1. Canada Signs ‘Virtual Currency’ Regulations into Law
The big news this week was Canadian Bill C-31, which outlines a number of regulations by which Bitcoin businesses established in Canada or even catering to Canadian citizens must abide.
As William Suberg reports: “Aside from instigating legislation for Canadian enterprises, it is notable that the bill obliges foreign entities to register with The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) if they directly serve resident Canadian entities or individuals and, by extension, that it denies banking facilities to those who remain unregistered.”
2. Philippines Gets Its First Bitcoin ATM
Bogdan Ulm reports that an open source Bitcoin ATM made by Skyhook is the first to be installed in the southeast Asian country.
“Unlike the other two popular Bitcoin machines, Lamassu and Robocoin, Skyhook is a lot smaller, and of course, less expensive. Owned by a Filipino company known as Bitmarket.ph, locals will finally be able to trade Bitcoins with Philippine pesos and not have to worry about exchange rates.”
3. Vericoin to Open Crypto Bank, Pay Interest to Users
Carlo Caraluzzo reported Wednesday that one altcoin developer has created a bank, called Veribank, that will pay users interest on their deposits.
4. Overstock Will Use Some of its Profits to Promote Bitcoin
Caraluzzo reported on Monday that Overstock, which made news earlier this year by becoming the first billion-dollar retailer to accept Bitcoin, will actively spend money promoting the cryptocurrency.
“But Overstock has plans to go far beyond mere acceptance of Bitcoin. They believe so solidly in a future with cryptocurrency that Byrne announced at the Bitcoin in the Beltway last Saturday that the company would be donating 3% of its Bitcoin generated profits to organizations that actively promote cryptocurrencies around the world.”
5. VC Investments in BTC Set to Skyrocket
Caraluzzo also reported that venture capital is about to start pouring into the Bitcoin economy at a much higher rate.
“Venture investors have been interested in the potential of Bitcoin for the last several years but during the last few months that interest seems to have grown exponentially. Just earlier this week, the Palo Alto-based cryptocurrency security firm BitGo announced that it had secured US$12 million Series A round of funding and back in May, payment processor BitPay successfully raised US$30 million with the backing of Richard Branson among other VCs.”
Elsewhere
- Vitalik Buterin has a huge post called “On Mining” over at the Ethereum blog.
- The Swarm team has posted a manifesto that has the word “revolution” in the first sentence.
- CoinDesk has a very nice mining roundup.
- A hat tip goes out to u/ThatchNailer for reliably curating great reading over on /r/Rad_Decentralization.
Market activity
Bitcoin started the week off trading right around the US$590 mark, and despite a midweek dip to about US$567, that looks to be where it will remain at the start of the weekend. Trading volume spiked somewhat on Thursday, when the price dipped, and there were US$5.7 million worth of transactions. Still, that’s considerably tamer than last week’s mini-roller coaster, when we saw a trading volume of US$21 million on June 14 (with roughly the same number of transactions as Thursday, it should be noted; people were spending big that Saturday).
Upcoming Bitcoin Events
- July 3: BitFin 2014 Conference, Dublin
- July 8: NexisLexus, Bitcoin regulation webinar
- July 9–12: FreedomFest, Las Vegas
- July 19–20: The North American Bitcoin Conference, Chicago
- July 23–24: Coin Congress, San Francisco
- July 24–25: Cryptocon, Sydney
- July 28–29: Cryptocon, Singapore
- July 29: American Bankers Digital Currencies Conference, New York