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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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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Gaurav Ghosh: Trust and Bitcoin
The English-language Indian daily newspaper The Economics Times published an article by Gaurav S Ghosh on Bitcoin. Excerpts:
But why would anyone trust a virtual currency that was nothing but a few lines of code generated anonymously by a process indecipherable to a non-expert audience.
There are huge inequities with respect to the bitcoin mining process, whereby early miners were able to mine much larger quantities of bitcoins than newer miners.
The author makes an argument that Bitcoin cannot be trusted and uses Zimbabwean inflation as an example — a delicious irony as the ZMD was ruined as the result of inflation and Bitcoin’s raison d’être is its protection from that very same occurrance.
Bitcoin never promised that those who were speculating in bitcoins at bubble levels would incur no losses. There was however the expectation that the amount of bitcoin currency issued is limited and that it would occur at a predeterminted rate (roughly 7,200 bitcoins per day at current levels). That promise is encoded in the software and enforced by massive amounts of computing power provided by those mining. That promise has been kept. Trust that this system can continue to meet this expectation has not lessened but has strengthened in the past few months.
The author also writes that the when a rapid increase in the money supply occurs that prices would increase afterward is just “one of many competing theories of how the economy works” so at least he is clear on his bias. Sadly the readers will need to learn from elsewhere the benefits that Bitcoin offers.
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Another BTC/INR Market Opens - Free Trading
Bitcoin-Central.net is an exchange that has been operating since 2010, which is long in the tooth as far as Bitcoin exchanges go. The exchange recently added a INR deposit method and operates a BTC/INR market — the second exchange to now serve those wishing to buy and sell Bitcoins with the rupee.
Bitcoin-Central exchange has no trading fees. Adding funds to the exchange account involves sending a bank wire transfer to the exchange’s bank account with ICICI (fee applies). Withdrawal to any bank in India is available as well (fee applies).
Support from the exchange is available by e-mail from: [email protected]
The exchange offers either Google or Yubikey multifactor authentication methods which can lessen the security risks significantly compared to transacting against exchanges without these methods.
Support fort the INR currency was just recently added so if the market follows the pattern that other new markets followed then first will appear some bids and offers that are far apart (a wide spread). Then sporadic trades will likely occur before the market starts to function with competitive offers on one or both sides and eventually an efficient market becomes the result.
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TradeHill - Bank Transfer - India / INR Funds, Then Buy Bitcoins
The first Bitcoin exchange to accept deposits using funds using a domestic bank transfer from any Indan bank is TradeHill.
Along with becoming the first exchange to offer the ability to buy bitcoins with India / INR bank transfers, the exchange also was the first to accept bank transfers for Chile / CLN and Peru / PEN. The exchange also accepts international USD bank transfers as well.
The exchange also provides a number of bitcoin cash out methods, including withdrawing to PayPal, to Amazon Payments, or to virtual instruments such as prepaid debit Mastercards, gift cards and game cards.
- TradeHill web site
- Article on Bitcoin wiki
- Overview on Bitcoin Money
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