Playboy Plus, a Playboy Brand Website, is Now Accepting Bitcoin

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Meltdown – The First Comic Shop To Take Bitcoin

Los Angeles’ Meltdown Comics became the first bricks’n'mortar comic shop to officially accept the digital currency Bitcoin as a method of payment.

The lucky purchaser was Bleeding Cool photographer (and so much more) Pinguino Kolb. She writes,

I used Blockchain on my iphone to buy Daniel Clowes’s Death Ray book. Francisco rang up the order on a tablet using BitPay. It was a smooth transaction, and a bit later I bought some stuff from his employee, who was super psyched to take a bitcoin order. I got a Black Business Protection Lucky Cat vinyl figure, Adventure Time Mathematical Vol 3, and some strawberry Yan Yan. That also went seamlessly.

And as for future reasons to pay with Bitcoin, manager Francisco said,

We’ll be the only comic book shop accepting Bitcoin. Down the line Bitcoin customers will start receiving special discounts, offers, swag, online shop, events, and more.;

 Post Source: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/04/meltdown-the-first-comic-shop-to-take-bitcoin/

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Luxury Yacht Service Makes its First Bitcoin Booking

Luxury yacht service The Advantaged Yacht Charter and Sales in Miami Beach has received its first booking paid for in bitcoin.

The company officially began accepting bitcoin in October last year, but only made its first booking, paid for with the digital currency, last week.

The company has a total of 26 boats in Miami Beach which it rents out, starting from $1,200 for four hours up to $18,000 for the most extravagant packages. Each one comes complete with a captain, a stewardess and a fruit and cheese platter.

Their first bitcoin deal came about after Tony Gallippi, owner of payment processorBitPay gave the company a shout out during his opening speech at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami.

Jessica Londono, co-owner of The Advantaged Yacht Charter and Sales in Miami Beach, was at the conference, as was her first bitcoin client. She explained:

“[Gallippi] just literally said a small little blurb about us, then my client went on and Googled me, saw the website, saw we accept bitcoin and then called me.”

Londono was able to effortlessly process the transaction for her client’s $2,500 charter using BitPay.

“It was literally the easiest transaction I’ve ever done,” she said. “I’ve co-owned the company for about nine years and this transaction took less than one minute.”

Londono sent her client an email with the contract for his charter and the BitPay address. “It’s so much easier than any credit card transaction I’ve ever done,” she added.

Nominal charges

As well as being a much quicker process, accepting bitcoin is also cheaper for vendors, as payment processors such as BitPay require a nominal charge in comparison to credit card charges. Londono said:

“American Express charges about 3.5%, which we lose out of our profits. Bitcoin is essentially free, depending on what service you use.”

Using bitcoin also makes the booking process simpler for Londono’s clients.

Londono first got into bitcoin in March 2012 through her “Apple genius husband”. Now her company, which also deals in yacht sales, is in the process of completing its first boat sale in bitcoin.

She stresses bitcoin is not simply a get-rich-quick scheme for her; it’s about exposure. Going to networking events like the Miami conference has been an opportunity to meet other eager people within the bitcoin community.

“I go to networking events on a daily basis trying to promote my brand, but it was so refreshing to go somewhere where every single person was so happy to talk to you and explain what they do,” she said.

“Everyone’s so excited about bitcoin that it’s just a pleasure to go ahead and get more involved and have more people be part of the bitcoin community.”

She hopes more vendors in South Florida will start to accept bitcoin payments soon.

“We have so many people with foreign currency that this would be an easy way to just unify us all.”

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/luxury-yacht-service-makes-first-bitcoin-booking/

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Mint personal finance tool embraces Bitcoin, but as an investment - not cash

Las Vegas may not be interested in letting gamblers use Bitcoin, but in yet another sign that the crypto currency is edging into the mainstream, Mint.com now lets you track your Bitcoin wallet. The new feature for the online personal finance tracker integrates exclusively with Coinbase—a popular web-based Bitcoin wallet hosting service.

Mint won’t treat Coinbase wallets as cash, the way it does savings and checking accounts from banks. Instead, Bitcoin is treated as an investment account, sitting alongside mutual funds and stocks.

A Mint user is more Bitcoins as a payment method than other "investments," but Bitcoin’s tendency for wild fluctuation makes it more at home among stocks and bonds. A single Bitcoin hovered around $20 last February and is now worth nearly $800, according toCoinbase.

Coinbase showing the per-Bitcoin price over the past months: That sure is a volatile "currency." 

Mint’s acceptance of Bitcoin as a legitimate part of a person’s financial picture may not have the same impact as major retailers like TigerDirect and Overstock accepting the digital currency. Nevertheless, with more than 14 million users, Mint’s integration is another positive step for wider acceptance of Bitcoin.

“We felt like it was something we couldn’t ignore anymore,” Mint product manager Vince Maniago recently told Venture Beat. “And this is a good time to go out and support the currency as it becomes more legitimate.”

