Poll: 8% of North American Retailers Will Adopt Bitcoin in 2015

The annual POS/Customer Engagement Benchmarking Survey conducted by Boston Retail Partners, suggests that 8% of North American retailers are planning on accepting Bitcoin within 12 months, and 5% within 1 to 3 years.

Not bad, event though the report also indicated that Apple Pay and PayPal will lead the payments market in 2016, with 30% of the respondents having plans to adopt the former, and 18%, the latter.

BitPay Releases Bitcore Playground

After having released open source JavaScript library Bitcore to help developers jump into building Bitcoin projects more easily, BitPay has now released Bitcoin Playground, which is designed to showcase Bitcore’s capabilities.

In a blog post, BitPay states:

“The Bitcore Playground is an interactive guide to using the Bitcore library and lowers the learning curve for Bitcoin. The Playground was made because we are incredibly excited about the existing ideas and projects that are being built on top of our open source projects, and we would like to fuel even more innovation by making our projects straightforward to use for developers entering the Bitcoin sphere.”

Bitcoin Foundation and Leading Bitcoin Companies Launch Public Education Campaign on Bitcoin

The Bitcoin Foundation announced a partnership with Bitcoin companies BitFury, BitGo, Tally Capital, ChangeTip, and Bitcoin Foundation lifetime member Bruce Fenton as well as theAudience - one of the world’s largest multi-channel publishers of social and digital content. The goal is to launch a multi-faceted social and traditional media campaign to educate businesses, consumers, and society at large about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Foundation board member Brock Pierce stated:

“As the ecosystem matures, Bitcoin companies are stepping up to the plate. We’re excited to join a coordinated and concentrated effort to teach Bitcoin to the world’s almost 3 billion internet users - two-thirds of which are from the developing world.”

Coinbase Exchange Volume Surpasses Bitstamp and BTC-e

Less than three weeks after its launch, Coinbase has already surpassed Bitstamp and BTC-e in trading volume. Very impressive, although it should be noted that Coinbase has not started to charge fee's as of yet. And compared to other (primarily Chinese) exchanges that charge no fees, Coinbase has some way to go.

Former Treasury Secretary Believes Bitcoin Needs Regulation to Succeed

Lawrence Summers, former US Department of Treasury Secretary and advisor to President Barack Obama, has argued that Bitcoin and the people who support it will need to embrace regulation in order to succeed.

"If the day ever comes where bitcoin counts for an appreciable fraction of commerce that takes place in the world economy, on that day it will be because that commerce is regulated and subject to safeguards and people believe that something other than a mathematical algorithm is ensuring that their money will not be stolen."

DarkCoin Introduces Trustless Instant Payment Confirmations

DarkCoin released a new core update to its DarkSend system allowing for the implementation of their InstantX (IX) protocol for immediate payment confirmations. The new release allows users to select the IX protocol for use in their transactions of the altcoin. The new system should mean that those receiving a transaction should get a confirmation within five seconds in most cases.

BitPay and Circle Endorse Bitcoin Derivative Platform LedgerX for CFTC Approval

The Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) recently launched a commenting period to understand the feasibility of Bitcoin-based derivate exchange LedgerX. And it seems like LedgerX has garnered a lot of support from the Bitcoin industry: BitPay and Circle as well as Lightspeed Venture Partners and Midas Advisory Group, Inc. issued comments in favor of the derivate exchange.

Speaking favorably of LedgerX, BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi said:

“We believe the CFTC should provide regulatory oversight, encourage transparency, and allow the creation of a robust derivatives market for bitcoin.”

Residents Most Likely to Pay Overstock in Bitcoin

Overstock has released data regarding bitcoin sales, which indicate that New Hampshire residents are the most likely to pay for items using the cryptographic currency, with 131 bitcoin orders per million residents in the Northeastern US state. The other top-10 states are (in order) , , , , , , , , and .

Digital Currency ATMs and Exchanges Must Be Authorized Says Financial Regulator

Businesses operating a digital currency ATM or an exchange platform in Quebec must obtain the appropriate license from the financial regulator: the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), in accordance to the Money-Services Businesses Act.

The AMF further warned consumers of the risks associated with dealing with digital currencies, notably volatility and liquidity risks, stating:

"Transactions involving virtual currency are not covered by the financial services compensation fund or the deposit insurance fund. Quebeckers should therefore be careful with virtual currency transactions as they may incur losses that are not covered under current compensation or deposit insurance plans.”

Core Developer Jeff Garzik: 'The Blockchain Can Never Support All the Transactions'

Discussing recurring issues such as the blocksize limit and the possibility of instant trustless transactions, Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik made some interesting statements in the developers’ mailing list.

In its essence, Garzik said that bitcoiners should try to let go of what they want Bitcoin to be, and instead focus on what it is: “Bitcoin is a settlement system, by design.” As such, they should let go of the notion of instant secure and universal payments. Instead, Garzik said: “Bitcoin transactions are, by definition, not instant.”

Adding:

“The blockchain can never support All The Transactions, even if block size increases beyond 20MB. Further layers are - by design - necessary if we want to achieve the goal of a decentralized payment network capable of supporting full global traffic.”

 

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