Coinbase

This is Huge – Bitcoin Apps May Finally be Coming to Apple

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Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 5.56.51 PMApple’s brand suffered earlier this year when the company decided to ban the  Blockchain Bitcoin app. In fact, it unleashed such a firestorm that diehard technologists and Bitcoin fans took to YouTube to post videos of themselves destroying their iPhones in a number of creative ways, including with a sniper rifle and a machete. In the event you haven’t seen these before, you can watch some of them here.

Moving along to the topic at hand, many people are closely scrutinizing Apple’s policies today due to the kickoff of the company’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference. For folks within the Bitcoin community, focus has been on a small recent entry within the section on “Purchasing and Currencies” within the document: App Store Review Guidelines. See below:

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BitPay Purportedly Raises $30 Million from Investors Including Richard Branson in Largest Bitcoin Investment Round Ever

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Very, very big news just broke in the Bitcoin space. According to TechCrunch, Bitcoin payment processor Bitpay has just raised $30 million in what would be the largest single round of fundraising ever in the Bitcoin space. It slightly surpasses the prior largest round, announced late last year by the other major Bitcoin payment processor Coinbase for $25 million.

BitPay is a company that is very familiar to readers of this site. It has experienced exponential growth over the past year or so. I most recently highlighted this in my post: BitPay is Now Adding 1,000 New Merchants Per Week.

This round implies a total valuation for BitPay of $160 million and it makes me wonder whether or not it could herald the beginning of another major move higher in the Bitcoin price. All year, I have been saying that I didn’t think the price would move until the summer. With summer less than two months away, I will become much more sensitive to news.

What makes this investment even more exciting is that Richard Branson (and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang) is purported to be involved. Considering his company Virgin Galatic has already been accepting bitcoin via BitPay, he is clearly impressed with the company and sees a very bright future for Bitcoin. As do I. This is big.

From TechCrunch:

We’re hearing that BitPay, a platform that processes payments in bitcoin for merchants, is raising the field’s biggest round yet. The company is raising $30 million on a roughly $160 million valuation in a round led by Index Ventures, with Richard Branson and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang participating. BitPay declined to comment.

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Zillow CEO and Wikipedia Co-Founder Publicly Warm Up to Bitcoin

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The reason Bitcoin refuses to “die”, is because it represents a genuine technological breakthrough in payments. The reason it hasn’t been exposed as a “ponzi scheme”, is because it isn’t one.

Earlier today, I came across a very powerful quote on Twitter by Erik Voorhees:

From my own personal experience, I have found the above sentiment to be completely true.

The more people actually look into Bitcoin, rather than simply dismiss it with superficial judgments, the more people recognize its incredible potential. A recent case in point seems to be Spencer Rascoff, CEO of online real estate database Zillow.

As Coindesk points out, last November Rascoff said on Bloomberg TV:

“I am sceptical of bitcoin. I just think there’s too much shadiness associated with the currency that’s not maintained by some sort of government or central bank. And I think it will blow up at some point, with some big scandal where someone loses 50, a 100 million dollars, and I don’t think it is going to be here in five years.”

Well, $475 million in customer funds have been lost via the Mt. Gox debacle and, despite some wild prices swings, there ultimately has been zero price impact. To borrow a phrase from Nassim Taleb, Bitcoin is the definition of anti-fragile.

It seems that time (and a conversation with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) has changed his tune. Yesterday, the Zillow CEO Tweeted:

Meanwhile, just last week the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, tweeted the following:

Wales subsequently posted a BTC address and the unsolicited donations started flooding in. I guess this was the Bitcoin community’s way of demonstrating its power (just as it did with the $28k recently donated to Dorian Nakamoto). By the end of today, the donations had climbed to over $11k. He tweeted:

While increased mainstream adoption by influential individuals is important, merchant adoption is equally key, and good news on this front has continued with today’s announcement by Big Fish that it will use Coinbase to accept payments in BTC.

So what’s Big Fish?

