Bitcoins Edisons Revenge on the Dollar

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Bitcoins Edisons Revenge on the Dollar
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http://www.coindesk.com/goldmoney-group-bitcoins-precious-metals-vault/
GoldMoney Group, one of Britain’s largest precious metal storage firms, has added bitcoin to the list of commodities it is willing to store in its vaults.
Established in 2001, the firm currently stores precious metals worth in excess of $1.4bn in secure vaults across five countries.
Today sees GoldMoney launch Netagio  – a spin-off business that offers a cold storage solution for bitcoins. Cold storage is a form of offline storage where bitcoins are encrypted on storage devices and placed in secure vaults.
Pros and cons
Security is the most obvious benefit of cold storing bitcoins with Netagio, as your bitcoins will be safely tucked away behind a few layers of encryption and physical security.
This might not be the best solution for speculators and those who require access to their bitcoins on short notice. However, Netagio will also allow users to freely access a few bitcoins if they happen to need them.
Even this service places an emphasis on security. It features two-factor authentication and users can set it up in such a way that their accounts can only be accessed from user-defined locations.
The service is free and you can check out the Netagio website for additional details. Simon Hamblin, managing director at Netagio, said:

“We are the only bitcoin wallet service in Europe to offer this type of free offline storage service, involving military-grade hardware, levels of encryption to give our customers comfort and security, all [...] backed by a reputable company who you can trust.”

He added: “Being a part of a larger established group that has a heritage in the dealing and safe-keeping of precious metal since 2001 makes it one of the most compelling storage offerings in Europe.”
Hamblin thinks cryptocurrencies have a future, but pointed out that they remain risky at this point. In any case, GoldMoney wants to let people to buy, store and sell digital currencies, regardless of whether they succeed in the long run. As Hamblin puts it: “Bitcoin might be the one, it might not be the one.”
UK competitors
Netagio isn’t the first cold storage service to hit the market, nor is it the first of its kind in the UK. Elliptic Vault made headlines when it launched last week , underwritten by Lloyds of London.
Elliptic is planning to create a full suite of digital currency services that should make them more secure and easier to use.
At this point, however, both companies are offering what can only be described as niche service for people who cashed in on bitcoin and don’t plan on cashing out anytime soon.
This article should not be viewed as an endorsement of Netagio or Elliptic Vault, please do your own research before considering investing any funds in this service.

http://www.coindesk.com/b

The price of bitcoin reached $1,000 again today on Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox , following the news this week that online retailer Overstock.com had started accepting bitcoin as a payment method.

The peak this time around was $1,011 on Mt. Gox. Not a record but surely a notable threshold to surpass once again. The last time it broke through to four digits was back on 5th January  amid news that Overstock would embrace bitcoin at some point later in the year – but it turned that around faster than everyone expected .

On 7th January, the Gox price reached $1,041.99. Around the same time, social gaming company Zynga also began testing bitcoin on its platform, likely a contributing factor to that particular price spike.

Overstock’s Announcement

It is clear that the decision by Salt Lake City-based Overstock to accept bitcoin is leading to increased interest in the digital currency. Previously, Overstock had announced that it would begin accepting bitcoin in the second half of 2014 .

Those plans were accelerated, and the retailer started accepting BTC for all its items. The company, started in 1999 by CEO Patrick Byrne, is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Byrne told CoinDesk recently that he believes in the possibilities that bitcoin can present in the free market.

“In an ideal world we’d go back to gold so you’d have a monetary system based on something that government mandarins can’t expand at the stroke of a pen,” he said. “We’re not going to go back to gold, but bitcoin shares that virtue. It is mathematically if not physically constrained.”

Payment Success Influences Price

Byrne’s belief in bitcoin is paying off, even within 24 hours of the announcement. Overstock, the largest organization to ever accept bitcoin, had made $130,000 in BTC sales spread over 840 orders after its first day of accepting it.itcoin-price-1000-again-overstock-sales-130000/

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-explained-five-year-old/
Still Don’t Get Bitcoin? Here’s an Explanation Even a Five-Year-Old Will Understand
Nik Custodio (@nik5ter) | Published on January 9, 2014 at 13:00 GMT | Bitcoin protocol , FAQs , News
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If you still can’t figure out what the heck a bitcoin is, this simple explanation for a five-year-old may help you …
We’re sitting on a park bench. It’s a great day. I have one apple with me, I give it to you.
You now have one apple and I have zero. That was simple, right?
Let’s look closely at what happened:
My apple was physically put into your hand. You know it happened. I was there, you were there – you touched it.
We didn’t need a third person there to help us make the transfer. We didn’t need to pull in Uncle Tommy (who’s a famous judge) to sit with us on the bench and confirm that the apple went from me to you.
The apple’s yours! I can’t give you another apple because I don’t have any left. I can’t control it anymore. The apple left my possession completely. You have full control over that apple now. You can give it to your friend if you want, and then that friend can give it to his friend, and so on.
So that’s what an in-person exchange looks like. I guess it’s really the same, whether I’m giving you a banana, a book, a quarter, or a dollar bill …
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to apples!

