Bitcoin 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."
-
"[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."
-
"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."
-
"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."
-
"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."
-
"India had the highest remittance volume in the world in 2011 with $58 billion, or 3.1% of GDP, according to the World Bank."
-
"Forward-thinking companies like Buttercoin have recently stepped in to apply the potential of bitcoin to these markets […]"
-
"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)

Previous Posts - Twitter: @Bitcoindia

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:

• MultiBit: A secure, lightweight, international Bitcoin wallet for Windows, MacOS and Linux. No blockchain download required.
• Armory (Alpha): An open-source wallet-managment platform for the Bitcoin network.
• 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.

Previous Posts - Twitter: @Bitcoindia

bitcoin:

In a newsletter from Mondato (@MondatoPortal) is an article on how underground money transfer networks are subverting central authorities as well as the traditional financial system.  Excerpts:

As mobile penetration continues to grow exponentially, even in restrictive economies such as North Korea and Iran, underground value transfer may soon find a new vehicle – the mobile phone.

Newly emergent virtual currencies like Bitcoin have the capacity to fly beneath government regulations, opening alternate channels for subversive money transfer.

The international community may be powerless to stop the emergence of Bitcoin, particularly in contexts such as North Korea, Somalia, or Iran where there is demand for alternative monetary systems.

Bitcions will become more global once Coinapult expands their SMS Wallet capability beyond the U.S. and Canada.  With that, bitcoins can be sent to any mobile phone with SMS text messaging.  Compared to mobile transfer systems like M-PESA, fees for bitcoin transfers are trivially small.

Coinapult’s SMS text messaging wallet might have limited potential as a subversive tool, however.  Unlike native Bitcoin transactions, Coinapult’s approach is dependent on the mobile phone network.  This leaves it vulnerable to disruption by the authorities who control the network and could block messages send to or from Coinapult.  Additionally, text messaging is not a secure communications protocol and there might be no method that would protect against a dishonest person who has access to the telecom operator’s systems.

The article’s accompanying infographic shows the scope of remittances including those to nations where there are restrictions.

Previous Posts - Twitter: @BItcoindia

bitcoin:

Paxum (@PaxumInc) has introduced electronic funds transfer (EFT) for customers in nearly two dozen countries.  For the first time those holding bitcoins in those countries can now use an exchange to move funds to Paxum (directly with Mt. Gox, Intersango and TradeHill or indirectly through the use of BitInstant) and from there withdraw as an electronic bank transfer.

Paxum does require the customer to first prove identity during the set up of the customer account (with two forms of photo identification required for customers in areas considered risky) however subsequent transactions will occur in a more timely manner.

The Canadian registered money service business been offering global money transfer and merchant payment services since 2007.  Paxum is among the financial organizations whose service offerings mesh relatively well with the needs of Bitcoiners.  This new EFT offering is the first such electronic link between Bitcoin and the banking systems in many nations.  The full list of countries where Paxum funds may be withdrawn via an EFT now includes:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Holland
• Hong Kong
• India
• Ireland
• Japan
• Mexico
• Poland
• Russia
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United States

Additionally, Paxum announced that it has resumed its ACH service, giving the ability for customers in the U.S. to load and withdraw funds between their bank and Paxum.

Customers may hold balances with Paxum in USD, CAD, EUR and GBP through a wallet for each currency desired.

This EFT withdrawal will likely be valued by immigrants wishing to send remittances to family members back home.  Recently the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued new rules requiring greater transparency regarding fees along with additional regulation.  To-date, Bitcoin hadn’t been particularly useful for remittances due to Bitcoin exchanges not having banking relationships in the developing countries where the bulk of remittance transfers land.

From the U.S. alone there are US$400 billion in remittance payments made and globally nearly that same amount in remittances are transferred to just to developing nations.

tl;dr: Paxum just expanded to the developing world — a new frontier for Bitcoin.

Previous Posts