Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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5,049
Bitcoin is an innovative payment network
and a new kind of money.

It is coming in the next Five to Ten Years as
a new way to conduct E-Business.



Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.

The Link: Bitcoin - Open source P2P money
 
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Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Getting started with Bitcoin
Using Bitcoin to pay and get paid is easy and accessible to everyone.

1. Inform yourself
Bitcoin is different than what you know and use every day. Before you start using Bitcoin, there are a few things that you need to know in order to use it securely and avoid common pitfalls.
Read more

2. Choose your wallet

You can bring a Bitcoin wallet in your everyday life with your mobile or you can have a wallet only for online payments on your computer. In any case, choosing your wallet can be done in a minute.
Choose your wallet

3. Get bitcoins

You can get bitcoins by accepting them as a payment for goods and services or by buying them from a friend or someone near you. You can also buy them directly from an exchange with your bank account.
Find an exchange

4. Spend bitcoins

There is a growing number of services and merchants accepting Bitcoin all over the world. You can use Bitcoin to pay them and rate your experience to help honest businesses to gain more visibility.
Find merchants
Read more

5. Processing payments

You can process payments and invoices by yourself or you can use merchant services and deposit money in your local currency or bitcoins. Most point of sales businesses use a tablet or a mobile phone to let customers pay with their mobile phones.
Find merchant services

6. Accounting and taxes

Merchants often deposit and display prices in their local currency. In other cases, Bitcoin works similarly to a foreign currency. To get appropriate guidance regarding tax compliance for your own jurisdiction, you should contact a qualified accountant.
Read more

7. Gaining visibility

There is a growing number of users searching for ways to spend their bitcoins. You can submit your business in online directories to help them easily find you. You can also display the Bitcoin logo on your website or your brick and mortar business.
Submit your business
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Bitcoin Black Friday: How to use virtual currency to buy real gifts
Keith Wagstaff NBC News

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Bitcoin Black Friday

Bitcoin Black Friday aims to promote businesses that accept the virtual currency known as Bitcoin.
As holiday deal-hunters pack the stores on Black Friday, a new breed of tech-savvy shopper will be at home, anonymously buying gifts with bitcoin.

Yes, the digital currency, the price of which broke above $1,000 for the first time on Wednesday, can be spent on many things besides black market drugs and other contraband, with which it's been notoriously associated.

If you're really feeling flush, you can use bitcoin to book that special someone a trip to space on Virgin Galactic. If that's outside your budget, you can check out the first Bitcoin Black Friday where hundreds of merchants, as well as charities, will offer discounts on everything from warm alpaca socks to sticky caramels to a Motorola Moto X smartphone under the Christmas tree via a bitcoin community-sponsored website. In fact, you can use the peer-to-peer digital currency to even buy a Christmas tree.

There has been plenty written about whether bitcoin is the future of money or just a fad. Here are the basics:

  • Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be spent, sold and moved around anonymously online. It's not tied to any government or central bank and can be used anywhere in the world.
  • The first bitcoin was created in 2009 and there are currently 12 million bitcoins. New bitcoins are generated by computers that are rewarded for solving complex math problems in a process called "mining."
  • Its value is skyrocketing. On Wednesday, one bitcoin traded for as high as $1,000, compared to $13.27 at the end of 2012.
  • Its wildly fluctuating value and its lack of government oversight have created doubts that it can survive as a viable currency.
Why even consider bitcoin? Well, some very smart people like Sam Yagan, whose talent with complicated algorithms built OKCupid into one of the biggest dating sites on the Internet, believe that some form of virtual currency — whether it's bitcoin or something else — will be accepted by most businesses in the future.

"When PayPal launched, people were like, 'Why would any company take PayPal? PayPal is for sending money to friends,'" Yagan told NBC News. "Now it's something that most e-commerce sites accept. Fifteen years ago, you would have said, 'No, that's never going to happen.'"

How to acquire bitcoins
You could buy your bitcoins from someone else on the Internet. You can also buy them through international exchanges like Mt. Gox, a bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo. The easiest way to do it, for now, is with Coinbase, a San Francisco-based company that received $6.1 million in investor funding earlier this year.

Coinbase combines three services — an exchange, a digital wallet and payment processor for vendors — to make buying bitcoins relatively easy for beginners.

Buying 0.033 BTC (at the time of purchase about $25) took me less than 10 minutes since I had my bank account information with me. I also had to authenticate my email address and telephone number.

