Bitcoin Tracker | Week 35
“If bitcoin could help us be more efficient, we’d use it” said John Kunze, the CEO of Xoom who is in the money transfer business. PYMNTScaught up with him on a variety of things, and bitcoin came up. Interview is worth listening to. Among other things, he says that in order to comply with KYC laws, Xoom has to, well, know his customers. As an anonymous currency, bitcoin is the antithesis of KYC. Compliance adds cost and friction. Bitcoin will have to comply with rules which will add cost and friction. Will there still be value? Don’t ask any Xapo customers though, who are not at all amused by the fees they are paying with their bitcoin debit cards. (Did they not understand that they were actually changing currency every time they wanted to pull out cash or use it since merchants don’t take bitcoin?!)
In the “the bitcoin side of the street is always sunny” it was reported that Visa’s CEO, Charles Scharf, said that it was open to the idea of bitcoin. Actually, that’s not what he said. He said, “Visa is not a currency, it’s a network. We can process real or virtual currencies to the extent that it makes sense.” He didn’t actually say bitcoin made sense. But the story got a lot of clicks given its, ah, optimistic portrayal of what Scharf said, but didn’t actually move its price. Bitcoin is just about the same as last week, trading at $589.65 when last week (8/1) trading was $588.02 according toPYMNTS.com Bitcoin Price index.
As always, if you have any news you’d like to share, please send it our way at contactus@pymnts.com.
On the Plus Side …
There is no such thing as a free lunch (or Wikipedia as it turns out). It still needs money to run and has raised over $140,000 since accepting bitcoin contributions last week. BitPay said it would offer retailers payment processing at no charge and has partnered with Global Payments to expand the number of merchants who can accept bitcoin. And a new virtual currency is being developed in Equator to help pay off debts! And, Overstock said it would be paying its employee bonuses in bitcoin (we couldn’t decide whether that belonged in the positive or negative column to be honest).
On the Dark Side …
A mysterious hacker has diverted computing power of bitcoins and generated $84,000 worth of bitcoins and still no trace of who or how he did it. More banks refused to work with bitcoin related businesses, this time in Argentina for a bitcoin exchange firm. Russia is in the news again, this time due to a drafted bill that might ban bitcoins. And Xapo users are ticked because their cards come with high fees.
PYMNTS.comBitcoin Price and Volatility index.
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