Bitcoin marketing

Bitcoin: ¿la próxima oportunidad de negocios?

En el mundo, ya hay ocho millones de “billeteras virtuales” en funcionamiento, cifra que creció 1.600% en sólo un año. Más de 63.000 empresas y negocios están aceptando una nueva generación de consumidores que incorpora nuevos medios de pago.

Ya lo usan empresas como Dell, Microsoft o Subway, y a fines del año pasado eBay reconoció que estaba analizando cómo implementar su uso. Cada día se hacen en el mundo más de 100.000 transacciones con ella, y mueve una cifra superior a los U$S 150 millones mensuales, según las estimaciones de diciembre 2014 del sitio especializado Blockchain. Se calcula que hay unos 8 millones de “billeteras virtuales” activas, que almacenan un capital –según un reporte de Bloomberg- superior a los U$S 4.000 millones. En el mundo, hay unos 63.000 comercios y empresas que aceptan pagos en bitcoins. Para tener una idea de su avance, alcanza con decir que en 2013 había apenas 500.000 “billeteras virtuales”: un crecimiento cercano al 1.600% en poco más de un año.Aunque su valor (que fluctúa según tendencias de mercado) ha bajado últimamente, la moneda digital se está convirtiendo en una excelente alternativa comercial para empresas y marcas que buscan ampliar su rango de negocios. Y, más específicamente, es una buena herramienta para países que tienen una moneda poco segura o inestable (como Argentina, cuya economía sufre los embates de la inflación). En el mundo, ya no hay categoría que haya permanecido ajena: es posible pagar un viaje en empresas de turismo, comprar equipamiento para el hogar, ropa o calzado, y hace pocos meses fue noticia una concesionaria estadounidense que vendió sus primeros autos pagados íntegramente en bitcoins. En ese país, hay más de 3.000 firmas que venden productos y servicios usando esta moneda; en Argentina, esa cifra llega a unas 200 empresas. Y nuestro país es el que muestra mayor desarrollo de toda América Latina, superando incluso a Brasil. Según fuentes de PayPal, la compañía -líder mundial en pagos electrónicos- está evaluando la integración de este valor a su sistema, lo cual ampliaría enormemente su masa crítica, considerando los 153 millones de clientes que tiene PayPal en todo el mundo. Y en Mercado Libre, la empresa más importante de e-commerce en América Latina, reconocen que están analizando la incorporación de esta moneda: sólo es una cuestión de tiempo.

VALORES CAMBIANTESUn informe de Merril Lynch de hace pocos meses asegura: “Bitcoin podría convertirse en un importante medio de pago para el e-commerce y podría emerger como un serio competidor de los tradicionales proveedores de transferencia de dinero. Como medio de intercambio, Bitcoin tiene un claro potencial de crecimiento”. Sin embargo, advierte que su alta volatilidad

como consecuencia de actividades especulativas “está dificultando su aceptación general como medio de pago para el comercio online”.Este último punto es clave: el bitcoin (que es apenas una de las 140 criptomonedas que circulan, aunque acapara el 95% del mercado) pasó en poco tiempo de valer unos cuantos centavos de dólar a superar los 1.100 dólares por unidad, en lo que fue una clara burbuja especulativa. Hoy ese valor unitario descendió a unos U$S 300, quizá acercándolo a un precio más racional. Pero esas violentas fluctuaciones de valor juegan en contra de su confiabilidad como medio de pago y refugio de valor. Y aún si el bitcoin como producto digital terminara colapsando, el camino que abrió seguirá consolidándose y ganando espacio en el mercado.En una entrevista concedida a revista Apertura, el sitio de comercio electrónico Avalancha.com, que comenzó a operar en mayo pasado en la Argentina para la venta de productos electrónicos y artículos para el hogar —y que está expandiéndose a otros segmentos vert i c ales— reconoció que acepta la moneda virtual como medio de pago, aunque la mayoría de las transa cciones se concretan a través de las principales tarjetas de crédito. En palabras de Miguel Klurfan, CEO de la empresa que prevé facturar $ 25 millones para finales de este año, Bitcoin les permite dar “una alternativa más de pago a los clientes” y presenta varias ventajas: “Las comisiones son menores que las de una tarjeta y no hay devolución de cargos; además, la transacción es segura, sin posibilidad de fraude, y el procesamiento del pago es inmediato”, señala. “También es una manera de apoyar al ecosistema de emprendedores y las nuevas tecnologías”, admite. Hoy, entre un 2 y 3 por ciento de las ventas de Avalancha se concretan en bitcoins. “Es una cifra nada despreciable, si bien no cambiará el volumen de nuestra facturación en el corto plazo. Pero la tendencia es que crezca, por lo que es importante posicionarse. A medida que sumemos la oferta de más productos en nuevos segmentos, habrá también más opciones de compra con este medio”, agrega Klurfan.El entrevistado dijo la palabra clave: “posicionarse”. Aunque en monedas virtuales hoy no haya un negocio, sí hay una tendencia. El negocio se hará visible mañana. Quizá sea momento de planificar alternativas de pago, promociones y canales de acceso para responder a una nueva generación de consumidores que no vienen con dinero en el bolsillo, sino con criptomonedas en el celular. Y hacerlo hoy. Porque, como todo el mundo sabe, en estrategias de marketing, mañana es tarde.

-Lo usan Microsoft, Dell, Times, Subway.-En países de alta inflación o sin moneda-Más de 100.000 transacciones/día en dic.14 según Blockchain. 150 millones US$ mensuales.-Usuarios: enero ’15, casi 3 millones.

Bitcoin como medio de pago: los casos de las empresas que utilizan la moneda30-10-2014 - 17:30 -

 Este año algunos comercios y sitios online comenzaron a aceptar la criptomoneda para realizar transacciones. Las operaciones aún son escasas, pero están en crecimiento.

Mariana Pernas 

El uso y circulación comercial de bitcoins comenzó a tomar impulso este año a nivel mundial y, más lentamente, en la Argentina donde la comunidad de seguidores es, por ahora, más entusiasta que poseedora del nuevo medio de intercambio virtual. Es que —lejos de la especulación—parte del éxito de la moneda reside en la posibilidad de un uso comercial más generalizado, que se está dando especialmente en los sitios de comercio electrónico.Gradualmente, las empresas de volumen se están abriendo a esta fuente de ingresos. A principios de año, los sitios de ecommerce Tiger y Overstock, en Estados Unidos, incorporaron a Bitcoin como medio de pago.