Mint's new Bitcoin integration. (Click to enlarge.)

Countries around the world are split on how to handle Bitcoin. In August, Germany decided to recognize Bitcoin as a financial instrument. China has already banned the crypto currency as has Thailand. More recently, the Canadian government appeared to give Bitcoin the cold shoulder—althoughBitcoin entrepreneurs up north don’t appear to be discouraged by the government’s position.

In the U.S., Washington is still mulling how to deal with Bitcoin , while states such as New York are also grappling with the issue of regulating Bitcoin.

For now, however, Bitcoin remains something of an untamed wilderness where finance and technology meet.

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Legal Online Gambling is Next Major Bitcoin Market

The international online gambling industry is an estimated $30bn market, and growing. More importantly for Bitcoin, it’s a global market that depends on fast, irreversible payments.

Just like a ordinary casino chip in any land-based casino, digital bitcoin provides privacy, immediacy, and payment finality. Unlike most typical consumer purchases (where returns and chargebacks are usually legitimate), a wager is a one-way transaction. Of course, you may be dissatisfied with the outcome, but that does not justify a reimbursement. The online gambling industry has struggled with this fact for years.

Plagued by chargebacks and fraudulent transactions, specialized payment methods and payment companies have sprouted up around the online casino world to address the problem of payment finality.

iGaming and bitcoin

For the first time ever, the world’s largest and most comprehensive trade event in gaming, ICE Totally Gaming 2014, will feature a half-day seminar on bitcoin in the iGaming environment on 4h February. The London-based conference represents every gambling sector: betting, bingo, casino, lottery, mobile, online, and social gaming.

“We are now witnessing the long-awaited arrival of mainstream online casinos into the bitcoin universe.”

Organized by Gran Via’s Willem van Oort, the seminar features two extraordinary panels: ‘Regulatory Aspects’ and ‘Bitcoin’s Competitive Edge’. I will also be speaking on the evolution and future of bitcoin as a new monetary unit.

Moderated by iGaming attorney David Gzesh, the regulatory panel will assess the compliance challenges in dealing with bitcoin payment processing applications, including currency conversion, reduced transaction costs, payment finality, Know Your Customer rules, and coin management techniques.

Panelists include; Stuart Hoegner, managing director at Gaming Counsel PC; Steve Beauregard, CEO and founder ofGoCoin; and Michael Ellen, director of licensing and strategy at Alderney Gambling Control Commission.

The second panel of the day focuses on the competitive advantages offered by bitcoin in the iGaming industry and will explore potential for new games, new jurisdictional regions, and unique investment opportunities on the horizon.

Stellar panelists include; Esteban van Goor, indirect tax lawyer at PwC; Ivan Montik, CEO and founder of Softswiss; Erik Voorhees, founder of SatoshiDice; Brock Pierce, managing director at Clearstone Global Gaming Fund; Jiten Melwani, founder of Bitgame Labs; and Gabriel Sukenik, director at Coinapult.

Into the mainstream

We are now witnessing the long-awaited arrival of mainstream online casinos and betting establishments into the bitcoin universe. This is the beginning of the second-generation bitcoin gambling sites – the first generation exemplified by sites like SatoshiDice, BitZino, and Seals With Clubs.

CoinDesk reported on Wednesday that Malta-registered casino Vera&John has become the first of the major licensed and regulated online casinos to accept bitcoin deposits. The gaming operator accepts inbound customer payments which are then processed and converted into euros via Panama-based Coinapult service.

Following a trend common among existing online poker sites like WinPoker, Vera&John will only permit wagering in national currency units. The strategy of utilizing bitcoin only as a customer payment transfer mechanism eliminates the exchange rate risk for the operator and the player.

Alternatively, if the player uses bitcoin for deposit, betting, and withdrawal, then the exchange rate risk stays with the player. Examples of that approach include CloudBet and CoinBet.

Sports betting site Cloudbet claims to have revolutionized the online betting experience by introducing the world’s most advanced bitcoin betting platform accessible from desktop and mobile devices. Users can browse an intuitive, elegant site to place immediate and discreet bets on any world event – at zero fees.

CloudBet currently deploys 100% offline cold storage for all bitcoin assets and the site has received excellent reviews.

In addition, Costa Rica-registered CoinBet offers casino gaming, poker, and sports betting all under a simple email registration with password. CoinBet claims to be the first legitimate, licensed entity to re-enter the real money online gambling space since Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, and Absolute Poker all had their sites shut down by the US Department of Justice in April 2011. However, that particular claim may actually go to Costa Rica-registered Infiniti Poker.

Unlike other regulated gambling jurisdictions issuing licenses, Costa Rica does not require operators to obtain and verify the identity of its players. On the policy of accepting US players, John Bauer, senior vice president of gaming at CoinBet, proudly emphasized:

“Look, to take away a person’s fundamental right to spend their money on whatever they choose is wrong, unconstitutional, and without question, an un-American thing to do.”

