1 CommentThis week, Bitcoin Examiner focused on new businesses, new features and new services. From trading platforms to new mining devices, and don’t forget about the expansion of the first Bitcoin news aggregator Zeroblock, everything that matters is here, in our latest weekly round up.
Btc.sx is the new Bitcoin-only margin trading platform
The name Btc.sx might sound familiar since the company is one of the sponsors of the Aussie event “Beers4Bitcoins”, set to occur in Sydney. But the startup, founded by the ex-banker Joseph Lee, stood out this week after announcing its trading platform that works exclusively with Bitcoin reached profitability just after one month and a half of work.
Lee wants everybody to have the chance to speculate on the value of cryptocurrency with the proper tools, but without the major risks. That’s why Btc.sx includes all the trades, payouts and deposits.
Developer creates a Raspberry Pi Bitcoin Hotspot
The developer Richard Green recently posted a message on Reddit announcing that he had finished a working prototype of a new Bitcoin enabled WiFi hotspot powered by a Raspberry Pi. The hotspot can be identified by the SSID (Service Set IDentifier) ‘BitcoinWifi’ and allows connections to Bitcoin nodes, via port 8333, enabling payment to provide full access to the service.
According to the author, the device requires zero configuration to work, but it needs to be added to an existing infrastructure (a 5V USB mains adapter and a router via Ethernet). You can read more about the project here.
Alydian is hosting Terahash to conquer the big miners
Alydian, the startup that is being supported by the business incubator CoinLab, is hosting ASIC mining equipment for its customers, via yearly contracts. The new service is directed to all the big miners out there, as the launch day pricing was $65,000 per Terahash with mining hosting contracts only available in 5 and 10 Th/sec blocks. Alydian’s goal is to conquer institutional-level investors that need to turn large amounts of money into Bitcoins. The California-based company and its incubator are betting on the fact that they are pioneers in this field, but their suggestion still raises a few doubts.
In-person Bitcoin exchanges are a success in Berlin
German’s capital is loving the in-person Bitcoin trade that’s going on all over the city streets. This week, the website RT.com told reported how cryptocurrency is being exchanged in Berlin, as the city recently hosted the third meeting organized by the Bitcoin Exchange Berlin
Buttercoin fights the fees that stain the remittances market
The advantages of Bitcoin for big transfers between different continents has been known for a long time. However, the impact of cryptocurrency in the global remittances market might be bigger than we initially thought. Especially because there’s a service out there called Buttercoin, a new tool that will help people get away from the scabrous fees required to use services like Western Union.
With Buttercoin’s help everything becomes possible. The service intends to open in India in the next three months and wants to be operating in six countries in just nine months. The idea is to open a local Bitcoin exchange in each country.
Special platform BitShares will be launched in October
There’s a new Bitcoin service on the horizon: BitShares is a decentralized cryptocurrency and part of a financial derivatives trading system set to be launched in October. BitShare, created by Invictus Innovations, is composed of a protocol and software called Hydra with three separate services: the decentralized identity management system BitNames, the secure chat and messaging system BitCom and a peer to peer trading exchange.
With this new project, Invictus Innovations wants to allow common investment actions on the trading exchange. Besides the “cryptocurrency” BitShares, this new trading system is also composed of a financial derivative called BitAssets.
Bitcoin group and US authorities meeting
Seven US federal agencies met this week with a representative Bitcoin group to discuss regulation. Patrick Murck represented the Bitcoin Foundation, as its general counselor, in this meeting with the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Services. It’s not clear if representatives from the banking field will attend the meeting.
The expert said that the gathering was very productive and positive: all the participants integrated the debate about the status of digital currency and wanted to understand how Bitcoin works. Lots of topics like law enforcement and governmental control were discussed at the meeting that happened in the US Treasury Department building, in Washington DC.
Now, the next move should be made by the US authorities. After this first event, the Bitcoin Foundation attended a new meeting at Capitol Hill on Tuesday (27) to continue discussing legal issues connected to cryptocurrency.