Once that is set up, users begin with the ability to buy 10 bitcoins a day — which comes nearly instantly if you link both a credit card and a bank account. I only linked the latter, which meant a wait period of around four business days.

Bitcoins, once purchased, are universal, which means they can be moved around to different digital wallets. These wallets let you send bitcoins to e-commerce sites and physical vendors, many of whom charge you by having you scan a QR code with your smartphone.

Where to spend your bitcoins
Looking to spend bitcoins on goods and services in your own neighborhood? Check out Coinmap, an open-source map that includes more than 1,000 bitcoin-friendly vendors. In the United States, most of the vendors are clustered around San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles, with others scattered across the country.

One proprietor, Buddy Koerner of Folino's Pizza in Selburne, Vt., told NBC News that three customers bought a total of 10 pizzas with bitcoin in three days after his business was mentioned on Reddit.

Grass Hill Alpacas, an alpaca farm located in In Haydenville, Mass., started accepting bitcoin two years ago. Recently, business has been booming. Over the last month, according to David Forster, who runs the farm’s sales, the business has accepted bitcoin for more than 100 pairs of alpaca socks, with multiple orders coming in every day, compared to only a few per week during the same time last year.

“I continue to accept them because it has been a real boon to our small business ,” Forster told NBC News in an email. He said that when he started accepting the virtual currency in February 2011, a pair of socks cost 75 bitcoins. By today’s standards, that would be worth more than $71,000.

“Unfortunately, I didn't keep any of the coins,” Forster wrote. “I was more interested in creating the bitcoin economy and keeping them circulating, so I'm not a bitcoin millionaire.”

Overall, however, bitcoin payments are the exception, not the norm.

That could change as bigger fish get in the game. That includes Gyft, a San Francisco-based seller of gift cards founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Vinny Lingham, who told NBC News that a "significant number" of his customers use bitcoin.

“The current credit card system wasn’t built for the Internet," he said. "There was a need for some form of digital cash."

Lingham said that he started accepting bitcoin after getting fed up with having to deal with fraudulent credit card charges, not to mention the 1.5 percent to 3 percent fee merchants get hit with every time you pull out your Visa or Mastercard. (Lingham recently started offering a 3 percent discount on all items as a way of giving users the money that would otherwise go to the banks).

That combination of guaranteed payments and no credit card fees, Lingham said, was creating opportunities for "businesses that weren't possible under the old paradigm."

A few other things you can buy with bitcoin: Plane tickets on CheapAir.com, T-shirts on MixedTees.com and, strangely enough, Sriracha bacon lollipops on Lollyphile.com — all of which are offering discounts as part of Bitcoin Black Friday.

And if someone you know could use a date for the holidays? You could always buy them an A-List account on OKCupid, which gives them special searching, browsing and messaging features that non-paying members don't have access to.

"That's one good thing to do with your highly appreciated bitcoin," Yagan said. "Have an OKCupid bitcoin party, drop one bitcoin, and get an A-List membership for 100 of your friends."
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
As Bitcoin tops $1,200, does its fate rest in China's hands?
Julia Wood CNBC
Nov. 29, 2013 at 11:49 AM ET

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ANDY CLARK / Reuters file

Digital currency bitcoin's value hit a high of $1,242 on Friday. But what's behind its meteoric rise?

A surge in Chinese demand underlies bitcoin's astronomical rise over the past few months—the alternative digital currency topped $1,200 early Friday—underscoring the nation's interest in digital currencies as alternative investments.

The question lingers: is it only a matter of time before the government steps in?

Bitcoin high a new high of $1,242 on Friday, before retreating to trade in the $1,180 range.

According to independent pricing site Bitcoin Average, China now accounts for 62 percent of global market volumes. The surge in demand recently led China-based BTC China to overtake Mt. Gox as the world's the largest bitcoin exchange by volume as the bitcoin craze continues to gather pace.

"China has a culture that is already acclimated to the use of digital currency, so it's not surprising that it has been quick to embrace bitcoin," Patrick Murck, founder and principal of the Bitcoin Foundation, told CNBC.

While the 30-fold rise in the volume of yuan-based bitcoin trades over the last two months underscores China's interest and helped to push the value of bitcoin above $1,000 Wednesday for the first time on the Mt. Gox exchange, buyers beware: Beijing has taken steps to rein in virtual currencies in the past.

