Like this? Share it.

After an overwhelming turnout for Mediabistro’s inaugural Inside Bitcoins: the Future of Virtual Currency conference this past summer in New York, Mediabistro decided to bring the Bitcoin-focused event to MGM Grand Las Vegas from December 10-11^th.

Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies continue to play a larger role in mainstream culture; and Inside Bitcoins is the perfect venue to explore the opportunities and challenges the growing bitcoin community faces. The conference will provide insight into the versatility and potential of this financial technology through sessions, such as Bitcoin & The Music Industry, Bitcoin in China, and Virtual Currency Guidance: Blaze the Trail or Get Run Over. Check out the entire conference agenda.

Attendees of Inside Bitcoins will have the opportunity to network and engage with the impressive roster of speakers, including Alan Reiner, the core developer of Armory Bitcoin Wallet; Pelle Braendgaard ,Co-Founder of Kipochi  and Nathan and Sam Huntzinger , the teenage visionaries of Bees Brothers.

With Bitcoin, the Bees Brothers, aged 15 years and 13 years, were able to sell honey and honey caramels all over the world by taking advantage of the absence of international currency exchange costs. In the session “Bees Brothers: Lessons from Young Bitcoin Entrepreneurs”, Nathan and Sam will share their experience using Bitcoin in turning a science project into a profitable year round operation. Read more on the Bees Brothers.

Inside Bitcoins is one of the first events of its kind to give attendees the option to pay for their ticket with either dollars or bitcoins. Each registrant will also receive a bitcoin paper wallet with a 0.01 bitcoin.

Thanks to On Bitcoin’s partnership with Inside Bitcoins, all On Bitcoin readers will receive 15% OFF admission to the innovative Las Vegas event. Register on the event website and enter code ONBC at checkout to redeem this offer!

Like this? Share it.

Like this? Share it.

Inside Bitcoins, Mediabistro’s bitcoin-focused conference that debuted last summer in NYC, is headed to Las Vegas after receiving tremendous interest and positive feedback following the first event.

Taking place in the MGM Grand Las Vegas from December 10-11^th, the conference will explore the current success and buzz surrounding the popular cryptocurrency. At the event, attendees will hear from experts in the bitcoin industry who will discuss the role bitcoins play in the current economy.

The first day of the conference will focus on topics including how to win at the bitcoin exchange ecosystem, creating and funding the next 100 great bitcoin companies, emerging issues in regulatory compliance, and the potential of bitcoin data analysis. Day one will also feature a keynote address by Tradehill founder, Jered Kenna, titled “A State of the Union for Bitcoin.”

Day two promises to offer just as much vital bitcoin information with sessions revolving around themes including Bitcoins in China, the future of free market money, freedom of speech and transaction, bitcoin and the music industry, and how trust and transparency can be brought to the market.

Inside Bitcoins was able to secure an impressive roster of speakers, including Rob Banagale, CEO and co-founder of Gliph; Steve Beauregard, CEO and Founder of GoCoin.com; Robert Cho, Vice President of SecondMarket; Bobby Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of BTC China; Adam B. Levine, Editor-in-Chief of Let’s Talk Bitcoin!; and Ardon Lukasiewicz, Founder of Bitmarkers. View the full speaker list.

The event will also feature exhibitors including Armory, CoinTap, and IDology, Inc. and the evening’s drinks reception provides the ideal forum to network with like-minded peers. Developers, entrepreneurs, investors, finance professionals, bankers, consultants, lawyers, security solution providers, data and payment processors, and online retailers will all be present.

We’re pleased to announce that On Bitcoin is partnering with Inside Bitcoins to offer all readers 15% OFF admission to the innovative Las Vegas event.

To redeem, simply enter code ONBC at checkout. Register Now!

Related: Read our recap from the Inside Bitcoins NYC conference 

Like this? Share it.

Like this? Share it.

Bitcoin News

A roundup of the top Bitcoin news from July 29 to August 4.

Monday, July 29

• Bank of Thailand Advises That Various Bitcoin Actvities Are Illegal

Tuesday, July 30

• Inside Bitcoins NYC Keynote: Is Bitcoin the New Financial Order?
• Finding Business Model Opportunities in Bitcoin – Inside Bitcoins NYC
• Building Bitcoin into the Core Architecture of the Web – Inside Bitcoins NYC
• Inside Bitcoins NYC Recap – Bitcoin Future is Bright, But Uncertain

Thursday, August 1

• MasterCoin Proposal to Make Bitcoin More Stable and Secure

Friday, August 2

• Coin Forest Wants to the Be the Groupon for Bitcoin

Like this? Share it.

