Global Bitcoin Conference - Bangalore, Dec. 14-15, 2013
This two-day event will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Bangalore, India on December 14th and 15th, 2013.
The lists of talks, speakers, panelists, vendors, and sponsors are still being put together but the goal of the conference is to provide an overview of where the virtual currency industry is today and its future potential — with emphasis on India’s role and future opportunities.
Additionally a Bitcoin ATM will be present for demonstration. Trading between buyers and sellers of bitcoins will occur, including those buying and silling bitcoins with gold. Startups who are raising funds and hiring will be present. Investors will be there looking for entrepreneurs and startups to fund. Payment processors will be there to help merchants get signed up to begin accepting Bitcoin that very same day!
- https://globalbitcoinconference.com
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=315551.0 (Discussion of the event)
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Mumbai Mirror - Bitcoin Arrives
Ankit Ajmera (@TvventyOne)’s article, published in the Mumbai Mirror, describes Bitcoin’s presence in India. Excerpts:
The Reserve Bank of India, for instance, has not yet formulated regulations to govern trading or profits generated from Bitcoins.
The only time Bitcoins will come under the purview of law is if a case of fraud is reported, following which cops can then initiate action against the fraudulent party.
There have been an estimated 29,400 downloads of Bitcoin wallets from Indian IP addresses. There’s the possibility that one person has downloaded more than one wallet.
- https://bit.ly/19NOOZ9
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=304384.0 (Further discussion of the article)
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Jonathan Stacke - Bitcoin in India
bitcoinnews:
Jonathan Stacke writes on Bitcoin in India for his latest article on The Genesis Block (@TheGenesisBlock). Excerpts:
"With talk of inflation and capital controls familiar to the bitcoin community, one might think Indian citizens would be jumping at the opportunity to adopt the digital currency, yet the hurdles to wide-scale bitcoin proliferation in India may be significant for the foreseeable future. While demand for gold has grown in India, the multiple applications it offers culturally and industrially in addition to acting as an alternative store of wealth may mean that such demand does not translate to bitcoin."
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"[A correlation exists] between bitcoin adoption and internet penetration in a given country. India, with just 12.6% of its citizens having internet access, has the sixth lowest internet penetration of the 100 largest countries. Despite that fact, the size of the total Indian population – more than 1.2 billion – makes India the third largest internet-using population in the world, with 150 million users, behind only China and the US."
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"It is possible to buy and sell bitcoin through a number of websites including buysellbitco.in and there does appear to be a healthy LocalBitcoins market."
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"Not to be overlooked is India’s mobile phone penetration of 71%, or approximately 900 million total users. […] only 44 million Indians are smartphone subscribers."
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"M-PESA, the mobile payment system that has changed the lives of millions in Kenya recently rolled out in India. […] If mobile payment systems like these gain traction in India as they have in Africa, acceptance of digital currency would prove to be a less significant hurdle."
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"India had the highest remittance volume in the world in 2011 with $58 billion, or 3.1% of GDP, according to the World Bank."
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"Forward-thinking companies like Buttercoin have recently stepped in to apply the potential of bitcoin to these markets […]"
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"The Reserve Bank of India has stated that it does not immediately intend to regulate bitcoin, but their historic actions indicate that may change soon enough […]"
- https://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-in-india-drivers-and-barriers-to-adoption
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=288709.0 (Further discussion of this article)
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Business Today - Paying in a different coin
Business Today covered Bitcoin. Excerpts:
"Early adopters, such as Mahin Gupta in Ahmedabad, have gained hugely. Gupta now runs a trading platform called buysellbitco.in. At the beginning of April this year, Gupta had 20 unfulfilled Bitcoin orders, as none of his contacts - some 60 people in India and the US - were willing to sell the coins.”
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“‘There are about 2,000 active Bitcoin users in India. Most of the users are individuals and want to explore the possibilities of an alternative investment opportunity,’ says Nilam Doctor, an Ahmedabad-based software professional who has invested in Bitcoins and also developed an online trading platform for the currency, rbitco.in.”
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"No e-commerce websites in India accept Bitcoins, but many Indian enthusiasts use the payment system for trade of goods and services from overseas websites."
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"The huge demand for Bitcoins in India has largely been from speculators hoping to gain from the rising value of the currency."
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"Until recently, Bangalore-based Bitcoin enthusiast Benson Samuel mined the currency using a botnet, or a network of computers that run applications. ‘I used to mine coins using GPUs,’ he says."
- https://bit.ly/ZQ0MNk
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Buying bitcoins from India
A response to a question on the Bitcoin StackExchange Q&A website provides a couple of methods for being able to purchase bitcoins.
With an exchange within India once again, Buy Sell Bitcoin, the ability to purchase with cash (rupees deposited at HDFC or Axis bank), makes buying bitcoins possible without having to transfer funds internationally or suffering excessive fees.
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The Times Of India - Online currency Bitcoin booming
Though the article had no specific references to Indians, the article appeared on The Times of India, so more and more people are becoming aware of bitcoins.
The Telegraph of Calcutta also ran a Bitcoin article.
bitcoin:
Guardian - Remittances Around The World
The photo above accompanies a Guardian article featuring an interactive map that shows the remittance flows for the particular nation selected.
