Original author: Stan Higgins
Coin News
Though digital currency has undeniably accumulated a strong following among consumers in Europe, the region has arguably trailed the US market in one notable area – high-profile merchant adoption.
Despite a number of mid-size merchants such as AirBaltic, 220volt and most recently Shipito joining the growing ranks of bitcoin merchants worldwide, a merchant with the revenue and notoriety of DISH, Expedia or Overstock has yet to become part of the region’s bitcoin ecosystem.
However, according to BitPay director of European business development Moe Levin, this narrative may soon change. He told CoinDesk:
“The sales cycle for merchants in Europe is longer than North America, I think that’s the real difference in not seeing the billion-dollar companies here. Soon to be announced though.”
Throughout the interview, Levin stressed that while BitPay may not be making headlines in Europe, the reasons for this are cultural. Europeans simply see bitcoin as a less sensational, more practical business solution that can help them save on operational costs.
“There are not so many big statements from people here, but everyday like clockwork more and more merchants are turning on BitPay’s service, because it isn’t a stretch. They don’t need to be convinced the same way North Americans do,” Levin added.
But, while the efforts haven’t yet yielded headlines, Levin explained that BitPay is adding roughly 200 new merchants to the ecosystem each week, and that in doing so, it’s produced valuable insight into how European business owners are thinking about bitcoin.
Defining the European bitcoin merchant
Levin indicated that, so far, BitPay hasn’t seen a notable difference between the demographics of its US or European customers. In both regions, its merchants are primarily focused on winning bitcoin’s main demographic – tech-savvy males, ages 18 to 45 years old.
“The best merchants are the ones that target this demographic exclusively. So we’re talking about electronics, travel, apparel and online purchasing,” Levin explained.
The company’s ability to penetrate each country, however, differs greatly. Levin indicated that while adoption is high among merchants in noted tech hubs such as Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, countries like Austria lag behind due to their older, less tech-minded demographics.
Still, Levin suggested that bitcoin may have the best chance of achieving wider adoption in areas where bitcoin better competes against the available fiat alternatives, adding:
“For the longest time the highest hits and search volume [on Google for bitcoin] has been from Estonia, the Netherlands and some of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.”
Currencies are a way of life
Still, there are historical and cultural factors that make the European merchant market unique. For example, Levin noted that the transition to the euro, while 15 years in the past, has opened up European merchants to thinking more critically about currency.
“People have been accustomed to so many currencies for such a long time that bitcoin is not a foreign idea. A bigger eurozone is a worldwide currency,” he remarked.
Levin also suggested that Europeans are naturally more hostile to fees from banks and financial providers, whereas in North America, these costs are viewed as part of doing business, adding:
“Here they’ve had enough of it already. They say listen the banks have done questionable things for a long time, they say that’s enough of that, why should we be paying fees? They don’t have the trust in banks that North Americans generally do, so it’s on their minds.”
E-commerce growth key to adoption
Levin also addressed another potential area where bitcoin can aid European merchants – cross-border payments, which he described as surprisingly uncommon given the geographical proximity of the region’s member states.
He said:
“In Europe, I don’t know what the reason is, but many people shop from the national e-commerce giants, and that’s changing. Obviously, there’s Amazon that’s strong here and there are some other big players, but they’re still shopping nationally.”
Bitcoin, Levin said, could be the key to helping European consumers break down these barriers of conventional commerce, citing it as a strong selling point that could become more prevalent in the future.
He added: “Cross-border shipping is growing, and it means that bitcoin can assist with that.”
Roadblocks to adoption
Levin acknowledged that BitPay faces a number of challenges in Europe, however. In particular, he noted that due to a variety of local payment options, merchants aren’t always able to put bitcoin first. He explained:
“[Merchants] don’t prioritize [bitcoin] over turning on an Estonian payment option or an Italian payment option, so from the company’s perspective, they may put bitcoin on a 2015 list.”
He also pointed to the relative efficiency of existing payment networks in Europe, citing them as stronger than those currently in place globally. For example, he mentioned the iDEAL payment network in the Netherlands, which allows customers to pay for Internet purchases using online bank transfers.
Introduced in 2005, the system processed more than 142 million transfers in 2013.
“In the Netherlands, to send money bank to bank, it takes a second. It’s just as fast as sending bitcoin,” Levin noted.
Focus on Europe
Of course, Europe is not only important for bitcoin, the market also poses a strategic relevance for BitPay, which is seeking to become the leading global bitcoin payment processor. While it faces competition from Coinbase in North America – the San Francisco startup that currently boasts big clients such as Overstock and Dell, that company has yet to prioritize Europe in a similar way.