He continued: “We are not here to engage in a legal debate, we are here to serve up the very first legitimate workaround to the complex online gambling laws in this US market. We are returning to Americans their freedom to choose and giving them their power back!”

Internet gambling in the US operates in a legal grey area. Other gaming operators in the near future may come to appreciate Bauer’s statement because the US jurisdiction has yet to see a clarifying test case in the matter of bitcoin-only wagering without conversion.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/legal-online-gambling-next-major-bitcoin-market/

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Mint.com will see your bitcoins now

• BY BRIAN FUNG

(btckeychain)

If you're one of the millions of people who use Mint, you know the personal finance tool does an effective job at tracking your credit card spending, bank account balances and investment performance. But now Mint is adding support for another type of financial instrument: Bitcoin.

Mint has reached an agreement with one of the Bitcoin market's most popular virtual wallet companies, Coinbase. Now that the two are linked, users who own bitcoins can add the alternative currency to their dashboard and track the value of their holdings, just like any other investment, according to VentureBeat.

Coinbase shows up on the tool as a line item beneath your 401(k), IRA and related accounts, but it might disappoint Bitcoin purists — as it calculates your stash as dollars.

The deal brings Bitcoin one step closer to Wall Street as another project — a bid to create the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund — steadily advances. Experts believe both will bring greater stability to the currency, making it a more viable platform.

Meanwhile, other countries have made warnings about the currency, or even issuedoutright bans against integrating it into the banking system. It's unclear whether these countries' regulatory authorities might reconsider their stance if Bitcoin becomes more widely accepted.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/30/mint-com-will-see-your-bitcoins-now/

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Casino to Accept Bitcoin

    Vera&John Becomes First Licensed Casino to Accept Bitcoin

Danny Bradbury (@dannybradbury) | Published on January 29, 2014 at 07:39 GMT | Lifestyle, News

Large online casino Vera&John has become the first licensed and regulated online casino to accept bitcoin deposits.

The Malta-registered site began taking deposits from customers on Tuesday, automatically converting them to Euros which would then be paid into customers’ accounts on the site. Customers making bitcoin deposits made at Vera&John will only be able to withdraw those deposits in bitcoin.

This online casino is different to the many bitcoin gaming sites that are found on online, said Johannes Klasson, an SEO consultant who has been working with Vera&John for two years, and consulted with the casino on the two-month bitcoin project.

Sites like SatoshiDice use bitcoin transactions as the basis for bets. They use the block chain, or an algorithm for proving off-blockchain bets, to prove that their bets are fair.

Instead, Vera&John is an established online casino, presenting bitcoin as way to pay for existing games on the site, rather than as a basis for new online games. Customers can make deposits in bitcoins, which are converted in real time at current Euro exchange rates. This means that the casino doesn’t hold bitcoins, and isn’t exposed to market risk.

A customer’s account can be used to play over 200 slot games on the site. The back end software that runs the games therefore doesn’t have to be adapted to work with bitcoin in any way.

Vera&John has over 100 employees. “They have the same software providers as the land-based casinos in Vegas do,” said Klasson. “In order to host them, you have to be huge.” These companies include Play’n GO, Betsoft, IGT, Nextgen Gaming, Bally Technologies and Three Pigeons. He added:

“Even SatoshiDice would get turned down if went to IGT and said, ‘hey, give me your games to host on on my page’. It doesn’t work like that.”

Vera&John is a EU-based casino, regulated by Malta’s Lotteries and Gaming Authority, and as such as required to provide fair bets, and are frequently audited, said Klasson. Bitcoin players will trust the online site’s fairness as fiat customers would.

Gamers can win up to 5,000 BTC in a single bet, according to a statement from the firm today.

The European online casino is working with Coinapult, which Klasson says is acting as a payment processor for the bitcoin element of the casino’s business.

When customers make a bitcoin deposit at Vera&John, the bitcoins are sent to Coinapult, converted into Euros and deposited into their Vera&John account.

“Vera&John have been extremely excited to get bitcoin payments up and running,” said a spokesperson at Coinapult, who said that the fact the bitcoins were immediately converted into Euros meant that bitcoin was being used as a payment network, rather than as a currency.

“They understand that it’s only a matter of time until other gaming operators recognize the benefits of bitcoin technology and realize the actual ease of integration.”

Vera&John does not accept business from US customers, due to the stringent anti-gambling legislation there. Coinapult’s operation operates under the laws of Panama, the spokesperson said, adding that launching a lawful and compliant business relationship was particularly timely, given “recent events and today’s NYC hearings”.

“Being able to build business relationships like these – in jurisdictions and with banks that have clear, market-friendly regulatory frameworks – is why Coinapult opted to leave the US and establish itself in Panama,” the spokesperson concluded.

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/verajohn-becomes-first-licensed-casino-accept-bitcoin/

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