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underbanked
1 Jul 1

Infographic: Who Are The Under Banked?

Who Are The Under Banked Infographic HolyTransaction

 

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jorge
, , , , , ,
adoption, Articles, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, cryptoeconomics, infographic, Infographics, underbanked
futuresize
22 May 0

Bitcoin listed on NYSE – Reminiscing

Bitcoin listed on New York Stock Exchange

Look at how far we’ve come.

Four years ago, the world of Bitcoin found me. By most peoples account, this was still very early days. The USD price, seen on a pre-Karpeles Mt.GOX, had recently surpassed it’s All-Time High of One-Dollar. I watched it climb up and kiss $31 over the next two months, before crashing back down to $2. Then $7. Then leveling off at $5. “Well, that’s it.” Said the forums and chat rooms ”Bitcoin is dead. We’ll never see $30 again.”  I was not convinced. Alternative currencies were already a fascination of mine, long before the idea became digital, and something about Bitcoin struck a chord.
I’d spend hours running numbers in my head and on paper, speculating about the possibilities. I made charts predicting price against difficulty, and theorizing just how high we might go after the first Block halving in the far distant future of 2012. You think people look at you like you’re crazy now…imagine what this looked like before anyone outside of a message board had heard the name Bitcoin. Friends politely listened to me exalt the virtues of cryptocurrency, sometimes for hours at a time, before hesitantly urging that I might be involved in a Ponzi scheme. “You don’t understand.” I’d say, “You’re looking at the future. This isn’t going away. It could go as high as $50, or even $100 per coin. It’s only a matter of time. Someday, Bitcoin could even have its own listing on the New York stock exchange.”

 

Fast forward to May 19th, 2015: The New York Stock Exchange has just launched an index for tracking Bitcoin. The feeling is surreal for me, and I’m sure for many of you too. We’ve gone from Alpaca Socks and Servers to an open world of goods and services. We’ve grown from a hand full of passionate nerds into a community of millions. We’ve seen phenomenal highs and crashing lows, but never a slowing of adoption. The resilience of our community is taking hold. It’s not about the price, or volatility. Bitcoin’s success has always been tied to the passion of its community, and it’s only getting bigger. So don’t be afraid to be a little frivolous with your coins sometimes. Go out and buy a street taco or a latte somewhere. Give some coins to your friends. Speculate. Tell everyone. And most importantly, enjoy the moment we’re in right now. The future is bright, and it’s a lot closer than you think.

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Satoshi
, , , ,
adoption, article, Articles, bitcoin, news, NYSE
NetkiPartnerHT3
24 Apr 3

HolyTransaction partners with Netki for human-readable address

Wallet addresses are one of the most aggressive barriers to the mass adoption of digital currency. Trying to explain these lengthy, case sensitive, intimidating strings of numbers and letters to the uninitiated is a daunting task. Much of the general population values simplicity over function, and in this regard wallet addresses seem scary and overly complex.

It is with this in mind that we are very excited to announce our partnership with Netki!
Netki makes digital money approachable and intuitive for new and veteran users alike, by transforming long and unwieldy Bitcoin addresses into human-readable wallet names. Additionally, your Netki name separates your identity from public blockchain data, providing you multiple layers of privacy, as well as multiple validations to keep you secure.
When paired with your existing HolyTransaction account, Netki will allow you to use one single Name for all of your wallet addresses. This means that you will be able to send multiple currencies, all to one domain name-like address! As of this writing Changetip is integrated with Netki. Storing your funds, tipping online, building/implementing blockchain applications, and buying, selling, and accepting your desired currency, have all just become as simple as remembering a single name, when used with supported vendors!
Your account will be automatically updated as soon as it’s ready, and the integration will be seamless from your perspective. Once implemented, your wallet name will correspond to your HT username.
Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin will be the first coins supported, with more of your favorites coming soon after.
Netki’s solution utilizes both the decentralized Namecoin blockchain at its core and distributed DNSSEC at its edges. This combination allows users to have both control and ownership of the blockchain, while still maintaining their financial privacy. This architecture allows users to easily share their Wallet Name with anyone without having to publish it to the world via a public ledger.
Together, HolyTransaction and Netki aim to transform cumbersome wallet addresses into one shareable, easy to remember name, that will be usable by all your digital currencies. We look forward to working together to continue making the bitcoin experience both friendly and intuitive for all.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Satoshi
, , , , , , ,
adoption, Articles, bitcoin, Dogecoin, HolyTransaction News, litecoin, namecoin, partners, wallet
bitcoin in russia
28 Dec 0