Like this? Share it.

Bitcoin Conference Speakers Share Mixed Views on the Future, But Optimism on Work Underway

“Bitcoin looks like Facebook today, but so did Friendster in its day.” — Brock Pierce, Managing Director of Clearstone Global

The Inside Bitcoins NYC conference dealt with a broad swath of topics from business models and profitability concerns to how Bitcoin can be an enabler of social freedoms.

And yet, much of the speaker focus and audience concern surrounded how Bitcoin can become more mainstream, how will it interact with or change the current infrastructure, and what (and who) will be the winning business model.

While there were discussions by the VC panel (Gold 2.0) and the keynote speaker, Charlie Shrem, on altcoins and other fiat currencies, the overwhelming consensus is that Bitcoin will be the dominant currency in the space.

As Brock Pierce, Managing Director of Clearstone Global, cautions “is Bitcoin Friendster, Myspace or Facebook?  It looks like Facebook today, but so did Friendster in its day.”

Looking at the state of the Bitcoin community today, many of the companies are still nascent – a number of the represented firms have had recent shutdowns/relaunches or are soon to launch private betas.  There continues to be a strong interest in education about legal and regulatory issues, today particular emphasized by the interest in the overview of major legal topics by Jacob S. Farber, Senior Counsel at Perkins Coie LLP.

Also represented on the post-lunch panel was James White, Director Tax Issues for the US Government Accountability Office, demonstrating how the government is taking a more active interest in the space.

Overall, the conference explored the major topics that entrepreneurs and potential financial investors are grappling with.  Among the motivations discussed by Anthony Gallippi, Co-Founder and CEO of BitPay (site), is the reduction of credit card payment fraud (estimated at $100 billion per year) and ability to accept payments from a much larger international consumer base.

Stephanie Murphy, from Let’s Talk Bitcoin, and Alan Safahi, founder and CEO of ZipZap, see the value in enabling freedom of speech through transactions outside the control of governments or without third-parties recording personal information.

However, for Bitcoin to become a mainstream monetary transfer mechanism, a number of issues need to be addressed, such as the noted legal uncertainties or the evolution of the current legacy infrastructure discussed by Maria Sparagis, President of DirectPayNet.

Ultimately, the major questions of adoption, future direction and industry winners continue to be hashed out.

Authored by Michael Smouha and Ronan Murphy, Contributors to On Bitcoin

Read other articles from the conference:

• Inside Bitcoins NYC Keynote: Is Bitcoin the New Financial Order?
• Finding Business Model Opportunities in Bitcoin – Inside Bitcoins NYC
• Building Bitcoin into the Core Architecture of the Web – Inside Bitcoins NYC

Like this? Share it.

Like this? Share it.

How to get Bitcoin into the hands of 2.4 billion people not using it today

Bitcoin has plenty of room to grow. With a market cap of roughly $1 billion USD, Bitcoin represents but a fraction of the United States’ $16.3 trillion USD money supply. Manu Sporny, founder of Digital Bazaar, is one of the people actively seeking to close the gap.

At the Inside Bitcoins NYC conference, Manu Sporny shared his answer to accelerate growth and provided a vision of adding 2.4 billion people to the Bitcoin ecosystem within the next five years.

Where might one find a market that large that can be on-boarded that quickly? To Sporny, the answer lies in the 2.4 billion people with access to the web and in the sheer global dominance of four popular web browsers: IE, Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

The challenge that naturally follows is how to integrate Bitcoin into the browser. Sporny is tackling this challenge by pushing for new W3C standards for the browser that will allow for more simplified transactions over the web.

The argument is that exchanging funds over the Web is far more complicated than it needs to be. While we can exchange massive quantities of data nearly instantaneously, financial transactions are slowed due to the speed of old money, credit card numbers, waiting for block chain verifications, PCI compliance and the like.

Exploring a Bitcoin Web Payments Solution

Sporny articulated two paths to easier and faster financial transactions.

The first is PaySwarm, a currency-agnostic standard for Web Payments. PaySwarm, being commercialized through a system called Meritora, is the first open, universal standard for payments on the Web, allowing users to execute zero-click payments of USD, Euro, Bitcoins or any other currency of their choosing.

The second option described by Sporny is the WebPayment API, another standard for browser-based payments being developed by Mozilla. The API would enable one-click purchase directly from the browser.

Sporny is very bullish on Bitcoin and with the potential creation of new W3C standards that will spur Bitcoin use, it’s now “time for entrepreneurs to get in on the ground floor.”

Authored by Michael Smouha and Ronan Murphy, Contributors to On Bitcoin

CC image by jurvetson

Like this? Share it.