“We got approached last month by a real estate developer,” Singh told Bloomberg Markets. “He had an offer to buy a house, and the purchaser wanted to pay in bitcoin. And they weren’t really sure what that was, so they contacted us.”

Singh noted that Bitpay has helped facilitate these sorts of transactions several times over the past few years. “We walked him through how it works and the process,” said Singh.

The purchase price of the home in question was roughly $4 million.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/man-accidentally-makes-13-million-buying-house-bitcoin/

The blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is attracting growing interest. This column argues that if transactions facilitated by this technology become pervasive, it will have implications for the conduct (and success) of central bank monetary policy. Central banks should embrace the technologies that underpin cryptocurrencies, or risk being cut out from intermediation and surveillance and also risk payment service providers moving to other currency areas with an institutional environment that is more appealing for buyers and sellers.

By Dirk Niepelt*

While excitement about Bitcoin appears to have subsided, the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is attracting growing interest (e.g. Oliver Wyman 2016). Central banks have joined the FinTechs and bricks-and-mortar financial institutions in paying attention (Economist 2016). Not a week passes without a monetary authority declaring interest in the technology, and in opportunities to employ it. What are the likely implications of this for central banks and the monetary system?

http://www.eurasiareview.com/21102016-central-banking-and-bitcoin-not-yet-a-threat-analysis/

The uber-libertarians who created Bitcoin don’t like banks, and big banks, for the most part, don’t like Bitcoin. Yet, despite this general sense of mutual disdain, many banks are very, very interested in the technology behind Bitcoin (even if they think the actual currency can take a hike).

Huge and important institutions like the Bank of England and the People’s Bank of China have expressed a sincere interest in adopting the blockchain method of recording and completing transactions, and applying themselves, The New York Times reports.


https://www.inverse.com/article/22078-bitcoin-blockchain-big-bank-technology

The price of Bitcoin seems to be climbing again. According to CoinMarketCap, the price of the top digital currency jumped from a rate of $618 earlier on Tuesday October 11 to $633 in three hours at a +2.5% difference.

The rise may have to do with the China's yuan fall to its lowest level in six years early Monday October 10 before erasing the losses on the first day of trading after a week-long holiday. Some China watchers have wondered if any signs of yuan weakness following the holiday would signal that Beijing was putting the currency back on a slow depreciation path after holding it steady through September.

Coinmarketcap’s display is consistent with illustrations on Trading View which shows trading on the BTCCNY Bitcoin chart move from a low 4150/BTC to 4260/BTC between 5.00 a.m. and 6 a.m. the same morning gaining a 2.7% increase.

This height has only been reached twice - recently between June and July 2016 just before the Bitfinex attack and between November 2013 and January 2014.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-yuans-depreciation-fuels-bitcoin-price

sean.com 6:15 p.m. CDT October 7, 2016
636114505034396769-ThinkstockPhotos-101125628.jpg

(Photo: Getty Images / Hemera)

The underlying technology behind the digital currency Bitcoin is piquing interest in corners of Nashville's health care sector, thanks to its potential to upend the way data is shared.

Blockchain, a distributed database that records transactions, can be tough for people to grasp, but with understanding often comes a sense of excitement about the possibilities, experts said. It's a way to securely transfer things of value — such as data or currency — without a middleman, said Corey Todaro, director of research and analytics at Martin Ventures.

“It’s not an understatement to stay there is some exhilaration or delirium. It’s very, very exciting.”
Kristen Johns

"It's not an incremental improvement. This is a new way of transferring data and governing data, which I think is fundamentally different from the way we've been doing it. The possibility excites me," Todaro said.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/industries/health-care/2016/10/07/blockchain-technology-piques-interest-in-nashville-healthcare/90740286/

 The public nature of Blockchain—where every node has a copy and all transactions can be seen—provides confirmation that prior transactions have not been altered. However, it also means that any private personal or financial information that is required for a transaction becomes public information, raising significant privacy concerns, especially for financial institutions and healthcare companies.

To address these concerns, companies are considering the development of private Blockchain networks where all users agree to confidentiality and use restrictions. Alternatively, sensitive data can be encrypted and held by a trusted third party, leaving enough data to verify the transaction but not enough to recreate the content. Unfortunately, these solutions require human intervention and limit the auditability of the Blockchain. Technology companies continue to work on this problem, but privacy remains a major stumbling block.


http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/beyond-bitcoin-barriers-to-use-of-47794/

Most people will gladly admit Bitcoin is far from matured. While there are signs of evolution compared to seven years ago, there is still a very long way to go. Any company active in the Bitcoin world right now will see its share of hardship and setbacks. ZebPay, India’s largest Bitcoin service provider, knows this all too well.