Russia reconsidering Bitcoin?

(CryptoCoinsNews) Could Bitcoin make it back into Russia? The latest news is that the draft law is in need of major revision as the Russian Ministry of Economic Development has not approved the draft in its current form. This is certainly not because of the desire to enhance freedom and liberty for Russian citizens, but because it may hurt Russian corporations ability to attract new business. The “quasi-money” designation includes things like gift cards and certificates that businesses use to bring in new customers. Banks, major retailers, and telecom companies would take a huge hit, and with the national GDP/economy is already having a terrible year, this bill does more harm than good overall.
“The proposed draft regulation act doesn’t solve any tasks assigned, but only serves to create legal barriers to the implementation of marketing programs of businesses and business development in general,” according to the Ministry of Economic Development.”
The issue with nation-states attacking Bitcoin out of defense of their currency is a complicated one. Many nations are in debt due to their debt-based fiat currency/central banking system. The current inherently flawed system is designed to leave nations indebted. Bitcoin and it’s potential growth leave open a way to build new businesses, generate new revenue streams by attracting investors, and ways for future taxation to help alleviate the nation’s indebtedness. Russia’s previous hard stance against Bitcoin was taken before many of their current economic issues and sanctions manifested.
Russia’s economic situation may continue to spiral downward, as they may soon suffer from restriction of access to the global financial system. In particular to the payment system SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which supplies secure messaging services and interface software to wholesale financial entities. An international banking computer partnership). Some critics say the government should pay more attention to financial innovations instead of trying to ban them.
Does this mean Bitcoin is in the clear? Not exactly. The bill most likely will be revised, but it may just benefit Russian corporations, but still restrict Russians ability to use electronic currency. The ban may just work around gift cards and bonus cards and remain for digital currency. The nature of the extent of the revisions remains unclear. What do you think Russia will do with Bitcoin?

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Satoshi
, , ,
adoption, Articles, bitcoin, Regulation, russia
1 Sep 0

Could Bitcoin be a replacement for Gold?

(CoinDesk) Gold has been used as a store of value for eons, thanks to its beauty and almost magical ability to never tarnish. Furthermore, despite radical shifts in human values over the past 100 years, its worth still has not diminished – even soaring to over $1,000 an ounce in recent times.
Now, though, there is a new, digital challenger on the scene that, when its price chart is compared with that of gold, bears some striking similarities
It’s no wonder, then, that companies like Netagio now allow people to trade bitcoin for precious metals like gold – it is a sign that investors want the ability to trade BTC seamlessly with other investment vehicles.
In a sense, bitcoin could be considered an upgrade from gold. Some even consider it as gold with transformational, information-like properties.

bitcoin vs gold

Digital gold with a twist

George Gilder, author of the forthcoming book Bitcoin and Gold: The Information Theory of Money, is impressed with bitcoin and has developed a well-thought argument for bitcoin as a sort of “next-generation gold”.
That’s because bitcoin builds upon the properties of gold and has spawned an information-based variation, he said.
Gilder told CoinDesk:

“Satoshi [Nakamoto] was right with bitcoin. That’s what amazes me. Satoshi arrived at a foundation for the value of bitcoin that’s valid.”