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Video of the Day – Hitler Responds to Bitcoin Surviving the Mt. Gox Collapse

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Here’s the latest in a long running series of creative Hitler video spoofs, which cover various contemporary topics of interest. This latest one takes on the recent chaos happening in the Bitcoin world, specifically related to the collapse of Mt. Gox (read my thoughts on this topic here). This video covers a lot of ground, … Read more

Wall Street Gets Bitcoin Fever – Wedbush Securities to Accept BTC for Research

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In what is probably the single most important positive headline since Overstock’s announcement that it would accept Bitcoin, Wedbush Securities has just announced it has become the first U.S institutional brokerage to accept bitcoin as payment for its research coverage. They will be partnering with Coinbase. So while JP Morgan has its head up its ass writing … Read more

Video of the Day – Man Flies from London to Tokyo to Confront Mt. Gox CEO

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Readers of this website know that I am no fan of Mt. Gox, something I outlined last weekend in my post: My Thoughts on Mt. Gox. Reports of freaked out customers flying long distances to Japan to complain about the exchange are nothing new. In fact, an Australian man’s journey was the first to go … Read more

Feeling a Little Insecure? JP Morgan Issues a Report Critical of Bitcoin

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Now this is special. John Normand, JP Morgan’s head of global FX strategy has just issued a report on Bitcoin to educate his “sophisticated” clientele on why they must avoid the revolutionary payment protocol and currency Bitcoin. Coindesk has done some excellent reporting on the matter. They write:

Released on 11th February, a new report by US-based multinational financial services company JPMorgan issued a sharp critique of bitcoin and other digital currencies.

The eight-page report, authored by the company’s head of global FX strategy, John Normand, aimed to present the “risks and opportunities” posed by bitcoin.

Normand writes:

“As a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value, it is vastly inferior to fiat currencies.

Since governments are quite unlikely to accord it the status of legal tender, bitcoin or other virtual currencies would not reach the scale and scope to render them worthwhile for widespread commerce, payments or investment.”

Normand explains:

“Recall that currencies don’t become widely used spontaneously or through a grassroots campaign. They become widely used nationally because a government declares them legal tender, and they become widely used internationally because they are legal tender in a significant economic area with large, unrestricted capital markets.”

Yes slaves, don’t try anything new. Sure, Bitcoin has gone from nothing to a $8 billion valuation in five years, nothing to see here. Obey. Your government loves you. Only politicians and Central Banksters are sophisticated enough to create money and handle it. Don’t get any big ideas. Think small, that’s where we want you serfs.

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My Thoughts on Mt. Gox

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I was going to start this article by stating: “Mt. Gox needs to get its shit together.” But its too late for that. Much too late. Mt.Gox has been the dominant Bitcoin exchange pretty much since the beginning. In its brief history, it has suffered several bad setbacks, with the one last spring an incident … Read more

Why China’s Attack on Bitcoin is a Sign of Weakness

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For myself and many others back in the 2008/09 period, it seemed obvious what China should to do from an entirely nationalistic perspective on the grand geopolitical chessboard. With the reputation of the U.S. laying in tatters following a gigantic financial collapse and an utterly embarrassing, unlimited taxpayer bailout of the criminals that caused the crisis, the entire world (including Americans) was looking for something else. Something new, something more lawful. Something more just and more stable. The U.S. dollar and the Federal Reserve System had been exposed and entirely discredited in many people’s minds. One of history’s most bold and monumental geopolitical moves was ripe for the taking. China could attempt to back its currency with gold, something I discussed with Max Keiser in a May 2010 interview. Immediately, capital flows would flood into the country, Chinese consumer purchasing power would explode and a rebalancing of their economy would experience a traumatic, but monumental and necessary shift. They could have announced such a plan and then implemented it slowly and with safety nets for manufacturers. It wouldn’t have been easy, but the window of opportunity was open. Instead, they did nothing, and now I think it’s too late.

I think there are two obvious reasons why the Chinese authorities failed to take bold action on the world stage. First, many of the wealthiest billionaires and elites in China have benefited greatly from so-called “free trade” partnerships with the West. The ponzi relationship in which we print pieces of paper and give it to them for manufactured goods has resulted in fabulous fortunes for the Chinese power players. Not to mention their existing personal, social relationships with Western elites. So why rock the boat?

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BitPay is Now Adding 1,000 New Merchants Per Week

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Earlier today, the Bitcoin news website Coindesk reported that BitPay is adding 1,000 new merchants per week, within an article highlighting the fact that private jet company PrivateFly had just teamed up with the payment processor to accept BTC for its charter flights. Just to put this into perspective and understand just how staggering this … Read more