2013-05-16 The Genesis Block: Bitcoin Access Expanded to over 11 Million Users

[Kikkerdril]

http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-access-expanded-to-over-11-million-users-of-webmoney/

WebMoney, considered the PayPal of Russia, announced the addition bitcoin as a payment option today. This will enable both merchant as well as person-to-person transfers. WebMoney had over 11 million users in 2010, and this number has no doubt grown significantly since then. WebMoney accounts are called purses, and transactions can be denominated in bitcoin, gold, USD and rubles among several others. All transactions are irreversible so there is little concern for charge-backs like PayPal would face.

Sounds like huge news, more info in this Bitcointalk topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=207072.0
Wiki on Webmoney: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebMoney

[aigeezer]

Wow. Good find. Looks huge.

[Mike Christ]

This is enormous.  Bitcoin continues to take the world stage, proving it is the superior alternative to all forms of money.

[freedomno1]

Yah Putin Chan Succeeds Again 
Mean I am extremely happy that Russia decided to accept this currency

[BTCLuke]

10s of millions of people who are used to shady cash deals now have a way to spend bitcoin through a program they are already familliar with.

BTC's price is going to push up steadily from the new Russian money flowing in now... But the best part?

They're all SPENDING coins... These aren't just more hoarders!

The Bitcoin ECONOMY is getting a huge boost here; not just the price.

...And it's ALL outside of Uncle Sam's jurisdiction!


This isn't just huge news; it's the best news so far this year!

[freedomno1]

10s of millions of people who are used to shady cash deals now have a way to spend bitcoin through a program they are already familliar with.

BTC's price is going to push up steadily from the new Russian money flowing in now... But the best part?

They're all SPENDING coins... These aren't just more hoarders!

The Bitcoin ECONOMY is getting a huge boost here; not just the price.

...And it's ALL outside of Uncle Sam's jurisdiction!


This isn't just huge news; it's the best news so far this year!

Enter bull market rally to 200 good or long term good

[teknomunk]

Looks like they state that they support deposits of bitcoins into webmoney accounts, but I can't seem to find if there is a way to withdraw to bitcoins.  Has anyone with better search skills than me found out?

[aigeezer]

Looks like they state that they support deposits of bitcoins into webmoney accounts, but I can't seem to find if there is a way to withdraw to bitcoins.  Has anyone with better search skills than me found out?

Looking at the WebMoney Exchanger site... detail overwhelming, but... how about this?

"The first participant places a new bid to exchange WMZ, WMR, WMU, WMB, WMY, WMG, WMX or WME (in any direction). Amount of the bid on the exchange is taken automatically via merchant.wmtransfer.com. As soon as it is processed, new bid appears in the List.

The second participant, who wants to make an exchange, places a cross (counter)- bid, agreeing to the terms and exchange rates at the bid, chosen by him from the list and paid in the same method. When the bids are processed both parties receive exchanged funds to their Purses according to their WMID which was used when placing that bid."

http://wmeng.exchanger.ru/asp/rules_wm.asp

WMX represents (a portion of) BTC, as I understand it, and you can exchange it for anything, it seems, meaning (I think) that you can turn anything they handle into BTC. To get the BTC back into your own wallet, I think you go here: https://wmx.webmoney.ru/en-US#

I haven't tried any of this - but it looks like it will all work.

[StarfishPrime]

Yes, this is definitely big news. The WebMoney currency exchange order books are already filling up with WMX orders.

The currency exchange features and easy, low cost BTC funding/withdrawal could put WebMoney in a new position to compete directly in many of Paypal's current markets. For example, very few US businesses would hassle with international wire transfers to/from a Russian bank account, but USD payments received to WebMoney (at substantially lower rates/lower risk than Paypal) could easlily be taken out as BTC with no international banking required.

Interestingly, they have choosen to use a new "WMX" currency designator defined to be 0.001 BTC (i.e. 1000 WMX = 1 BTC) and use 3rd party to hold and transfer the actual BTC amounts as described on their site, below:

WMX funding/withdrawal gateway
The service of keeping and transferring your BITCOIN ownership rights is provided by INDX Transactions LTD, the WMX Underwriter. The terms of service providing are set forth in the Agreement (Agreement on Property Rights Keeping), accepted by WebMoney Transfer system users upon creating X-purses. Your BTC ownership rights being kept are verified by depositing the corresponding amount of WMX (warehouse's receipts) on your X-purse. The Underwriter has set rates: 0.001BTC = 1 WMX.

Depositing WMX to your purse is executed by The Underwriter only after receiving over 6(six) bitcoin.org peer-to-peer network database verifications of your BTC transaction to the address provided by The Underwriter.

The Underwriter accepts any amounts of BTC for keeping, but depositing WMX to your purse is executed only for the amounts exceeding 0.0001 BTC.

Withdrawing BTC is possible only for the amounts exceeding equivalent of 1.00 WMX. The Underwriter’s withdrawal fee is 0.0005 BTC (paid by The Underwriter upon making a transaction).

This may put Paypal one step closer to adding BTC as an additional transaction currency. It would almost seem inevitable at this point.

[BTCLuke]

This may put Paypal one step closer to adding BTC as an additional transaction currency. It would almost inevitable at this point.

I dunno. The very day PayPal gives the public the ability to use their service to buy bitcoins, their stock should drop considerably... It would be enabling the enemy to conquer them.

I just can't think of a way for the two to peacefully co-exist. Paypal will have little choice but to spend tons of money bribing the US Congress to make bitcoin illegal.

It'll be wasted of course, but nobody said they are that bright.

[StarfishPrime]

This may put Paypal one step closer to adding BTC as an additional transaction currency. It would almost seem inevitable at this point.

