Category Archives: Bitcoin

The Evolution of Giving: Bitcoin
Charities need more transparency. Charities cannot be dealing with transactions fees. Giving needs to be seamless. Bitcoin can help. 🙂 VISIT -- https://www.changetip.com JOIN -- http://www.tip.me...

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The Evolution of Giving: Bitcoin - Video

Editors note: Contributor Kevin Cruz writes for BitcoinMagazine and so he knows a few things about Bitcoin. But with the help of a BTC to cash service he tried to live for weeks using only bitcoin.

I write for a living and sometimes people pay me in bitcoins. Im aware that Im being paid in a currency that hasnt reached mainstream adoption, but I keep collecting them to see what happens.

Last month, while writing a book review late in the night, I got a phone call from an unknown number. It was a guy named Cyril Houri from a Bitcoin company called Brawker.

He had a proposition that blew me away: he would help me to live solely on bitcoins for a month. I was going to be his guinea pig.

Brawker allows people to buy and spend bitcoins by matching a bitcoin holder with a credit card holder; The credit card holder pays for a good/service and receives the bitcoins in return. Effectively, this provides a platform for people to buy bitcoins.

More important for you to know while reading this story: the platform allows people to use bitcoins anywhere, with a considerable discount.

I didnt know where I would spend them, or where this journey would end, but I accepted. This was an opportunity I could not turn down. It was time to make some magic.

I used Brawker to buy most of the things on this journey, and Ive indicated the instances in which I used another method.

Week 1

I was living at my aunts apartment in New York City where I paid no rent or electricity, and travelled using public transportation (no need to buy gas).

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Living On Bitcoin | TechCrunch

Provided by Quartz Nice costume, but bitcoin's days as a fad are up.

For all the volatility in bitcoin pricing, 2014 may be looked back on as a year when Bitcoin began to move past the proof-of-concept stage and toward a mainstream market. Some 6.6 million Bitcoin wallets have been set up so far this year, according to Coindesk, a fivefold increase over 2013. And 75,000 merchants now accept the digital currency, including giants like Dell, Expedia and Overstock.

But one area of the Bitcoin economy is maturing much faster than the others, to the point where profits are increasingly harder to come by and consolidation and diversification are already happening: the mining of bitcoins. For years, bitcoins were mined largely by a far-flung network of desktop hobbyists. But increasingly, a smaller group of companies building large data centers set up for the sole task of mining new bitcoins.

Although mining is a throwback to pre-digital era of pickaxes and gold pans, bitcoins are mined in a unique way, by harnessing computing power to confirm transactions on a public ledger and increase security on the network. Miners compete not only to confirm transactions but to solve calculations that typically grow more difficult over time. The details of the process can be arcane, but the end result for miners is clear: rewards in transaction fees and freshly minted bitcoins.

In Bitcoins earliest years, mining could easily be handled by desktop computers running a CPU or a powerful graphics chip. As more would-be miners emerged, companies like BitFury, KnCMiners and Cointerra began to sell ASIC chips designed for a single task: running mining software. Bitcoin developers, hobbyists and speculators found mining to be an easy and often profitable way to get involved in the Bitcoin economy.

Quickly enough, that began to change. By design, the bitcoin reward offered for each block mined decreases over time. Currently, about 3,600 bitcoins are mined each day but the competition for them has surged over the past year. As economies of scale began to kick in, some miners found they needed to constantly spend the bitcoins they were earning on the latest, fastest hardware just to stay in the game. The hobbyist became sidelined, and the typical bitcoin miner became the industrial operator of data centers that could consume 10 or 20 megawatts of energy.

The Bitcoin mining industry is on its way to consolidation, as a few highly-skilled and well-capitalized vendors drive the industry, says Valery Vavilov, CEO of BitFury, which sells mining gear, operates 40 megawatts of bitcoin data centers around the world and plans to boost its capacity to 100 megawatts.

