The queen of cryptocurrencies invites itself to merchants. On Wednesday April 6, the Bitcoin 2022 conference was held in Miami, one of the biggest events dedicated to this cryptocurrency. Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike, a payment application based on the Lightning Network, an overlay of the Bitcoin network, announced that thousands of brands were now able to accept payment in bitcoin, reports PhonAndroid Friday April 8. Among the 400,000 brands involved in this partnership, we find McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart and Best Buy.
This concerns all sites and merchants who use Shopify, a platform that allows you to design an e-commerce site, NCR, a payment solution for commerce, and Blackhawk, a specialist in gift and customer cards. These services have become compatible with the Lightning Network, which consequently allows bitcoin transactions. “Any online merchant using Shopify can accept payments without the boomer network that dates back to 1949, receive them instantly, final cash, no middleman, no 3% fees,” boasted Jack Mallers, insisting on the speed of transactions.
On the other hand, it is only an announcement and the outlines are quite blurred, warns PhonAndroid. It should be noted that El Salvador, the first country that authorized bitcoin as legal tender, also relied on the Strike application to develop this project.
Monday, April 11, 2022
Are McDonald's and Starbucks the next bitcoin adopters?
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Where to spend your bitcoins?
This post will show you that there are many ways to spend your bitcoins beside buying drugs and other illicit goods and services on Silk Road, the underground marketplace shut down some time ago.
Let's start with some art. If your are visiting Amsterdam, the dutch capital, then you might want to have a caricature of you and of course you can pay using bitcoins (it is even cheaper).
Bitcoin continues to gain popularity as a digital currency, but what businesses actually accept them? Here are some other places to spend your bitcoins.
Internet : Wordpress, the popular blogging platform accepts Bitcoins as payment for upgrades and allows users to install plug-ins for accepting the currency on personal websites that use the free service.
Travel : If you plan a trip to space, then be informed that Virgin Galactic is now accepting Bitcoin for space flights on board the SpaceShipTwo.
It is also possible to spend your bitcoins in a travel if you prefer to stay on the planet Earth. Expedia, the online travel site, announced it will start accepting Bitcoin for hotel bookings. If people utilize the service, the company said it will eventually bring it to other areas of the site like air travel, car rental, and other vacation services.
AirBaltic, the Latvian airline, may be the first to accept payments in bitcoin
BTCTrip is an online flight and hotel booking service that was one of the first in its industry to serve the bitcoin community.
CheapAir.com, the California-based online travel booking website, started taking bitcoin.
The UK’s Theatre Tickets Direct has recently started accepting bitcoin, offering a ticket booking service for mostly London shows, such as West End theatre and musicals.
Eat and drink : Order a Domino's, Papa John's, or Pizza Hut pizza with Bitcoin using the website PizzaforCoins.com and receive it at your door.
Bitcoin.Travel is a respected site, offering a mappable list of accommodation, apartments, attractions, bars, and beauty salons around the world. Coinmap also maintains a worldwide database of establishments.
This restaurant in Amsterdam accepts Bitcoins.
Online shopping : The gift card retailer website Gyft allows you to purchase gift cards for more than 200 retailers using Bitcoin as payment. All you need is a Bitcoin wallet to purchase the gift card and you're good to spend it at the store location or website. Retailers include: Whole Foods, Best Buy, Sephora, Gap, Sears, Victoria's Secret, Target, and Home Depot.
Overstock, on of the major retailers started accepting Bitcoins. Overstock sells surplus and liquidated items, as well as new furniture, apparel, home goods, and electronics.
On Etsy, there are numerous sellers that accept Bitcoin.
Online gaming : Zynga accepts Bitcoin as a payment option for its in-game virtual currency, tokens, for many of its games.
Sport clubs : The Sacremento Kings and San Jose Quakes are two sports teams that now accept Bitcoin for ticket purchases and team apparel.
Jewelery: Bitcoin Now Accepted at REEDS Jewelers.
