Category: Software

Analysis, Finance, Software

Using Bitcoin is Best for Low-Cost Fraud Protection

The card companies, banks and payment processors cooperate together to charge a good chunk of fees both to cover the cost of fraud and to protect against it. But can bitcoin offer better, or at the very least lower-cost, fraud protection for merchants and consumers?

It’s almost essential today for merchants to accept credit or debit cards. Indeed, it is often the only form of payment in a customer’s wallet. However, in exchange for accepting cards, merchants must pay for a number of services that they may not need or want as part of the blanket fees charged by payment processors.

There are even some examples where merchants offer customers a discount in exchange for paying in cash, such as gas stations in the US, which often advertise a cheaper price to customers using physical money.

News on Bitcoins

Alan Safahi, CEO of ZipZap and a veteran of the payments industry, said that banks should be interested in bitcoin’s potential for lower overhead operational merchant costs, explaining: “Banks don’t make a lot of money for payment processing. They couldn’t care if they are processing Visa, MasterCard or bitcoin.” One of the biggest issues with credit cards that merchants simply cannot avoid is chargebacks – when a card transaction is reversed after a payment for a variety of reasons.

“For more developed economies with stable currencies, chargebacks is one of the biggest selling points to bitcoin adoption for merchants,” said Michael Dunworth, whose startup snapCard allows users to pay for things online in bitcoin whether a merchant accepts bitcoin or not. “[Chargebacks are] a drain on all fronts, and an incomparable value-add of accepting bitcoin,” he added.

Bitcoin News Video

Watch this video for more “News on Bitcoin”.

Continue reading “Using Bitcoin is Best for Low-Cost Fraud Protection”

Richard Atkins
Finance, Software

Bitcoin News: Social Media-Inspired Bitcoin Wallet

Safello is now allowing users to request invitations to its newly launched bitcoin wallet service. For the release, the Sweden-based bitcoin services company will leverage Blockchain’s API, though its wallet service will build upon Blockchain‘s basic offering, adding an additional social layer that will allow users to easily search for other users with whom they’ve previously transacted.

The news was released during a panel session at Sthlm Tech Fest, a Sweden-based conference featuring top talent from the payments world such as Stripe and iZettle alongside bitcoin companies such as Safello, Blockchain and KnCMiner.

Safello chose to take a decidedly under-the-radar approach to the release, opting against issuing a formal press release. However, news of the new service quickly found its way to Reddit, an event that CEO Frank Schuil cited as evidence of the demand for the service. Schuil told CoinDesk that users may need to be patient, as not all requests to access the service will be immediately approach. He said: “We anticipate to slowly let users in during this month or next month.”

News on Bitcoins

Safello framed its wallet service as one that aims to eliminate some of the more common pain points associated with bitcoin wallets, branding it as “so easy that even your mom could use it”. Notably, Safello’s wallet will incorporate features common to digital address books, allowing users to easily search for friends.

All transactions can be viewed in a timeline and if verified accounts are being used, bitcoin addresses will be replaced by user names, photos and comments. The end result is Safello’s wallet history being visualized more in the style of the social timelines that Facebook and Twitter users have grown accustomed to.

Bitcoin News Video

Watch this video for more “News on Bitcoin”.

Continue reading “Bitcoin News: Social Media-Inspired Bitcoin Wallet”

Richard Atkins
Old Computer Collectible Computer
Software

Old Computers Become Collectibles: It is Worth Collecting or Selling?

Getting rid of an old computer when you get a new model is often one of those tasks you tell yourself you’ll get to one of these days. Somehow there just never seems time to wipe the hard drive and resell it. Often old computers wind up in the basement collecting dust. Yet some models may actually be rising in value the longer you keep … Continue reading Old Computers Become Collectibles: It is Worth Collecting or Selling?

Harvey Dyer
Finance, Software

Bitcoin Update: US Colleges Start Bitcoin Courses

Two top-ranked US universities, New York University and Duke University, are offering courses on cryptocurrencies for the first time. Professor Geoffrey Miller taught the first class of NYU’s new course, The Law and Business of Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies, yesterday. 35 students attended the session – the first in a series of 14 – which covered the fundamentals of money.

Miller, a faculty member at NYU’s law school, teaches the course with Professor David Yermack, who is on the faculty of the university’s business school. Yermack says the course aims to examine the impact of cryptocurrencies on the fundamental principles that underpin current notions of law and finance.