In 2009, the government introduced legislation banning the use of digital monies to purchase tangible goods. The laws were aimed at curbing enthusiasm toward Q Coin, a digital currency used on Tencent's web-based instant messaging service called Tencent QQ. While Q Coin was initially used for the purchase of online games, it quickly spread into mainstream marketplaces.

The New York Times reported last week that People's Bank of China (PBOC) Deputy Governor Yi Gang said at an economic forum that it would be impossible for the central bank to recognize bitcoin as a legitimate financial instrument in the near term. However, Yi said people were free to participate in the Bitcoin market, a sign that some have interpreted as a cautious nod.

Murck rejects the idea that Bitcoin risks being outlawed by Beijing. "It's a very different situation. Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual currency, while [Q Coin] is centralized, it's controlled by Tencent. There's an entirely different risk profile," he said.

Bitcoin's decentralized nature is part of its appeal for Chinese investors. Because the government does not allow the yuan to float freely, analysts say the flock of funds into bitcoin may be less a vote of confidence in digital currencies than a no confidence vote for the yuan.

While the outcome of the Third China plenum earlier this month indicates that the government may be leaning towards a more liberal yuan policy, itBit CEO Richmond Teo doesn't believe it will dent demand for cryptocurrencies.

"The liberalization of the yuan could actually help the adoption as people seek fast and low cost methods to transact," he told CNBC.

Star power is also keeping bitcoin at the forefront of the public imagination. The Winklevoss twins, of Facebook fame, are heavily invested in bitcoin and have lodged an SEC filing to establish the first ever bitcoin trust. More recently, Sir Richard Branson told CNBC's "Squawk Box" of his willingness to accept the virtual currency on Virgin Galactic, his space travel endeavor.

These public discussions are helping legitimize bitcoin, Murck says.

"The key imperative now is for companies and entrepreneurs to go about establishing the infrastructure necessary to make bitcoin a safe and reliable investment. Among exchanges, we're starting to see a move away from quantity to quality. Exchanges are becoming higher quality, better backed and offer safer and more secure infrastructure," Murck added.

itBit, which recently raised $3.25 million to launch a NASDAQ-powered platform offering "bitcoin trading for serious investors," is part of this new wave of exchanges that appeal to investor preference for safety. itBit holds customers' bitcoins in an offline bitcoin wallet and offers security features including two-factor authorization and withdrawal delays.

Still, the million-dollar question remains – what is fair value for this fledgling currency that seems to know no limits?

"Fair value is difficult to determine... we believe it could be a multiple of what it is now," Murck said.

- By CNBC's Julia Wood. Follow her on Twitter@JuliaCNBC

Bitcoin breaks $1,000 barrier for the first time

Why bitcoin may never be ready for popular consumption

Bitcoin merchants: Where to spend bitcoin
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Electric sale: Someone used bitcoins to buy a Tesla
James Eng NBC News

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Mike Blake / Reuters

A customer bought a Tesla Model S electric car like this one using Bitcoin.

Add a brand new Tesla Model S to the growing list of items you can buy with bitcoins.

An auto dealership in Newport Beach, Calif., revealed Wednesday that it sold its first vehicle with the virtual currency as legal tender.

“Bitcoin, a fully encrypted and fully digital currency, has been used by a recent client of ours to pay for a Tesla Model S Performance we had in our inventory. That's right, an electronic currency was used to purchase a fully electric vehicle,” Lamborghini Newport Beach boasted in a blog post.

A Lamborghini Newport Beach official told The Daily Dot that the buyer, who was not identified, paid 91.4 bitcoins for the premium electric sedan, which was voted Motor Trend’s 2013 “Car of the Year.”

The value of the virtual currency has skyrocketed several thousand percent since the beginning of the year and recently crossed the $1,000 barrier on the Mt.Gox exchange. On Thursday, the price of a bitcoin slumped back below $1,000 after China’s central bank banned financial institutions from trading in the virtual currency.

The California dealership didn’t say when the electrifying sale took place or what the equivalent sales price in dollars was. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the four-door Model S sedan is around $90,000, though customers rarely pay the full amount.

“Lamborghini Newport Beach is proud to announce that we are fully capable of accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles. We are excited to be opening the door to this new currency,” the dealership said.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Why China Will Send Bitcoins to $10,000
By MONEY MORNING STAFF REPORTS

The Link: Intelligence Expert: This Will Cripple Iran

Millions of Chinese are quietly dumping there gold and replacing it with a radical new digital currency called Bitcoin.

