Bitcoin Plaza

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Xapo Adds Visa Founder and Former Citibank CEO to Advisory Board

Universal Bitcoin services startup Xapo has announced that former executives from Visa and Citibank, alongside a former secretary of the treasury, has joined the company’s board of directors.

In a Xapo statement, Visa founder Dee Hock, former Treasury Secretary and President Emeritus of Harvard University Lawrence H. Summers and former Citibank CEO and Chairman John Reed, said they joined the company because of the potential of Bitcoin’s technology and currency to advance financial services.

Reed highlighted how Bitcoin could change financial services, noting they have “remained largely untouched by the digital revolution.” He added that Bitcoin is a large improvement over the “historical form of currency,” highlighting the digital currency’s scarcity and divisibility.

Summers, who also serves on the board of Bitcoin startup, 21 Inc., made mention of Bitcoin’s payment network being the first time someone could send money without having to rely on a third party, which historically have been banks, clearinghouses or third-party payment networks. In a Xapo blog post, he added that this peer-to-peer (P2P) aspect could soon cause “many billions of people sending bitcoin every day as easily as they currently send a text message.”

“We live in the 21st century but are still using command and control organizational structures from the 16th century,” Hock said. “Bitcoin is one of the best examples of how a decentralized, peer-to-peer organization can solve problems that these dated organizations cannot. Like the Internet, Bitcoin is not owned or controlled by any one entity, so it presents incredible opportunities for new levels of efficiency and transparency in financial transactions.”

Global Bitcoin Services

Xapo offers a suite of Bitcoin services, including a wallet and connected debit card, merchant payment processing, and secure bitcoin storage. The company is best known for its bitcoin cold storage service for individual and institutions with large amounts of bitcoin.

Since its founding in 2012, the company has raised $40 million from a large selection of tech and financial investors, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Benchmark and Greylock Partners. The new additions to Xapo’s board will be joining Ribbit Capital Managing Partner Meyer Malk and Benchmark General Partner Matt Cohler, who joined the company earlier this year.

BitQuick Goes Passwordless

BitQuick is the latest Bitcoin company to integrate Clef’s passwordless two-factor authentication to make logins safe and easy for a big audience.

Oakland, CA – May 26, 2015 — BitQuick, the fastest way to buy Bitcoin, announced an integration with Clef today to protect the accounts on their platform. Clef is becoming increasingly popular for Bitcoin companies who are interested in growing their audience, especially companies on the rise like BitQuick. BitQuick has rapidly grown their volume by circumventing some of the traditional requirements for buying Bitcoin and making the process take hours instead of days. In an industry where every millisecond is tracked to help increase sales, speed is a huge asset both for the company and for the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.

A growing appeal of Clef is the network of sites which already use it. More than 70,000 sites, including popular Bitcoin networks like AlphaPoint, have already integrated Clef. Users of those sites have already gotten rid of some passwords, but actively seek out new sites where they can use Clef. This translates to an influx of new users for sites that integrate Clef and then a steady stream as it is added to Clef’s recommendation engine. The increased traffic had overwhelmed some unprepared sites, so Clef now works to even out the initial spike.

BitQuick’s speed is the headline selling point, but the service has also developed a reputation for spotting and thwarting potential scams. The slowness of other services is rooted in their fraud-prevention systems, so BitQuick has used its volume to focus on learning patterns that help identify fraud and squash it before it happens. Other services leave the fraud detection completely to the users, who cannot have the same high-level perspective and learnings. BitQuick has also integrated with Purse, and Fold to make their speedy Bitcoin purchases available for people making purchases at Amazon or Starbucks.

“Everyone in the ecosystem is talking about friction, and how we can reduce the friction in using Bitcoin,” said Brennen Byrne, CEO of Clef. “But the first Bitcoin purchase is still unforgivably slow on most systems. That’s why we’re so excited to see BitQuick solving the Bitcoin purchase problem. To get more people owning and spending Bitcoin is the key, and I know that Clef users are going to love BitQuick.

BitQuick does not require everyone trading on their platform to make accounts, but the cases where users do need to log in are particularly important to protect. Making two-factor authentication accessible for those users, and also making it really easy to use, helps them build more trust with their users. Typically, sites that offer two-factor auth see fewer than 1% of users opt in to protect their accounts, but sites that use Clef have seen more than 50% of their users opt in to the safer login. To make the process simple and seamless, Clef recognizes a user’s phone instead of anything they need to remember or type.

“For us, Clef is more than just an evolved two-factor solution,” said Jad Mubaslat, CEO of BitQuick. “We’re excited about using Clef to replace confusing passwords altogether. This improves both the experience and security habits of our users.”