Now, let’s say I have one digital apple. Here, I’ll give you my digital apple. Ah! Now it gets interesting.
How do you know that digital apple which used to be mine, is now yours, and only yours? Think about it for a second. It’s more complicated, right? How do you know that I didn’t send that apple to Uncle Tommy as an email attachment first? Or your friend Joe? Or my friend Lisa too?
Maybe I made a couple of copies of that digital apple on my computer. Maybe I put it up on the internet and one million people downloaded it.
As you see, this digital exchange is a bit of a problem. Sending digital apples doesn’t look like sending physical apples.
Some brainy computer scientists actually have a name for this problem: it’s called the double-spending problem . But don’t worry about it. All you need to know is that it’s confused them for quite some time and they’ve never solved it. Until now.
But let’s try to think of a solution on our own.

Ledgers

 
Maybe these digital apples need to be tracked in a ledger. It’s basically a book where you track all transactions  –  an accounting book.
This ledger, since it’s digital, needs to live in its own world and have someone in charge of it.
Just like World of Warcraft , say. Blizzard , the guys who created the online game, have a “digital ledger” of all the rare flaming fire swords that exist in their system. So, cool, someone like them could keep track of our digital apples. Awesome  –  we solved it!

Problems
There’s a bit of a problem though:
1) What if some guy over at Blizzard created more? He could just add a couple of digital apples to his balance whenever he wants!
2) It’s not the same as when we were on the bench that day. It was just you and me then. Going through Blizzard is like pulling in Uncle Tommy (a third-party) out of court (did I mention he’s a famous judge?) for all our park bench transactions. How can I just hand over my digital apple to you in the usual way?
Is there any way to closely replicate our park bench transaction digitally? Seems kinda tough …

The Solution

 
What if we gave this ledger  to everybody? Instead of the ledger living on a Blizzard computer, it’ll live in everybody’s computers. All the transactions that have ever happened, from all time, in digital apples, will be recorded in it.
You can’t cheat it. I can’t send you digital apples I don’t have, because then it wouldn’t sync up with everybody else in the system. It’d be a tough system to beat. Especially if it got really big.
Plus, it’s not controlled by one person, so I know there’s no one that can just decide to give himself more digital apples. The rules of the system were already defined at the beginning.
And the code and rules are open source  – kinda like the software used in your mom’s Android phone. Or kinda like Wikipedia. It’s there for smart people to maintain, secure, improve, and check.
You could participate in this network too – updating the ledger and making sure it all checks out. For the trouble, you could get like 25 digital apples  as a reward. In fact, that’s the only way to create more digital apples in the system.
I simplified quite a bit … But that system I explained exists. It’s called the Bitcoin protocol. And those digital apples are the bitcoins within the system. Fancy! So, did you see what happened?
What does the public ledger enable?
1) It’s open source, remember? The total number of apples was defined in the public ledger at the beginning. I know the exact amount that exists. Within the system, I know they are limited (scarce).
2) When I make an exchange I now know that digital apple certifiably left my possession and is now completely yours. I used to not be able to say that about digital things. It will be updated and verified by the public ledger.
3) Because it’s a public ledger, I didn’t need Uncle Tommy (third-party) to make sure I didn’t cheat, or make extra copies for myself, or send apples twice, or thrice…
Within the system, the exchange of a digital apple is now just like the exchange of a physical one. It’s now as good as seeing a physical apple leave my hand and drop into your pocket. Just like on the park bench, the exchange involved two people only. You and me , we didn’t need Uncle Tommy there to make it valid.
In other words, it behaves like a physical object.
But you know what’s cool? It’s still digital.
We can now deal with 1,000 apples, or 1 million apples, or even .0000001 apples. I can send it with a click of a button, and I can still drop it in your digital pocket if I was in Nicaragua and you were all the way in New York.
I can even make other digital things ride on top of these digital apples! It’s digital after all. Maybe I can attach some text on it – a digital note. Or maybe I can attach more important things; like say a contract, or a stock certificate, or an ID card …
So this is great! How should we treat or value these “digital apples”? They’re quite useful aren’t they?
Well, a lot of people are arguing over it now. There’s debate between this and that economic school, between politicians, between programmers. Don’t listen to all of them though. Some people are smart; some are misinformed. Some say the system is worth a lot; some say it’s actually worth zero. Some guy actually put a hard number on it: $1,300 per apple . Some say it’s digital gold; some say it’s a currency. Others say they’re just like tulips. Some people say it’ll change the world; some say it’s just a fad.
I have my own opinion about it, but that’s a story for another time.
Hey kid, you now know more about Bitcoin than most.

