Topic: bitcoin in 2017 - page 2. (Read 4733 times)

The Bitpay Visa: a Bitcoin-Debit Card Review

Bitcoin debit cards have become more popular over the past two years with various choices on the table for consumers to choose from. Cards enable a user to load the account with bitcoin reserves and spend the funds where major credit cards are accepted.

Bitcoin.com decided to review two popular bitcoin debit cards that are currently available to cryptocurrency supporters. The Bitpay Visa card and the Xapo debit card are from two well-known bitcoin companies and both offer different features. We hope to explain in detail how these loadable cards work so our readers can get an idea of what it’s like to utilize these types of cards.

Just recently I ordered the Bitpay bitcoin Visa card, available to U.S. residents in all fifty states. The card cost me $9.99, and you have to pay for the product in bitcoin. There wasn’t much to fill out for verification purposes. Registration required my social security number, email, and current mailing address. Other than those requests nothing more was required from me for identity. After registration, I paid for the card with a Bitpay invoice and was told I would receive the card in 7-10 business days.

Five days later I had received my card, including a PIN and references to card fees. The PIN is used like a traditional debit purchase and also for ATM access. After getting my card and reviewing the fees, I went to the Bitpay Visa card activation page. The page asks for the credit card number, three-digit CVV, and your email. As soon as the information is processed, you now have access to an account page.

The account page is where you load bitcoins onto the card. There is a button that says “add funds, of” and you type in how much money you want to load in USD. I decided how much I wanted to add to the card and entered the amount, which then processes a new Bitpay invoice. Like any Bitpay invoice you have 15 minutes to pay and I scanned the address with my phone’s wallet, thereby paying the amount. Immediately the invoice is marked as received, but funds are not accessible until the transaction receives one confirmation. It must have been a busy day because I had to wait for my transaction to confirm. When it did, my card was loaded with funds.

I am agree that bitcoin is going to be the golden year to bitcoin. I am more interested in bitcoin as money, but not as technology. And I think that bitcoin is going to show itself in this year. It will appear new places that will accept bitcoins as payment, the government will create and accept some laws to control bitcoin.

An amazing start to 2017 saw Bitcoin passing $1000, it's highest point for the first time in three years!
I've all heard the naysayers, newspapers, commentators and so called experts declare Bitcoin dead, time and time again
but those of us who understand the technology, and the value it brings to the world market and this steady increase is a signal of the growing confidence in cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies in the future.

That is golden year of bitcoin in 2017. Cheer up now.

If the block size is increased to 2MB or higher, the price could be even $5000.

Yes Bank Develops Blockchain to Digitize Vendor Finance in India

Yes Bank, a prominent private sector bank in India has announced the implementation of a multi-node blockchain to digitize and automate vendor financing solutions for a regional client.

Vendor financing is essentially the lending of money by a company to one of its customers, so the latter can purchase products from the company, driving sales for the former.

To develop the solution, Yes Bank sourced technology from the Linux Foundation-led open-source blockchain project, Hyperledger. The blockchain solution made use of smart contracts developed by Fintech startup Catenia Technologies to deliver a vendor financing solution for major Indian electrical equipment manufacturer Bajaj Electricals.

Bajaj’s business interactions that include discounts and disbursal of funds to its vendors will be digitized over the blockchain, allowing for faster, more efficient record keeping and increased transparency. Yes Bank’s anchor client (Bajaj Electricals), will see automatic debits from its account at the bank, as a part of the automated smart-contract enabled blockchain transaction.

“The entire process cycle for bull discounting reduces from four days (owing to manual intervention and transit) to almost real-time,” a press release from Yes Bank read.

The blockchain implementation was heavily facilitated by technology partner IBM. Hosting the blockchain over its “Hybrid Cloud” platform, Yes Bank also leveraged IBM’s “Watson Conversation” a cloud-based cognitive service to further enhance the user experience of participants (bank, the vendor and borrowers or purchasers) in the blockchain.

Bajaj managing director Shekhar Bajaj sees blockchain as the solution to digitize supply chain financing.

The blockchain implementation in Indian business finance comes during a time when other similarly notable efforts start to take shape in the country. IBM has also partnered major Indian conglomerate Mahindra to bring supply chain financial solutions in the country for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Tech giant Microsoft launched its Azure Blockchain as a Service toolkit to Indian customers in December 2016, soon after the announcement of a partnership with consulting giant KPMG to push blockchain adoption among clients in India.

Barry Silbert Optimistic of Global Bitcoin Exchange Volumes
Barry Silbert, the co-founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), stated that trading volumes of global bitcoin exchanges are growing at a rapid rate. Exchanges in regions such as the Middle East and Mexico have demonstrated record breaking volumes amid bitcoin’s recent price rally.
As arguably the most active investor in the bitcoin industry, Silbert collaborates with leading bitcoin exchanges including Japan’s Bitflyer, Mexico’s Bitso and South Korea’s Korbit. Silbert and the rest of the DCG members direct and lead companies globally, to expand their services and operations.

DCG invests in a wide range of bitcoin and blockchain startups, ranging from bitcoin exchanges to blockchain solutions providers. In early 2016, DCG closed multiple deals with multi-million dollar blockchain startups, to provide necessary infrastructure to the financial market and banking industry that are seeking to implement and commercialize the blockchain.

