Bitcoin Payments: Igniting Or Not?

From Payments.com

“So far Bitcoin is a bust as new payment systems go. That might come as a surprise given all the attention this digital currency has gotten, the many tens of millions of dollars in funding various Bitcoin-related ventures have received, and the volumes written on it every day.

To see what I mean, it’s useful to compare Bitcoin with a successful payment system that launched around the same time.”

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Royal Canadian Mint conducts crypto-currency trial

From Mobile Payments Today

“The Royal Canadian Mint is currently running an employee trial of its MintChip crypto-currency. MintChip is linked to the Canadian dollar, and is designed for low-value online, mobile and physical payments.

A Canadian government-owned crown corporation that produces Canada's coins, the Mint has issued MintChip accounts to 200 employees at its Ottawa and Winnipeg offices. It has installed Ingenico's IWL220B contactless card readers in its cafeterias, enabling pilot participants to pay for purchases using MintChip via NFC-enabled BlackBerry 10 smartphones.”

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Triple whammy hits bitcoin price

From Finextra

“Bitcoin's price has plummeted by around 20% after exchange MT Gox temporarily suspended withdrawals, Apple kicked a popular wallet off of its App Store and Russia outlawed the crypto-currency.”

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Bitcoin, mobile payments and the future of money

From Econsultancy

“Money is changing, with a range of innovative new technologies looking to disrupt the established financial structures.

Chief among these are the crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.

But what are they, where did they come from, and are they really a threat to the traditional monetary system?”

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Robocoin Launches $10k Incentive Program to Promote Bitcoin ATMs

From CoinDesk

“Bitcoin ATM pioneer Robocoin has launched a new campaign to get its machines installed around the world: offering a $10,000 bitcoin incentive to promoters who sign up.

The ‘Robocoin Ambassador Program’ offers participants 25% of a machine’s fee revenue until the amount reaches $10,000.

To earn that $10,000 an Ambassador needs to find potential Robocoin operators, guide them through the purchase process and then actively promote machines ones they’re installed.”

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The Bitcoin ATM Has a Dirty Secret: It Needs a Chaperone

From Wired

“When Mitchell Demeter and Jackson Warren opened the world’s first bitcoin ATM at a coffee shop in Vancouver, it was an instant success. People actually lined up to use the machine, which processed about $1 million in digital currency transactions over its first month.

But one day in November, a few weeks after launching the ATM, Demeter noticed something peculiar as he perused the machine’s transaction data at his office, across town from the coffee shop. At one point, the machine had voided 15 transactions in a row, for no obvious reason. So he drove down to the cafe, and as he walked through the front door, he immediately saw the problem.”

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Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value

From Bloomberg

“Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Bitcoin prices are unsustainably high after surging 89-fold in a year and that the virtual money isn’t currency.

“It’s a bubble,” Greenspan, 87, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. “It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.”

Bitcoins, which exist as software and aren’t regulated by any country or banking authority, surged to a record $1,124.76 on Nov. 30. The currency has rallied on growing interest from investors, while merchants are starting to accept Bitcoins and U.S. officials have told lawmakers such payments could be a legitimate means of exchange.”

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Bitcoin Black Friday: US online retailers attempt to stir up an online shopping frenzy

Bitcoin is continuing to elbow its way into the mainstream consciousness, with a gang of US online retailers attempting to give their own boost to the digital currency by co-opting America’s biggest ‘retail event’: Black Friday.

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Bitcoin Foundation meets US lawmakers

From Finextra

“Bitcoin Foundation representatives met with a host of US law enforcement agencies and regulators in Washington yesterday to discuss oversight of the digital currency.

The bitcoin lobbyists gave a presentation to a group including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), FBI, IRS, Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Secret Service.”

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Bitcoin and Banks: When Worlds Collide

From American Banker

“A Bitcoin conference in New York last week drew a motley crowd. There were the expected wide-eyed believers in the digital currency, earnest entrepreneurs building Bitcoin-related businesses, and somewhat more skeptical venture capitalists — but also traditional banking lawyers and anti-money laundering compliance consultants whose services are in hot demand. Startup executives complained about the difficulty of getting (or keeping) bank accounts and state money transmitter licenses. But the technology shows great promise and demonstrates that it is possible to send money as fast and as cheaply as email, even if banks running on legacy systems cannot.”

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California vs. Digital Currencies

From American Banker

“California’s financial regulator has baffled observers by sending a cease-and-desist “warning letter” to the Bitcoin Foundation. The letter accuses the nonprofit of acting as an unlicensed money transmitter, even though its main activities are promoting awareness of digital currencies and developing the Bitcoin protocol client software. Did the Golden State’s bureaucrats blindly send out letters to any organization it could find with the word “bitcoin” in its name? This much is clear: Rapidly evolving payment technologies are confounding traditional ways of understanding money.”

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Buzz from the Bitcoin Conference

From American Banker

“The Bitcoin2013 conference attracted a mix of businesspeople in suits and entrepreneurs in jeans and untucked shirts. All were excited about the technology's potential to disrupt the payments business – specifically micropayments, international remittances and charitable giving. For merchants, Bitcoin offers faster and cheaper payments than incumbent systems. The U.S. government's recent crackdown on Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, failed to cast a pall over the event.”

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Legal grey area has Bitcoin ATMs treated as money-laundering machines

“The Robocoin is an ATM for Bitcoins, and for a few glorious days this past weekend, on a conference center floor in San Jose, California, it dished out thousands of dollars in exchange for Bitcoins, the world's most popular digital currency.

The two brothers who built the Robocoin - Mark and John Russell, of Las Vegas - are still trying to figure out what to do with their contraption. But one thing's certain: they don't want to operate it on their own. Mark Russell isn't even sure if that's legal.’

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And now take a look at the Robocoin Bitcoin Kiosk at work.

How Bitcoin Works

The Internet currency, Bitcoin has seen an uptick recently as more people look to the virtual currency as a way to get rich. Here is a closer look at how Bitcoin works.

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Why Banks Should Care About Bitcoin

Look beyond the hype about the price of this digital currency. Because Bitcoin's not just a currency, it's also a payment system, and as such a budding challenger to PayPal, Western Union, Visa, MasterCard, and perhaps banks themselves. Whether the currency is a pot of gold or fool's gold is beside the point, argues Executive Editor Marc Hochstein. The real potential of this technology is as a set of pipes for transmitting value.

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What we are reading … 28th March 2013

Thoughts on the Move to Regulate UK Payments http://shar.es/eFQpZ

You Have The Right to Remain Paperless: The "No Check" CEO Bill of Rights http://dld.bz/cs8km

Basel Committee Cracks Down on Capital-Protection Ploy at Banks http://twb.io/YwedS0

Masked by Gibberish, the Risks Run Amok http://nyti.ms/11oBawS

What are the Benefits of In-Store Mobile Commerce? http://dld.bz/cs8jV

Barclays takes the crown at Digital Wallet Foundry http://www.finextra.com/News/FullStory.aspx?newsitemid=24664

The Next Generation of Video in Banking http://twb.io/YwnBVS

Is BlackBerry becoming a sweeter pill to swallow? http://dld.bz/cs8eq Court Favors Bank in Fraud Dispute http://dld.bz/cs8en

Tabletop Bitcoin ATM Is Huge for Payment Privacy

“It looks like a high school science project, but this countertop machine may be a bulwark of financial privacy in the age of digital money.”

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