Gilder sees economic uncertainty as advantageous to bitcoin, a fact evidenced by the increasing interest in bitcoin observed in Argentina and other countries hampered by volatile fiat currencies.

argentine peso decline

The decline of the Argentine peso versus the US dollar from 2013 to 2014. Source: exchange-rates.org

As an example, Gilder believes that increased government control of money, such as capital controls or quantitative easing, means more uneasiness in terms of economic sentiment.
“The more money [governments] print, the more uncertain the people become,” said Gilder. “Bitcoin is based on the understanding that the money supply doesn’t really matter.”
Adrian Ash, the head of research at BullionVault, a gold storage company, pointed out:

“Digital gold currencies have been tried and failed many times in the last 20 years. They came to nothing thanks both to state resistance, but also to lack of adoption.”

However, it’s safe to say that bitcoin has progressed further than its failed predecessors. That may be, though, because previous electronic money alternatives like E-gold were backed by gold, and not by cryptographic keys. As a result, bitcoin might be the first to offer a substantial alternative that would appeal to gold enthusiasts.

Role as a currency

Another characteristic of bitcoin that makes it seem like an upgrade over gold is its protocol that allows value to be moved quickly around the globe. Regardless of how supportive gold enthusiasts are of their favorite store of value, there’s no denying it has limited appeal to mainstream consumers.
Bitcoin adoption by the average person remains a hurdle to overcome to ensure success, but the digital currency’s combination of novel innovations might allow it to complement existing methods of exchange.
“[The] chicken-and-egg situation [of adoption] might be resolved by bitcoin’s most exciting aspect – zero-cost exchange of value,” said Ash.
Along with adoption as a means of exchange, bitcoin could become a very useful currency, commodity and recording mechanism via its block chain. According to Gilder, the problem of velocity, or how much people spend a thing of value, is what will ultimately make bitcoin a success. Or a failure.
Gilder said:

“Velocity is what determines value. Not just printing money. Satoshi [Nakamoto] has an absolute 21 million bitcoin limit. Bitcoin is determined by velocity, by turnover rate governed by the people holding the coins.”

Bitcoin might be an iteration of gold – a 2.0 version. People can hold stores of it, as well as spend it – a property that gold cannot compete with.
“It’s important to note that gold isn’t used as currency anywhere today,” said Ash.
Given that even Ash concedes this point, bitcoin’s long-term success may lie in adoption. In other words, whether bitcoin is able to triumph and replace gold will lie with its peer-to-peer network, and just how large this base of bitcoin believers becomes in the years ahead.

Bitcoin believers

It’s hard to tell how many bitcoin users there really are. New bitcoin products and services are seemingly announced every day, and Mary Meeker’s presentation of bitcoin’s growth via the use of a chart showing the number of wallets in use (see below) shows there is traction.
While wallet use is growing, it’s not a one-to-one correlation – or even if many of the newly created wallets actually have bitcoin in them. It does show increased awareness overall, however.
Source: CoinDesk

Source: CoinDesk

However, it can be argued that gold investors will have to see the promise of bitcoin over the precious metal not only as a store of value, but also as a spending and transactional innovation.
The rise of consumer services continues, and energy focused on that particular sector of the bitcoin economy is notable.
For instance, in Canada, there are a number of options for people to buy or sell bitcoin. Not only do residents of Canada have access to an established exchange for the Canadian dollar, there are storefronts and even bitcoin ATMs available in most major cities.
Access to bitcoin for gold investors is the best way to prove the value of bitcoin to this subset of the market, and this is especially true in the US market.
In a poll conducted by Harris Interactive in December 2013, when bitcoin prices were at their all-time pinnacle, the majority of people still didn’t even know what bitcoin was. And, likely because of this, they indicated that they would much rather invest in gold over bitcoin.
Harris poll question: Would you rather invest in gold or bitcoin? Source: CoinDesk

Harris poll question: Would you rather invest in gold or bitcoin? Source: CoinDesk