Posteriormente, el fabricante de hardware Dell, a partir de julio se sumó a esta tendencia para las compras que se realicen en su sitio Dell.com —las personas y pequeñas empresas de Estados Unidos—, en una prueba piloto que canaliza a través del sistema de procesamiento de pagos Coinbase. También a mediados de año comenzó  a aceptar bitcoins  el sitio de venta de electrónicos Newegg, el proveedor de televisión satelital Dish y el sitio de turismo Expedia. En el mercado deportivo, el equipo de la NBA Sacramento Kings de igual forma toma bitcoins para la venta de su “merchandising” online asociado con la plataforma de procesamiento de pagos Bitpay.

Crédito: Bloomberg 

Sin embargo, aún no lo adoptaron jugadores clave como Alibaba, Amazon o Ebay, aunque el CEO de esta última compañía dijo a The Wall Street Journal que “estaba considerando formas de usar bitcoins” y su unidad de procesamiento de pagos, Brantree, se encuentra en negociaciones con Coinbase para soportar la criptomoneda. En el ámbito local y regional, el principal sitio de comercio electrónico, MercadoLibre, está “analizando” incorporar la moneda virtual, aunque no lo hará en el corto plazo. 

En la Argentina el uso comercial de bitcoins aún registra pocas transacciones. Pero sólo en la ciudad de Buenos Aires algo más de cien comercios toman bitcoins y también hay actividad en el interior del país. Los aceptan desde locales gastronómicos —bares y restaurantes, entre los que se encuentran dos locales de la cadena Subway—, hoteles, empresas de capacitación y, más afines a la tecnología, algunos proveedores de hosting de I n t e rnet, de venta de hardware, consultoría y servicio técnico de computación. Los motivos de este movimiento son ofrecer alternativas de pago a los clientes, posicionamiento de mercado, diversificación de la fuente de ingresos o, simplemente, comprometerse con el uso de nuevas tecnologías. 

De acuerdo con Sebastián Serrano, CEO de BitPagos —una plataforma de procesamiento de pagos con bitcoins que apunta a comercios de América latina—, la adopción de la criptomoneda en la Argentina es todavía muy incipiente. “En Estados Unidos hay más de 3.000 comercios que aceptan pagos en bitcoins y en la Argentina hay unos 200, aunque es el país de América latina con más comercios que lo admiten. Y a nivel mundial, se calculan unos 30.000 comercios —afirma—. Es incipiente en todo el mundo pero crece rápidamente: mientras que en 2013 había menos de medio millón de billeteras bitcoin, hoy se estima que hay entre 5 y 8 millones.” 

Alternativa de pago 

Un informe del Bank of America Merril Lynch elaborado a finales del año, concluye: “Bitcoin podría convertirse en un importante medio de pago para el e-commerce y podría emerger como un serio competidor de los tradicionales proveedores de transferencia de dinero. Como medio de intercambio, Bitcoin tiene un claro potencial de crecimiento”. Sin embargo, advierte que su alta volatilidad como consecuencia de actividades especulativas “está dificultando su aceptación general como medio de pago para el comercio online”.

El sitio de comercio electrónico Avalancha, que comenzó a operar en mayo pasado en la Argentina para la venta de productos electrónicos y artículos para el hogar —y que está expandiéndose a otros segmentos vert i c ales— acepta la moneda virtual como medio de pago, aunque la mayoría de las transa cciones se concretan a través de las principales tarjetas de crédito (incluidas algunas regionales). Según Miguel Klurfan, CEO de la empresa que prevé facturar $ 25 millones para finales de este año, Bitcoin les permite dar “una alternativa más de pago a los clientes” y presenta varias ventajas: “Las comisiones son menores que las de una tarjeta y no hay devolución de cargos; además, la transacción es segura, sin posibilidad de fraude, y el procesamiento del pago es inmediato”, señala. “También es una manera de apoyar al ecosistema de emprendedores y las nuevas tecnologías”, admite. Hoy, entre un 2 y 3 por ciento de las ventas de Avalancha se concretan en bitcoins. “Es una cifra para nada despreciable, si bien no cambiará el volumen de nuestra facturación en el corto plazo. Pero la tendencia es que crezca, por lo que es importante posicionarse. A medida que sumemos la oferta de más productos en nuevos segmentos verticales, habrá también más opciones de compra con este medio”, agrega Klurfan.

   

Crédito: Bloomberg

La empresa utiliza BitPagos como plataforma de procesamiento de las operaciones —una integración que realizó en dos semanas a través su API—y el servicio de Bitex para convertir los bitcoins a pesos, ya que Avalancha no atesora en la moneda virtual. “Recibimos los pagos directamente en pesos. Como compañía nunca se nos ocurrió atesorar en bitcoins. No asumimos los riesgos de volatilidad de Bitcoin. Nuestro negocio no es financiero o especulativo; tampoco nos interesa diversificar nuestra cartera de monedas. Nuestro foco es la compra y venta de productos en Internet”, afirma Klurfan, cuya empresa tiene 25 empleados y realiza alrededor de 600 ventas por mes con un ticket promedio de $ 4.000. En el caso de MercadoLibre, que el año pasado concretó transacciones por US$ 7.300 millones y emplea 2.171 personas a nivel regional, están “estudiando” la incorporación de la criptomoneda, aunque no será en el corto plazo, advierte Paula Arregui, Product VP MercadoPago de MercadoLibre. “Bitcoin tiene dos aristas para nosotros: como atesoramiento y como medio de pago. En el primer caso hicimos un primer avance tímido, ya que hoy a través de nuestra plataforma hay gente que vende y compra bitcoins como un producto más. El segundo aspecto, que genera más valor, consiste en la integración de Bitcoin con MercadoPago como un medio de pago. Allí estamos muy atentos al desarrollo de Bitcoin, pero vemos que el volumen de transacciones online es pequeño todavía. No creemos que sea relevante tampoco en Estados Unidos y Europa. En un futuro no muy lejano será parte de nuestra integración y tenemos que estar preparados para hacerlo, pero hoy MercadoLibre tiene otras prioridades, como el segmento de movilidad y la apertura de nuestra plataforma.” 