When you look at the numbers, it's almost surreal.

Before the Chinese surge, one Bitcoin was worth about $213. Then the Chinese barreled in -- and suddenly Bitcoin shot up near $1,000. That's for a single Bitcoin.

"The demand out of China has been staggering," Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket which owns the Bitcoin Investment Trust, told CNNMoney. "We're seeing the early signs of money coming into Bitcoin as an asset class."

But it's not just Chinese investors embracing Bitcoin mania. The government has gotten behind it and is encouraging its citizens to grab as much of it as they can.

Baidu, China's version of Google, announced it will accept payment in Bitcoins. And now the Chinese are buying homes, condos even entire office buildings with Bitcoins.

Editor's Note: What does China know about Bitcoins that has them so bullish? Go here to see what they've discovered.
Bitcoins have seen explosive growth in the U.S. as well.

Currently, 200,000 companies in the United States can pay their employees with it and 700,000 American businesses are turning to it, including Wal-Mart, CVS, Lowes, and NIKE.

In addition, 36 cities across 20 states allow residents to pay for everything from water bills to parking tickets with it. People are using it to pay for lunches and dinners at over 12,000 restaurants in 45 states.

As Bitcoins have grown widespread, prices have skyrocketed.

Last December the virtual currency traded at $20 and now trades above $900.

That's a 4,150% gain in less than one year.

But Bitcoins can be extremely volatile which begs the question: Can the profits continue?

One Silicon Valley tech guru has identified three Bitcoin triggers. This strategy allows investors to take advantage of Bitcoins' volatility and maximize gains. Click here to learn the secret to buying Bitcoins.

Tech expert, Michael Robinson, a Pulitzer-Prize nominated financial journalist and former Board Member of a major Silicon Valley Venture Capital Fund, has spent the past two years analyzing Bitcoins.

He says ordinary investors still have huge paydays ahead from Bitcoins.

"A lot of people mistakenly believe that they should be loading up on Bitcoin mining software," Robinson says. "This will cost them thousands and leave them forever trying to catch up to their initial investment."

He says future success will come from understanding the "how's and why's" of Bitcoins.

"You have to step back and look at all the pieces of a very big puzzle," he says. "Take our dollar. It's lost 96% of its value since 1913. The Australian Dollar it's lost 99% over that same time. The Canadian Dollar 95%. The British pound, down 99%."

"None of us are blind. Bitcoin is a global rebellion against the Fed, against all Central Banks," says Robinson. "Bitcoin is about control. With Bitcoins there's no sovereign credit risk."

"It's a stateless currency," Robinson adds. "There's no central bank, no central computer, no center to attack."

After talking to the CEOs of Bitcoin exchanges Robinson believes we are just getting into the first stage of the Bitcoin revolution.

"There is no other investment opportunity on the planet that offers this kind of potential," claims Robinson. "Bitcoins may be the ultimate, 21st century tax haven."

Robinson believes that we are at the tipping point of $1,000, $10,000, even $1,000,000 Bitcoins.

Bitcoins are an opportunity to spend a few hundred bucks...$500, maybe $1,000 and turn it into millions.

What that means is you shouldn't bet the farm on Bitcoin, because you don't need to.

Publisher's Note: As a service to our readers, we've created a Bitcoin Virtual Portal which provides everything you need to know about Bitcoin from A to Z. It also gives investors three exciting ways to profit from Bitcoins. Whether you're investing $5 or $5,000 this is priceless information you'll want to have. Click here.
 

Num7

Administrator
Staff
Messages
12,376
I talked about Bitcoins about a year ago with a friend of mine, we thought about buying a few of them when they were about 180$ each.

Right now, a Bitcoin is worth 736$. Makes you wonder how high the BC will get at some point.
 

Kurt

Junior Member
Messages
42
I do wonder about the stability of these currencies though as what happened with that site that got shutdown that was being used for drug dealers and this currency is what makes me skeptical. Black Sheep or something.
 

Num7

Administrator
Staff
Messages
12,376
It's a risk. Maybe you'll earn a few thousand bucks if you guy a bunch of BC right now. Maybe you'll completely loose that money though.

It seems legit, as a lot of people are active all over the world with it.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
I believe Bitcoin is a dead issue and a new Bitcoin system will be coming
in the next Five years backed by the large world banks.
 

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