I dunno. The very day PayPal gives the public the ability to use their service to buy bitcoins, their stock should drop considerably... It would be enabling the enemy to conquer them.

I just can't think of a way for the two to peacefully co-exist. Paypal will have little choice but to spend tons of money bribing the US Congress to make bitcoin illegal.

It'll be wasted of course, but nobody said they are that bright.

My take is that by accepting BTC payments, Paypal could apply their customer protection features (and their existing fee structure) to the bitcoin ecosystem. Just as many pre-Paypal buyers would never give their card info to a random online vendor, many buyers today wouldn't send bitcoin (or cash in the mail) to random online vendors. Paypal provides a level of vendor accountability that bitcoin doesn't.

Time will tell, but a Paypal adoption would certainly be orders of magnitude beyond any news to date.

[cypherdoc]

10s of millions of people who are used to shady cash deals now have a way to spend bitcoin through a program they are already familliar with.

BTC's price is going to push up steadily from the new Russian money flowing in now... But the best part?

They're all SPENDING coins... These aren't just more hoarders!

The Bitcoin ECONOMY is getting a huge boost here; not just the price.

...And it's ALL outside of Uncle Sam's jurisdiction!


This isn't just huge news; it's the best news so far this year!

Enter bull market rally to 200 good or long term good

fuck yeah.

[BTCLuke]

My take is that by accepting BTC payments, Paypal could apply their customer protection features (and their existing fee structure) to the bitcoin ecosystem.

Obviously they wouldn't be able to control the coins that their customers bought though. If a coin is allowed outside of the paypal interface in any way, then paypal has just become another coinbase.

If it doesn't, and paypal manages to keep all of "their" bitcoins within paypal-to-paypal transactions only, then what makes that a bitcoin? They could just as easily SAY they've got bitcoins there when they don't!

The technologies are just not compatible. If they enable ppl to buy btc in any way, then they've just helped a technology grow that will (mostly) destroy them.

[StarfishPrime]

My take is that by accepting BTC payments, Paypal could apply their customer protection features (and their existing fee structure) to the bitcoin ecosystem.

Obviously they wouldn't be able to control the coins that their customers bought though. If a coin is allowed outside of the paypal interface in any way, then paypal has just become another coinbase.

If it doesn't, and paypal manages to keep all of "their" bitcoins within paypal-to-paypal transactions only, then what makes that a bitcoin? They could just as easily SAY they've got bitcoins there when they don't!

The technologies are just not compatible. If they enable ppl to buy btc in any way, then they've just helped a technology grow that will (mostly) destroy them.

They might do just like WebMoney, and as they do with USD now, i.e. you fund your account (with BTC) and you maintain a BTC balance. No actual BTC would be transacted in the blockchain unless you deposit or withdraw, just as no USD is actually moved when paypal users transfer funds between themselves. Coinbase could theoretically do this too, but they actually process bitcoin transactions for everything instead of just maintaining a ledger. You're already trusting Paypal, WebMoney, banks, etc that they have "real dollars" underlying the transactions. Until you withdraw, you can never really be certain can you?

Like Western Union and MoneyGram, Paypal's best strategy might be to find a way to incorporate bitcoin into their business model. Otherwise the risk is that they will become irrelevant. Microsoft is still paying a heavy price for not taking the internet seriously and embracing it back in the 1990's. If you miss the initial opportunity, there's sometimes no way to catch up. Apple, Google, Oracle, etc have been walking all over them in this space for years now.

[Its About Sharing]

Wow, that is huge news and how did I miss that for 3 days???

The growing acceptance is great, but being that we are just starting our Black Swan Antifragile phase ( ) we need to get the word out.

This news is like both free advertising to millions of new users about BTC and also helps to gain BTC acceptance / use.

Just wow, unbelievable. First the China new with CCTV and now this. I see these two bits strong evidence of growing international support.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6...

[TraderTimm]

This is international acceptance:

http://bitnodes.io/

Graphs bitcoin nodes not totally hidden by Tor, etc... Interesting distribution, also shows that China is really up there - and I didn't expect that so soon.

[StarfishPrime]

This is international acceptance:

http://bitnodes.io/

Graphs bitcoin nodes not totally hidden by Tor, etc... Interesting distribution, also shows that China is really up there - and I didn't expect that so soon.

Incredible. When did that happen?! It's been a while but last time I checked China was well behind the US. This is big. Really big.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

This is international acceptance:

http://bitnodes.io/

Graphs bitcoin nodes not totally hidden by Tor, etc... Interesting distribution, also shows that China is really up there - and I didn't expect that so soon.

Incredible. When did that happen?! It's been a while but last time I checked China was well behind the US. This is big. Really big.

You better check this out:
2013-05-17 China CCTV 13 - Bitcoin

[stash]

Looks like they state that they support deposits of bitcoins into webmoney accounts, but I can't seem to find if there is a way to withdraw to bitcoins.  Has anyone with better search skills than me found out?

I've explored and depo some BTC to wmx purse, Deposit and withdrawal are processing on dedicated site here https://wmx.webmoney.ru
Can depo and withdraw here without fees as tested yesterday (they may charge it later)

[aigeezer]

This is international acceptance:

http://bitnodes.io/

Graphs bitcoin nodes not totally hidden by Tor, etc... Interesting distribution, also shows that China is really up there - and I didn't expect that so soon.

That is fascinating. Thanks for the link. I'm surprised Japan is not on the list. Also, media blather might make one expect Argentina and more of the PIIGS.

"Information wants to be free". Now we have to figure out what it implies and watch for trends once the methodology stabilizes.