Invest in property: Cai-Capital Limited is an established property Acquisitions and Sales company, offering overseas and UK clients the opportunity to purchase properties in London and the South of England. they offer access to the UK Property Market using Bitcoin investments.
Let's start with some art. If your are visiting Amsterdam, the dutch capital, then you might want to have a caricature of you and of course you can pay using bitcoins (it is even cheaper).
Bitcoin continues to gain popularity as a digital currency, but what businesses actually accept them? Here are some other places to spend your bitcoins.
Internet : Wordpress, the popular blogging platform accepts Bitcoins as payment for upgrades and allows users to install plug-ins for accepting the currency on personal websites that use the free service.
Travel : If you plan a trip to space, then be informed that Virgin Galactic is now accepting Bitcoin for space flights on board the SpaceShipTwo.
It is also possible to spend your bitcoins in a travel if you prefer to stay on the planet Earth. Expedia, the online travel site, announced it will start accepting Bitcoin for hotel bookings. If people utilize the service, the company said it will eventually bring it to other areas of the site like air travel, car rental, and other vacation services.
AirBaltic, the Latvian airline, may be the first to accept payments in bitcoin
BTCTrip is an online flight and hotel booking service that was one of the first in its industry to serve the bitcoin community.
CheapAir.com, the California-based online travel booking website, started taking bitcoin.
The UK’s Theatre Tickets Direct has recently started accepting bitcoin, offering a ticket booking service for mostly London shows, such as West End theatre and musicals.
Eat and drink : Order a Domino's, Papa John's, or Pizza Hut pizza with Bitcoin using the website PizzaforCoins.com and receive it at your door.
Bitcoin.Travel is a respected site, offering a mappable list of accommodation, apartments, attractions, bars, and beauty salons around the world. Coinmap also maintains a worldwide database of establishments.
This restaurant in Amsterdam accepts Bitcoins.
Online shopping : The gift card retailer website Gyft allows you to purchase gift cards for more than 200 retailers using Bitcoin as payment. All you need is a Bitcoin wallet to purchase the gift card and you're good to spend it at the store location or website. Retailers include: Whole Foods, Best Buy, Sephora, Gap, Sears, Victoria's Secret, Target, and Home Depot.
Overstock, on of the major retailers started accepting Bitcoins. Overstock sells surplus and liquidated items, as well as new furniture, apparel, home goods, and electronics.
On Etsy, there are numerous sellers that accept Bitcoin.
Online gaming : Zynga accepts Bitcoin as a payment option for its in-game virtual currency, tokens, for many of its games.
Sport clubs : The Sacremento Kings and San Jose Quakes are two sports teams that now accept Bitcoin for ticket purchases and team apparel.
Jewelery: Bitcoin Now Accepted at REEDS Jewelers.
Invest in property: Cai-Capital Limited is an established property Acquisitions and Sales company, offering overseas and UK clients the opportunity to purchase properties in London and the South of England. they offer access to the UK Property Market using Bitcoin investments.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Bitcoin : A scam or a money for the future?
Bitcoin is often defined as a cryptocurrency or as an electronic money. However, the official monetary authorities in many countries have made it clear that bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are not considered legaly as money. A money requires an issuing authority that guaranties its value. Bitcoin has no issuing authority, it is not controlled by a central bank or a government and is not regulated.
So, what is bitcoin? is it a money for the future as most of the funs present it? A scam? a ponzi scheme?
Bitcoin is based on cryptography and peer-to-peer technology. This "money" is not issued by a central authority but instead generated by machines over the world running complex calculations. The generated coins are attributed to those who put the calculation power in the service of the network in a process called "mining". To keep the number of generated coins constant over time, the difficulty is increased with the total network power. Sending or receiving bitcoins is simple and cheap compared to any traditional payement system. Transactions are comfirmed by the network and registred in an open book called the "blokchain" so anyone can know exacltly the amount of bitcoins in each address but those addresses are anonymous.
Bitcoin is a great technological innovation. The idea of a peer-to-peer "currency" that allow people to make cheap, fast and anonymous transactions is one of the most important advances in computer science in the last years. But it is still not sure whether bitcoin will become a dominating payement system in the future or it will collapse and disappear in the next few years.