The ability to explore the map on a nation-by-nation basis (as shown above for Peru) is available only after clicking the “Leave Tour” button from the application.
Bitcoin, as a decentralized digital currency with no authorative source is beginning to gain some traction as a remittance payment method. Bitcoins are becoming fairly easy to acquire inexpensively in many areas (e.g., U.S., UK, Canada, and Europe) which correspond to areas where much of the remittance flows originate.
Since most remittance recipients use the funds for paying expenses and shopping, bitcoins aren’t (yet) quite useful to them and there are still just few methods to cash out bitcoins with a local exchanger. These methods are improving with independent exchange agents listed on LocalBitcoins.com now providing cash-out service in over 700 cities worldwide and the upcoming launch of BitcoinWireless which will let bitcoins be used to pay for mobiile phone service in more than 100 countries.
Bitcoin may have an even bigger impact for those who currently send remittances by enabling investment capital to flow quickly and cheaply to where the opportunities lie. If there is more work near a worker’s home then there is less need for that worker to live away from the family in order to provide for them. Knowledge workers are already the first to be able to work for a foreign employer without having to live abroad. And since bitcoin payments have no concept of borders, the employer can sent bitcoins to the employee at a lesser cost to both employer and employee. Increasingly these knowledge workers with foreign employers are requesting that their compensation be paid in bitcoins, and employers are increasingly willing to oblige.
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Bitcoin version 0.7.0 released
bitcoin:
A significant new release of the Bitcoin-Qt and Bitcoind clients from Bitcoin.org, v0.7.0, is now available for download.
This v0.7 release includes a number of new features, performance improvements and bug fixes and is the first major feature release since the v0.6 release nearly six months ago.
A subset of the improvements includes:
- Calls for better privacy are answered with Tor hidden service support.
- IPv6 support.
- URI Handling (click on bitcoin address, address and amount are entered for you.)
- Lower CPU usage during block downloads.
- Optional method to load blockchain from a local file.
- Raw transaction API (Full access to the blockchain data)
- Better translations (Language support)
While it is recommended to back up the wallet.dat before performing this upgrade, the update will not overwrite an existing wallet or blockchain database.
- https://bitcoin.org/releases/2012/09/17/v0.7.0.html
- https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.7.0
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110243.0
Also new since the last major release are how alternatives to the Bitcoin.org reference implementation client are featured on the Bitcoin.org Clients page. The alternatives for the desktop include:
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MultiBit: A secure, lightweight, international Bitcoin wallet for Windows, MacOS and Linux. No blockchain download required.
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Armory (Alpha): An open-source wallet-managment platform for the Bitcoin network.
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Electrum: A lightweight Bitcoin client, based on a client-server protocol. No blockchain download required.
Coming in the next significant release to bitcoin will likely be the use of LevelDB for faster access when the client reads or writes to the blockhain, and “ultraprune” which will result in a much lower storage requirement to hold the blockchain.
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Benson Samuel - Bitcoin In India?
Benson Samuel (@BensonSamuel) blogs on Bitcoin from Bangalore. His latest post introduces his readers to the Bitcoin ecosystem and describes some of the opportunities and challenges for Bitcoin in India, specifically. Excerpts:
Several new exchanges are being setup for India, and it is only a matter of time, before we can have a robust environment supporting Bitcoins in an open marketplace.
Several Indians participate in forums on Tor and have started engaging in open discussions about betterment and open business.
As long as there is prohibition of an item of need or desire, there will remain a Black Market. As long as this continues, Bitcoin will have value and will continue to grow. Bitcoin will replace or become the main currency in lands where modern banking has failed. It will remain a steadfast channel of alternative commerce where the need is.
Inspired Indians have taken up the challenge to reshape the way we have banked for decades.
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'Cash deposit' Method For Buying Bitcoins Reaches India
Bitcoin exchanges have found the magic formula that allows funds to flow and a new exchange, Mr. Bitcoins, is taking it to India!
For the first time ever for the country, those wishing to buy bitcoins can simply bring their Rupees to a bank (HDFC) and make a deposit into a special account for the exchange. Those funds are then converted to bitcoins and the digital currency is delivered to the Bitcoin address the customer specified.
Mr. Bitcoins launched in May and offers this cash deposit method in Australia and the United States as well. The exchange is operated by Kenseycol PTY LTD out of Australia.
This method will likely be valuable for its convenience — funds from cash deposits are converted either the same day or next business day.
The exchange rate that is quoted is real-time but it is somewhat higher than the BTC/USD exchange rate after further converting it using the USD/INR conversion rate. There are no additional fees however, causing this method to be cheaper than sending an international bank wire or other money transfer service such as Western Union.
Update: We’ve been asked to explain in more detail how to use this service:
- Visit Mr. Bitcoins, click on the INR tab.
- Enter your e-mail address, your bitcoin address (e.g., from Instawallet), and the amount (in BTCs) that you wish to buy. Then click the Buy Bitcoins button.
- You will then see a receipt with the HDFC account name, account number and the amount (in INRs) to deposit.
- Print the receipt and take it with you to the nearest HDFC where you deposit cash into the account shown on the receipt. Once Mr. Bitcoins sends the bitcoins, you can monitor the transaction’s progress towards getting confirmed using Blockchain.info.
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