In its current form, ZebPay lets users buy anything in India Among the services they support are Amazon, Domino’s, Flipkart, and PVR vouchers, to name a few. This goes to show there is a huge demand to use Bitcoin for everyday goods and services. Having a gateway to do so is part of ZebPay’s success throughout the years.

But things did not start out all that well. Zebpay co-founder Mahin used to run the BuysellBitco.in platform. Users could access this platform to convert between fiat currency and cryptocurrency. However, the platform caught the attention of India’s central bank, and a raid by government officials followed shortly after its launch.

http://themerkle.com/zebpay-now-processes-us10m-in-bitcoin-volume-every-month/

[Bank of England to Create Hybrid Intrabank Payment System, Includes Bitcoin Support]

Bank of England to Create Hybrid Intrabank Payment System, Includes Bitcoin Support
The Bank of England is known for its progressive outlook. On multiple occasions, representatives of the English Central Bank have hinted the use of digital currency and blockchain technology in the near future. They may have been referring to the recently announced plan to revamp the country’s interbank payment system all this while.

In an announcement, the Bank of England made its plans to upgrade its interbank fund transfer network by the end of this decade. The  central bank is looking forward to adopting the latest available technologies in the fintech sector. This move is expected to help the country’s banking sector to insulate itself from cyber-attacks while ensuring compatibility with digital currencies.

READ MORE: Bank of England Does Groundwork for Central Bank Backed Digital Currency

According to a leading news media outlet, the Bank of England’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system currently handles over 500 billion pounds worth of transactions every day.  Speaking about the bank’s plans to revamp its system, Executive Director of the Bank of England Andrew Hauser says,

    “The world of payments is changing rapidly, and central banks need to keep pace if we are to deliver our mission of monetary and financial stability … whilst also enabling innovation and competition where we can.”


http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/09/18/bank-of-england-hybrid-payment-system/

When the two students announced the Bitcoin giveaway back in 2014, it didn’t take long to attract unwanted attention. Several people tried to “hack the system”, which ultimately failed. While these types of attempts are not uncommon, it goes to show messing around with Bitcoin is not straightforward. But how is Bitcoin doing over at MIT so far?

Unfortunately, things aren’t looking all that positive for the cryptocurrency. The MIT Bitcoin Project is still around, and actively trying to educate student son cryptocurrency. Most of the students stick to cash or using credit cards whenever they are paying for goods and services. So far, Bitcoin hasn’t made any significant impact.

Being a student in this day and age of digital payments is a blessing and a curse. The sheer number of different payment methods is staggering. Competitors such as Venmo are a bit problem for Bitcoin adoption, even at MIT. Not too many stores around campus have started accepting Bitcoin either, which isn’t helping matters.

http://themerkle.com/bitcoin-struggles-to-catch-on-at-mit/

Bitcoin price this past week traded as high as $629 against the US Dollar, but found sellers. The price dropped sharply after a failure to break the stated level. During the downside move, the BTC/USD pair broke a bullish trend line formed on the 4-hours chart (data feed from SimpleFX). The highlighted break was crucial, as it ignited more losses in the pair.

The pair traded as low as $568, but then quickly recovered. The price moved above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last drop from the $629 high to $568 low. However, the pair is struggling to close above the $615 level. It is also struggling for a daily close above the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last drop from the $629 high to $568 low. It means it won’t be easy for the bulls to take the price higher.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/09/18/bitcoin-price-weekly-analysis-can-btcusd-recover/

Standards Australia recently announced that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is supporting its proposal to develop a set of international standards for blockchain technology.

Standards Australia is the country's highest non-government, not-for-profit Standards organization. They cover everything from consumer products and services, construction, engineering, business, information technology, human services to energy and water utilities, the environment and much more. However, they do not enforce, regulate or certify compliance.

The organization submitted it’s proposal for ISO review last April. It’s designed to establish new international standards on blockchain technology and electronic distributed ledger technologies. The bulk of the work excludes legal obligations and regulatory matters addressed by government jurisdictions.