The key to bitcoin as a new form of gold is to improve upon the precious metal. And that means making the most of its transport and currency capabilities.
For this to happen, an increase in awareness is needed  – and some proponents of gold already understand this fact.
Companies like the UK’s GoldMoney have been offering bitcoin as a storage option along with gold for some time. Furthermore. investment broker and author Peter Schiff, while making waves about his insistence that bitcoin could become worthless, is still nevertheless accepting it at his company, SchiffGold – a fact that should make gold investors take the digital currency a little more seriously.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Satoshi
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adoption, Articles, bitcoin, cryptoeconomics
bitapple
28 Aug 0

All 70,000 residents living in Dominica will be eligible to receive bitcoin

(CoinDesk) All 70,000 residents living on the Caribbean nation of Dominica will
be eligible to receive bitcoin as part of ‘The Bit Drop’ project, an
upcoming collaboration between bitcoin businesses, interest groups and
local government officials.
Scheduled to take place on 14th March3, 2015, The Bit Drop will feature an island-wide party boasting ‘celebrities, musicians and
supporters of bitcoin’, as well as education booths and free giveaways.
Speaking to CoinDesk, project manager Sarah Blincoe
suggested the ambitious project started with a simple question: how do
you get bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible? From
there, she explained, a plan was launched to distribute an undisclosed
amount of bitcoin to island residents via text messaging.
While the event has serious goals, Blincoe said the group decided to adopt a lighthearted tone for the project, adding:

 

“Who doesn’t like a party? No one in the Caribbean, that is for sure.”

The ‘perfect location’

Dominica, with its relatively small population and gross domestic
product (GDP), proved an ideal location for the event, according to
Blincoe.
The country’s high mobile penetration rates, however, may have been
the most compelling factor. Blincoe believes Dominica’s smartphone users
will be able to solve real-world problems using bitcoin, adding:

 

“The island has opportunities for remittance due to many
islanders moving for work to [other] islands, as well as the local
medical university with students from around the globe. Dominica
citizens also face currency exchange issues when traveling to nearby
islands.”

Data from Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL),
a regulatory body overseeing telecommunications in Dominica, bolsters
this claim, suggesting there were roughly 100,000 mobile subscriptions
active in the country in 2012. Additionally, bitcoin penetration is
comparatively low in Dominica.
“The young forward-thinking administration sees the long-term benefits
in the block-chain technology and is eager to support our project in any
way possible.”

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Satoshi
,
adoption, Articles, education
4 Aug 0

The bitcoin industry in Australia!

Bitcoin adoption in Australia and New Zealand is increasing rapidly. Outpacing most of the Asian countries, the local startups and bitcoin merchants in Australia are trying hard to increase the bitcoin adoption in Oceania and help the local merchants to adopt bitcoin.
Currently, the major Australian exchanges have an estimated sum of 40,000 active local users and because of these exchanges, (including BTC markets, btradeaustralia, bitxoin and getbitcoin), there are more than 190 businesses accepting bitcoin in Australia. Although there aren’t as many “popular” or “famous” startups in Australia, the rapid growth of bitcoin exchanges and bitcoin merchants is helping the bitcoin industry thrive in Australia.
“The Bitcoin Association of Australia estimates that the Australian share of this market capital is approximately 2%. This means that the market capitalization for Australia is approximately $120 million.”

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Satoshi
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adoption, Articles, australia, bitcoin
26 Jul 0

Bitcoin has passed the tipping point

Products and services that are first-to-market often take such a battering that they lose out to competitors with copycat products. Business history is littered with wildly successful products with ultimately spectacular collapses because they lost out to competitors that found a better way of doing things – things they learned at the trailblazer’s expense.

The Sony Betamax is the poster child for products that created a market and lost out to a rival – in this case VHS. Sony created a market for recording TV, but because the tapes where an hour long VHS grabbed the movie rental market.