A customer can log into BitQuick on any computer in the world by holding their phone up to the computer screen. Clef uses the phone’s camera and an animation called the Clef Wave to seamlessly sync with the computer and log the user in. The process is backed by the same public key cryptography as Bitcoin wallets and is available for free on any iOS or Android device.

About Clef

Clef is an Oakland startup building the two-factor of the future. By taking advantage of the rapid spread of mobile devices, Clef has built technology that is not only much more secure than traditional logins, but also much easier to use. Since 2013, Clef has spread to more than 70,000 sites and received accolades from The New York Times, Inc. Magazine, and The Economist. Clef is funded by Morado Ventures and angels from a broad variety of product and security backgrounds. For more information on Clef, visit getclef.com or email press@getclef.com.

Bitcoin Alternative DNotes Launches World’s First Digital Currency Employee Incentive Benefits Plan

Bitcoin Press Release: DNotes is pleased to announce the launch of the world’s first Digital Currency Employee Incentive Benefits Plan – the latest in a family of unprecedented digital currency financial instruments from the DNotes team.

Chicago, Illinois. [May 25, 2015] – DNotes announces the release of their Employee Incentive Benefits Plan, the latest addition to their family of CRISPs (Cryptocurrency Investment Savings Plans) that already provides an investment vehicle for Children, Students, and Retirement funds. The Employee Incentive Benefits Plan combines knowledge of the employer/employee relationship with macro-economic foresight to maximize its users’ long-term potential benefit.

Employee benefits play an important role in the lives of employees as well as their families. Benefits offered by an employer can be a deciding factor for a potential employee’s job decision. The cost of doing business is ever increasing, and with it, employee savings requirements. The traditional idea that pension plans will take care of an employee’s financial needs upon retirement is quickly becoming obsolete. The relationship between employers and employees needs urgent re-examination, and a new mindset of partnership for mutual benefit and survival is necessary.

“Employees are struggling to secure their financial future. This means high stress, increased anxiety, lower productivity, and diminishing loyalty that breeds high staff turnover. High interest credit cards are being used to supplement cash flow. Furthermore, these fraud-prone cards have high transaction costs and shockingly high chargebacks that are paid for by the merchant, anywhere up to 8%, thus impeding business, jobs, and wage growth. I see Digital Currency adoption as a solution to high transaction costs for merchants, and inflated prices for essential consumer goods,” said DNotes Co-founder Alan Yong.

Self-Employment Trending Down

Yong, a pioneer from the early days of mobile computing, pointed out that while small businesses continue to be the main incubator of job creation in the US economy, the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that entrepreneurship is in steady decline, with both incorporated and unincorporated self-employment dropping nearly ten percent since 2004. Small business numbers have not recovered in line with economic growth since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Yong attributes this in part to small business owners having difficulty meeting costly payroll, healthcare obligations, mounting regulations, and funding their own retirement accounts.

Why is CRISP for Employee Incentive Benefits Plan the Solution? And What are DNotes?

CRISP for Employee Incentive Benefits will facilitate the distribution of digital currency called DNotes – a cryptographically secure digital currency which is the most reliably appreciating and stable currency in its class. DNotes has increased against the US dollar more than 30 fold since its inception in February 2014 and centers its business strategy on creating a stable trustworthy digital currency from the ground up for everyone, whether they are rich or poor. DNotes promotes trust and integrity for the long-term mutual benefit of all as it continues to work towards further capital appreciation. As DNotes positions itself to be the predominant digital currency used for global payments, with instantly cleared payments at near zero transaction costs, multiple strategic plans are systematically executed to ensure that DNotes becomes the foremost digital currency to supplement fiat currency worldwide.

How Will the Program Work?

Director of CRISP for Employee Incentive Benefits, Marc Fortenberry, said that employers will register for the program by completing a simple online form at http://ift.tt/1FaQVq7. Each employer will have a main dashboard which will include a company specific link for their employees to sign up. The employer dashboard will also have a table that shows employee details to facilitate instant balance transfers into their accounts. The employer will then be able to send DNotes to reward their staff as they see fit. Every approved employer registration will receive 1,000 DNotes to get them started.

Employees need to have a DNotesVault account, and sign up with the link given to their employer, which requires only the employee’s e-mail used to register at DNotesVault. When submitted, a new address is created in the employee’s DNotesVault account that is identified with their company name.

