Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Bubble Trouble 2: BitPay And The Growing Economy

Those who believe Bitcoin is in a bubble claim that usefulness of BTC does not match up to the $1 billion+ market cap. In this series I'm looking at evidence that shows the economy is on the rise.


If you believe that Bitcoin is in a bubble, you probably accuse speculators. But if you look at BitPay, the largest processor of online Bitcoin payments, you'll see that demand for BTC as a currency (something that people can exchange for real goods) is up. This doesn't mean that there aren't speculators, because surely there are, just that more and more people are using Bitcoin for what is intended.

The traffic ranking for BitPay has gone from below the threshold for
Alexa tracking to the 78,684th ranked site in global traffic and 33,455th in the US in the last month and a half.
According to a new blog post by BitPay, the service has exceeded the sales of Silk Road

Silk Road, the "Dark Web" marketplace for illegal drugs, is one of the original big users of Bitcoin. The pseudonymity of BTC caused many of its early adopters to use the currency for illegal transactions.

According to the post, BitPay processed over $5.2 million worth of transactions during the month of March with 5,100 completed invoices, $3 million in the last eight days. Compare that to February, which only saw $687,000 in transactions and 2,300 completed invoices.

BitPay has also approved over 1,300 new merchant applications during the month of March, bringing their total number of approved merchants to over 4,500.

Interest in BitPay skyrockets

In addition to the Alexa.com rank, Google Trends shows that more people are searching for BitPay.


As more people desire to hold Bitcoin, more merchants will desire to cater to a Bitcoin economy, as is shown by BitPay's rise in popularity. And as more merchants enter the economy, the currency becomes more useful which will attract more adopters.

The question is if enough new merchants are adopting Bitcoin to sustain or even further elevate the price.


@Bitcoin_Trends

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Monday, April 1, 2013

Major Looting on Instanwallet & Bitcoin Central?


Users trying to log into Instawallet and Bitcoin Central right now will see this message, which has some Bitcoin talk forum members worried. Today $3 million worth of BTC was transfered to a little used address, including $1 million from Instawallet's cold storage.


http://blockchain.info/address/1LrPYjto3hsLzWJNstghuwdrQXB96KbrCy

"That's the 'cold wallet', supposedly offline storage. Which appears to not be offline at all since a gigantic amount of coins just got looted from it," posted one forum user.

Neither service has released a statement yet, so it is unclear where the money was going. But it appears to have been stolen.


Attacks on the rise

It appears that such behavior is on the rise as the price of BTC goes up. In the last week, Dwolla and Mt.Gox experienced delays due to a DDoS attack and Mercado Bitcoin, the only exchange to run in Brazil, was completely compromised.

More updates as they come.


@Bitcoin_Trends

Bitcointip Goes Down, Total Tips Near $20k


Over $18,000 dollars worth of tips have been sent through the Bitcoin tip service as of yesterday, but the service experienced a major outage today because of "April Fools shenanigans."

The service allows users to tip others for comments they like on Reddit, usually less than $1 USD. Reddit's inclusion of this service looks like the future of micropayments, if there is one.

Unlike paypal or other services to exchange money online, it doesn't cost anything to send someone Bitcoin.

This could change the whole online ecosystem, if in the future it becomes common practice to send tips all over the internet for popular content.


@Bitcoin_Trends

Instawallet Breached, Million Dollar Pizzas & More



Users trying to access Instawallet are currently greeted by the above. More information as it becomes available.

This is another recent attack on the Bitcoin infrastructure, following a DDoS attack on Mt.Gox in the last few days and one on Dwolla in the last week. Mercado Bitcoin, a Brazilian exchange was also compromised recently.

http://bitcointrends.blogspot.com/2013/04/spate-of-recent-attacks-disrupt-market.html

Other News: New BTC-based crowdfunding platform


BitcoinStarter fully launched today. The service is an all or nothing model that deals only in BTC There are currently six active projects requesting funding, two of which have already received donations.

One project, called BitcoinTablet, seeks 85 BTC to establish a charity:

"BitcoinTablet is a charity organization that focuses on providing free IT equipment to the world's poorest areas. 

"One of our aims is to be the most efficient way to directly donate learning and communication technology to young people in developing countries."

Like Kickstarter, projects on BitcoinStarter offer incentives for pledging a certain amount.

Pizza Index cracks $1 million

In 2010 a man conducted likely the first real-world BTC transaction and bought a pizza for 10,000 BTC. The index tracks how much that pizza would cost today.



@Bitcoin_Trends




Tweets for $100

Twitter users share their feelings on the historic milestone:



@Bitcoin_Trends