In my opinion, bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme although it may look like. It is true that those who initiated the system or joined the network at its beginning have mined a considerable amount of bitcoins before the mining process becomes so computationaly demanding but this is quite fair and as we say "the early bird catches the worm". The important thing is that the bitcoin system is now on the network and out of control of any group of individuals, organizations or government. It is currently maintained by people all arround the world who believe in it and whom confidence gives value to bitcoin.
The bitcoin will continue to exist as long as people continue to trust it and use it. But will they continue to use it if, for instance, the authorities declare it illegal? Last month the chinese monetary authorities have forbiden the chinese banks from using bitcoin without clearly declare its use by people, companies or organizations as illegal. The bitcoin price has fallen to about 50% in consequence. In France, the central bank has warned about the volatile nature of the bitcoin market and therefore adviced against the use of bitcoin. The finnish central bank has considered bitcoin as commodity because it fails to meet the definition of a money or an electronic payement.
UPDATE: After a statment from the russian central bank warning about the high speculative nature of Bitcoin trade and that the unit carried a big risk of losing value, the russian authorities have now declared that treating Bitcoin as parrallel currency is considered illegal due to the possible use of it in money landering and terrorism activities financing.
So, what is bitcoin? is it a money for the future as most of the funs present it? A scam? a ponzi scheme?
Bitcoin is based on cryptography and peer-to-peer technology. This "money" is not issued by a central authority but instead generated by machines over the world running complex calculations. The generated coins are attributed to those who put the calculation power in the service of the network in a process called "mining". To keep the number of generated coins constant over time, the difficulty is increased with the total network power. Sending or receiving bitcoins is simple and cheap compared to any traditional payement system. Transactions are comfirmed by the network and registred in an open book called the "blokchain" so anyone can know exacltly the amount of bitcoins in each address but those addresses are anonymous.
Bitcoin is a great technological innovation. The idea of a peer-to-peer "currency" that allow people to make cheap, fast and anonymous transactions is one of the most important advances in computer science in the last years. But it is still not sure whether bitcoin will become a dominating payement system in the future or it will collapse and disappear in the next few years.
In my opinion, bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme although it may look like. It is true that those who initiated the system or joined the network at its beginning have mined a considerable amount of bitcoins before the mining process becomes so computationaly demanding but this is quite fair and as we say "the early bird catches the worm". The important thing is that the bitcoin system is now on the network and out of control of any group of individuals, organizations or government. It is currently maintained by people all arround the world who believe in it and whom confidence gives value to bitcoin.
The bitcoin will continue to exist as long as people continue to trust it and use it. But will they continue to use it if, for instance, the authorities declare it illegal? Last month the chinese monetary authorities have forbiden the chinese banks from using bitcoin without clearly declare its use by people, companies or organizations as illegal. The bitcoin price has fallen to about 50% in consequence. In France, the central bank has warned about the volatile nature of the bitcoin market and therefore adviced against the use of bitcoin. The finnish central bank has considered bitcoin as commodity because it fails to meet the definition of a money or an electronic payement.
UPDATE: After a statment from the russian central bank warning about the high speculative nature of Bitcoin trade and that the unit carried a big risk of losing value, the russian authorities have now declared that treating Bitcoin as parrallel currency is considered illegal due to the possible use of it in money landering and terrorism activities financing.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Earn free bitcoins
In this section, you can see different ways how to earn free bitcoins. If your are interested in buying bitcoins for dollars or euros via paypal or credit card see here.
Mining altcoins: Many other cryptocurrencies are still easy to mine. You can mine those altcoins and then exchange them with bitcoins via an exchange platform (e.g. bter).
btcclicks is another Pay-to-click website. Here also you get paid bitcoins for viewing ads. Click here to register.
