Ecurrency

PayPal makes it easier for small businesses to accept mobile payments with its “Cash for Registers” offer. According to a global study it commissioned from Wakefield Research, people don’t like carrying wallets.

The latest organization to announce this news is, unsurprisingly, mobile payments company PayPal. 83 percent of respondents across five countries said they’d ditch their wallets if they could. Further, even when they are lugging around those pesky wallets, people often don’t have cash on them. Canadians were found to be most often plagued by this problem, with 75 percent saying they often find themselves sans cash and unable to make a purchase. Continue reading…

Canadian Bitcoin-operator LibertyBit, which exchanges the virtual currency Bitcoin for U.S. and Canadian dollars, has been told it does not have to register with Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), said CEO Paul Szczesny, via email on Tuesday.

FINTRAC, which was created in 2000, is responsible for investigating and preventing money-laundering and activities used to fund terrorism. But concerns have been raised in some quarters that the high degree of anonymity of Bitcoin transactions makes them attractive for criminal purposes such as tax evasion. Continue reading…

WebMoney announced that the new type of title units named WMX has come into service at the system. WMX is a unit of measurement delegated by WebMoney Transfer users and stored in the Guarantor`s (INDX Transactions LTD) storage for property rights to publish entries in the distributed transactional database of the bitcoin.org peer-to-peer network.

It’s possible to perform operations with X-purses using ether WM Keeper Classic ver. 3.9.9.1 or WM Keeper Light. WMX funding and withdrawal are available at wmx.webmoney.ru service. The rate is following: 0.001BTC = 1 WMX. Continue reading…

U.S. law enforcement officials cracked down this week on the Bitcoin economy’s biggest exchange, Mt. Gox, accusing its operator of running a money transmitting business without the proper license and “freezing” several of its key financial accounts. Mt. Gox is by far the biggest exchange in the Bitcoin economy, handling about 66% of all currency conversions. The drama started on Tuesday, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security obtained a warrant to seize the contents of Mt. Gox’s account with Dwolla, a payment processing network based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dwolla is one of the key services used by Tokyo-based Mt. Gox to let its American customers convert U.S. dollars into Bitcoins and vice versa. The company stopped processing transactions to and from Mt. Gox’s account after it received the warrant and tried to distance itself from the dispute. Continue reading…

Forbes’ reporter Kashmir Hill made an interesting experiment using Bitcoin. She tried to live on Bitcoin for a week. Although she faced some inconveniences, the whole experiment was successful. It proves that Bitcoin is really powerful payment methods. Using “coins” you can buy almost all kinds of goods – from cakes to houses. Reporter’s experience might be useful for all Bitcoin users.

Moreover, a mobile gift card platform Gyft, recently announced that it had added support for Bitcoin purchases of gift cards on the Android platform, through its partnership with BitPay Inc., the world’s leading payment processor for Bitcoin. Continue reading…

An american user has started a petition to force Apple to approve Bitcoin wallet applications for iPhones. He has started the petition to request Apple change its policy. The petition says: Continue reading…

Bitcoin cryptocurrency is widely used today not only in the Web, but in our real life also. Recently the owner of realty in New York started to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. The popular dating site OK Cupid is going to start to take “coins” as well. Moreover, the owner of Overland Park Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram in Kansas City has become the first cars’ dealer in USA, who accept Bitcoin.

But at the same time the group of the american computer specialists made a research with the cautionary results. A new study from computer scientists Tyler Moore of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Nicolas Christin of Carnegie Mellon University has found that 45% of Bitcoin exchanges (18 from 40 exchanges which work with Bitcoin) end up shutting their virtual doors while leaving their users’ money in limbo. Continue reading…

Last weeks and months there have been many rumors and news regarding popular crypto-currency Bitcoin. And this week isn’t the exception. What is important – most of them are really positive for the users of it. In our previous post we wrote about the potential interest of the giants of the instant money transfers market Western Union and MoneyGram to Bitcoin.

Now they say that one of the biggest payment system of the world PayPal is interested in working with Bitcoin. Сurrently PayPal doesn’t have a relationship with the virtual currency Bitcoin, but soon that may change. Continue reading…

Rumors say that digital currency Bitcoin has drawn interest from two of the world’s largest movers of money. Some news sites informed that Western Union and MoneyGram, the world’s biggest instant money transfers companies, are studying ways their customers could use their services to send and receive money transfers denominated in Bitcoins.

Both companies run remittance networks commonly used by immigrants to send money to friends and family members in foreign countries. Western Union also operates a business solutions unit that helps companies send payments to other businesses.

The best-possible paradigm that both Western Union and MoneyGram have for entering into the Bitcoin market isn’t to be part of people transferring Bitcoins between one another (the very basic underlying protocol behind Bitcoin already does this) but the niche they could fill is that of an exchange. People who want to change Bitcoins between whatever fiat currency of their locality could use an easy-to-reach method of doing that. Continue reading…

Bitcoin crypto-currency continues to gain popularity. The recent rapid growth of its rate has returned this currency to the headlines of the financial news. In March more than 20 000 users registered on MtGox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange. More and more people are interested in Bitcoin. And naturally, the novices have the question where and how to get “coins”. In this article we’ll review different ways of it with their advantages and disadvantages. Continue reading…