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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

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Slovakia Sets Record Straight on Europe’s First Bitcoin ATM

A Slovakian bitcoin ATM operator desires to set the record straight on the topic of Europe’s very first bitcoin ATM.

That title is at the moment claimed by a machine installed in the Helsinki Central railway station in Finland. There has also been considerable media hype about a Swedish machine that was touted as the continent’s pioneering ATM dealing in the digital currency.

But Marian Jancuska, who operates the ATM in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital city, says neither Scandinavian nation can claim the honour, since his machine was installed before either a single. He said:

“I am glad bitcoin ATMs are developing in momentum [in Europe]. But I would like to set things straight.”

Jancuska’s ATM was ‘permanently’ installed in downtown Bratislava on 8th December, six days just before the Finnish ATM was set up. The Bratislava ATM is mounted on a metal stand that’s bolted to the wall and floor. It’s situated near the entrance of a branch of a nicely-identified restaurant chain named The Pub.

Because bitcoin ATMs are often operated on a short-term basis or as demonstration units during events, it’s beneficial to distinguish amongst those utilizes of an ATM with a permanent installation, exactly where the machine can be expected to be situated for the foreseeable future.

CoinDesk earlier reported on Finnish exchange Bittiraha’s claim that it had installed Europe’s very first permanent bitcoin ATM on 16th Dec. The machine is positioned inside a branch of a popular record retailer chain in the heavily trafficked Helsinki Central railway station.

Bratislava ATM information

Jancuska’s ATM is a Lamassu unit, so it only converts fiat currency to bitcoin and not the other way about. Jancuska currently charges a three% charge per transaction, despite the fact that he says he is operating to decrease it to 1%.

The wallet linked to Jancuska’s ATM has recorded 290 transactions to date. It has received 82.74 BTC (about $ 75,000) and has a existing balance of about 7.46 BTC (about $ six,771).

Jancuska says he only knows his ATM buyers by their wallet addresses, since employing the ATM doesn’t demand handing more than any identity information, and he prefers to maintain it that way.

Nonetheless he said interest in bitcoin in Slovakia seems to have spread from technologies specialists and enthusiasts to the mainstream, aided by interest in the topic from nearby media. Jancuska says he’s pleased with the ATM’s present place, although he would think about making it obtainable for one particular-off events as properly.

Slovakia’s bitcoin scene

Bratislava has an active bitcoin community, according to Jancuska. CoinDesk reported on the Bratislava Subway franchise that laid claim to being the very first franchised outlet of the sandwich chain to accept bitcoin. That Subway outlet is owned by Martin Petrus, who also runs an exchange in Slovakia.

Jancuska’s ATM produced an look at Petrus’ Subway for two weeks. The pair met when Jancuska did a demo of the ATM at ProgressBar, a well-liked Bratislava hackerspace. Jancuska stated:

“[Martin Petrus] suggested I spot the ATM in his restaurant till it was ready for installation downtown. I liked the idea so the ATM spent about two weeks at Subway. It became a special location exactly where you could both get bitcoins and devote them.”

Regardless of Slovakia’s evident interest in bitcoin adoption, the international media seems to have been slow to pick up on stories from the eastern European nation. The Bratislava ATM’s installation, for instance, was overshadowed in the media by announcements from Sweden and Finland, for instance.

Even Petrus’ move to accept bitcoin at his Subway franchise came to light belatedly, following other outlets of the global sandwich chain had been hailed for becoming the first to adopt bitcoin.

“Despite [bitcoin] activity taking place right here, its not reported [by] international media,” Jancuska stated.

ATM operator

Jancuska operates his ATM and runs his technologies consultancy, called 0011. The 35-year-old who hails from eastern Slovakia says mostly functions with monetary institutions in his capacity as a consultant.

Jancuska bought his first bitcoin fractions in early 2012. He subsequently purchased complete bitcoins from Mike Gogulski, who is noted for getting one of a tiny number of Americans who have renounced their citizenship to turn into stateless. Gogulski is also a software developer and bitcoin enthusiast who lives in Bratislava.

Jancuska paid Lamassu 50 BTC (nearly $ 50,000 at today’s rate) for his machine, a move that he says he doesn’t regret. For Jancuska, with Bratislava’s bitcoin ATM firmly located in the annals of the cryptocurrency’s history, there is tiny debate about the machine’s future:

“The future of the ATM in Bratislava ought to be really clear — it need to basically provide the service it’s meant for.” He added, “I nevertheless need to add some indicators and stickers to it.”

Bratislava image through Shutterstock

CoinDesk

Slovakia Sets Record Straight on Europe’s First Bitcoin ATM

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

US Senator Tom Carper sees “good things” in bitcoin

The head of an influential Senate committee on virtual currencies today warned against “killing the infant in the cradle” by more than regulating bitcoin. Sen. Tom Carper stated that there have been “good factors” inherent in the virtual currency, and likened the existing situation to the early days of the Internet.

Speaking to the news outlet CNBC, the Democrat Senator for Delaware admitted that he knew “next to nothing at all” about bitcoin and virtual currencies 6–12 months ago, shortly prior to he chaired a hearing into the subject by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in November.

Sen. Carper likened bitcoin to the World wide web when it initial became a commercially important entity. “Some stated that it had some upside prospective. Some individuals said it had some downside potential also, with drug transactions and trafficking and money laundering, all sorts of downsides. But the early message for the Net was let’s not kill the infant in the cradle,” he said.

He identified related upsides and downsides for bitcoin. “We know that there are some excellent factors that can take place. It can boost transactions in between sellers and purchasers, it can actually assist international trade, reduce the expense of transactions,” he continued.