There are other Pay-to-click websites that pay in bitcoin or in dollars. However, do not expect to earn a lot with those sites. Most of them will allow the user to only visualise a handfull of ads per day. The rates are also very low ranging from 1 to few hundreds Satoshi per click (1 Satoshi = 0.00000001 Bitcoin). All you can make per day and per site is equivalent to less than 1 cent.
I'm waiting to obtain few refferals to test this option too. I will write about it later.
The payout for their Coinurl url shortening service is low. It ranges from 50 to 250 Satoshi per view. They also say that they accept only one view per IP and per day. Additionally they can decide when and how many views are valid and reject what they consider illegal clicks.
Coinurl is offline as of March 2015.
Follow this link to create an account on Adfly and start monetizing your short urls.
Adfly also started recently its popads service.
I have read numerous positive reviews on Adfly and tested it myself. They pay timely when the gains are above the 5$ threshold.
Mining cryptocoins:
Mining bitcoins : The bitcoin algorithm is such that the mining difficulty increases with the network power so that the amount of mined coins remains constant. Nowadays a huge power is put in bitcoin mining over internet. Mining bitcoins with CPU or even GPU is in general not profetable. You may need to invest in sofisticated hardaware in order to make a good outcome out of the mining activity.Mining altcoins: Many other cryptocurrencies are still easy to mine. You can mine those altcoins and then exchange them with bitcoins via an exchange platform (e.g. bter).
Pay-to-work websites:
There are also many websites proposing Paid to Work similar to Amazon's Mechanical turk where you get paid a small amount for doing a task like ranking the quality of translation or so. Paid to click websites pay you a small amount of money (or bitcoins) to visit an advertise's website.Pay-to-click websites:
coinad is one of these Pay-to-click website where you get paid for clicking on ads and viewing them for a minimum number of seconds. Click here to register and start to make bitcoins immediately.btcclicks is another Pay-to-click website. Here also you get paid bitcoins for viewing ads. Click here to register.
There are other Pay-to-click websites that pay in bitcoin or in dollars. However, do not expect to earn a lot with those sites. Most of them will allow the user to only visualise a handfull of ads per day. The rates are also very low ranging from 1 to few hundreds Satoshi per click (1 Satoshi = 0.00000001 Bitcoin). All you can make per day and per site is equivalent to less than 1 cent.
I'm waiting to obtain few refferals to test this option too. I will write about it later.
Webmasters, put ads on your website :
If you own a web site, you can use coinurl service. This service is similar to Google Adsense. By diffusing ad units on your website you get paid on a Pay-per-click or a Pay-per-view basis. Coinurl seems to have a problem with blogs. They say that they reject 99% of blogspot or wix websites.Shrink urls and make money:
Short urls are useful when you want to put the link in a tweet for instance, where the message has a strict limit in terms of number of characters. You can turn the long urls short and earn money when the users click on them.Coinurl url shortner :
You can also use Coinurl service to shorten urls. Shortened urls show interstitial ads to the user before the target website is open. Try here a shortened link to Wikipedia to see how it works.The payout for their Coinurl url shortening service is low. It ranges from 50 to 250 Satoshi per view. They also say that they accept only one view per IP and per day. Additionally they can decide when and how many views are valid and reject what they consider illegal clicks.
Coinurl is offline as of March 2015.
Adfly url shortner :
If you can receive your money in Paypal or Payza than Adfly is a better choice for you. The payout is higher than coinurl. Especialy if you have a good traffic from the US. The payout depends on the location of your visitors and the type of the ads (interstitial, banner, popup).Follow this link to create an account on Adfly and start monetizing your short urls.
Adfly also started recently its popads service.
I have read numerous positive reviews on Adfly and tested it myself. They pay timely when the gains are above the 5$ threshold.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Trading cryptocurrencies with bter
You can use your bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies as stock deposit. Otherwise, you can trade them and try to make a profit. Put in mind that cryptocurrencies market is very volatile. You can make substantial earnings but losses can also be very large.
When I talk about losses, I refer to various kinds of risks that are inherent to the cryptocurrency market.
- Market is very volatile. Prices can change rapidly. The extent of those changes might also be very high. It can happen that the bitcoin price changes by 30% in one day.