At the same time that Standards Australia submitted their proposal, they also released a four-page document, “Blockchain & Electronic Distributed Ledger Technologies.” The report states that proposed international standards for blockchain will focus on technical solutions that promote interoperability, and compatibility between existing systems, “This will allow the technology to be more widely used and deployed,” states the paper.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/australia-to-lead-iso-blockchain-standards-endeavor/

For quite some time, the Steam platform insisted on having at least one Bitcoin network confirmation before a purchase would be completed. Albeit this is not a major issue for most people, it could take up to ten minutes until this happened. Keeping in mind how they rely on BitPay to process payments, this decision seemed a bit weird.

Lo and behold, things have shifted back to their standard procedure once again. Steam purchases are completed as soon as transactions hit the network, to much joy of Bitcoin community members. No one wanted to wait 10 minutes before a game starts downloading, a process that can take up quite some time as well.

http://themerkle.com/steam-switched-back-to-zero-confirmation-bitcoin-transactions/

The history of ViaBTC has been described in a post on the mining pool’s Medium blog. To summarize, Haiyang left Tencent to start a mining pool and found an investor to help with the project on Chinese-language Bitcoin forum 8btc.

According to Haiyang, ViaBTC’s early investor resources account for a large portion of the mining pool’s hash rate. “ViaBTC mining pool had an investor at its early stage, who provided us with the startup capital and hash rate, but didn’t take part in the decision-making and operating of the mining pool,” he told Bitcoin Magazine. “Currently, approximately one third of the hash rate is from our investor, and the rest from our customers.”

Haiyang added that the mining pool mainly uses the Ant Miner S7, but they also use the Avalon 6, though less frequently.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/an-interview-with-viabtc-the-new-bitcoin-mining-pool-on-the-blockchain-1474038675

The Bitcoin company BitPay has announced the launch of a new invoice display option to make paying with Bitcoin even easier. The new display is a modal window which offers multiple methods of making a payment.

In describing the modal invoice, BitPay writes:

    “When a customer goes to pay, the invoice modal drops down over the current order screen. This means that the customer never has to leave the merchant website or order flow. When the invoice is paid, they can move on to the next screen in the merchant's order form.”

The modal interface offers customers multiple payment methods. You can either scan the bar code which is displayed with a mobile Bitcoin wallet, copy and paste a Bitcoin amount into a wallet, or you can pay from a wallet on the desktop or a mobile device by selecting “Open Wallet.” Payments are confirmed with a "ding", which BitPay says it's “especially proud of”.

http://www.neowin.net/news/bitpay-introduces-modal-windows-for-better-bitcoin-payments

The Bitcoin exchange announced the successful relaunch of its Fiat gateway. Surbitcoin stated that their bank accounts got frozen after an undisclosed party decided to complain to the bank for a delayed withdrawal. Surbitcoin said:

    Thanks to the help of Banesco’s Security Department we found the shady actor who caused the fiat gateway outage. We will pursue legal actions against this individual, and we thank our customers for their patience.

Surbitcoin is the most popular Bitcoin exchange in Venezuela, operating since 2014, the exchange has managed to secure a partnership with Banesco, the biggest bank in Venezuela. Surbitcoin enables users to purchase and sell Bitcoins with local currency, Rodrigo Souza, the CEO of Blinktrade (the company running Surbitcoin’s underlying platform), stated:

    Surbitcoin is one of the few Bitcoin exchanges in the world offering instant fiat withdrawals and deposits, we send money out in less than 30 seconds in 95% of the time.


http://themerkle.com/venezuelas-biggest-bitcoin-exchange-resumes-operations/

This is just one more controversy in a long list surrounding Bitcoin, the world’s best known virtual currency, which has sparked a furious debate across financial services, technology, political and civil liberties organisations. Yet it continues to exist.  What’s more, Bitcoin is going beyond its alternative currency status to exert a much bigger impact through its underlying technology, Blockchain.

In a few short years, Blockchain has come to be recognised for its potential to create a fundamental, disruptive shift in the way financial transactions are processed, making them safer, faster, cheaper, more accurate and tamper-proof. Its potential impact is such that Blockchain is now being regarded as the biggest disruptive phenomenon since the internet. While a number of technologies, including the SMAC stack, have transformed banking and financial services delivery, none have promised to challenge the operating principles of banking transaction and book-keeping. Blockchain does this in style, questioning the very premise of centralisation by ensuring its transactions are inherently trustworthy, peer-to-peer, and signed off online by counterparty institutions. The technology takes out the centralised authority in a financial transaction — from stock exchanges to clearing houses — and plants its network instead to play that role.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/558523/theres-kid-blockchain.html

TOKYO —

The head of collapsed Bitcoin exchange MtGox has been released on bail nearly a year after his arrest on embezzlement charges, according to one of his lawyers.

