Many things that can be said about Brazil, but income equality is not one of them. The recent troubles during the World Cup demonstrated that the great majority of the population has been anything but happy at the government’s (mis)management of the country’s money. The good news is, however, that Bitcoin is making a strong attempt to fill the gap left by Brazil’s Central Bank. In January of 2014 Brazil’s inflation had grown to 5.91% and was still climbing. Rodrigo Batista, president of online brokerage Mercado Bitcoin announced that the trading volume had grown from zero to R$10.5 million (US$4.4 …

PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel believes Bitcoin has succeeded as a currency, but still lacks as a payment system. On October 15, Peter Thiel was invited to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business to speak about entrepreneurship and business practices for an event organized by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The event was hosted by Booth School of Business' Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics Randall Kroszner, and gathered more than 1,000 members of the University community, reported the Chicago Maroon. Thiel started his talk with a critique of what he calls "a pervasive, …

Back in August, the New York Department of Financial Services pushed back the deadline for public commentary on its proposed BitLicenses. That deadline, October 21, is here. In the last few days, two big names in the Bitcoin community, BitPay and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have made public statements about how their organizations perceive the state’s proposed regulations. On Monday, payment processing service BitPay submitted a letter to New York’s superintendent of financial services, Benjamin Lawsky, expressing concern over the regulations as they were laid out this summer. “[T]he proposed regulation,” BitPay Chief Compliance Officer Tim Byun wrote, “significantly misses …

One of the most important things that need to happen to make Bitcoin successful is that acceptance from both merchants and the public needs to happen on a large scale. Over the last several months, we have seen some of the largest companies in the world begin accepting Bitcoin, such as Dell computers, eBay and Expedia. But these companies need a payment platform that not only allows them to accept Bitcoin but to convert it into fiat currencies and deposit it to bank accounts as well. BitPay is one of the largest Bitcoin and digital currency business solutions and it …

Phishing attacks are nothing new on the internet. While most are relatively amateurish (the African Princess) some are quite well put together and will fool most people if you are not paying attention. Phishing incidents have been happening more and more frequently in the virtual coin industry and the latest group targeted seems to be customers of BitPay, one of the largest cryptocurrency payment platforms in the world. image: Bitpay via Imgur Different companies react differently to events like this, but BitPay is already stepping up to the plate with a public statement to Cointelegraph about what happened and where …

Add artificial life extension to the list of things payable in cryptocurrency: an Arizona cryonics lab is taking donations in Bitcoin. Donors to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Scottsdale, can now make one-time donations in Bitcoin in any monetary amount using the company’s Bitcoin donation page, which is powered by popular cryptocurrency service Bitpay. “The generosity of [Alcor’s] members and supporters…permits Alcor to do more than what would be possible with membership dues alone,” the company’s donation page says. “Your generous tax-deductible donation will help us preserve the future for all of our members.” The …

Organizers of the second North American Bitcoin Conference expect a big turnout for what they describe as “the most community-oriented TNABC yet.” This TNABC will be held in Chicago the weekend of July 19–20, and organizers recently announced that the Hotel Chicago will host the event. “The Official kick-off party will take place in the iconic House of Blues, which will be the best location of the year to meet the movers and shakers of the Bitcoin industry,” organizers said in a release. Organizers say that more than 2,000 people are expected for the conference, and they are trying to …

Even though there were some unpleasant vibes regarding Bitcoin in Vietnam government, the outlook for the crypto and altcoins is promising. A Vital Cooperation The reason for such an unlikely scenario is the venture enterprise that’s got invested not only by Vietnam but also Israel and Germany. The venture is called Bitcoin Vietnam and it works similarly to BitPay, GoCoin and others cryptocurrency analogies to Bitcoin. The success though can be addressed not only to Vietnam but, more importantly, to it’s cooperation with Bits of Gold an exchange for the main digital currency. Another important alliance is with the Bit2c …

We just can’t catch up with BitPay, only yesterday we wrote about service’s new HQ in Argentina and a fresh press release it became known about two new offices, one in New York and another in San Francisco. Oh, in case you were wondering, I meant family game, not an economic term. Although, if BitPay goes on to conquer states and countries just like that, I am not envying their competition. Eye of Beholder For starters, both offices will serve as sales coordinators and support for the platform’s users, meaning merchants and, again, both of them will be under the …

As of previous week, BitPay has surpassed an impressive number of 26,000 approved merchants that are willing to use the service to process their Bitcoin payments. Maybe 26 tons is not as round number as 10 that service managed to reach half a year ago, but that doesn’t make it less respectable in or eyes. Only three and a half month ago, a fellow author wrote about yet another milestone reached – 15,500. That definitely counts as successful expansion in my books. As a short recap. BitPay is PayPal for Bitcoin. Customer makes a purchase using bitcoins but seller receives …

Well, looks like Londoners are serious about Bitcoin. If even such a traditional for England thing as a gin distillery goes Bit, then any other merchant will join the party soon. That is the message that The London Distillery Company (TLDC) wants to send to fellow merchants. As the CEO of the joint, Daren Rook says: “We are looking at our neighbours to say ‘We can accept bitcoin; maybe you should look at it too because we’ll have people coming through.’ Our plan is to iron out the issues that we’ll potentially have and then go to everyone and say …