ZeroBlock is coming to Android soon
ZeroBlock, the first Bitcoin news aggregator, was launched in May and, according to the founders of the service, the Bitcoin community is loving this new service. ZeroBlock is the first cross-platform that shows real time Bitcoin market data and an updated news feed, all in the same place.
As the service keeps growing, it’s now time to get an Android version. Bitcoin Examiner talked with Dan Held, one of ZeroBlock’s founders to know more about the platform and the idea behind it, and you can read this interview here.
KnCMiner takes delivery of ASIC boards
The Swedish mining firm KnCMiner is preparing to ship 28nm ASIC boxes next month, according to Coindesk. Besides, the company is hinting that its design may allow for higher hash rates than it was publicised. You can check the full article here.
RoboCoin’s ATM lets you buy Bitcoin with cash
The new RoboCoin ATM machine was launched this week, allowing anyone to buy Bitcoin with actual US dollar bills, right on the street corner. “Robocoin is a Bitcoin ATM machine. We make Bitcoin grandma friendly, so anyone can go and buy and sell Bitcoin”, explained RoboCoin CEO, Jordan Kelley, to the website Venture Beat.
Tradehill boost its safety levels by moving accounts
The well-known Bitcoin exchange Tradehill has recently announced it has moved its costumers’ accounts to a North American credit union to assure bigger security levels. According to the company, its goal is to improve the clients’ experience during transactions, making them bulletproof. A month after re-launching the service with its renewed features, Tradehill has executed Bitcoin exchanges worth more than $1 million and it’s now betting on improving its safety levels.
Atlanta hosts Bitcoin conference in October
The city of Atlanta will receive a crypto-conference on October 5 with the theme “Bitcoin and the Future of Money”. The main goal is to commemorate the four years of Bitcoin’s launch in October of 2009. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or an expert: the conference invites everyone to join. According to the organization, Bitcoin’s birthday celebration will start in the day before, October 4, with a reception at the offices of BitPay in Atlanta (Suite 516, Atlanta Tech Village). Check the complete program here.
Half of all transactions might come from online gambling
What happens when you realize that half of all cryptocurrency transactions are generated by online gambling accounts? Jeremy Liew, a partner at a venture capital firm called Lightspeed Venture, revealed the possible truth this week. He says the main “culprit” is one of the biggest Bitcoin gambling sites, the recently sold SatoshiDice. In a blog post, Liew revealed that the transactions from SatoshiDice accounted for a huge percentage of all Bitcoin transactions in the month of June 2013, somewhere between 25 percent and over 50 percent.
Bitcoin is already included in the Oxford Dictionaries Online
Oxford University Press just announced its latest quarterly update to the Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) and Bitcoin is one of the new additions. The free online dictionary of current English got a lot of new words, some of them from the universe of technology. If you type in the name of your favourite cryptocurrency at the dictionary’s website, you’ll find the following result: “bitcoin, n.: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank”.
Coinbase doesn’t charge fees until businesses’ first million
Coinbase always “believed that merchant adoption is key to Bitcoin going mainstream”, so the platform has announced that is not charging any processing fees to merchants until they reach $1 million in transactions. This means that the platform is waiving to their fee of 1% until the merchants reach a certain level of transactions. After the first million is reached, Coinbase will go back to charge the usual processing fee.
Bitcoinvention Asia postponed to February 2014
The Bitcoinvention Asia, the first big cryptocurrency conference ever to be held in the Asian continent, was postponed to February 2014, according to a message sent by the organization team to Bitcoin Examiner. The event was supposed to happen on October 17th, but due to “several reasons” it had to be delayed. Oron Barber, one of the conference coordinators, says that “the most important [reason] is that people just asked us for more time” to organize their schedules.
New TerraMiner IV gets price cut of almost $2,000
After recently launching its first product, a 2 TH/s ASIC Bitcoin miner, Cointerra has already announced it’s cutting the price of the TerraMiner IV from $15,750 to $13,999. The device has four powerful 28nm ASIC chips running at 500 GH/s each. This decision is a response to the signals given by the Bitcoin community. But there’s more news. Ravi Iyengar, Cointerra’s CEO, revealed to the website that new low-cost and smaller devices are coming.
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