About Alan Yong:

DNotes Co-Founder Alan Yong is a well regarded visionary since the early days of personal computers. He founded Dauphin Technology in 1989 and is best known for creating the Dauphin DTR, the most powerful window-based miniature computer that competed head on with Apple’s Newton computer that became the Apple Iphone as we know it today. In 2007, Yong co-founded Smokeys Daylily Gardens, one of the largest daylily growers in the world. Smokeys Daylily Gardens is the first merchant to accept DNotes as payment for daylily purchases. Alan recently shared his thoughts on the disruptive potential of Bitcoin, blockchain technology and DNotes in an interview.

Yong agrees with other industry’s visionaries that digital currency and the Blockchain technology will be the greatest technology revolution since the Internet. However, he passionately believes that to gain mass acceptance, the currency must be built from ground up for everyone with trust and integrity. There must be strong leadership and sufficient self-interest from its community to promote and protect the currency’s stability for the long-term mutual benefits of all participants.

For more information about us, please visit: http://ift.tt/1FaQVq7

To trade Bitcoin with DNotes please go to: http://ift.tt/1RhgQF9

Follow DNotes on twitter: http://twitter.com/dnotescoin

Media contact:

Name: Alan Yong

Email: Contact@DNotescoin.com

Is Goldman Sachs Flirting with Bitcoin, or the Blockchain?

The New York Times technology and finance reporter Nathaniel Popper’s new book “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the inside story of the misfits and millionaires trying to reinvent money” has been praised as one of the best Bitcoin books to date. Popper tells the story of Bitcoin from its geeky, libertarian early days to the beginnings of the current phase marked by significant venture capital investments and growing adoption by the financial community.

Popper’s book contributes to the ongoing Bitcoin vs. blockchain debate. Once a bitcoin-like crypto-currency is adopted banks and governments, will it still be recognizable as bitcoin, or rather become a sanitized blockchain controlled by central banks, with all the troublesome features of bitcoin removed?

“A company like Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan is hesitant to rely or work with a financial network in which the people keeping it alive are essentially anonymous,” says Popper in a Forbes interview. “Banks have to know who’s transacting and flag it if someone suspicious is involved in the transaction. But it’s quite easy in Bitcoin to have an identity tied to an address in a way that would make a bank feel comfortable.”

Popper released previously undisclosed information in a section of his book, re-published by American Banker magazine with the title “When Goldman Sachs Began Flirting with Bitcoin.”

Goldman Sachs is one of the most respected financial companies in the world, often considered as epitome of the best – and the worst – of today’s financial system. Therefore, Goldman Sachs’ take on bitcoin can be considered as representative of the financial industry as a whole.

Recently, after stating in a report that Bitcoin could shape the future of finance, Goldman Sachs participated as lead investor in a $50 million funding round for startup “Bitcoin bank” Circle in one of the highest profile investments in a Bitcoin company to date.

Financial operators are attracted by blockchain-based financial networks with no single point of failure, which could keep running even if one of the participating nodes stops working or is taken out. They are also attracted by the relative speed and low cost of blockchain transactions.

It currently takes the bank three or so days to settle stock trades, says Popper. “What if that could happen instantly and be recorded on a blockchain for everyone to see?”

But, according to Popper, Bitcoin remains a thorny issue for Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and other top financial players. The problems are Bitcoin’s potential for anonymity, and the fact that the Bitcoin blockchain is “powered by thousands of unvetted computers around the world, all of which could stop supporting the blockchain at any moment.”

Popper reports that JPMorgan and other major banks envisaged a new blockchain that would be jointly run by the computers of the largest banks and serve as the backbone for a new, instant payment system without a single point of failure. The new blockchain, decentralized but closed, would offer the benefits of the current Bitcoin network without relying on end-users for its operations.

IBM has recently developed a similar concept for a non-Bitcoin, closed blockchain for central banks. Even governments are warming up to the idea, with rumors of “Fedcoin” in the United States and some kind of “Eurocoin” in Europe, especially in financially troubled economies such as Greece’s.

In a research paper titled “One Bank Research Agenda,” the Bank of England called for further research to devise a system that could use distributed ledger technology without compromising a central bank’s ability to control its currency.

It appears that financial institutions, central bank and governments are, indeed, flirting with the blockchain but determined to leave the open, pseudonymous and peer-to-peer (P2P) features of Bitcoin out. If so, Goldman Sachs’ investment in Circle could be seen as an intermediate, preparatory step to test the waters before implementing a non-Bitcoin blockchain.

Photo by Laslovarga / CC SA 3.0

BitGold Inc. Acquires GoldMoney.com for CAD $52 Million

Gold payment startup BitGold acquired the operations and intellectual property of the leading consumer gold storage company GoldMoney.com.

The acquisition of the company will be in exchange for 1,169,794 common shares in BitGold, a public company trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. GoldMoney, since its founding in 2001, has amassed 20,000 customers, 135,000 user sign ups and manages more than $1 billion in assets.