Según Arregui, en el marco de esta evaluación inicial de Bitcoin “estamos asesorándonos; estamos hablando con quienes ya hicieron la integración en la región, así como con nuestros desarrolladores y a nivel de directorio. Pero no es un lanzamiento para el corto plazo”. La ejecutiva afirma que MercadoLibre no concibe a los medios de pago —Bitcoin incluido—como una competencia. “Son complementarios —pre c i s a—. A mayor cantidad de medios de pago, más alternativas para los consumidores.” Los negocios que operan en el mercado IT son más propensos a incorporar bitcoins. El espacio 3DLab Fab&Café, donde se brindan servicios de impresión 3D y se organizan eventos y encuentros de capacitación en nuevas tecnologías, acepta la criptomoneda desde principios de año. “Al tratarse de un bar temático tecnológico y un lugar de trabajo y networking de

emprendedores de la industria, nuestros clientes siempre están interesados y son adoptadores tempranos de tecnologías disruptivas. Nos sirve desde el punto de vista comercial y de posicionamiento. Es una tecnología experimental que nos interesa y tiene beneficios concretos”, señala Joan Cwaik, socio del emprendimiento.

“Desde que abrimos hasta hoy recibimos US$ 120 en bitcoins por consumos en el bar y por servicios de impresión 3D. Los pagos en bitcoins, por lo general, se realizan en los eventos de tecnología que organizamos. Por ahora no es una forma de pago masiva, sino que está acotada a estos encuentros de emprendedores”, admite Cwaik. 

A su entender, la moneda virtual ofrece numerosas ventajas para los comercios. “Hay personas que tienen bitcoins y no saben dónde o cómo gastarlos, ya que después de 2013 su valor creció en un 1.000 por ciento y sus poseedores tuvieron muchos beneficios —sostiene Cwaik—. A nosotros, en particular, nos diferencia de la competencia el hecho de aceptar un medio de pago que

atrae a la comunidad vinculada a la tecnología, es un valor agregado. Es más seguro al no tener que usar billetes físicos y la verificación de la transacción es casi instantánea, sin posibilidades de fraude. Tampoco tiene comisiones, se adapta muy bien a las micro transacciones y habilita a los turistas y a los a compradores internacionales, ya que es una moneda global.” Pero, a pesar de su optimismo, Cwaik reconoce que “al ser una moneda experimental, es muy sensible y fluctuante. No está estabilizada”. Y opina: “Es una amenaza muy grande para los bancos y las tarjetas de crédito, ya que busca eliminar al intermediario de las transacciones”.

A partir de mediados del año pasado, la empresa de capacitación Generando IT decidió tomar bitcoins como medio de pago. “Para las capacitaciones online, nuestro mayor público se encuentra en los países de Américalatina y en España. Utilizamos PayPal como herramienta de pagos, pero comenzamos a recibir consultas de clientes del exterior sobre si aceptábamos bitcoins. Empezamos a averiguar y creamos nuestro monedero virtual. Ya tuvimos algunas transacciones; hasta el momento fueron algunos casos puntuales que totalizaron unos $ 2.000”, señala, Belén Alegre, codirectora de Generando IT.

“Por ahora, mantendremos la suma y lo que vayamos recibiendo como ahorro. Si el volumen crece, empezaremos a tratar de utilizarlo para pagar otros servicios, pero la realidad es que no tenemos proveedores importantes que lo acepten. Pero por el perfil de nuestros clientes es bueno darles esta alternativa”, completa Alegre.

La implementación para recibir pagos en Bitcoin fue “bastante simple”, aseguran en Generando IT. “Bitcoin core está disponible para descargar desde Bitcoin.org; de allí descargamos el cliente, porque es uno de los más s o p o rtados y, por otro lado, dado que trabajamos sobre plataformas de Linux, ésta era una de las opciones disponibles”, señala Fernando Martínez, responsable del desarrollo de Generando IT. “Por el momento no usamos un tercero como gateway de pago, principalmente porque no tenemos un volumen de transacciones alto con bitcoins. Así que, básicamente, una vez que la persona cierra la inscripción a través del sitio, se le envía un e-mail automático donde puede determinar su medio de pago deseado. Si el usuario desea pagar con bitcoins, generamos la dirección correspondiente dentro de nuestro monedero y se la enviamos para que haga la transferencia.”

En cuanto a las dificultades, señala que “una primera instalación del monedero se realizó sobre un sistema operativo Debian y no lográbamos hacer que funcionara correctamente, por lo que montamos máquinas virtuales con distintas versiones para poder optimizar el proceso y

reconocer el problema”, completa.

Con sede en la provincia de Salta, la empresa Netyco brinda desde 2003 servicios de streaming de radio por Internet, hosting, diseño web y servidores VPS (servidores privados virtuales). Tras una etapa de análisis, decidieron que aceptarían bitcoins, sobre todo para utilizarlos como medio de pago para su proveedor de servidores web y data center —Hivelocity—, que está basado en Estados Unidos. “Le consultamos si aceptarían bitcoins y respondieron que sí; para nosotros fue muy útil porque que hoy es difícil hacer los pagos en dólares”, cuenta Leonardo Auza, director de Netyco, que brinda servicios de streaming a las radios de la Universidad Nacional de Salta y a la Universidad Católica de Santiago del Estero, además de varias emisoras evangélicas, entre los usuarios locales. 

