Tag Archives: exchange
Bitcoin Exchange VirtEx Shut Down by Royal Bank of Canada
Bitcoin Exchange VirtEx
VirtEx is a Bitcoin exchange based in Calgary, Canada, formed by Joseph David with over $13.2 million traded. From their website:
VirtEx stands for Virtual Exchange. We are Canada’s first Bitcoin (BTC) trading market that allows you to buy and sell Bitcoins with Canadian Dollars. We are continuously researching new fund transfer options for faster, easier deposits, and withdrawals with minimal fees. We hold and verifying funds before orders are allowed to be placed. If you see an order to buy or sell Bitcoins on our site, you can be assured that the funds have been verified and you can accept to buy or sell at the price and quantities specified.
As the National Post reports, VirtEx has run into a snag.
Earlier this month Royal Bank of Canada quietly informed Mr. David that it would no longer do business with his company.
“They shut down our account without any reason,” said Mr. David, an ebullient entrepreneur with a background in technology companies. “They just said we have the right to refuse service to whomever we wish.”
For whatever reason, many in Canada’s small but fast growing Bitcoin community are suddenly dealing with the same problem: The banks have decided they don’t like the cryptocurrency and they’re shutting down some of the accounts of businesses that deal in it.
Read the full article at the National Post.
Top Bitcoin News Last Week: Bubble, Winklevoss Twins, Mt. Gox Attacks
Bitcoin News
A roundup of the top Bitcoin news from April 8 to April 14:
Monday, April 8
Tuesday, April 9
Thursday, April 11
Friday, April 12
- Did the Bitcoin Bubble Burst Already?
- Winklevii Bitcoin: Twins Secretly Own 1% of the Bitcoin Economy
Sunday, April 14
Video: Bitcoin Primer – Bitcoin Economy, Mining, Exchanges, and More
Bitcoin Primer Video
Below is a short Bitcoin primer video. The video provides an overview of Bitcoin, the decentralized digital currency taking the world by storm.
The film was directed, designed and animated by Duncan Elms, written and voiced by Marc Fennell - a personal project done between other jobs. More info at Vimeo.
The narration and illustration does a great job of explaining Bitcoin, discussing:
- The difference between Bitcoin and fiat currencies
- What Bitcoin mining is and how many Bitcoins have been mined
- How Bitcoin is a self-stabilizing economy
- Bitcoin exchanges including Mt. Gox
- The Silk Road
- Who accepts Bitcoin as cash
- MintChip
The video is out of date in terms of the price of Bitcoin because of the massive growth and subsequent bubble bursting, but otherwise an excellent Bitcoin primer.
Did the Bitcoin Bubble Burst Already?
Bitcoin Bubble May Be Over
Wow, the Bitcoin bubble blew up fast.
Bitcoins were trading for as high as $266 earlier this week and as low as $77 today.
Trading activity overwhelmed exchanges like Mt. Gox and trading was halted twice, as shown in the chart below from CNN Money.
“The rather astonishing amount of new accounts opened in the last few days…made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag,” said Mt. Gox. “As expected in such situations, people started to panic, started to sell Bitcoin in mass…resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine.”
This comes on the heels of Bitcoin theft and DDoS attacks on the exchange.
Bubble photo by Visual Artist Frank Bonilla used under Creative Commons license.
Here Comes the Bitcoin Venture Capital
Bitcoin Venture Capital Heats Up
Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jeremy Liew published his perspective on the incredible opportunity to invest in companies that are building new ideas for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It looks like the Bitcoin venture capital is heating up.
There are three key markets in Bitcoin:
Wallet. Holding your Bitcoins for you, serving some of the checking account functions of a bank.
Exchange. Converting from USD to Bitcoins and back.
Payments. Helping merchants accept Bitcoins for their transactions.
As a rule of thumb, VCs like to see billion-dollar markets to get excited. How can each of these markets get to be a billion dollars in size?
To build multi-billion dollar opportunities, the Bitcoin economy needs to grow 100X from where it is today, Liew goes on to say. But to put that in perspective, it grew more than 10X in the last year.
These opportunities are not without risk. Liew acknowledges that in its short existence, Bitcoin has been the target of theft and over 10% of the Bitcoins in circulation have been stolen. This and other risks will make it hard to be build sustainable businesses, but not impossible.
Via TechCrunch.