In a BitGold press release, the startup said the acquisition will lower its operating cost and give them a ready-made vault storage operation for the company’s in-beta gold payment system. BitGold is currently developing and testing a payment service that will use blockchain technology to facilitate digital gold payments.

As part of the acquisition, GoldMoney founder James Turk, alongside company directors Mahendra Naik and Hector Fleming, will join BitGold’s board of directors.

“We created GoldMoney with the vision of making gold accessible for savings and payments, a vision that BitGold is rapidly expanding in a new era of cloud computing and mobile technology,” said Turk.

Roy Sebag, BitGold CEO added, “with the technology of the BitGold platform we can expand the GoldMoney legacy of trust, security and a client-centric purpose to new markets, growing from a much stronger base and benefiting all stakeholders. Combining the first global e-marketplace for gold with the latest and most innovative, we instantly become the world’s largest and most active bullion money service.”

Gold 2.0?

GoldMoney will continue to operate as usual, operating its vault service as well as various media products, but new features and products will be added in the coming months. According to Turk, users can expect a gold debit card, expanded payment options, as well as “the many applications and features being developed by this innovative team.”

However, BitGold was very hush-hush about how — and if — the blockchain startup’s payment network would be implemented into GoldMoney.

Founded in 2014, BitGold launched with the mission to make gold payments practical by digitizing them through Bitcoin’s payment network. Since then, the startup has received a lot of attention, as well as investment. The gold payment network has raised several million dollars from large players in the gold and financial industries, including Alex and Gregory Soros’ fund ,Soros Brothers Investments, and Eric Sprott’s Sprott Inc.

Despite the attention, the company has been secretive about the company’s product, which has been loosely described as a payment network for gold using the blockchain (though recently all mentions of blockchain and bitcoin have been removed from BitGold’s marketing copy). BitGold launched a private beta for select persons in Zurich, London, Hong Kong and several other cities late last year. The beta was supposed to end in early February, but has continued. The product is still unavailable to the public.

According to a video produced by the startup, the payment network will serve three main use cases: greater gold functionality for gold investors, online payments and international money transfers (remittances). In the video, Sebag said users will be able to send gold to any other BitGold user for free, no matter where that user is (after an initial cost of one percent to get the gold into the network). The founders of the company envision a future where migrants would avoid fees charged by remittance providers by sending gold through the startup.

It is unclear how BitGold would deal with compliance requirements for operating a global payment system. The startup has failed to shed any light so far on how BitGold will comply with know-your-customer (KYC) regulations around the world. That is a huge question, since every single “digital gold” company that has come before BitGold has either been charged by law enforcement or shut down on its onw volition due to financial regulations.

Up until 2012, GoldMoney ran its own gold payment service that allowed users to send gold to each other. But the company shut it down citing the regulatory costs of compliance as too high for the “insignificant demand.” Also, in contrast to the now defunct E-Gold, whose founders were arrested, GoldMoney’s digital gold network did not allow for independent agents to exchange the virtual gold for real gold. The tactic heavily limited the product’s potential but helped it avoid being a den of black market activity that E-Gold became.

Coinzone to Launch Mobile Bitcoin Wallet Tailored for European Users

Amsterdam-based Bitcoin payment gateway Coinzone, which now positions itself as a full-stack Bitcoin solution with a focus on Europe, announced that it will launch its wallet – the core of its upcoming platform – in early summer.

“Our goal is to assist Europe with all that Bitcoin has to offer the world of commerce,” says the Coinzone website.

According to the company, the Coinzone Wallet will make Bitcoin simple for a growing community of European consumers. The fully-featured personal wallet will support country-specific local currencies for bank deposits and withdrawals, transfers and instant payments.

“Growing European demand for Bitcoin means more and more consumers want a simple and secure way to transact,” says co-founder and CEO Manuel Heilmann. “We’ve developed Coinzone Wallet in response to an overwhelming demand from users seeking a wallet that stores their sensitive information locally in Europe.”

The Coinzone wallet has been specifically developed to address privacy and legal frameworks, such as EU privacy, secure payment and data protection laws in operation across the region. All data will be securely hosted in European locations, giving Coinzone Wallet users the assurance of protection under European privacy laws.

“Our aim is to make it easy for European consumers to do more with bitcoin,” added Heilmann. “The Coinzone Wallet is an important milestone for Coinzone towards a full-stack Bitcoin solution. It is set to literally get bitcoin into the hands of consumers so they can transact as and when they wish.”