Aunque recibieron algunas consultas de clientes del exterior para pagar en bitcoins pero no concretaron transacciones, realizaron la integración con el servicio de procesamiento Bitpay —a través de su API—que mediante el cobro de una comisión transfiere el pago en bitcoins a la billetera de Netyco. Lo cierto es que por el momento las operaciones se concretan lentamente y por escasos montos. Para facilitar el acceso del público a bitcoins y así estimular su circulación y uso en el país, a mediados del mes pasado se lanzó Ripio, un desarrollo de BitPagos que brinda la posibilidad de comprar bitcoins en los 8.000 puntos de venta de la red Telecargas. “El objetivo es bajar la barrera de acceso a la economía de bitcoin — señala Serrano—. Es difícil adquirir bitcoins en la Argentina; la mayor parte de las opciones son comprar a otros usuarios o a través de algunas plataformas orientadas a usuarios especializadas y que resultan sofisticadas para el público común. Nuestra alternativa, en cambio, es una billetera virtual para hacer recargas. Es útil para la población no bancarizada, que tiene difícil acceso a la economía online.” 

La plataforma de Ripio “permite comprar bitcoins a través del celular al precio de mercado del momento más una comisión. Al integrarnos con Telecargas, la operación es muy similar a la recarga de saldo para el celular. Vendemos hasta $ 1.000 en bitcoins por compra, que se acreditan instantáneamente”, cuenta Serrano, de BitPagos. El monto de la comisión por esta operación es del 4 por ciento; pero “a medida que podamos ir puliendo la plataforma queremos reducirla”, adelanta el emprendedor y admite que el número de transacciones “aún es incipiente”.

- Moreover, Bitcoin generally can be a powerful force to bring a much larger number of people around the world into the modern economic system. Only about 20 countries around the world have what we would consider to be fully modern banking and payment systems; the other roughly 175 have a long way to go. As a result, many people in many countries are excluded from products and services that we in the West take for granted. Even Netflix, a completely virtual service, is only available in about 40 countries. Bitcoin, as a global payment system anyone can use from anywhere at any time, can be a powerful catalyst to extend the benefits of the modern economic system to virtually everyone on the planet.And even here in the United States, a long-recognized problem is the extremely high fees that the “unbanked” — people without conventional bank accounts – pay for even basic financial services. Bitcoin can be used to go straight at that problem, by making it easy to offer extremely low-fee services to people outside of the traditional financial system.A third fascinating use case for Bitcoin is micropayments, or ultrasmall payments. Micropayments have never been feasible, despite 20 years of attempts, because it is not cost effective to run small payments (think $1 and below, down to pennies or fractions of a penny)

through the existing credit/debit and banking systems. The fee structure of those systems makes that nonviable.

 8/07/2014 @ 4:49PM 11.889 views

Bitcoin Momentum Grows in Emerging Markets

Techonomy , Contributor

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By Min-Si WangBitcoin is gradually making progress as a medium of exchange in developing countries. While it can be volatile as an investment asset, it has real utility as an instrument for payment and money transfer, especially in places where conventional payment systems are immature. Because Bitcoin facilitates instant payment through peer-to-peer technology, most transactions can be completed in less than 10 minutes no matter how distant the two parties are. In addition, each transaction is recorded in a public ledger, enhancing transparency and trustworthiness.

Consequently, a supportive ecosystem is quickly evolving around the digital currency. Companies—mostly startups—are building exchanges, trading and payment platforms, wallets, and storage and remittance services. There are now around 65,000 bitcoin transactions a day currently, and 13

million bitcoins are in circulation globally. (That converts to about $8 billion at a recent USD/BTC exchange rate of $589/BTC). But bitcoin’s ability to scale further hinges on consumer confidence and the development of services that allow users to securely store and transact in bitcoins.

(Image via Shutterstock)

To be sure, consumers are increasingly familiar with many of the concepts behind bitcoin in emerging markets like parts of Africa, where alternative cashless payment solutions like M-Pesa’s mobile money are already popular. A recent survey by mobile payment company Jana found that over half of respondents from Asia and Africa expressed confidence in investing in bitcoin. Consumer confidence is especially high in Kenya, home of M-Pesa, and 74 percent of Kenyan respondents said they would feel comfortable investing in digital currency.A number of intriguing startups in Asia and Africa are offering various bitcoin-related services. Below are a few notable examples:

BITCOIN EXCHANGES

The first live bitcoin exchange in the world, Vietnam’s VBTC, offers trading services, multisignature wallets (used to reduce the possibility of fraud by employing several private keys), and bitcoin storage. The firm’s founder says that Vietnam’s high inflation rate makes bitcoin an attractive alternative to the national currency. While local regulators have issued warnings about bitcoin risks, VBTC is bullish on the digital

currency’s potential in Southeast Asia and beyond.

In neighboring China, BTC China is one of the world’s largest exchanges for the digital currency. In addition to providing trading and exchange services, BTC China offers a wallet app, Picasso, which enables users to sell bitcoins by pushing a few buttons. But Chinese regulators are as leery of bitcoin as their Vietnam counterparts: China’s Central Bank has restricted the transfer of  bitcoins in China.

REMITTANCE SERVICES

According to the World Bank, remittance flow, or the amount of money sent back to their home country by global economic emigrants, reached $414 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow to $540 billion by 2016. As bitcoins become easier to acquire in developed countries where remittance flow originates, bitcoin startups can offer the migrant population international transfer at a significant discount to traditional providers like banks and Western Union. Bitcoin remittance can be verified, settled, and signed off on for free in a few minutes, making the transfer efficient. Kenya-based startup Bitpesa, which serves the African diaspora in the UK and aims to expand to other African countries, currently offers remittance service at only 3 percent per transaction. By contrast, Western Union and banks often charge transfer fees of between 9 and 20 percent. PayPal, a popular inexpensive transfer method in developed countries, is not available in Kenya.

PAYMENT AND WALLET SERVICES

BitPago, a bitcoin payment startup targeting Latin America, charges 5 percent to process credit card transactions and handles bitcoins for free for hotels and hostels. Based in Argentina, the founder, Sebastian Serrano, was inspired by hyperinflation and the economic damages that currency volatility has caused there. Another LATAM start-up, Moneero, allows users to manage accounts and sub-accounts in bitcoins. Moneero also provides secure wallet services, Moneero Social and Moneero SMS, which allow users to transfer bitcoins through both mobile and social media.

Users in developed markets still account for the majority of bitcoin transactions, but penetration is increasing in emerging markets. While the U.S. dollar accounts for approximately 80 percent of bitcoin trading volume, trading volume in China grew from 0.4 percent in 2012 to 4.7 percent in 2014. One of the most popular bitcoin exchanges, BTC-e, is based in Bulgaria.

