I think they will become a major competitor to paypal over the next year if they keep this up.
This move by Dwolla competes directly against Bitcoin, particularly in the micropayments space ... down to $0.01 USD through Dwolla? Now free (apparently).
And they have a Mobile App for iPhone ... https://www.dwolla.com/dwolla-for-iphone.aspx
And Investment backing.
This is seen as important enough that the post on Hacker News for it rose to #1 right away and remains in that position:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3300066
As far as the benefit of this to bitcoin ... this gives even more options for those wishing to spend their bitcoins, as converting to Dwolla from the exchanges is trivial. Similarly, converting Dwolla funds into bitcoins takes very little time and can be automated as well. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bitcoin used by those merchants who aren't from the U.S. as the method for moving funds out of Dwolla to their local currency. Through a U.S.-based intermediary, of course, as Dwolla is only available to persons or businesses in the U.S., for now.
This will be good for the #bitcoin-otc marketplace as well -- as it is the most widely used place where people can convert their Dwolla USDs over to PayPal USDs, for example, and vice-versa.
http://bitcoin-otc.com
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-otc-foyer
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