services hasn’t yet caused giants like PayPal and Ebay to need reputation protection, but they may be looking to revamp their business models soon. The new kid on the block, Dwolla, threatens to shake things up in an industry that seems to change by the year.

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Bitcoin miners busted? Police confuse bitcoin power usage for pot farm – Computerworld Blogs

May 26, 2011May 26, 2011 ~ CBPS ~ Leave a comment

Bitcoin, one of the world’s newest currencies, is an open source, peer-to-peer currency that does not exist in physical form. It’s owned and traded by means of an anonymous P2P network, without any third-party intermediary like a payment processor, without any government issuing or tracking the virtual currency. While there is a limit of only 21 million bitcoins to be generated by the year 2140, bitcoin is “free” to generate and is created by “bitcoin miners.”

The implication is that a completely untraceable underground economy will emerge using bitcoin.

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