Monthly Archives: December 2013

Central Banks in New Zealand and Australia Issue Bitcoin Warning

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“Representatives from the central banks of New Zealand and Australia have issued their own official warnings on bitcoin, terming the currency ‘interesting, but risky’.  John McDermott, assistant governor at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), said banks and businesses should ‘tread very carefully’ with the digital currency, in a report by the Wall Street Journal.   RBNZ Governor Graeme Wheeler cited price volatility as a cause for concern.  Next door, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Glenn Stevens, said he was ‘still trying to understand’ the cryptocurrency during an interview with theAustralian Financial Review.”

http://www.coindesk.com/central-bank-new-zealand-australia-bitcoin-warning/

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Most Americans Don’t Know Bitcoin

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“Some Americans think Bitcoin is an Xbox game. Others think it might be an iPhone app. The majority have no idea it’s a virtual currency they can use to buy everything from T-shirts to Tesla Motors sedans, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.  Only 42 percent of Americans who responded to the Dec. 6-9 telephone survey correctly identified Bitcoin, which has gained more than 80-fold in value this year as its popularity expands.  Bitcoins, which exist as software and aren’t regulated by any country or banking authority, are accepted at businesses ranging from a Lamborghini dealership in Costa Mesa,California, to a Peruvian food truck in Washington.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/most-americans-don-t-know-bitcoin-while-some-guess-xbox.html

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Bitcoin’s Evolution Will be SWIFT

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“By granting individual businesses the ability to instantly settle international transactions the creative destruction of the marketplace has obliterated the hold that banks have over these long-distance payments through the SWIFT, TIPANET or any of the dozens of RTGS networks around the world.  As adoption of bitcoin grows, it will displace more and more of the global M2 supply and, consequently, grow exponentially in value.  Below you will see the value of bitcoin in today’s dollars should it expand to a certain portion of the whole of M2.  For convenience, I’ve also put in the fractional units of bitcoin; milli and microbitcoins as you will soon be denominating bitcoin transactions in that manner.”

http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2013/12/10/bitcoin%E2%80%99s-evolution-will-be-swift.html

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Coinbase’s Plan to Secure Your Bitcoin

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“Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong tells FORBES how they want to use their most recent $25 million investment round and hope to change the way e-commerce is done.”

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Bitcoin market price app, ‘Bitcoin Alarm,’ is carefully cloaked malware

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“The desktop Windows application sends price alerts by SMS to a mobile phone. But closer examination of its code turned up several suspicious traits that indicate it may try to steal the virtual currency, wrote Kenny MacDermid, a research analyst with security company Arbor Networks.  Tucked inside Bitcoin Alarm is a script that checks whether security software from Avast is running. If so, it stays quiet for 20 seconds.  An encrypted file inside Bitcoin Alarm turned out to be a remote-access Trojan called NetWiredRC, which can be used to steal login credentials and, in this case, bitcoins, he wrote.”

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2080041/bitcoin-market-price-app-bitcoin-alarm-is-carefully-cloaked-malware.html

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Bitcoin and Intrinsic Value: a Layman’s Response to Alan Greenspan

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“Once upon a time, at the end of the last millennium, I founded and led the first games company to sell virtual goods or virtual currency for real money.  We sold (and still sell) ‘credits’ – virtual currency that is bought for real money, which players can use to buy other things in our games.  When I first started selling credits, a lot of people, including almost everyone in the games industry who was aware of what we were doing, thought it was ridiculous. The general criticism was along the lines of: ‘Why would someone pay real money for a fake sword?’  16 years later, people are still buying these credits, and they’re even used to pay other people for third-party services around our games.”

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-intrinsic-value-alan-greenspan/

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Bitcoin goes big: Wall Street, Silicon Valley aboard

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“Scoff if you like but bitcoin, despite its myriad defects and detractors, is getting an increasing level of focus in high finance.  Just a few recent examples.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101268674

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Fidelity halts bitcoin investments from IRAs

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“Fidelity Investments is no longer allowing clients to invest in the virtual currency bitcoin through SecondMarket’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, a representative for Fidelity told MarketWatch on Thursday.  On Thursday, a Fidelity spokesman told MarketWatch that such investments are no longer allowed. The spokesman couldn’t confirm when or why the policy was changed.  ‘On an individual basis, we allowed an investor to invest in that Bitcoin Investment Trust,’ said Rob Beauregard, director of public relations at Fidelity, in a telephone interview Thursday morning. ‘We are no longer allowing that.'”

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/12/12/fidelity-halts-bitcoin-investments-from-iras/

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Bitcoin Fever Catches on in India

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“Last week, a beauty salon in the north India town of Chandigarh said it would accept bitcoins as payment for its services. Nisha Singh, owner of CastleBloom Beauty Bar, says she wanted to give her customers another payment option and also attract publicity for being one of the first Indian stores to accept bitcoins.  Devansh Agarwal, a 22-year-old undergraduate student of engineering in a small town named Jamshedpur in eastern India, says he is trying to set up his own bitcoin exchange.  Mr. Agarwal bought his first bitcoins in July with prize money won in college quiz competitions. He says his 100,000-rupee ($1,640) investment in bitcoins is now worth one million rupees ($16,400).”

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/12/12/bitcoin-fever-catches-on-in-india/

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Baidu-owned Hao123 Launches Dedicated Bitcoin News Portal

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“There were signs of bitcoin life from Chinese internet giant Baidu this week: Hao123, one of its subsidiaries and China’s largest web directory, launched a dedicated bitcoin channel and news aggregator for bitcoin-related stories.  As well as headlines for all the latest bitcoin news, the new site also features a chart with all the latest bitcoin (and even litecoin) exchange rates in Chinese yuan from the leading exchanges.  There is a timeline of major events in the history of the world’s first cryptocurrency, starting from ‘January 3rd 2009: Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first 50 Bitcoins on a server located in Helsinki, Finland,’ and ending with ‘Future: ?’  Alexa ranks Hao123′s traffic 17th globally and 5th in China.”

http://www.coindesk.com/baidu-hao123-launches-bitcoin-news-portal/

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