Since closing a $30m Series A round in January, BitPay has been seeking to further its influence in Europe, adding key investors in the region such as Virgin Galactic’s Sir Richard Branson and opening its European headquarters in April.
Levin said that, as such, BitPay has ambitious benchmarks for enrolling merchants this year, concluding:
“We have benchmarks toward the end of the year to have another 30,000 to 40,000 merchants. The benchmarks are there, the main thing we’re dealing with now is absorbing all the demand.”
Disclaimer: CoinDesk founder Shakil Khan is an investor in BitPay.
Images via Lifeboat.com and Shutterstock
BitPayEurope
Original author: Pete Rizzo
Original author: Pete Rizzo
Original author: Emily Spaven
Original author: Jon Southurst
Lotus pond outside the Pura Taman Saraswati temple in Ubud, Bali.Extending from close to Malaysia all the way to Australasia, Indonesia is a vast archipelago of over 13,000 islands littered with volcanoes, tropical forests, diver-friendly reefs and a host of different cultures.
While an increasingly popular destination for travellers, the nation’s infrastructure often leaves much to be desired.
ATMs are often few and far between and offer limited amounts for withdrawals, businesses do not always accept credit cards outside larger tourist spots and travelling with large amounts of cash comes with the usual security concerns.
For this reason, there is a significant use case for integrating bitcoin into the nation’s tourist infrastructure, Darmawan said.
“We get visited by many bitcoiners,” said Darmawan, “and some of them come with interesting stories about how they lost their wallet because it got stolen when they were on the market. So they need to sell some bitcoin to get some Rupiah. And some of them come straight from the airport to get cash in Rupiah. We are glad to be helping them while visiting Indonesia.”
Bali and tourist and Ubud images via Shutterstock
BaliBitIslandIndonesiatravel
Original author: Dan Palmer
The malicious email mimicking a Blockchain wallet security alert.
While the attack would only be profitable if it tricked an actual Blockchain wallet user, Epstein said that the high click-through rates, which have been better than for benchmark rates for marketing communications like email newsletters, suggest that even non-bitcoin users knew enough about cryptocurrency to be lured by the prospect of gaining access to some potentially lucrative bitcoins.
“It’s a staggeringly high click-through rate given the relative percentage of recipients who would have been bitcoin holders,” Epstein said.
‘Topical news’ approach
Proofpoint noted that the phishing attack’s employed a straightforward ‘account warning’ template that is simple yet highly effective.
The phishers also played on current fears over hackers from China by framing their initial message as a security alert over an unauthorised log-in attempt originating from Sichuan province in western China. That province’s technical university has made headlines as a possible proving ground for state-sponsored elite hackers.
Epstein said this was the “topical news” approach to phishing, which had been recently deployed in other attacks that used this summer’s World Cup as cover.
“Topical news is always effective. We have seen and will likely continue to see ‘Chinese hackers’ as an element,” Epstein said.
The research did not uncover the attacker’s identity, although Epstein said that the attacks appeared to be purely profit driven, which ruled out organised crime or industrial espionage.
He warned that the method of attack held rich potential to inflict greater damage in future, particularly if they were used to deploy trojan horses, which is software that performs unauthorised actions on your computer, or ransomware, which blocks a victim’s access to a computer until a ransom is paid.
Phishing Image via Shutterstock
CrimeProofpointSecurity
Original author: Joon Ian Wong
Black Rock City excludes buying and selling by definition.
Rising from the Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man festival, it’s a temporary community where rental van logos are covered to avoid commercialism and where a bike ride might net you a free dance lesson or a grilled cheese sandwich from a billionaire, but no shopping.
So what is a cryptocurrency camp doing at Burning Man, an event where even bartering is deemed too capitalistic?
Relax. It’s dogecoin.
Late-model burgundy caravan
In the official Burning Man database, the camp is registered as Camp Bitcoin. But after hatching a plan for a bitcoin-themed camp early this year, its organisers began dropping out: one is getting married, one has a new baby and another ended up under house arrest.
Just a couple of weeks before ‘burners’ (the term for Burning Man attendees) were to converge in the Nevada desert, Gary Lachance and a handful of other dogecoin enthusiasts, most of them from Vancouver, British Columbia, picked up the mantle and ran with it. Now Camp Bitcoin has been rechristened Camp Dogecoin.
Lachance said in an email that he and friends are driving a “late-model burgundy doge caravan” that was bought on credit especially for the trip. It should be hard to miss.
“We’ll be strapping a giant red rocket to the roof, slapping a doge head on the hood, and overloading the van with crazy people and unlikely items and diminishing our odds of getting across the border. That’s how we roll.”
Another contingent is heading south in more low-key style, driving a rented recreational vehicle.