More recently, Friendster was the first social network to explode, with millions of users in the first 3 months. But it couldn’t manage its growth and lost out to MySpace and of course Facebook.

adoption curve

There are many more examples. Some lost slowly, like the Atari 2600 game console, and some crashed spectacularly like Rio MP3 player. Palm lost to Apple, Netscape to Internet Explorer, WebCrawler to Google, Tivo to the cable companies, and on and on.

So far Bitcoin is an exception to this model. And though it’s been battered by ruinous headlines, including one just this week where the World Bank is calling it a naturally occurring Ponzi scheme, Bitcoin remains resilient.

Kaushik Basu, World Bank economist and author of ‘Ponzis: The Science and Mystique of a Class of Financial Frauds’ argues that most Ponzis today are not always obvious and that today’s Ponzi schemes often don’t have a puppet-master pulling the strings. Bitcoin, he says, is just such a Ponzi. The speculation on the currency raises the demand for Bitcoin making it a bubble.

Bitcoin has hundreds of competitors all built on the Bitcoin model. A handful are gaining some success, like Litecoin which is currently trading at $9, and Darkcoin (I’m not kidding) which is trading now trading at $7.50.

Darkcoin was built to cover perceived flaws in Bitcoin’s anonymity. One reason for the early success of Bitcoin was that it was as anonymous as passing dollars on the street. And while there is a far greater level of anonymity with this electronic transaction than making a purchase with a credit card or PayPal, Bitcoin is not anonymous to those forces who really want to know.

Unlike Bitcoin, Dash mixes up users’ transactions so that it’s nearly impossible to trace a payment to a person. But the promise of Dash’s privacy features solves a problem for only a small subset of Bitcoin users.

Few have heard of other crypto-currencies. If people barely understand Bitcoin, then any competitor has the impossible task of differentiating itself.

In his paper Basu mentioned Bitcoin by name, so did the IRS when it said it was a taxable asset. And this week Benjamin M. Lawsky, the superintendent of financial services for the State of New York, proposed regulations to create a “BitLicense” to include rules on consumer protection, the prevention of money laundering and cybersecurity. That’s akin to Apple successfully rebranding the MP3 to a podcast.

Just search “20 USD in BTC” on Google and you’ll get the exchange rate. It works for any fiat currency. You can’t do that with any other crypto-currency.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $600. Not bad for a five year old Ponzi scheme.

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Satoshi
, , , ,
adoption, Articles, bitcoin, bitcoin network, cryptocurrency, cryptoeconomics
12 Jul 0

Analysts: Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF to pass SEC approval

As the Winklevoss twin’s highly-anticipated, not to mention first of its kind bitcoin exchange traded fund, inches its way towards becoming a reality, ETF analysts are weighing on the likeliness of the fund securing the SEC’s approval. 
Chief Investment Officer of ETF.com, Dave Nadig, tells International Business Times: 
“I don’t see very much in the way of impediments to it at this point, “everything I see in the Bitcoin filing is by the book so it would be a surprise if they officially deny it. If they pocket veto it and kind of ignore it for a while… that’s a possibility.”
The Winklevoss twins, who have claimed to own as many as 1% of all bitcoins in circulation, recently revealed in their fourth filing since the ETF’s initial proposal that the fund will trade on the NASDAQ under the ‘COIN’ symbol.
The twins’ bitcoin ETF seeks to appeal to investors who want to get in on the digital currency under regulated conditions, which further opens the door to large institutional investors who cannot yet hold bitcoin directly on brokerage statements. Furthermore, the fund hopes to mitigate the risk often associated with storing the digital currency while providing a template for tax reporting. 
ETFtrends web editor, Todd Shriber explains: 
“If the Bitcoin ETF is classified as a commodity ETF, the rate of tax they’ll be paying will much higher than if they bought a currency ETF.”
ETFtrends.com editor and president of Global Trends Investments, Tom Lydon says that given the twins’ openness about the status of the ETF, which can only go so far due to SEC laws and procedures, the likeness of it securing approval is highly likely: 
“I would feel strongly it’s going to happen it may not be as soon as people would hope, I wouldn’t imagine they would continue talking about it and making progress if in fact it would not come to fruition.”
Lydon tells IBT that the largest impediment in terms of acquiring investors will lie in the education of those interested parties. However, thankfully, he adds, “they’re pretty good at explaining what Bitcoin is.”