As the bitcoin ecosystem continues to expand, emerging-markets startups are gaining the attention of venture capitalists from the developed world. BitPago has raised $600,000 from investors including Boost Bitcoin Fund and Pantera Capital, while BTC China has raised $5 million in Series A funding.

Much like the development of mobile money in Africa, emerging markets present incubation and growth opportunities. There’s a consumer appetite for alternate currency in these places

where inefficient financial systems often levy high service fees for both individual customers and small businesses. In Latin America, Asia, and Africa, bitcoin use will just keep going up.

Min-Si Wang contribues on topics relating to finance and e-commerce for Techonomy. She currently works in tech M&A as a consultant, and has experiences in international development for Planet Finance and the Clinton Foundation. 

EBay’s PayPal Unit to Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments

By Spencer Soper and Olga Kharif  Sep 9, 2014 1:01 AM GMT-0300  

EBay Inc. (EBAY)’s PayPal service will start accepting bitcoins, opening up the world’s second-biggest Internet payment network to virtual currency transactions.

“We’re announcing PayPal’s first foray into bitcoin,” Bill Ready, the chief of EBay’s Braintree unit, said at Techcrunch’s Disrupt SF conference yesterday. “Over the coming months we’ll allow our merchants to accept bitcoin. On the consumer side it will be a sleek experience.”

EBay, as the world’s biggest Web marketplace and operator of a global payments service, is the most significant business to date that’s embraced bitcoin. The move could potentially enable PayPal’s 152 million registered accounts to transact using the virtual currency, spurring wider use and acceptance of bitcoin, according to Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc.

“PayPal integrating bitcoin into Braintree is a very substantial development,” Luria said. “Not only will it make it possible for some of the fastest-growing apps to integrate bitcoin seamlessly, it opens the door for PayPal to integrate bitcoin into its main wallet functionality. If that happens millions of retailers will de facto be accepting bitcoin overnight.”

Braintree provides payment capabilities on websites and in mobile apps such as mobile car-booking service Uber Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc., the short-term home rental service for travelers. EBay acquired Braintree for $800 million in cash last year to expand its mobile-transactions business. PayPal and Braintree will work with bitcoin payment-service provider Coinbase Inc. to enable payments in the virtual currency, Ready said.

Goods, Services

Ready said that tens of thousands of PayPal merchants using Braintree will be able to accept bitcoins if they choose to do so.

“We’re at the right time for this, and to see how to propel it forward,” Ready said. He said he expects to announce which merchants will accept Bitcoin in the coming months.

EBay would join other companies in accepting bitcoin, a digital currency that started to enter the mainstream in 2013. Dell Inc. began accepting bitcoins for for good such as computers in July.

Dish Networks Corp., Overstock.com Inc. and Expedia Inc. also accept the virtual currency. In total, about 63,000 businesses handle bitcoins, and users have set up more than 5 million digital wallets to keep their holdings at the end of June, according to CoinDesk, a website tracking the digital money’s use.

Bitcoins emerged from a 2008 paper written by a programmer or group of programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, becoming the most popular virtual currency. It relies on a public ledger and cryptography to record transactions and protect ownership.

Uncertain Future

A Bloomberg Global Poll of financial professionals in July indicated that there’s still skepticism of the virtual currency even as technology entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and hedge funds plow money and effort

into building it into a global payment system. Bitcoin prices have swung between more than $900 to as low as $341 this year as enthusiasts try to address the digital currency’s weaknesses, persuade consumers to embrace it and overcome governments’ concerns that it could be misused by criminals.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said the virtual currency trades at unsustainable, bubble-like prices, according to the quarterly poll of 562 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers. Another 14 percent said it’s on the verge of a bubble.

To contact the reporters on this story: Spencer Soper in San Francisco at ssoper@bloomberg.net; Olga Kharif in Portland atokharif@bloomberg.net

Bitcoin Gets More Respect From Major BrandsPosted by Sheila Shayon on December 18, 2014 12:02 PM

Bitcoin has survived skepticism, economic volatility and outright hostility from entrenched financial

institutions since it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. But now, it's starting to seep into the

global economy as more big brands are stepping out in support of the digital currency.

Time Inc. is the latest company to announce it’s accepting the virtual currency for subscriptions to

many of its magazines, including Fortune, Health, This Old House and Travel and Leisure.

“For a major publisher like Time Inc. to embrace Bitcoin sends an important message to both its

readers and to the broader media community,” said Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of

Coinbase (Time Inc.'s Bitcoin processor), according to the New York Times.

Microsoft is also now acceping Bitcoin for some online purchases via the BitPay currency

exchange, which can now be used for purchases on Windows Store or at stores that sell Xbox

Games, Xbox Music or Xbox Video.

Microsoft joins Dell, Overstock.com, DISH Network and Expedia in accepting the virtual currency.

“We're pleased by the response to our current Bitcoin pilot on Dell.com for consumer and small

business shoppers in the U.S.,” said Dell CIO Paul J. Walsh.

“While we were initially predicting we’d see primarily consumer demand, we are seeing purchases

across the full product and customer spectrum—from software and peripherals to our Latitude

business line of PCs and even our largest transaction to date—north of $50,000 for a highly

configured PowerEdge server system. This form of payment is clearly resonating with consumer,

small and medium businesses,” he added.

Bitcoin has been building momentum this year. In October, Bill Gates said, "Bitcoin is better than

currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and of course for large

transactions currency can get pretty inconvenient."

And it's found particular success in some of the more unstable international markets. As Business

Insider commented, “In the world of conventional finance, governments can see every time you use

your credit card, withdraw cash at an ATM, or make a wire transfer. Yet with Bitcoin, they don’t have

this ability. And this is a key reason why Bitcoin has become so popular, especially in places like

Argentina where people are getting squashed by their government.” 

Ironically, as the Russian ruble plunged more than 11 percent against the dollar this week, “the

beneficiaries of this flight from Russia appeared to be the euro, the yen, sterling—and bitcoin,"

CNBC notes.