Yet, despite the hype around blockchain that existed throughout 2016, bitcoin exchanges have seen the largest commercial success.
Rapidly Rising Trading Volumes of Bitcoin Exchanges

Several bitcoin exchanges under the portfolio of DCG including Bitso and BitOasis have reported record-breaking volumes. Bitso, for instance, saw more trading activity in one month during December than in 2014 and 2015 combined, amid the end of the year price rally.

In an interview, Bitso president and cofounder Daniel Vogel stated that the rising demand is directly attributable to the lack of financial infrastructure for the general population in Mexico. The limited amount of banking services and financial systems led to the search for alternative solutions, such as bitcoin.

Middle East’s BitOasis also reached record breaking volumes, as the demand for bitcoin rose rapidly over the past few months amid global economic instability and financial troubles.

“December has been our best month yet since launch. We broke new daily volume records,” said Ola Doudin, co-founder and CEO of BitOasis.

Silbert Assures Investor: It Is Just the Beginning

Silbert reassured investors and traders that it is only the beginning. As an investor of 19 bitcoin exchanges, Silbert has access to the trading volumes and private data of exchanges globally. Observing the rapidly increasing volumes of exchanges, Silbert said:

“Best part of having invested in 19 bitcoin exchanges around the world is we get to see their monthly volumes. Folks, it is happening.”

Also, countries like India, Venezuela and China have tightened currency controls and imposed various financial regulations, which have led to the devaluation of their national currencies. India, for instance, is currently dealing with a severe cash shortage issue, which has proven to be a disastrous situation for average workers, businesses and households.

If this global economic slump and financial instability continue, the demand for bitcoin will continue to rise. Inevitably, many bank consumers and traditional financial services users will migrate to bitcoin to avoid excessive control from banks and governments.

the $2000 is too big, and it is best if price goes up more logically and reliably rather than jumping up 2x and then fall down fast.

if you look at the charts you can see a pretty nice linear rise shaping up based on the rises throughout all these years but if we make another breakout now, the same story as 2013 will happen.

Its not possibly doubled. Its already double the value now. This made bitcoin to be rocking stocking online in the world. We got more adoption, mining decreased to half the rate. Price doubled to 950$ now and so many interesting stories with the bitcoin in this year.

Yes, when the price rose to $ 1,000 bitcoin in Thuan 2017, I think it would be a lot of things changed. perhaps, so many businesses are open out there, and that business accepts bitcoin as a means of exchange. it will make people do the same. Well, bitcoin will be popular in 2017.

Bitcoin in 2017 will be great, Indeed. Aside from that the user would be possibly doubled it's value would exceed 1000$ based on the expert and as I can see in myself. If it will hit 1000$ many people will obviously sell their bitcoin and that time bitcoin price will decrease but will goes up eventually.

With such temps of grow the price can rise to 2000$ already by this summer. But there is a high risk of new hacking attack now because of the high price. Remind the summer of 2016. Something like that will happen again sooner or later.

I think that in 2017 we will see a rise of the bitcoin in the market, first the price of the bitcoin might go up to 1500$ by the end of the first quarter, and that will bring many new users to the bitcoin and also a lot of investments with it, so it is no surprise if most of the big names like Amazon or eBay starts using it as a payment method, and we might see banks starting to adopt it.

The price will rise to at least $1,500 by the end of 2017. Drops and hikes are likely and will correlate with the general sentiment in the global capital markets. If overall uncertainly prevails, the price would keep rising as the liquidity of bitcoin is inherently low. The better part of demand will be generated by that.

The only thing that i can see is the price will be down after hit 1000 dollars, due to the people will sell their bitcoin, you know what this makes me scared bitcoin will not pass the highest price in bitcoin's history. In other hand we can see many people will interested on it all we know that bitcoin has been covered on media in good way lately, there will be more startup and projects engaged with bitcoin. About the value of the bitcoin i hope that i'll be wrong no one can predict future accurately, We all can have an opinion and speculate about it.

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I have no idea what will happen to Bitcoin price as we go into 2017.

But I would note that Bitcoin has very majestic price cycles, it goes WAY UP and then comes WAY DOWN.  Yet the general tendency has been for it to keep going up, on the average.  In my three or so years playing with BTC, I have noted that the system has not failed yet, nor apparently even come close, despite all the drama.

Buy and HODL seems to be a reasonable strategy.  There does seem to be a good chance that BTC will move beyond its ATH, then crater again.

Whee!      

I would say we need to wait until february or march to see if those price that we have are sustainable. Maybe they are, but I really dont know why people are so excited about the 1000 usd per bitcoin? would you sell? I guess not. So whats the point?

This will surely break the $ 1000 before the end of the year

Yes, every day the news is better, I think a BTC has a promising and bright future, will we see in 10 years bitcoin at 30000 $ ? Time will tell us I will continue to buy in the cuts

In my own opinion bitcoin will be a great digital currency this comming year 2017 or by june merchants will start accepting bitcoin as payment methods we can use easily our bitcoin technology is upgrading Amazong are start accepting bitcoin i saw on my bitcoin wallet based on philippines it is still china. will the central for bitcoin marketing.

I'm with you, it's awesome