In a blog post titled “Why We’re Building a Bitcoin Wallet,” Heilmann noted that Coinzone always had more in mind than just building a payment gateway. Coinzone team members run studies to understand the various needs across Europe, and move from country to country to understand the local requirements of European bitcoin users.

“We also hear over and over from consumers that is it too difficult to find places to spend bitcoin,” notes Heilmann’s post. “In every study we conduct at Coinzone, that is one of the top five questions people have. When you combine the rise in mobile usage with merchant adoption, we have an opportunity to create a new experience for consumers looking to spend their bitcoin. Our initial release of the Coinzone Wallet will make a step in that direction. Over time, we’ll continue to learn from feedback in order to enhance this feature.”

According to Coinzone CMO and Vice President of User Experience Paul Sylling, we are moving into an era of “frictionless” spending based on mobile payments, in which consumers expect an experience that is easier and more convenient. Bitcoin matches perfectly with the rise of mobile and new expectations of how payments should work.

“With the launch of the Coinzone Wallet, coupled with our existing merchant network, we position ourselves to reinvent the commerce experience,” Sylling told Bitcoin Magazine. “By building the full stack, we have the opportunity to offer additional unique services to our customers as well as streamline the user experience.”

Sylling confirmed that according to current expectations, the Coinzone Wallet will be launched in early summer, and consumers can already sign up for early access. The wallet, available for Android, iOS and the Web, will include features deemed important for non-technical Bitcoin users, such as language localization, conversion to local currencies, and withdrawals to local banks.

In order to address the problem mentioned by Heilmann – that it’s difficult to find places to spend bitcoin – the planned release includes map-based local search features. To merchants, Coinzone will offer point-of-sale (PoS) solutions to accept bitcoin payments on tablets and smartphones, and interfaces to existing payment processing systems.

BitFury’s Allied Control Receives Green Innovation Award

Bitfury’s Allied Control, a company that uses two-phase immersion thermal management for high-performance computing and data centers, received the Green Innovations Award for its potential in saving electricity and “billions of gallons of water” in the future.

Allied Control was recognized by the head of the Hong Kong government for its energy-efficient two-phase immersion cooling system, which submerges electronic components in dielectric heat transfer liquids (better heat conductors than air, water or oil). The liquids vaporized from the chips are condensed and reused.

According to a report, the U.S National Security Agency’s major data center in Utah “consumes up to 6.6 million gallons of water a month.” Apart from the water used to cool the data center, it also embeds water in electricity generation which consumes 1.8 liters of water per kilowatt-hour in the United States.

Allied Control’s third-generation immersion cooling system saves around 99 percent of electricity used for cooling not just in cold regions, but hot and humid parts in Asia, without wasting water or oil. This advantage allows data centers and chip manufacturers to expand their services into countries with cheap power costs and existing infrastructure, such as the Philippines or Vietnam.

In January 2015, Bitfury acquired Allied Contol for the same reason, with a global vision to expand throughout Asia into countries with low power costs for manufacturing chips for bitcoin mining.

“This acquisition will enable us to substantially increase energy efficiency of our data centers and speed up deployment of our new ASIC chip allowing to lower overall capital expenditure,” BitFury CEO Valery Vavilov said. “In addition, it provides an opportunity for us to enter new markets such as HPC, using the experience of the Allied Control team. The use of immersion cooling will provide BitFury with flexibility when choosing locations for our data centers.”

Help Datacenters in Locations like California

Suffering from the same problem as the massive data center in Utah, several major technology companies have moved their data centers from California to other colder states due to high energy and water consumption. However, with the two-phase immersion cooling system, tech giants have the opportunity to move to regions such as California, where infrastructures are pre-set-up and most tech talents are based.

“With California being in its fourth consecutive drought year and regulators proposing mandatory reduction of up to 35 percent in urban water consumption, Allied Control’s immersion cooling technology might offer an effective solution to cool down the many data centers serving the hungry and ever-growing demand of cloud services and other Silicon Valley applications,” said Kar-Wing Lau, vice president of operations at Allied Control, in a press release. “In our standard configuration, the closed-loop cooling units do not use evaporative water towers, and as a result, the water usage effectiveness is close to zero (WUE <0.003 L/kWh).”

“Our proprietary technology is highly energy efficient,” BitFury CEO Vavilov added. “We are committed to growing our transaction processing infrastructure with the smallest carbon footprint, continuing to rely solely on renewable energy sources.”

Universities Banking on FinTech to Make Their Graduates More Employable

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Samourai Wallet: A Serious Darkwallet Contender

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BitQuick Goes Passwordless

BitQuick is the latest Bitcoin company to integrate Clef’s passwordless two-factor authentication to make logins safe and easy for a big audience.

About Clef

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