In about 5 hours you can view the live Webcast Bitcoin
movement. All you got to do is click this link below.

http://lykd.it/zBlr

sounds risky and a waste of time, maybe its just me

@rocky wrote:sounds risky and a waste of time, maybe its just me

Yeah I know but so was investing in Gold 9 years ago.
Listening in on the explanation doesn't cost a thing. Best live now situation I could find.

In about 2 hours you can view the live Webcast Bitcoin
movement. All you got to do is click this link below.

http://lykd.it/zBlr

In about 2 minutes you can view the live Webcast Bitcoin
movement. All you got to do is click this link below.

http://lykd.it/zBlr

OK, I set in for a hour and this is amazing and stupid mixed. If it works, people will make money but I think it is the stupidest thing ever to think a currency (digital) can be created and work but hey, green stamps use to be kinda the same thing. There is a lot of retailers on board like Target, overstock.com and others but I still do not see for myself, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Mainly do to I do not have the time or enthusiasm to delicate to the endeavor. I want knock it and will just set back and watch it. All I got to say anymore about it... ;)

http://www.coindesk.com/pay-taxes-bitcoin-snapcard-pay-irs/Bitcoin-based shopping cart snapCard is expanding its offerings by launching a pay-the-IRS service for its customers.

“Tax services are truly relevant right now,” Ioannis Giannaros, one of snapCard’s founders, told CoinDesk. “It’s going to be really cool.”

SnapCard users will be able to pay their taxes in bitcoin, and the company will process a USD transaction through a payment processor.

“Essentially, you fill out a form and you say how much you want to pay. Then, we invoice you.”

Tax Payment Processing With BTC
“There are payment processors that have partnered with the government already. What we’re essentially doing is [functioning as] a layer on top that accepts bitcoin,” said Giannaros.

The cost for the tax payment service is a 1.87% fee for the payment processor and a flat $10 charge from snapCard.

“We have a government payment processor, like a credit card processor, that we run the transaction through. That’s the nuts and bolts of it.”

The electronic methods of submitting owed taxes have consisted of an echeck or a credit card. Many credit card processors charge between 2-3% to make a tax payment using plastic.

“There’s a lot of attributes to the US dollar that make it monopolistic in the US, and one is paying taxes. You have to pay in dollars,” Giannaros said. “At the end of the day, you still pay in dollars through us. But it kind of alleviates the end-to-end point. It’s using bitcoin to pay your taxes.”
SnapCard and Ecommerce
SnapCard bills itself on its website as ‘the easiest way to buy anything on the Internet using bitcoin’. The company regularly charges a 2% fee (1% during the month of January) when using the shopping cart service to pay for items with bitcoin, and uses a bookmarklet to enable the checkout process.

Once a user gets to the shopping cart stage of an online purchase, he or she clicks on the snapCard bookmarklet, which forwards the data to the company for bitcoin processing. The advantage of this is that, with the exception of Overstock.com, large online retailers still don’t accept bitcoin as a payment method. Until that changes, those who want to buy items with BTC from Amazon or a majority of online retailers need to use a third-party service. SnapCard has even processed the sale of a $90,000 Mercedes Benz from a car dealership that would not accept BTC.


So far, snapCard has facilitated more than $300,000 in BTC transactions from an active base of over 2,500 users. In December, Giannaros and his co-founder Michael Dunworth told CoinDesk in an interview that they believed many of their customers were early bitcoin investors looking to spend their increasingly valuable bitcoins to promote the virtual currency.

SnapCard is currently being incubated at Boost VC, a San Mateo, CA-based startup accelerator that frequently financially backs bitcoin-based companies. A few other bitcoin startups along with snapCard will be pitching to investors at Boost’s Winter Class Demo Day on 11 February.

It’s free to sign up with snapCard. Customers have the option of linking their account to Coinbase or getting an invoice to pay to a bitcoin address within five minutes of order processing.