Unpredictable and illogical
Wendell Davis, of bitcoin wallet maker Hive, originally conceived the camp with Satoshi Square founder Josh Rossi and other friends. Davis said he approves of the shift from Camp Bitcoin to Camp Dogecoin.
“That’s totally in line with Burning Man itself. It’s totally unpredictable and illogical. If Camp Bitcoin’s destiny was to become Camp Dogecoin, then so be it,” said Davis, who opted to stay home for health reasons.
Lachance, whose life is devoted to decentralization, predicted that dogecoin’s absurd aesthetic will be a better cryptocurrency ambassador to Black Rock City than bitcoin would have been.
He added:
“People see bitcoin and they think in terms of money laundering and drugs. But they see this dog and that’s just like [chuckles] the last thing on their minds. The subversity of it is definitely awesome.”
Camp Dogecoin will be part of Anahasana Village, an established Burning Man locale with plenty of infrastructure to share with the dogecoin crew, which, having come together in a couple of weeks, is light on preparation and funding.
Wallets, buttons and a dance party
Organizers think 20 or more burners will stay in camp, but no one is really sure. They are broadcasting their plans to the 200 recipients of the original Camp Bitcoin mailing list, so it could turn out to be more.
Planned events include a Worthless Currency Exchange, where Monopoly money is traded, a Bitcoin for Beginners class, and discussions about cryptocurrency and decentralization in general.
Participant Cameron Gray plans to print out paper wallets with a few dogecoin in each to give away free. Kyle MacDonald will bring a button-making machine, which he will use to create buttons with a dogecoin theme or any other kind of button that the moment calls for.
Lachance, who propagates a phenomenon known as the Decentralized Dance Party year-round, hopes to throw such a party on the playa, and will also be recruiting folks who want to run Decentralized Dance Parties in their home cities.
The organizers say the loosely planned events all revolve around helping burners understand the intersection between cryptocurrency and decentralization with the annual gathering’s guiding principles, like radical inclusion, decommodification and self-reliance.
“We’re not just going to go there and say, ‘doge is love’,” said Gray, a Vancouver musician who runs cryptocurrency coworking space decentral.bangtown.
He added:
“The mission [will be] helping people get into crypto to understand why it’s a good thing, even though it’s money at Burning Man. How it connects with open source, how it connects with radical inclusiveness, how it connects with justice, transparency, openness. Yeah.”
This is not the first time cryptocurrency will be mentioned at Burning Man.
For the past three years, there has been a gathering where 50 or more people showed up to learn about bitcoin for about 90 minutes, said Darrell Duane, mayor of Anahasana Village and a bitcoin enthusiast who has been helping make Camp Bitcoin/Camp Dogecoin a reality.
Some camps have used bitcoin to raise funds, and some people have urged Burning Man organizers to accept bitcoin for tickets.
Founding principles
In online discussions, a common thread has been the concern that any currency-themed camp might contradict Burning Man’s non-commercial ethos.
One of the Ten Principles of Burning Man is ‘decommodification’ with the explanation: “our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising.” In that spirit, camps do not put up corporate logos, and many burners even cover or change the logos on their vehicles.
Lachance and the other organizers feel that Camp Dogecoin is in line with Burning Man’s principles, since it will not be advertising a company, and any logo that they end up displaying will not be a corporate one.
He added:
“Dogecoin is not an organization, it’s basically a protocol. It’s like having Camp Email.”
Veteran burner Duane acknowledged that other burners may question how a crypto-camp is appropriate given the aversion to advertising and commerce. His response is that cryptocurrency essentially decommodifies banking, making it very relevant to the burn.
“If we were to talk about using BitPay or Coinbase, that would not be appropriate,” said Duane, who welcomes any controversy as a way of pushing Burning Man boundaries, adding:
“Some people will say, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t sponsor this camp.’ We’ll be educating them.”
The shift to dogecoin will probably eliminate some of the controversy that may have arisen around bitcoin.
Bitcoin is used by major corporations and has spawned slew of startups; it’s big business. It’s hard to feel as threatened by a currency with a big grinning shiba inu mascot that likes to say “such wow”.
But one controversy is sure to arise in the desert as enthusiasts who have only communicated in type meet in person for the first time: how to pronounce dogecoin.
Lachance’s web page about the camp lists only three rules, and one is: “Dogecoin must be pronounced ‘dogh-gee-coin’, not ‘dohj-coin’.”
But as many, if not most, people use the latter pronunciation, commenters on the page quickly took issue with Lachance’s edict. In a phone interview, Lachance stood by the ban on ‘doje’.
“We’re totally against that,” he said.
Burning ManDogecoin
Original author: Carrie Kirby