Only market players that can deliver the most energy-efficient equipment with the most cost-efficient capital and operating costs will thrive, says Vavilov, while small players with limited capability will struggle or drop out of the Bitcoin race, which will result in a narrowing of the field over time.

Several factors determine who profits the most from Bitcoin miningpower consumption, data-center speed and cost, electricity rates and the current price of bitcoin. Each month, it becomes harder for a small player to keep up. The costs of new ASIC miners alone are steep: The price of current cutting-edge processors can run $5,000 or more apiece, while cheaper offerings can be unreliable in quality or even fraudulent.

The higher-priced mining equipment can employ 20-nanometer chipsrivaling speeds from Intel and AMDand even faster 16-nanometer chips are on the way. Ever-powerful processors are necessary because the difficulty of the math calculations required to mine Bitcoins is designed to increase as competition grows. That level of difficulty can rise substantially in a matter of weeks, rendering mining equipment outdated between the time its ordered and the time it finally arrives.

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Gold rush days of Bitcoin mining are over, and not because of price

The U.K. government, led by chancellor George Osborne, wants London to become the world's bitcoin hub. Meanwhile, the Bank of England has released a study detailing the digital currency's virtues. So why, under the surface, is there a "chilling effect" threatening to derail a sector that could bring millions to the economy?

Around the world, mainstream banks afraid of fines and regulatory controls are shutting out firms that provide bitcoin-related services or even associate with the cryptocurrency.

Any bitcoin business can tell you how hard it is to set up a U.K. bank account. Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited (GAJL), advisors to the Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund (GABI), has claimed that HSBC shut down its account recently. Danny Masters, the director of the company - which is fully regulated in Jersey - told CNBC that the excuse given was that in HSBC's opinion GAJL no longer met the "risk reward" profile of the bank and was a "potential money laundering risk."

Read More Bitcoin set to take over the financial world: Book

Reports from industry website CoinDesk in September said that Wells Fargo in the U.S. have done similar with San Francisco-based startup called QuickCoin. In the Isle of Man, Capital Treasury Services (CTS), which provides financial services to bitcoin businesses, announced September that it was no longer working with bitcoin firms, citing the "highly regulated environment."

Meanwhile, the not-for-profit Bitcoin Foundation - which aims to promote and protect the cryptocurrency - has told CNBC that it has been repeatedly turned down for a U.K. bank account because "bitcoin" was in its name. Meanwhile in China, government pressure on state-lenders has even managed to roil the price of the digital currency.

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Why the world's banks should stop shunning bitcoin

MADEIRA BEACH The Alligator Attraction is a classic Florida joint, the kind of place where tizzied tourists can toss turkey dogs to snappy reptiles. But this week, old-school fun will start accepting new-school funds: bitcoin, an online "cryptocurrency" that has gained buzz if not exactly a stronghold in the financial realm the past few years.

"There are so many benefits to bitcoin," says Sonny Flynn, business manager at Alligator Attraction, home of Chompers the star reptile, who, it should be noted, doesn't care how you pay for his snacks. "It's hack-proof. There's no transaction fee. It's almost as if you are paying in cash."

With the ESPN Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl at Tropicana Field on Friday, and thousands of football fans in town to watch the tilt between North Carolina State and Central Florida, some 100 bay area merchants will celebrate by accepting bitcoin paperless digital currency that can be used in lieu of cash, checks or credit cards. (See our sidebar for a bitcoin tutorial.)

Madeira Beach where a "Beach Bash" party will go down starting at 3 p.m. today for teams, cheerleaders and fans is the hub of the bitcoin boom in Tampa Bay. Myriad John's Pass Village & Boardwalk stores are now equipped with the necessary technology to process bitcoin currency. Some software, a tablet and a consumer's smart phone are all that's really needed to make the cyberdeal. Want a scoop of strawberry at the Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor? Bitcoin can sate that sweet tooth.

"As a merchant, it's the greatest thing in the world," says Doug Andrews, recreation director for the City of Madeira Beach. A store sets up with a bitcoin conversion company, one of the benefits being lower fees than dealing with credit-card companies. Then, "every 24 hours, a merchant gets money" converted back into U.S. dollars "wired into their account. This is a very unique concept."

