Chinese Web Search Giant Baidu Now Accepts Bitcoin

As I have maintained on many occasions, reports of the death of Bitcoin have been greatly exaggerated. If anything, the news related to the most popular crypto-currency ever has only gotten considerably more positive in the wake of the raid on Silk Road. The most recent development is that massive web services site Baidu, Inc. has started to accept Bitcoin for its Jiasule service. I wonder if this is in any way related to the recent Chinese calls for a new reserve currency, as I can’t imagine the company would go ahead with accepting BTC without at least some “all clear” from authorities. If this signals implicit approval for Bitcoin by political leaders in China (it’s too early to tell), it would have paradigm-shifting global consequences.

Here’s the BTC chart. You make your own judgement:

Screen Shot 2013-10-15 at 12.24.34 PM

From CoinDesk:

Search engine giant Baidu has announced it is now accepting payment in bitcoin for its Jiasule service, which improves websites’ performance, speed and security.

Founded in January 2000, Baidu is similar to Google in that its offers a variety of tools and services to produce information and products in response to search terms, however, Baidu is specific to Chinese-language search terms.

Rough translation of the company’s news release:

Baidu Jiasule Accepts Bitcoin Payment

How can we reflect the characteristics of a trendy IT person and a professional webmaster? The answer, of course, is to own bitcoins!!!

Bitcoin is a new kind of electronic currency, a digital transfer medium, which has already received a high degree of international recognition, and has already reached into our daily lives. It can be used to buy a cup of coffee, or exchanged for gold and silver. In China, bitcoin is considered quite “trendy”.

Today, I have good news for everyone: from 14 October 2013 onwards, Baidu Jiasule will officially support bitcoin payments. Baidu Jiasule users can use bitcoin to pay for any Jiasule services. Baidu Jiasule, as the innovator of the Internet, has become the first cloud services vendor to support bitcoin, giving us richer payment methods and experience.

In the future, Baidu Jiasule will continue to try more new things, giving everyone more convenient payment options.

Bitcoin has been gaining in popularity in China over recent months, with data on SourceForge showing downloads of the Bitcoin-QT in China reaching 250,443 so far this year, beaten only by the US with 503,819 but ahead of the UK with 106,931.

Not only this, but the volume of bitcoins traded with Chinese yuan is increasing.Bitcoincharts shows that Chinese yuan currently accounts for 12% of the total bitcoin exchange volume, while 68% is in US dollars and euro at 6%.

“For the first time in human history, bitcoin has allowed people to save and defer purchasing power, in a digital form. The Chinese people love this concept! It explains bitcoin’s fast adoption in China this year – 2013 has been a breakout year for bitcoin, and even more so in China,” he said.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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6 thoughts on “Chinese Web Search Giant Baidu Now Accepts Bitcoin”

  1. That’s why BTC has nowhere to go but up up up! It’s so obvious and there is nothing the banksters can do in the short term. So get in now before it starts to really ramp up into the hundreds and then thousands of phony fiat currency to one BTC.

    Reply
  2. Please keep an eye and report on Bitcoin and China. If this story is confirmed then folks start to realize that China is willing to use BTC against the USD it shouldn’t take long for BTC to fly past $200 again. Permanently.

    Reply

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