The race to become the largest bitcoin ATM provider in Britain is heating up. Later this week, U.K.-based bitcoin startup SatoshiPoint will activate two new Robocoin ATMs in London. A third ATM is tentatively scheduled to be debuted on June 3rd in Bristol. The machines are currently connected to Bitstamp, and will charge a 5%…
Mainstream bitcoin adoption may be taking another step forward with the introduction of a Facebook-integrated bitcoin wallet app from San Francisco-based startup QuickCoin. The company’s “social wallet” system allows users to send and receive bitcoin easily, using Facebook’s popular API to remove any technological issues for users. Speaking with CoinDesk, QuickCoin co-founder Marshall Hayner explained…
If there is a single technical development likely to increase bitcoin’s mainstream appeal, it’s BIP 70. The protocol, introduced in the March 0.9.0 update of Bitcoin Core, is arguably the first major toolset for making the bitcoin experience user-friendly. Among other innovations, BIP 70 allows users to display their addresses in human-readable text rather than…
Although designed as a trustless payment network rather than as a true virtual currency, Ripple has been one of the best known and highest profile alt-coins for the last several years. The system’s native currency, ripples (XRP), have traded as high as $0.06 in recent memory, giving it a surprisingly high market cap for a…
On May 18, 2010, a programmer in Jacksonville, Florida, named Laszlo Hanyecz was hungry. As a very early adopter of an experimental virtual currency called bitcoin, Hanyecz had also mined tens of thousands of the things. Surely there was someone out there in the digital void who might be willing to trade him a couple…
Bitcoin machines might just be popping up like wildflowers all across the U.K. later this year thanks to a new deal between bitcoin ATM maker Lamassu and newly formed distributor QuikBit. Based in the self-governing British dependency of the Isle of Man, QuikBit aims to build a network of ATM-like automated vending machines (AVMs) across…
Yesterday, Google’s Chrome team removed and automatically uninstalled popular browser-extension bitcoin wallet KryptoKit, leaving thousands of users without access to their bitcoins. Google cited vague “terms of service” violations as the cause, but otherwise provided no explanation for their actions. The developers quickly cried foul over the move, and within hours Google relented, restoring the…
As the line between plugin-based web apps and dedicated desktop programs blur, browser-powered plugins have become increasingly popular. One of the best known and most trusted of these is a Chrome extension called KryptoKit, which works as both a bitcoin wallet and an encrypted messaging system. With over 6,100 users and a nearly 5-star rating,…
For small businesses in the U.S., Intuit is easily as trusted a name as Google, Apple or Microsoft. The company has been at the cutting edge of digital accounting and tax preparation since the early ’80s, launching products such as Quicken, QuickBooks, Turbo Tax and Billing Manager. This week, Intuit revealed that it was testing…
Dedicated bitcoin ATMs are at a crossroads. Even counting the first proof-of-concept working prototypes, the entire industry is less than a year old, with most of the “major” manufacturers having only a few dozen units in the field today. While orders are growing rapidly, so are prices. Robocoin and Lamassu are banking on a market…