- Exchange market are subject to security failures. Many examples are by now available, including Mt.Gox, coinex.pw, bter and others. When a site is hacked and coins are stolen, their is often no way to recover your deposits.
- Bitcoin has no central authority behind, no guaranty as well.
Cryptocurrencies trading platforms:
Bter (RECOMMENDED)
Coinex.pw (Offline since March 2014, shut down)
Cryptsy (NOT RECOMMENDED)
Vircurex (not yet tested)
Coins-e (not yet tested)
Cryptocurrencies markets are still very volatile. Prices can go up and down in short time. You can make money but you can lose as well. So, do not invest in those exchanges more that you can afford to loose. Finally, this post is for information only and may not be regarded as recommendation of any type.
BTER :
bter.com is a cryptocurrency trading website. You can here exchance a cryptocurrency for another or for chinese yuans. If you don't yet have an acount then click on the link bellow to open an account and get 10% discount on your trading fees for 6 months:
If you already have an account, login into your account using the link bellow to benefit from the 6 months tranding fees discount:
You need to deposit some funds in your account. The simplest way is to use cryptocurrencies like bitcoins or litecoins. Deposit of chinese yuans might be more complicated.
In early 2015, bter announced that a substantial amount of bitcoins has been stolen from their cold wallet. After going offline for few weeks they finally reopened the site and resumed withdrawals gradually. Trading was again enabled by March 12th.
COINEX.PW (NOT RECOMMENDED) :
After the spectacular collapse of MtGox last month, many other exchanges show difficulties. Coinex.pw a cryptocurrency exchange has shut down operations in March after being victim to cyberattacks resulting in the theft of considerable amount of coins belonging to the costumers. The owner has first deleted his accounts on Reddit and GitHub. He reappeared later, and promised that coinex.pw will refund the costumers from his own coins. He also revealed that the same thing happened in the past and that the stollen amount were refunded from the company's account.
It seems that the website is again operational but withdrawals are not possible. Any amount you deposit there will probably be lost.
coinex.pw has been shut down.
CRYPTSY :
Cryptsy, another popular cryptocurrency exchange is also experencing difficulties probably due to hacker's attacks (they say: our wallet that was bloated by transaction spam and moving to a multiple wallet system). But it seems that Cryptsy is having a particular problem. They process deposits fast, transactions are also going but if you try to withdraw your coins then you get stuck. Withdrawals may remain in "Pending" status for a long time, sometimes for many days. By the time you get you coins, the valued might have been droped by a considerable percentage. It took me 5 days to get my IFC coins out of this exchange. A quick search on many forums reveals that Crypsty is being exprencing this kind of difficulties since several months already. Some users report withdrawals pending for over a week. Some also reported the same difficulties with other coins than IFC. Overall, despite a good market depth and intersting prices, I do not recommend this exchange.
When I talk about losses, I refer to various kinds of risks that are inherent to the cryptocurrency market.
- Market is very volatile. Prices can change rapidly. The extent of those changes might also be very high. It can happen that the bitcoin price changes by 30% in one day.
- Exchange market are subject to security failures. Many examples are by now available, including Mt.Gox, coinex.pw, bter and others. When a site is hacked and coins are stolen, their is often no way to recover your deposits.
- Bitcoin has no central authority behind, no guaranty as well.
Cryptocurrencies trading platforms:
Bter (RECOMMENDED)
Coinex.pw (Offline since March 2014, shut down)
Cryptsy (NOT RECOMMENDED)
Vircurex (not yet tested)
Coins-e (not yet tested)
Cryptocurrencies markets are still very volatile. Prices can go up and down in short time. You can make money but you can lose as well. So, do not invest in those exchanges more that you can afford to loose. Finally, this post is for information only and may not be regarded as recommendation of any type.
