Friday, June 5, 2015
Disruption Ahead: La’Zooz on Road Mining and ‘Replacing Your Car with Your Smartphone’
Chinese Exchanges Reject Gavin Andresen’s 20 MB Block Size Increase
Former JP Morgan Exec: Distributed Digital Ledgers Will Change Finance
How to ‘Avoid Fiat Entirely’ When Buying Gold, Altcoins
JUN 5 DIGEST: SpectroCoin Launches BTC Debit Card for Eastern Europe, Xapo Execs Sued by Former Employer
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Where the Money Goes When Digital Currency Startups Raise Capital
Cash is Going Extinct, Unless You Pay to Protect It
Deutsche Bank Set to Launch 3 ‘Innovation Labs’ to Accelerate Fin-Tech Startups
Inside a Tibetan Bitcoin Mine: The Race for Cheap Energy
SpectroCoin Launches A Bitcoin Debit Card For Eastern Europe
European Bitcoin exchange and payment processor SpectroCoin launched a debit card earlier this week that can be loaded with digital currency and spent at anywhere major debit and credit cards are accepted.
A press release by London-headquartered SpectroCoin said the debit card can be issued to residents of 150 countries and is accepted at merchants around the globe.
The startup, which also has offices in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, is focused on bolstering bitcoin adoption in Eastern Europe, a region largely overlooked by most digital currency companies. The debit card is SpectroCoin’s latest effort to make spending bitcoin easy in the region, something the startup holds is crucial to the long-term success of the digital currency.
“For SpectroCoin users, it means broader spectrum of withdrawal options, as they are no longer dependent on their bank card and do not have to wait for wire transfer to be able to withdraw cash, which means quicker and cheaper link between bitcoin and cash for SpectroCoin users,” SpectroCoin co-founder and CEO Vytautas Karalevičius told Bitcoin Magazine via email. “It is a step towards being one-stop shop for bitcoin.”
Fees and spending limits
To order the card, simply go to the dashboard of your SpectroCoin account and click on the ‘Order Debit Card’ section toward the bottom of the screen. From there you will be taken to a screen which will prompt you to fill in an order sheet; shipping the card to you takes 4-7 days and costs €7. After you receive the card, you can manage your card form SpectroCoin account.
For point-of-sale purchases, no fees are charged but a one percent fee is tacked on when loading the card with bitcoin. Using the card to withdraw cash through an ATM in United Kingdom costs €2.25; in any other country there is a €2.75 fee.
The maximum loading limit and card balance is €10,000 for verified users; €1,000 is the maxium cash withdrawing limit. To get verified, a card-holder must provide a form of ID and a utility bill. For unverified users, the limits of are one-fourth that of verified users.
SpectroCoin was unwilling to share who issued the card when asked by Bitcoin Magazine, but did say it was issued by a company in Gibraltar, an overseas British territory south of Spain, which is regulated by the country’s Financial Services Commission. Gibraltar is part of the European Union, and as such local financial companies are also regulated by E.U. governing bodies.
SpectroCoin’s announcement comes a week after Bitcoin Magazine reported on another European exchange, BitStamp, which released a debit card as well. Their card is similar to the Baltic startup’s, including the fees and spending limits, but BitStamps’ also allowed for users to receive a digital debit card.
Financial Blockchain Applications will be Measured in the Trillions, says Blythe Masters at Exponential Finance 2015
The Singularity University and CNBC are hosting the Exponential Finance 2015 conference n New York, on June 2-3. The conference examines how rapidly accelerating technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, crowdfunding, digital currencies and robotics are rapidly disrupting businesses throughout the financial industry.
The Singularity University, based at Moffett Federal Airfield in California and sponsored by high-profile high-tech firms including Google, is an educational center dedicated to world-changing applications of disruptive, exponentially accelerating technologies.
The conference program features an impressive set of high-profile speakers including Blythe Masters, the former J.P. Morgan star who now leads Digital Asset Holdings, a technology company that uses distributed digital ledgers to address operational challenges and settlement latency in both digital and mainstream financial assets. Masters’ presentation, titled “Blockchain: The Financial Challenge of Our Time,” has been featured in a CNBC article titled “Why financial firms are investigating bitcoin tech.”
Masters discussed why major financial institutions and their regulators should explore the potential for technologies like the blockchain. She also examined how distributed ledger technologies can help make financial transactions more transparent, efficient and secure with thoughtful protection and collaboration by the industry. A video clip of Masters’ presentation is available online.
According to Masters, the technological innovation behind Bitcoin has the potential to empower the existing financial world, not just disrupt banks out of existence as some have foretold.
