Finland’s first Bitcoin vending machine unveiled in Helsinki

helsinkitimes.fi / 16 Dec 2013

STARTING today, it is possible to buy the digital currency known as bitcoins in Helsinki, following the unveiling of Finland’s first Bitcoin vending machine in the record shop Levykauppa Äx in Asematunneli, a shopping centre in down-town Helsinki. By inserting euro notes to the machine, it will transfer an equivalent amount of bitcoins to the depositor’s digital wallet.

Henry Brade, the chief executive of Prasos, the company behind the website Bittiraha.fi, estimates that the vending machine is also the first of its kind in Europe. The world’s first Bitcoin vending machine was unveiled in Canada’s Vancouver in October. - READ MORE

FrostWire aims to incorporate Bitcoin into a BitTorrent client

siliconangle.com / By SAROJ KAR / DECEMBER 16TH, 2013

The developers of FrostWire BitTorrent clients are currently working on an integration of crypto currency Bitcoin into their software. In the future, users will get the opportunity to leave an anonymous donation by uploader of a file.

The trend of Bitcoin payments with the peer-to-peer network has been around for some time. Several other BitTorrent developers are exploring options to include bitcoin payments in their client software. Even the most well-known portal for torrents, The Pirate Bay allows such donations to the seed originator of a file.

In 2011, FrostWire programmers have thoroughly revised the software to make a BitTorrent client and in the process the support for the FrostWire (formerly Gnutella) network was abandoned. Now, the developers of FrostWire P2P clients want to also implement the software.

“The idea is to let users enter an optional Bitcoin address and suggested donation amount along with the torrent they’re about to create on FrostWire,” FrostWire‘s Angel Leon toldTorrentFreak in an interview. - READ MORE

Coinbase wants to bring Bitcoins from the nerds to you

marketplace.org / by Ben Johnson / December 17, 2013

All this week, Marketplace Tech is talking about the digital currency Bitcoin. Yesterday, we found out that like most forms of currency, Bitcoin is “a massive hallucination we all agree upon.” But it’s also a techy idea — a network where computers with a shared record of transactions can trade long strings of letters and numbers to keep track of who has what. Whether that description sounds simplistic or overly complicated, there’s a company in Silicon Valley called Coinbase designed to make sure we don’t ever have to worry about it.

Coinbase is getting big money in venture capital funding – another $25 million announced just last week. Venture capitalists like Coinbase because they think it might be the company to bring the use of Bitcoin from the nerds to the rest of us. Bitcoin co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong certainly hopes so. He characterizes his company as a sort of PayPal for Bitcoin, that both connects merchants with consumers, and allows people a way to store their money online.

“We are serving three completely different segments of the Bitcoin market,” Armstrong says. “We have a consumer wallet. We have merchant services, helping businesses accept Bitcoin. And we also will have a developer platform that 3,000 developers have built apps on it. So, yes, it’s a challenge, but many parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem work better when you have multiple parties talking together.” - http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/coinbase-wants-bring-bitcoins-nerds-you

GreenBank Capital (CNSX:GBC) Launches Two New Subsidiaries to Invest in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Startups – Video News Alert Summary on InvestmentPitch.com

online.wsj.com / December 17, 2013, 10:18 a.m. ET

Vancouver, British Columbia, December 17, 2013 – GreenBank Capital (CNSX:GBC) has launched two new subsidiaries, designed to invest in Bitcoin and Bitcoin startups. GreenBank believes it is the first public company to establish a presence in Bitcoin.

InvestmentPitch.com has produced a “video news alert” about GreenBank Capital. If this link is not enabled, please visitwww.InvestmentPitch.com and enter “GreenBank” in the search box.

Bitcoin, a digital cryptocurrency, is created and held electronically. Bitcoin’s most important characteristic, and the thing that makes it different to conventional money, is that it is decentralized. No single institution controls the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin Canada Investments Inc. will invest exclusively in Bitcoin currency. The second subsidiary, Bitcoin Angel Capital Inc., will invest in early stage Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency focused companies. - READ MORE

Why China had to crack down on bitcoin—and may eventually regret it

qz.com / By Adam Pasick / December 17, 2013

China’s brief yet torrid love affair with bitcoin is drawing to a close.

The country’s central bank, which earlier this month banned Chinese commercial banks from trading in the virtual currency, has now told third-party payment platforms like Alipay that they cannot do business with Chinese bitcoin exchanges, making it much more difficult (though not impossible) for its citizens to purchase bitcoins. That cuts off the huge surge in investment that sent the currency to dizzying new heights over the past last few months.

Ultimately China had little choice but to crack down on bitcoin, because it made it all too easy for Chinese investors to evade already- porous currency controls and anonymously move their funds out of the country. More generally, Beijing had an aversion to a volatile, decentralized and possibly destabilizing digital currency that it could not control. - READ MORE

China Bans Anonymous Transfers to Exchanges — $40,000 a Bitcoin? — $61M invested in Bitcoin Trust

MadBitcoins, Published on Dec 16, 2013

December 16, 2013 — Istanbul, Turkey — MadBitcoins: The great national temperance beverage. The Beanie Baby of the Day is Legs the Frog. The MadBitcoins Subscriber Index is at 1514. Here are Today’s MadBits: Bitcoin prices were up and down this weekend, but now they’re down. With Coindesk BPI reporting a Last of $726, a High of $880 and a Low of $709. Litecoin prices were down as well to $25 dollars a coin.

Congratulations Bitcoiners! I’m proud of you! Over the weekend more than 4 bitcoiners donated more than $99 to BitcoinHelps.org to support the building of a well in Kyoga, Uganda. Thank you Bitcoiners for supporting Bitcoin Aid during this Holiday Season. If you haven’t donated yet, but would like to, please donate at BitcoinHelps.org — even a few bits helps!
http://bitcoinhelps.org

1.) China Bans Payment Companies from Working With Bitcoin Exchanges, Sources Claim
http://www.coindesk.com/china-bans-pa…

2.) Winklevoss: Bitcoin Might Hit $40,000 Per Coin
http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/camero…

3.) SecondMarket’s Bitcoin Investment Trust Amasses $61m in 3 Months
http://www.coindesk.com/secondmarkets…

China Bans Anonymous Transfers to Exchanges — $40,000 a Bitcoin? — $61M invested in Bitcoin Trust

Bitcoin Ideology and the Tale of Casascius Coins

coindesk.com / Jon Matonis / Published on December 17, 2013 at 16:40 GMT

A weekend article in The New York Times examined the ideological underpinnings of the bitcoin cryptocurrency. While the article got most of it correct, it missed some additional principles that are core to the adopters of bitcoin.

First of all, a vote for bitcoin is essentially a vote against the established monetary order with its centralized authority, legacy infrastructure, and diminishing financial privacy. Moreover, it is also a vote for an individual’s choice in currency and freedom of transaction without payment blockades and surveillance. To both the technical and non-technical, bitcoin represents fungibility, irreversibility, and user-defined privacy.

As The New York Times pointed out, additional facets that bitcoin adopters find attractive include how bitcoin demonstrates the absurdity of a central bank’s unlimited issuance model and the irrelevancy of self-serving capital controls.

A decentralized cryptocurrency separates a functioning medium of exchange from state control.

Nothing illustrates this more starkly than a physical bitcoin on a coin-shaped metal disc, which could be considered a negotiable monetary instrument in some jurisdictions. Lately, bitcoin has appreciated so much that the older 10 BTC and 25 BTC Casascius coins must now be declared to US Customs when entering or exiting the US. - http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-ideology-casascius-coins

Bitcoin gaining popularity in China

Bitcoin gaining popularity in China