September has been a good month for Bitcoin so far. Aside from the currency’s rising value, acceptance, awareness and implementation have all made great strides around the world.
Here is a quick look back on some of the big moves Bitcoin has recently made on these fronts.
First, there is the Bitcoin Foundation’s Jon Matonis presenting the idea of officially giving Bitcoin the XBT code to the International Standards Organization Committee in Zurich.
I suppose this is bigger deal symbolically — no pun intended — than anything else, but it’s still a big deal.
You see, having a currency code supported by the ISO 4127 standard makes Bitcoin look so much more official. And the XBT code would put it on the exchange rates feed right next to gold (XAU) and silver (XAG).
Bitcoin would be crawling along the bottom of screens in airport terminals. And you know who would see that? Politicians and policy makers. As Bitcoin tries to dissociate itself from prevailing narratives of drug deals and money laundering, this would be huge.
Elsewhere, two Bitcoin payment processors have reached milestones of their own. BitPay in the US just signed up its 10,000th merchant, and BIPS in Denmark has signed up its 15,000th customer. BitPay has also announced new integration with Quickbooks.
Again, this as much as anything combats the mail-order-drugs narrative with a piece of real business software.
John Law at CoinDesk indicates that a real tipping point could be on the horizon for Bitcoin payment processors. The security and ease of integration make accepting Bitcoins an easy decision for aware merchants. The column likens it to radio replacing sheet music for in-home music entertainment.
Elsewhere, European gaming giant Bigpoint has integrated Bitcoin payment processing so gamers can buy in-game virtual goods with the digital currency. That’s a user base of 330 million gamers, each of whom has been further incentivized with a 5% bonus on Bitcoin purchases.
The lesson this month has been that markets are really beginning to take Bitcoin seriously, and at the moment there is a lot of upside in doing so.