CES Watch

CES 2015: Bitcoin Makes a Splash, Despite Controversies AbroadPosted by Sheila Shayon on January 8, 2015 03:35 PM

Bitcoin has been attracting a lot of interest—or at least curiosity—from companies and consumers

alike, not to mention governments and financial watchdogs.

That's why CES 2015 is highlighting the virtual currency in a 2,000-square-foot island where

companies including BitPay, Bitman, Bitstamp, Blockchain, Circle, CoPay, Kraken, Private Internet

Access, Robocoin and yBitcoin—collectively representing more than $100 million in venture capital

—have been showing their wares in the Wild West that is the Bitcoin economy.

"Bitcoin is rapidly redefining financial and commercial paradigms," says Emily Vaughn, Marketing

Manager at BitPay. "The showcase represents some of the top talent in bitcoin technology and will

provide a unique experience for the 170,000 CES attendees."

The product offerings range from how to purchase bitcoin and set up a bitcoin exchange account to

online security and a demonstration of mining hardware.

Bitcoiners on the island include BitPay, which is highlighting a new version of its CoPay Bitcoin

wallet for Windows Mobile.

"This is one of our contributions to the Bitcoin technology," said BitPay CEO Stephen Pair.

"Microsoft’s support has enabled us to make our code available to a new group of developers and

companies. We look forward to seeing how Copay evolves."

Gliph Inc. announced Gliph Marketplace, a new way to buy and sell locally using cash and Bitcoin.

A feature of the new marketplace is a P2P transaction experience the company has dubbed "deal

flow." The feature helps users focus on completing a deal by "integrating messaging and useful

push notifications into the buying and selling experience." Deal flow also offers intuitive listing status

updates, and claims to earn money faster by making digital payments an integrated part of the

experience.

Meanwhile, cyber security startup, HyprKey, is showcasing its patent-pending HYPR-3 biometric

payment gateway technology, a 3.2 mm Bluetooth sticker that secures credit cards and bitcoin.

Stick it on a keychain or smartphone and have one year of battery life and back-up when you leave

your wallet at home.

"As technology increasingly transforms commerce, the payments landscape is poised to benefit

from security and efficiencies," said HyprKey CEO George Avetisov. "HYPR-3 is a technology we

expect to gain prominence as a direct result of showcasing its functionality, which includes the

ability to spend bitcoin without ever owning bitcoin and the capability of safeguarding user accounts

like bankcards behind an impenetrable key."

In countries like Nigeria, where financial theft and fraud are rampant, bitcoin is a game-changer.

"Nigerian online consumers simply do not have the same access to goods and services from

international vendors due to one simple thing: credit card fraud," said ICE3X founder Gareth

Grobler. "Bitcoin solves that problem."

Payment processor VoguePay has partnered with South African bitcoin exchange ICE3X to begin

bitcoin trading in Nigeria. "VoguePay have spotted the opportunity bitcoin offers, seeing as one of

the primary attributes of bitcoin is its security," added Grobler.

Despite the full-steam-ahead attitude at CES, controversy still swirls around the digital currency. On

an alarming note, Canadian Bitcoin exchange Vault of Satoshi is shutting down Feb. 5 and the

Ontario-based exchange is no longer accepting new deposits.

"We’d like to reassure the community that it has absolutely nothing to do with insolvency, stolen

funds, or any other unfortunate scenario," the operators posted. "Our decision stems from

opportunities presented by a new business that has forced us to reexamine our priorities."

The closure coincides with Bitstamp’s admission that some of its operational wallets were

compromised Jan. 4, leading to "a loss of less than 19,000" bitcoins, which is roughly $5.1 million.

Speculation that Bitstamp is "Mt. Gox 2.0," having reportedly lost $5 million since it was allegedly

hacked Jan. 5th, likely caused the company-in-crisis to not attend CES 2015 despite having bought

a stand.

This kind of news spreads like wildfire, fanned by crypto-currency critics, and Bitcoin recently sank

below $300 for the first time in over a year. Still, believers like Silicon Valley legend Marc

Andreessen are undeterred.

Why Bitcoin MattersBy MARC ANDREESSEN JANUARY 21, 2014 11:54 AM January 21, 2014 11:54 am 104 Comments

Photo

Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.Credit Keith Bedford/Reuters

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Editor’s note: Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested just under $50 million in Bitcoin-related start-ups. The firm is actively searching for more Bitcoin-based investment opportunities. He does not personally own more than a de minimis amount of Bitcoin.

A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers.

Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.

On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it. They see within it enormous potential and spend their nights and weekends tinkering with it.

Video

PLAY VIDEO|2:21

Bitcoin Believers

Bitcoin BelieversWhile regulators debate the pros and cons of bitcoins, this volatile digital currency inspires the question: What makes money, money?

 Video by Channon Hodge, David Gillen, Kimberly Moy and Aaron Byrd on Publish DateNovember 25, 2013.

Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its effects become profound; and later, many people wonder why its powerful promise wasn’t more obvious from the start.

What technology am I talking about? Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.

One can hardly accuse Bitcoin of being an uncovered topic, yet the gulf between what the press and many regular people believe Bitcoin is, and what a growing critical mass of technologists believe Bitcoin is, remains enormous. In this post, I will explain why Bitcoin has so many Silicon Valley programmers and entrepreneurs all lathered up, and what I think Bitcoin’s future potential is.

First, Bitcoin at its most fundamental level is a breakthrough in computer science – one that builds on 20 years of research into cryptographic currency, and 40 years of research in cryptography, by thousands of researchers around the world.

Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem. To quote from the original paper defining the B.G.P.: “[Imagine] a group of generals of the Byzantine army camped with their troops around an enemy city. Communicating only by messenger, the generals must agree upon a common battle plan. However, one or more of them may be traitors who will try to confuse the others. The problem is to find an algorithm to ensure that the loyal generals will reach agreement.”

More generally, the B.G.P. poses the question of how to establish trust between otherwise unrelated parties over an untrusted network like the Internet.

The practical consequence of solving this problem is that Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique

piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.

What kinds of digital property might be transferred in this way? Think about digital signatures, digital contracts, digital keys (to physical locks, or to online lockers), digital ownership of physical assets such as cars and houses, digital stocks and bonds … and digital money.