“There is a school of libertarian ‘visionaries’ who want to imagine a world without big banks, big governments,” she said in a recent interview. “That’s nice, but completely irrelevant to [Digital Asset Holdings’] business model. We don’t imagine a world in which big banks and big governments don’t exist.”
Masters said at Exponential Finance 2015 that Bitcoin’s underlying technology has the opportunity to improve settlement latency and system security for firms, and, therefore, the market for financial blockchain applications will ultimately be measured in the trillions.
She added that major financial firms have all begun to dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to learning about the technology. Masters’ company Digital Assets Holdings “bridges the gap between the blockchain development world and financial services,” Masters said.
“If you can find a way to bridge the two of them then you have something that is truly revolutionary,” she said in a previous interview.
The Singularity University’s news site Singularity Hub reports that Masters cautions against the hype. The world, she says, is a long way away from economies tabulated on blockchain-enabled disributed ledgers. We need to determine whether they can withstand a concerted attack, can handle transactions on a truly global scale, and can maintain privacy. At the same time, Masters believes that the blockchain may prove incredibly empowering for existing organizations that embrace it. “How seriously should you take this?” she asked. “About as seriously as you should have taken the concept of the Internet in the early 1990s. It’s a big deal.”
The CNBC article lists many other recent examples of how high-profile banks and financial institutions are exploring the financial applications of the blockchain. The list includes Banco Santander, Barclays, UBS, BNY Mellon, IBM, Intel, Overstock, Nasdaq, and the U.S. Federal Reserve, all of which have been featured in recent Bitcoin Magazine articles to show how the technology of the blockchain is gradually winning support in both Wall Street and Capitol Hill.
In the past six months, “everybody realized that bitcoin’s more than a currency,” said Brian Kelly of Brian Kelly Capital. “Everybody had their ‘aha’ moment, and investors with many millions of dollars to spend are starting to see how it can be used.” He added that the financial community was slow to come around to this technology, but they are beginning to embrace it as a cost-saving tool.
Photo courtesy of Exponential Finance
HayekGold from Anthem Vault Represents Physical Gold on the Bitcoin Blockchain
Financial technology company Anthem Vault today launched HayekGold (the ‘hayek’), a digital token that enables more people to own and spend gold. Each hayek represents 1 gram of gold stored in the secure, world-class vaulting facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, and will be purchased at the market value at the time of the transaction.
“We use the latest, most secure technology – the Bitcoin blockchain – that fuels hundreds of other crypto-related platforms,” said Anthem Vault founder and CEO Anthem Blanchard. “The hayek coalesces the most trusted store of value in history, gold, with the world’s most secure exchange network, Bitcoin. Gold is hardly volatile and can help create a more anchored currency and savings plan.”
Blanchard, a lifelong advocate of decentralized sound money, is the son of James U. Blanchard III, who helped restore Americans’ right to own gold bullion. The Hayek name leaves no doubts about Blanchard’s political leanings. “First of all, we love F. A. Hayek, one of the greatest contributors to the Austrian School of Economics,” states the HayekGold website. “He wrote a number of valuable books and articles about the free market, price theory, and more throughout the 20th century. Second, Anthem Vault’s CEO is named Anthem Hayek Blanchard. His parents loved F. A. Hayek’s work so much that they named their son after him!”
Anthem Vault’s initiative was previously referred to as HayekCoin. Anthem Vault decided to change the name to HayekGold to help clarify exactly what the crypto-asset is and how it works.
“When most people talk about cryptocoins, they are referring to a digital currency that can be mined (created) with a computer,” notes the HayekGold website. “HayekGold, however, does not involve any digital mining. Sure, the physical gold has to be mined in the traditional sense (by digging into the earth!), but the digital tokens can never be created out of thin air. They can only come into existence when real gold is deposited into Anthem Vault.”
Presumably, the company also wanted to avoid associations with “altcoins” of dubious reputation and trustworthiness. In fact, HayekGold runs on the Counterparty infrastructure, which is a layer on top of the Bitcoin network. That means that HayekGold is not an altcoin but a part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, and every transaction is recorded on and secured by the real Bitcoin blockchain.
Anthem Vault provides individuals with an efficient and liquid way to buy, own and sell physical, 100 percent fine gold and silver bullion. All metals are securely stored with an independent world-class vaulting facility in Salt Lake City, Utah and are insured for loss by theft or natural disaster. Anthem Vault’s offices and operations team are based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company is incorporated as a Nevada corporation and regulated as a precious metals dealer by the U.S. Treasury.
Other gold companies are discovering Bitcoin. In May, BitGold, a Canadian corporation with offices in Toronto and Milan and a network of secure vaults for gold storage, announced the public launch of the BitGold platform, a software service that connects gold storage with payment networks, resulting in a banking-like platform for gold.
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