BTER :
bter.com is a cryptocurrency trading website. You can here exchance a cryptocurrency for another or for chinese yuans. If you don't yet have an acount then click on the link bellow to open an account and get 10% discount on your trading fees for 6 months:
If you already have an account, login into your account using the link bellow to benefit from the 6 months tranding fees discount:
You need to deposit some funds in your account. The simplest way is to use cryptocurrencies like bitcoins or litecoins. Deposit of chinese yuans might be more complicated.
In early 2015, bter announced that a substantial amount of bitcoins has been stolen from their cold wallet. After going offline for few weeks they finally reopened the site and resumed withdrawals gradually. Trading was again enabled by March 12th.
COINEX.PW (NOT RECOMMENDED) :
After the spectacular collapse of MtGox last month, many other exchanges show difficulties. Coinex.pw a cryptocurrency exchange has shut down operations in March after being victim to cyberattacks resulting in the theft of considerable amount of coins belonging to the costumers. The owner has first deleted his accounts on Reddit and GitHub. He reappeared later, and promised that coinex.pw will refund the costumers from his own coins. He also revealed that the same thing happened in the past and that the stollen amount were refunded from the company's account.
It seems that the website is again operational but withdrawals are not possible. Any amount you deposit there will probably be lost.
coinex.pw has been shut down.
CRYPTSY :
Cryptsy, another popular cryptocurrency exchange is also experencing difficulties probably due to hacker's attacks (they say: our wallet that was bloated by transaction spam and moving to a multiple wallet system). But it seems that Cryptsy is having a particular problem. They process deposits fast, transactions are also going but if you try to withdraw your coins then you get stuck. Withdrawals may remain in "Pending" status for a long time, sometimes for many days. By the time you get you coins, the valued might have been droped by a considerable percentage. It took me 5 days to get my IFC coins out of this exchange. A quick search on many forums reveals that Crypsty is being exprencing this kind of difficulties since several months already. Some users report withdrawals pending for over a week. Some also reported the same difficulties with other coins than IFC. Overall, despite a good market depth and intersting prices, I do not recommend this exchange.
How to buy bitcoins using paypal or credit card
There is no direct way for buying bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies with paypal. The reason behind that is that Papal paiements can be reversed while bitcoin transactions cannot. A buyer can pay with Paypal, recieve the bitcoin and then make complaint and cancel the paiement.
You can however use your paypal account to buy bitcoins by following the steps detailed bellow:
virwox is exchange site for vitrtual currencies. In particular, the site exchanges Linden dollars for US dollars, euros, swiss francs, .. and bitcoins. The Linden dollar is the virtual currency of the virtual reality game and social network "Second life". You can open an account, fund it with US dollars, euros or swiss francs using paypal or credit card. Then buy some Linden dollars and exchange them again for bitcoins.
Click here to open a virwox account :
You need first to deposit some funds in your account . You can use one the available options:
- Paypal
- Credit card
- Bank transfer
-...
Go to "Exchange" section to buy Linden dollars for your mony.
Again, in the "Exchange" section, you can sell your Linden dollars for bitcoins.
Finnaly, you may withdraw your bitcoins to an address of your choice. To do so, go the the "Withdrawal" section, enter the amount of bitcoins you want to withdraw, your bitcoin wallet address and confirm the operation.
You can however use your paypal account to buy bitcoins by following the steps detailed bellow:
virwox is exchange site for vitrtual currencies. In particular, the site exchanges Linden dollars for US dollars, euros, swiss francs, .. and bitcoins. The Linden dollar is the virtual currency of the virtual reality game and social network "Second life". You can open an account, fund it with US dollars, euros or swiss francs using paypal or credit card. Then buy some Linden dollars and exchange them again for bitcoins.
Click here to open a virwox account :
You need first to deposit some funds in your account . You can use one the available options:
- Paypal
- Credit card
- Bank transfer
-...
Go to "Exchange" section to buy Linden dollars for your mony.
Again, in the "Exchange" section, you can sell your Linden dollars for bitcoins.
Finnaly, you may withdraw your bitcoins to an address of your choice. To do so, go the the "Withdrawal" section, enter the amount of bitcoins you want to withdraw, your bitcoin wallet address and confirm the operation.
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