All these are exchanged through a distributed network of trust that does not require or rely upon a central intermediary like a bank or broker. And all in a way where only the owner of an asset can send it, only the intended recipient can receive it, the asset can only exist in one place at a time, and everyone can validate transactions and ownership of all assets anytime they want.

How does this work?

Bitcoin is an Internet-wide distributed ledger. You buy into the ledger by purchasing one of a fixed number of slots, either with cash or by selling a product and service for Bitcoin. You sell out of the ledger by trading your Bitcoin to someone else who wants to buy into the ledger. Anyone in the world can buy into or sell out of the ledger any time they want – with no approval needed, and with no or very low fees. The Bitcoin “coins” themselves are simply slots in the ledger, analogous in some ways to seats on a stock exchange, except much more broadly applicable to real world transactions.

The Bitcoin ledger is a new kind of payment system. Anyone in the world can pay anyone else in the world any amount of value of Bitcoin by simply transferring ownership of the corresponding slot in the ledger. Put value in, transfer it, the recipient gets value out, no authorization required, and in many cases, no fees.

That last part is enormously important. Bitcoin is the first Internetwide payment system where transactions either happen with no fees or very low fees (down to fractions of pennies). Existing payment systems charge fees of about 2 to 3 percent – and that’s in the developed world. In lots of other places, there either are no modern payment systems or the rates are significantly higher. We’ll come back to that.

Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument. It is a way to exchange money or assets between parties with no pre-existing trust: A string of numbers is sent over email or text message in the simplest case. The sender doesn’t need to know or trust the receiver or vice versa. Related, there are no chargebacks – this is the part that is literally like cash – if you

have the money or the asset, you can pay with it; if you don’t, you can’t. This is brand new. This has never existed in digital form before.

Bitcoin is a digital currency, whose value is based directly on two things: use of the payment system today – volume and velocity of payments running through the ledger – and speculation on future use of the payment system. This is one part that is confusing people. It’s not as much that the Bitcoin currency has some arbitrary value and then people are trading with it; it’s more that people can trade with Bitcoin (anywhere, everywhere, with no fraud and no or very low fees) and as a result it has value.

It is perhaps true right at this moment that the value of Bitcoin currency is based more on speculation than actual payment volume, but it is equally true that that speculation is establishing a sufficiently high price for the currency that payments have become practically possible. The Bitcoin currency had to be worth something before it could bear any amount of real-world payment volume. This is the classic “chicken and egg” problem with new technology: new technology is not worth much until it’s worth a lot. And so the fact that Bitcoin has risen in value in part because of speculation is making the reality of its usefulness arrive much faster than it would have otherwise.

Critics of Bitcoin point to limited usage by ordinary consumers and merchants, but that same criticism was leveled against PCs and the Internet at the same stage. Every day, more and more consumers and merchants are buying, using and selling Bitcoin, all around the world. The overall numbers are still small, but they are growing quickly. And ease of use for all participants is rapidly increasing as Bitcoin tools and technologies are improved. Remember, it used to be technically challenging to even get on the Internet. Now it’s not.

The criticism that merchants will not accept Bitcoin because of its volatility is also incorrect. Bitcoin can be used entirely as a payment system; merchants do not need to hold any Bitcoin currency or be exposed to Bitcoin volatility at any time. Any consumer or merchant can trade in and out of Bitcoin and other currencies any time they want.

Why would any merchant – online or in the real world – want to accept Bitcoin as payment, given the currently small number of consumers who want to pay with it? My partner Chris Dixon recently gave this example:

“Let’s say you sell electronics online. Profit margins in those businesses are usually under 5 percent, which means conventional 2.5 percent payment fees consume half the margin. That’s money that could be reinvested in the business, passed back to consumers or taxed by the

government. Of all of those choices, handing 2.5 percent to banks to move bits around the Internet is the worst possible choice. Another challenge merchants have with payments is accepting international payments. If you are wondering why your favorite product or service isn’t available in your country, the answer is often payments.”

In addition, merchants are highly attracted to Bitcoin because it eliminates the risk of credit card fraud. This is the form of fraud that motivates so many criminals to put so much work into stealing personal customer information and credit card numbers.

Since Bitcoin is a digital bearer instrument, the receiver of a payment does not get any information from the sender that can be used to steal money from the sender in the future, either by that merchant or by a criminal who steals that information from the merchant.

Credit card fraud is such a big deal for merchants, credit card processors and banks that online fraud detection systems are hair-trigger wired to stop transactions that look even slightly suspicious, whether or not they are actually fraudulent. As a result, many online merchants are forced to turn away 5 to 10 percent of incoming orders that they could take without fear if the customers were paying with Bitcoin, where such fraud would not be possible. Since these are orders that were coming in already, they are inherently the highest margin orders a merchant can get, and so being able to take them will drastically increase many merchants’ profit margins.

Bitcoin’s antifraud properties even extend into the physical world of retail stores and shoppers.

For example, with Bitcoin, the huge hack that recently stole 70 million consumers’ credit card information from the Target department store chain would not have been possible. Here’s how that would work:

You fill your cart and go to the checkout station like you do now. But instead of handing over your credit card to pay, you pull out your smartphone and take a snapshot of a QR code displayed by the cash register. The QR code contains all the information required for you to send Bitcoin to Target, including the amount. You click “Confirm” on your phone and the transaction is done (including converting dollars from your account into Bitcoin, if you did not own any Bitcoin).

Target is happy because it has the money in the form of Bitcoin, which it can immediately turn into dollars if it wants, and it paid no or very low payment processing fees; you are happy because there is no way for hackers to steal any of your personal information; and organized crime is unhappy. (Well, maybe criminals are still happy: They can try

to steal money directly from poorly-secured merchant computer systems. But even if they succeed, consumers bear no risk of loss, fraud or identity theft.)

Finally, I’d like to address the claim made by some critics that Bitcoin is a haven for bad behavior, for criminals and terrorists to transfer money anonymously with impunity. This is a myth, fostered mostly by sensationalistic press coverage and an incomplete understanding of the technology. Much like email, which is quite traceable, Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. Further, every transaction in the Bitcoin network is tracked and logged forever in the Bitcoin blockchain, or permanent record, available for all to see. As a result, Bitcoin is considerably easier for law enforcement to trace than cash, gold or diamonds.

