Bitcoin Forum

See at about 06:30  here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7BfjsCAZyQ

Shouldn't be surprising I guess... but patenting such trivial ideas is quite irksome to me, and not a really good development for the bitcoin economy.

Also - it strikes me that there is some precedent in that you can use a 'bitbill' as a deposit card.
Perhaps the patent is specific to the situation where the deposit is converted to fiat currency and sent to the owner's bank account - but still - gluing things together like that to perform a service shouldn't be patentable IMO.

I'm curious to know the extent of this patent.

A search of the US Patent Application database was unable to return any relevant results.

I did, however, find this and several other applications similar to it which may constitute prior art:

United States Patent Application    20120123923
Nicolaidis; Chris ;   et al.    May 17, 2012
STORED VALUE EXCHANGE METHOD AND APPARATUS

"An apparatus and method for exchanging one form of stored value for another form of value. In one embodiment, a method for exchanging stored value for an alternative form of value comprises receiving stored value account information relating to the stored value from a remote user device, and determining a market value of the stored value. The method further comprises generating an offer to exchange the stored value for an alternative form of value and sending the offer to the remote user device. An indication of acceptance of the offer from the remote user device is then received and the alternative form of value is exchanged for the stored value. Finally, the stored value is exchanged for another form of value equal to the market value."

A patent on trading things at their market value, nice, nice.

So besides this video being TOTALLY AWESOME for bitpay and more importantly bitcoin in general, you've decided to pick on the patent?

There were 4 VC groups and over 200 attendees at this conference. All with investment $$$ and hearing about the potential opportunities bitcoin brings to the payments space.

I would rather like to thanks Tony for taking the time to submit his business and win a spot to present at this conference. Your bitcoins may be just a little bit more valuable tomorrow.

Tony and Stephen are awesome.

You mess with them, you mess with me.

...and I'm from Brooklyn  8)

Yeah, I did neglect to heap praise on the awesomeness that is a Bitcoin startup approaching VC groups...
probably because the ****ing cancer of anticompetitive patents really puts a bitter taste on it.

But you know.. realistically  - there's bugger all I can do about it...  a solid patent arsenal will make a business more attractive to those handy bitcoin-price-pumping VC types.... and it's all about the price after all, not freedoms and principles and all that guff.. right!? 

(In fairness - there's probably not much choice for a serious bitcoin startup. Patents probably need to be held at least for defensive purposes)

Is there a list of merchants accepting bit-pay available somewhere? I'd like to support bit-pay but I have no idea who takes it.

"we make on average, 2 to 2 1/2 % of [payment volume]".

Not bad for a 0.3% exchange fee + 15 minutes of exchange rate risk exposure (plus a daily ACH transaction).

So if we stop the religious war on patents for a minute and examine your statement above, it is absolutely correct. It is easily one of the top 3 questions first asked by investors these days. If bitpay wants to survive in todays business climate, patents are a necessary evil.

Don't hate the player, hate the game....

+1

BTW, for the exact same reasons, Paymium (operator of Paytunia and Instawallet) has filed two patents already..
The patents are not related to bitcoin technology itself of course.
Bitcoin businesses must attract VC money to reach critical mass and broader adoption.