“The course is not so much about teaching a knowledge of bitcoin, but it’s to show how some of the issues about property, finance and contracts are going to change very quickly in the next century. The technology is forcing people to reexamine long-held assumptions.”

News on Bitcoins

Yermack and Miller are joined by Duke University Finance Professor Campbell Harvey, who is preparing a course on cryptocurrencies that will be offered to students next spring. Both schools at NYU and Duke are ranked in the top 10 of their respective categories in the US News and World Report college rankings. Notably, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam graduated from Duke in 2010.

Harvey’s course at Duke is titled Innovation, Disruption and Cryptoventures and will focus on the potential of businesses that use the block chain. The course will be offered to students at Duke’s computer science department and its law and business schools. Harvey is confident that the course will be a hit with students. He said: “I think it’s going to be a blockbuster. The problem will be turning people away.”

Bitcoin News Video

Watch this video for more “News on Bitcoin”.

Continue reading “Bitcoin Update: US Colleges Start Bitcoin Courses”

Richard Atkins
Finance, Software

Bitcoin News: A Look at Bitcoins in Gambling

Gambling is big business, and online gambling represents a significant and growing proportion of that business – about 8% currently. Research company H2 Gambling Capital, which values the online gambling market in terms of gross winnings, put the global market value at €21.73bn ($28.54bn) in 2012. Furthermore, the firm expects a 9.13% compound annual growth rate through 2015.

Right now bitcoin gambling only accounts for a tiny percentage of the total of online gambling revenues. However, it is clear that the opportunity exists to make significant income within the industry and, with bitcoin’s advantages in terms of low-cost, speedy payments, cryptocurrency-based gambling firms are doing their best to do just that.

The bitcoin world loves to gamble, in one form or another. In his book, The Anatomy of a Money-like Informational Commodity, Tim Swanson points out that half the transactions on the bitcoin network were being used to transmit bets to SatoshiDice, one of the earliest bitcoin betting sites, created by Eric Voorhees.

News on Bitcoins

Further, an analysis in August 2013 showed that roughly 5% of the value of all bitcoin transactions in June that year were flowing through SatoshiDice. That means lots of very small transactions, which is, after all, one thing that cryptocurrencies are very good at.

Ivan Montik, CEO at SoftSwiss, provides online casino software for entrepreneurs, and its solutions support fiat and bitcoin gambling. “We’ve got about 400 requests for the launch of a bitcoin casino in the last six months,” he said. “We constantly have three to five casinos in the set-up phase, and could have had more if we had more resources.” Not all bitcoin bets are low in value. Montik said that there are some high rollers in crypto-land.

Bitcoin News Video

Watch this video for more “News on Bitcoin”.

Continue reading “Bitcoin News: A Look at Bitcoins in Gambling”

Richard Atkins
Finance, Software

Bitcoin Breaking News: Singapore Now has a Bitcoin & Litecoin Exchange

Singapore’s latest exchange, CRXzone, has become the first platform to offer both litecoin and bitcoin trading in the country. Like others in the Asian region, the exchange aims to attract an international customer base by offering additional bitcoin services beyond trading.

One of CRXzone’s key strategies to attract a wide customer base is its range of account funding and withdrawal options. As well as the usual bank transfers, the exchange offers international payment processor options like OKPAY, Egopay, and PerfectMoney.

CRXzone CEO Pawan Kumar tends to refer to other payment networks as ‘digital currencies’ too, blurring the line somewhat between cryptocurrencies and widely-used international payment networks. This is probably due to his 25-year experience in the IT industry, experience with online businesses and involvement in digital payment networks “since the time of E-gold”.

News on Bitcoins

While all offer speed and cost advantages over traditional currencies, Kumar said that bitcoin’s decentralized nature made it an attractive option. “I personally feel […] bitcoin will slowly takeover all other digital currencies and remain a useful tool for digital payments which are growing day by day.”

One of CRXzone’s selling points is its litecoin trading option, despite the popular altcoin’s image taking a battering following its recent price slump to $5 and lower. “We still believe that litecoin will survive the current downward trend. It is well known and widely used crypto after the bitcoin [sic]. Leverage trading seems to be a reason for the current price slump, as per my personal judgement.”

Bitcoin News Video

Watch this video for more “News on Bitcoin”.

Continue reading “Bitcoin Breaking News: Singapore Now has a Bitcoin & Litecoin Exchange”

Richard Atkins