What’s the future of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a classic network effect, a positive feedback loop. The more people who use Bitcoin, the more valuable Bitcoin is for everyone who uses it, and the higher the incentive for the next user to start using the technology. Bitcoin shares this network effect property with the telephone system, the web, and popular Internet services like eBay and Facebook.

In fact, Bitcoin is a four-sided network effect. There are four constituencies that participate in expanding the value of Bitcoin as a consequence of their own self-interested participation. Those constituencies are (1) consumers who pay with Bitcoin, (2) merchants who accept Bitcoin, (3) “miners” who run the computers that process and validate all the transactions and enable the distributed trust network to exist, and (4) developers and entrepreneurs who are building new products and services with and on top of Bitcoin.

All four sides of the network effect are playing a valuable part in expanding the value of the overall system, but the fourth is particularly important.

All over Silicon Valley and around the world, many thousands of programmers are using Bitcoin as a building block for a kaleidoscope of new product and service ideas that were not possible before. And at our venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, we are seeing a rapidly increasing number of outstanding entrepreneurs – not a few with highly respected track records in the financial industry – building companies on top of Bitcoin.

For this reason alone, new challengers to Bitcoin face a hard uphill battle. If something is to displace Bitcoin now, it will have to have

sizable improvements and it will have to happen quickly. Otherwise, this network effect will carry Bitcoin to dominance.

One immediately obvious and enormous area for Bitcoin-based innovation is international remittance. Every day, hundreds of millions of low-income people go to work in hard jobs in foreign countries to make money to send back to their families in their home countries – over $400 billion in total annually, according to the World Bank. Every day, banks and payment companies extract mind-boggling fees, up to 10 percent and sometimes even higher, to send this money.

Switching to Bitcoin, which charges no or very low fees, for these remittance payments will therefore raise the quality of life of migrant workers and their families significantly. In fact, it is hard to think of any one thing that would have a faster and more positive effect on so many people in the world’s poorest countries.

Moreover, Bitcoin generally can be a powerful force to bring a much larger number of people around the world into the modern economic system. Only about 20 countries around the world have what we would consider to be fully modern banking and payment systems; the other roughly 175 have a long way to go. As a result, many people in many countries are excluded from products and services that we in the West take for granted. Even Netflix, a completely virtual service, is only available in about 40 countries. Bitcoin, as a global payment system anyone can use from anywhere at any time, can be a powerful catalyst to extend the benefits of the modern economic system to virtually everyone on the planet.

And even here in the United States, a long-recognized problem is the extremely high fees that the “unbanked” — people without conventional bank accounts – pay for even basic financial services. Bitcoin can be used to go straight at that problem, by making it easy to offer extremely low-fee services to people outside of the traditional financial system.

A third fascinating use case for Bitcoin is micropayments, or ultrasmall payments. Micropayments have never been feasible, despite 20 years of attempts, because it is not cost effective to run small payments (think $1 and below, down to pennies or fractions of a penny) through the existing credit/debit and banking systems. The fee structure of those systems makes that nonviable.

All of a sudden, with Bitcoin, that’s trivially easy. Bitcoins have the nifty property of infinite divisibility: currently down to eight decimal places after the dot, but more in the future. So you can specify an arbitrarily small amount of money, like a thousandth of a penny, and send it to anyone in the world for free or near-free.

Think about content monetization, for example. One reason media businesses such as newspapers struggle to charge for content is because they need to charge either all (pay the entire subscription fee for all the content) or nothing (which then results in all those terrible banner ads everywhere on the web). All of a sudden, with Bitcoin, there is an economically viable way to charge arbitrarily small amounts of money per article, or per section, or per hour, or per video play, or per archive access, or per news alert.

Another potential use of Bitcoin micropayments is to fight spam. Future email systems and social networks could refuse to accept incoming messages unless they were accompanied with tiny amounts of Bitcoin – tiny enough to not matter to the sender, but large enough to deter spammers, who today can send uncounted billions of spam messages for free with impunity.

Finally, a fourth interesting use case is public payments. This idea first came to my attention in a news article a few months ago. A random spectator at a televised sports event held up a placard with a QR code and the text “Send me Bitcoin!” He received $25,000 in Bitcoin in the first 24 hours, all from people he had never met. This was the first time in history that you could see someone holding up a sign, in person or on TV or in a photo, and then send them money with two clicks on your smartphone: take the photo of the QR code on the sign, and click to send the money.

Think about the implications for protest movements. Today protesters want to get on TV so people learn about their cause. Tomorrow they’ll want to get on TV because that’s how they’ll raise money, by literally holding up signs that let people anywhere in the world who sympathize with them send them money on the spot. Bitcoin is a financial technology dream come true for even the most hardened anticapitalist political organizer.

The coming years will be a period of great drama and excitement revolving around this new technology.

For example, some prominent economists are deeply skeptical of Bitcoin, even though Ben S. Bernanke, formerly Federal Reserve chairman, recently wrote that digital currencies like Bitcoin “may hold long-term promise, particularly if they promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system.” And in 1999, the legendary economist Milton Friedman said: “One thing that’s missing but will soon be developed is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A – the way I can take a $20 bill and hand it over to you, and you may get that without knowing who I am.”

Economists who attack Bitcoin today might be correct, but I’m with Ben and Milton.

Further, there is no shortage of regulatory topics and issues that will have to be addressed, since almost no country’s regulatory framework for banking and payments anticipated a technology like Bitcoin.

But I hope that I have given you a sense of the enormous promise of Bitcoin. Far from a mere libertarian fairy tale or a simple Silicon Valley exercise in hype, Bitcoin offers a sweeping vista of opportunity to reimagine how the financial system can and should work in the Internet era, and a catalyst to reshape that system in ways that are more powerful for individuals and businesses alike.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/why-businesses-love-accepting-bitcoin/

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101231506#.

http://www.coindesk.com/state-bitcoin-2015-ecosystem-grows-despite-price-decline/

http://www.mycustomer.com/feature/technology/ecommerce-payments-time-start-taking-bitcoin-seriously/167479

http://coinmap.org/