Oh Bitcoin you fickle beast. As the last few weeks have been a roller coaster of nothing but down. It looks like Bitcoin has finally rebounded a bit. Just enough to let the dust settle. After last weeks large dive in the market reaching as low as $173 on Coindesk’s ticker to rebounding a bit as I type at $232.54. Hopefully you were taking advantage of the low prices and investing 🙂
Coinbase, a San Francisco based company is one of the most trend setting companies for the Bitcoin world. Coinbase is a site where a user can buy, sell, and transfer Bitcoin around the globe. With its very highly usable interface anyone from advanced to a newbie can easily understand what they are doing while within the website. While the goal of Coinbase is to make it easy for non-techie people to get into Bitcoin transactions, they are also setting trends on getting Bitcoin into larger markets for companies to use as well! Coinbase just held yet again another funding round. They have raised just over $75million backed by some mega hitters in this go round including New York Stock Exchange(NYSE), the Fortune 500 services group USAA, a megabank hailing from Spain BBVA, and DoCoMo, A top Japanese telecom provider. This is by far the largest fund raiser set for a Bitcoin company where the previous record was set at around $35million. What does Coinbase plan to do with all of the money? Coinbase is looking into reaching into new tarket markets. The one example he gave was India. “In India, there are 100 million phones that are connected to the Internet, 2% of those people have a credit card or bank account and those people don’t have a desktop computer and they don’t have email.” Armstrong said.
Other pieces of the money will be used for regulations. As Bitcoin becomes more prominent globally. There are more countries truly accepting it as a form of currency. With this comes the burden of jurisdictions and how it’s regulated.
Bill Gates was recently interviewed, and asked if he was a “believer” in Bitcoin. Bill Gates said “Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place. And of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient.” Bill Gates for Bitcoin. +1 Cheap, Instant, and Electronic.
Winklevoss Twins. Winklevoss Twins. Winklevoss Twins.
You know that name. It’s in your head. Who are they? They are the brothers who “created” Facebook. The ones that claim Zuckerberg stole their code and profited from them. After all of the legal battles in trying to get some rights to aiding create the Facespace world. They recieved $65m in Facebook shares and cash. What are they doing with all their new found money? The Winklevoss’ are in the works to creating the first regulated Bitcoin exchange for American customers. “The Nasdaq of Bitcoin”. This is a large gamble on their part as the Bitcoin community has been given blows over the last 2 years. Mt Gox “hacked” and Bitstamp Hacked. The twins brought on a programmer from Two Sigma (A hedge fund company) and are in the process of building a system that is easy to use for both small investors and institutionalized firms that want direct access to the trading system. The Winklevoss’ have moved forward with creating a company for the Nasdaq under the ticker name COIN that is in the process of being approved. Once approved they will be able to be publicly funded as well. The Winklevoss’ over the last two years have done angel investing into other Bitcoin operations that all have gone belly up due to some sorts of scandals. “This time around we are betting on ourselves.” Tyler W. said.
As I finish typing this up, Bitcoin is sitting at a hearty $226.93.
Have a great week everyone!