Next year, Madeira Beach will allow scofflaws to pay for parking tickets using bitcoin, making this one of the first towns in the world to uniformly adopt bitcoin as a prime source of payment.

"You can even buy diamonds with bitcoin," says Ashley Wheeler, the Bitcoin Bowl's director of corporate sponsorship and events. Indeed, Continental Wholesale Diamonds in Tampa will also gladly take your bitcoin. The conversion is basically the same: If a diamond ring is priced at $10,000 U.S. dollars, you're still paying $10,000 U.S. dollars even when paying via bitcoin.

Situated next to Tropicana Field, Ferg's Sports Bar and Grill in St. Petersburg will have a bitcoin ATM machine on the premises. Instead of dispensing dollar bills, it will gobble them up, converting the money into digital currency stored on your smart phone, which can then be used to buy, say, an $8.99 plate of nuclear wings.

Local restaurateur Steve Westphal is accepting bitcoin at his hotspots, including 400 Beach Seafood and Tap House in downtown St. Petersburg. John Ruetz, general manager of 400 Beach, says right now bitcoin is a "novelty" at best, although "good PR is good PR," so he's all in.

The brainchild of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (who is popularly described as either one person or a group of people), bitcoin gained controversial buzz over the past few years as a nerd-friendly alternative to the physical demands of cash money and the negatives surrounding credit cards, including fraud and charges. Merchants usually get dinged about 3 percent per credit card transaction.

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At ESPN Bitcoin Bowl, push is on for football and cryptocurrency

The U.K. government, led by chancellor George Osborne, wants London to become the world's bitcoin hub. Meanwhile, the Bank of England has released a study detailing the digital currency's virtues. So why, under the surface, is there a "chilling effect" threatening to derail a sector that could bring millions to the economy?

Around the world, mainstream banks afraid of fines and regulatory controls are shutting out firms that provide bitcoin-related services or even associate with the cryptocurrency.

Any bitcoin business can tell you how hard it is to set up a U.K. bank account. Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited (GAJL), advisors to the Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund (GABI), has claimed that HSBC shut down its account recently. Danny Masters, the director of the company - which is fully regulated in Jersey - told CNBC that the excuse given was that in HSBC's opinion GAJL no longer met the "risk reward" profile of the bank and was a "potential money laundering risk."

Read More Bitcoin set to take over the financial world: Book

Reports from industry website CoinDesk in September said that Wells Fargo in the U.S. have done similar with San Francisco-based startup called QuickCoin. In the Isle of Man, Capital Treasury Services (CTS), which provides financial services to bitcoin businesses, announced September that it was no longer working with bitcoin firms, citing the "highly regulated environment."

Meanwhile, the not-for-profit Bitcoin Foundation - which aims to promote and protect the cryptocurrency - has told CNBC that it has been repeatedly turned down for a U.K. bank account because "bitcoin" was in its name. Meanwhile in China, government pressure on state-lenders has even managed to roil the price of the digital currency.

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Why the banks should stop shunning bitcoin

NC State #39;s Dave Doeren Previews Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl | ACC Now
Wolfpack head coach Dave Doeren praises his team for a successful 2014 season and details why a victory will be so important for his team over Central Florid...

By: ACC Digital Network

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NC State's Dave Doeren Previews Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl | ACC Now - Video

2014 Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl Preview
Visit TheAmerican.org for more information.

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2014 Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl Preview - Video

New York Regulator Lays Out Tweaks to Bitcoin Rules
After receiving a round of public comments, New York state plans to soften proposed rules for virtual currencies such as bitcoin, its banking regulator said ...

By: WochitGeneralNews

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New York Regulator Lays Out Tweaks to Bitcoin Rules - Video

Tap Titans - If Bitcoin Billionaire Was A RPG!
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Tap Titans - If Bitcoin Billionaire Was A RPG! - Video