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Satoshi
, ,
adoption, Articles, news, Regulation
bitindexchart 630x396
10 Jul 0

Pantera Launches BitIndex to Track Bitcoin

Pantera Capital, an investment fund that focuses on bitcoin, has announced an index it says will allow investors to track the cryptocurrency over a medium-term timeframe.
(CoinDesk) Dubbed the BitIndex, it takes into account seven different factors that Pantera believes accurately charts bitcoin’s overall progress.
What’s interesting is Pantera Capital is not including price in the BitIndex, instead tracking other data sources that it believes lends to bitcoin’s technological progression.
In the fund’s monthly report for June, Pantera stated:
“While some other indices also offer guidance (such as trade in USD), we chose not to include them because of unreliable data, limited availability, or other statistical problems.”

Components of index

The seven measures that the BitIndex includes, in order of importance, is as follows:
  1. Developer interest on GitHub.
  2. Merchant adoption as a measure of consumer adoption.
  3. Wikipedia views measuring bitcoin education.
  4. Hashrate by logarithmic scale corresponding to orders of magnitude.
  5. Google searches captured by the number of times “bitcoin” appears.
  6. User adoption as measured by wallets.
  7. Transaction volume on the bitcoin network.
Pantera’s letter does not indicate how it calculates the merchant adoption metric, although statistics for hashrate, user adoption by wallets and transaction volume are publicly available from a number of different data sources.
Information from websites such as GitHub for developer interest, as well as Wikipedia and Google to identify mainstream interest and popularity, is also readily available.
While it appears the BitIndex closely followed pricing movements in the latter half of last year, measurements the fund uses show that, despite negative news events like Mt. Gox and the US Marshals’ BTC auction, bitcoin is on an uptrend.

Always about price

BitIndex offers a different look at technological aspects of bitcoin rather than infatuation with the cryptocurrency’s valuation.
In fact, the firm says that it is value distortions that influenced the creation of BitIndex, specifying, “price manipulation at Mt. Gox and/or the Chinese and in the first quarter of 2014 due to the collapse of Mt. Gox”, as problems defining bitcoin’s true worth.
There is a lot of interest in bitcoin’s value, and the vast number of exchanges with different prices has created a need for composite pricing information.
CoinDesk has its Bitcoin Price Index and the Winklevoss twins, who are major investors in bitcoin and are trying to launch an ETF for the cryptocurrency, also have the creatively named Winkdex.
However, Pantera states unequivocally in its letter that the BitIndex gives people a longer-range view of bitcoin than what price indexes offer:
“Pantera has developed the BitIndex to inform our views on bitcoin. It is not a tool to forecast bitcoin’s price. This index is designed to assist us in forming our views on what may happen to bitcoin in the medium term.”

Focus on investing

While the BitIndex may provide a glimpse into where bitcoin is going, it is questionable whether it offers insight into the bitcoin economy’s adoption rate as a store of value – seemingly something Pantera’s investment clients would be wanting the firm to do.
“The index looks at the interest level across a couple key populations: general public, users, developers, and merchants, and should be a pretty accurate judge of the overall growth of bitcoin”, said Andy Beal, a lawyer with Crowley Strategy that advises bitcoin startups.
He added, however:
“The only group that was not included that can really affect growth is investors.”
Pantera is backed by Fortress Investment Group, Ribbit Capital and Benchmark Partners. Its focus on bitcoin began in 2013, and the firm invests directly in BTC as well as funds startups that operate within the industry.
Bloomberg’s company overview information indicates that, prior to concentrating on bitcoin, Pantera Capital previously invested in public equity, fixed income, currency and commodity markets.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Satoshi
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adoption, Articles, bitcoin, bitcoin network, price
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