Television footage showed France-born Mark Karpeles, 31, leaving the Tokyo Detention House on Thursday after reportedly paying more than 10 million yen to secure his release.

It was the first time that Karpeles—noticeably thinner with long hair in a pony tail and wearing a baseball cap—has been out of custody since his arrest in August following the demise of the Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange.

“He is very pleased,” lawyer Nobuyasu Ogata said of his client’s release.

Karpeles is facing allegations that he fraudulently manipulated data and pocketed millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency.

It was not clear when he would go to trial.

The French national—who cannot leave Japan as a condition of his bail—was arrested and re-arrested several times, extending an initial three-week incarceration allowed under local law.

MtGox shuttered in 2014 after admitting 850,000 coins—worth around $480 million at the time—had disappeared from its digital vaults.

The company initially said there was a bug in the software underpinning Bitcoins that allowed hackers to pilfer them.

Karpeles later claimed he had found some 200,000 of the lost coins in a “cold wallet”—a storage device, such as a memory stick, that is not connected to other computers.

MtGox, which once said it handled around 80 percent of global Bitcoin transactions, filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the cyber-money went missing, leaving a trail of angry investors calling for answers and denting the virtual currency’s reputation.

Bitcoins are generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet, and are not backed by any government or central bank, unlike traditional currencies.

source : http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/bitcoin-ceo-released-on-bail-in-embezzlement-case

Most people agree we do not need to know how a television works to enjoy using one. This is true of many existing and emerging technologies. Most of us happily drive cars, use mobile phones and send e-mails without knowing how they work. With this in mind, here is a tech-free user guide to the blockchain — the technology infrastructure behind bitcoin and many other emerging platforms.

What does the blockchain do?

The blockchain is software that stores and transfers value or data across the Internet.

What can I store and transfer using the blockchain?

To use the blockchain, you will need to set up an account or address (a virtual wallet). At this time, the most popular use for the blockchain is to make micropayments with virtual currencies. For example, you can buy bitcoin with real money and then spend it on the Internet using the blockchain.

Authorising a payment using the blockchain is similar to using a credit card to buy something online. Instead of a 16-digit credit card number, you provide the vendor with a unique string of numbers and letters generated for each transaction. With this unique identifier, the blockchain can verify and authenticate the transaction.
https://www.techcentral.co.za/demystifying-the-blockchain-a-basic-guide/66853/

Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralised digital currency underwent a rare ‘halving’ over the weekend, a process built into the currency’s existence to ensure only a certain amount will ever be on the market.

Analysts are divided on how it’ll affect the already volatile currency in the long-term, but what will definitely happen is that the miners who work on high-powered computers to verify the transactions, will receive half the Bitcoin reward they used to get.

Jacob Donnelly from CryptoBrief.com has written extensively on Bitcoin and spoke to The World’s Margie Smithurst ahead of the 'halving' to explain the process and discuss the future of Bitcoin in general.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-13/bitcoin's-'halving'-and-the-future-of-the/7626260

Although this relationship has an obvious beneficial effect for bitcoin and those involved in trading the currency, it could create an indirect benefit for another party — the manufacturers of the smartphone devices.

It will especially benefit those smartphone devices that attempt to take advantage of the situation by allowing the market to propagate unhampered. Unimpeded by any attempts by the manXiaomiufacturer to regulate, remove, or otherwise tamper with any bitcoin related applications.

Despite this, the benefits that smartphone manufacturers could receive from embracing Bitcoin is ultimately dependent on the uncertain role that bitcoin will have as a preferred hedge against the Yuan, and how far the Chinese government goes with its currency manipulation.

However, while the long-term benefits that Bitcoin could provide are ultimately uncertain, it seems some benefits are already being felt by smartphone producers in China. As evidence of this, competing, cheaper smartphones have recently increased in popularity at the expense of the iPhone, whose sales in the country have recently declined.

http://bitcoinist.net/xiaomi-smartphones-bitcoin-users/