Tony Gallippi

Want to Receive Part of Your Paycheck in Bitcoin? Here’s How…

by

I’ve covered Bitcoin payment processor BitPay on many occasions over the past year or so. The pioneering company provides an invaluable service to merchants that want to allow their customers to pay for goods and services in Bitcoin without taking on any currency risk. Well, they have now branched out into what seems to be a perfectly complimentary business, allowing employers that don’t deal with Bitcoin directly to pay their employees in Bitcoin should they so desire.

This will be achieved via the Bitcoin “Payroll API,” which is currently in beta release open to employers in the states of Georgia (where BitPay is based) and South Carolina. All 20 of BitPay’s employees receive some of their compensation in Bitcoin, and the project got kickstarted after many of BitPay’s own employees asked for something similar. CEO of BitPay Tony Gallippi receives 100% of his pay in Bitcoin.

However, this is not the only milestone for the company. A few days ago I pointed out that the company was signing up a staggering 1,000 merchants a week, and now it has been announced they have surpassed the 20,000 merchant threshold.

It’s interesting to think that a currency originally involved primarily in online gaming, which can be accessed at such venues as BitBet.com, has now spread so quickly into the mainstream with retailers such as Overstock accepting it.

This development is truly incredible, and allowing people to receive a small part of their salary in Bitcoin will only further its development as an genuine real world currency people and businesses want to both use and hold on to.

More from Coindesk:

What’s the easiest way to get bitcoins into your wallet? Answer: Get paid in bitcoin. BitPay, the world’s largest digital currency payment processor, now lets employees do that with the beta release of its Bitcoin Payroll API for employers.

American W-2 employees (see below) can elect to have all, or part, of their salary paid in bitcoin for every pay period. It works as a ‘net payroll deduction’, meaning taxes and garnishes are removed from an employee’s gross income first, and the bitcoin portion is deducted from take-home pay.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Inside Bitcoins: Welcome to Satoshi Square

by

Yesterday was an absolutely amazing, jam-packed day at the Inside Bitcoins Conference in New York City, and I want to start out by thanking MediaBistro for putting it on and for having me as a media partner. 250-300 people attended the event, and roughly 30 of them took it to the next level and paid for their ticket in bitcoin.

BitInstant
The event kicked off with keynote speaker Charlie Shrem, founder and CEO of BitInstant. For those who aren’t familiar with it, BitInstant is one of the more convenient ways to acquire bitcoins for cash. Incredibly, he is a mere 23-years old and started the company while still enrolled at Brooklyn College. He shared his experience of pitching venture capital firm after venture capital firm, and his subsequent rejection by each and every one of them. He eventually convinced his mother to seed him the $10,000 needed to start the company.

Shortly after the speech, I was able to chat with Charlie in the hallway and he couldn’t have been nicer. He immediately pointed to my “Bought with Bitcoin” shirt and told me he wanted one. The shirt’s in the mail man.

Regulatory Panel
From there, the conference proceeded with a perfect mix of both subject specific panels and individual speakers. On the panel discussing regulatory issues, a really interesting debate emerged that I had not read about previously. It revolved around whether under the recent FinCEN guidelines on virtual currencies, bitcoin “miners” are considered money transmitters and thus require registration as such. Neither side could find agreement on the issue, which highlights just how much of a wild, wild-west type environment it still is.

BitPay
CEO Tony Gallippi of BitPay was a huge highlight for me. Not only have I recently integrated BitPay on Liberty Blitzkrieg to sell my Bitcoin shirts, but it was the company’s stunning growth earlier this year that got me obsessed with the entire topic. Back in late March, BitPay had 4,000 merchants and was adding them at a mind-boggling rate of 1,000 per month. Fortunately for them, they continued on that pace and Tony reported 8,000 merchants had signed up as of yesterday. Amazing.

Mr. Gallippi also made a particularly significant point about BitPay that I hadn’t even considered, one which represents a huge positive for any merchant using them. He noted that companies can avoid potentially burdensome accounting and reporting requirements since the merchant doesn’t legally hold any bitcoins themselves unless they want to.

However, the most powerful thing Tony covered was his discussion on some of the ways that banks are already going after merchants for accepting bitcoin by shutting down their bank accounts in retribution. Even more interesting, Tony sees the biggest future concern being that payment companies like Visa and MasterCard will threaten to pull their services from merchants that also accept bitcoin. Since merchants might get 95% of their revenue via the conduit of these payment companies, they would probably quickly kick Bitcoin to the curb. I think his foresight on this issue, as well as the fact he is already rallying people to prepare for it, makes him an even more impressive CEO and leader in the space than I thought.

Adam B. Levine – YouTube is Broken
Adam has a quick and interesting mind, one that hits you like a hurricane the moment he starts speaking. I was really excited for his talk, since he was focused on what I think is one of the biggest business problems on the web today. This has to do with the inefficiencies of website monetization. As a guy that runs podcasts, his particular area of concern was youtube. He demonstrated that by placing a QR code within videos to allow bitcoin donations, he was able to earn multiples of what he could via traditional ad networks. This really impressed me, mainly because such a small percentage of the population has ever owned a bitcoin.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

The Inside Bitcoins Conference is Almost Here – July 30th in NYC

by

It’s only two weeks away and I am getting excited about attending my first ever Bitcoin conference in NYC on July 30th. Bitcoin has held a spot in my psyche ever since I first heard of the crypto-currency a couple of years ago and learned of the motivation behind its creator. It’s been amazing to … Read more

Peter Thiel Gets the Bitcoin Bug

by

Interesting news out today in the Bitcoin world.  As you may recall, last week I highlighted how the highly respected venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson, early investor in Twitter) invested in Coinbase.  Today we learn that another very high profile investor has plunged into the Bitcoin pool.  In this case it’s Peter Thiel, and his investment is in BTC merchant processor Bitpay, a company I have highlighted previously on several occasions.  Back in March I noted that the company was putting up mind-boggling growth rate numbers.  Incredibly, the tremendous growth rate continues as they added another 1,900 merchants in April and are currently signing up around 100 additional merchants a day.  Max Keiser, one of the earliest proponents of Bitcoin and a celebrated bankster fighter is also involved in the investment.  From Coindesk:

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is leading a group of investors into funding the merchant services firm BitPay.

BitPay, which offers corporate Bitcoin services, said it had not been looking for funding but the opportunity was too good to turn down.

BitPay founder and CEO Tony Gallippi said: “We raised seed funding in January and February and still had some left so we weren’t looking for money. They approached us, which was a nice surprise because we’d heard that they’d got as far as due diligence with another company in this space. We were really impressed with their experience and energy.”

Asked about yesterday’s action against Dwolla Gallippi said much of the coverage was wrong and once you looked at the actual warrant it was clear it was a very specific problem of non-compliance – “the shell company was not licensed to do what it was doing.”

BitPay claimed 1,900 new merchants signed up in April and it continues to sign up over 100 new customers every day. It is currently processing around $5m of Bitcoin transactions per month.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.