“The theme that emerged from our hearing was let’s keep an eye on the bad stuff, tamp it down, find out what sort of legislation that we require in order to tamp it down, and that is what we’re undertaking.”

The Senator praised federal agencies such as the Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service the Division of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for functioning together on analyzing virtual currencies. “I feel they’re on leading of it,” he stated. “I was pleasantly shocked to see that they’re communicating with each and every other, they’re collaborating with every other,” he said. The IRS has but to situation firm guidance on taxation for bitcoin.

His Committee had mailed numerous such agencies to ask for their policies and procedures with regards to virtual currencies. In November, shortly prior to the hearing, it identified a “keen interest” among them in the phenomenon.

The Bitcoin Foundation applauded Carper’s softly-softly method on bitcoin.

“It seems that Senator Carper and the Bitcoin Foundation agree that useful sources and energy is ill-spent attempting to solve hypothetical D.C. troubles,” stated a spokesperson, pointing to a “green light” from Washington to create out bitcoin-related organizations.

Jered Kenna, CEO of Tradehill, a bitcoin exchange for high net-worth men and women, is still unable to operate as an exchange right after his important banking partnership fell via in August following regulatory concerns.

“I don’t see as a lot of a need for new regulation as deciding where bitcoin fits within the current structure,” Kenna mentioned. “If some thing is illegal with money then it ought to be illegal with bitcoin. You shouldn’t expect to be capable to gamble or avoid paying taxes just simply because you’re using bitcoin.”

Capitol Hill image by way of Shutterstock

CoinDesk

US Senator Tom Carper sees “good things” in bitcoin

Complete STORY: Bitcoin

Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees Back Bitcoin Wallet KryptoKit

KryptoKit, the browser extension that makes it possible for users to send bitcoin payments and encrypted messaging in just a couple of clicks, today announced three massive names from the bitcoin globe would join the project “in ownership roles”: Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees and Vitalik Buterin.

The move is positive to raise the profile of Toronto-primarily based KryptoKit, which launched in Las Vegas final month. The browser plugin has a 5-star user rating on the Google Chrome Net Store, but had been relatively low-important in its marketing techniques until lately.

All three names have worked on quite a few bitcoin-associated projects and have a personal interest in easy-to-use, private payment systems.

Pedigree

To many in the bitcoin community, these men and women need to have tiny introduction. Ver is recognized around the world for his serial entrepreneurship and bitcoin evangelism. He is CEO of MemoryDealers and has been involved with the Bitcoin Store, BitInstant and Blockchain.information. Ver has also acted as a seed investor on various other projects.

Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine, exactly where he is still a head writer. He has also been involved with bitcoin software program projects including pybitcointools, multisig.information and the bitcoin private crucial secret-sharing utility btckeysplit.

Voorhees is yet another name extended-related with bitcoin. He is co-founder of Coinapult, a firm which permits users to send bitcoins by means of SMS and email, and is organizing to significantly expand its range of offerings.

Voorhees also founded gambling platform SatoshiDice FeedZeBirds, a bitcoin-based Twitter advertising platform and Paysius, a Bitcoin payment module.

The 3 will join co-founders Anthony Di Iorio and Steve Dakh. Di Iorio is Executive Director of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada and founder of the 400+ member Toronto Bitcoin Meetup group which meets weekly, as properly as downtown Toronto co-working space Bitcoin Decentral.

He mentioned he reached out to the 3 out of admiration for their perform building communities and representing bitcoin on the international stage.

“I have a lot of respect for these guys,” Di Iorio mentioned.

“We currently had all the funding we necessary, but I respected their leadership capabilities and reached out to them. Roger and Erik are most likely two of the prime Bitcoin spokespeople in the planet and will be operating with us on enterprise strategy and other locations.”

Simplicity and ease

KryptoKit promises a frictionless “Simple Bitcoin and Safe Social Network”. There is no need to have to log in to any service: launched speedily from the browser toolbar, the compact window offers the user with a bitcoin address to load with spending funds and send with 1 click.

It also searches the page at the moment becoming browsed for bitcoin addresses and presents them as a list. Bitcoin data is accessed through the Blockchain.information API and all details is stored client-side, with no central server.

Centralized servers and remote data storage have been the downfall of other ill-fated internet wallets in the past.

An additional key feature is an encrypted message service based on GPG (GNU Privacy Guard). As with the bitcoin wallet, this is almost instantaneous to set up and use. Users could generate new GPG keys or import an existing public-private pair.

KryptoKit also released a video this week demonstrating its ease of use with current solutions, like Zynga’s new bitcoin payment trial.

Buterin stated he liked KryptoKit as the first in-browser bitcoin wallet that “does it correct.” He became interested in the project right after writing an report on it for Bitcoin Magazine.

“The capacity to not enter any sort of personal information and basically pay in two clicks on the web page was usually one particular of the promises of bitcoin for me, and KryptoKit is the very first application in my opinion to correctly recognize the guarantee.”

“Also, I’ve constantly been attracted to encrypted messaging technology, and KryptoKit tends to make encrypted messaging significantly easier than any other computer software I’ve employed in contrast to tools like Enigmail and Gibberbot, I can truly see KryptoKit catching on merely because it’s so much easier to use than several classes of non-encrypted messaging computer software.”

He promised far more features to come soon, such as far more chat and messaging attributes that could turn KryptoKit into “the planet’s very first really viable encrypted and semi-decentralized social network”.

While KryptoKit is Chrome-only for now, its developers have promised a Firefox version in the coming weeks with extensions for other browsers (eg: Safari) anticipated right after that.

Network nodes image via Shutterstock

CoinDesk

Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees Back Bitcoin Wallet KryptoKit