Ripple's Director of Business Development: Major Players to Adopt the Network in Near Future

Ripple Labs has been on a massive hiring spree, recently boosting their payroll to 30 employees:

We're a team of 30 now! Meet the latest additions to our tech team: http://t.co/9KJgsXcLX7 #ripple
— Chris Larsen (@chrislarsensf) November 6, 2013

Occasionally they'll use their blog to profile a new hire; this time it was Welly Scully, their new "Director of Business Development."

When answering the last question, "what do you think will be the tipping point for merchant adoption," he dropped this bomb:

"Once merchants realize that the network is secure and stable, and that the value proposition is viable, there will be a race to join the network.

The signal will be clear when the first major merchants go live on the network. Based on the response we have received so far from some of the largest actors in the ecosystem, this event will be around the corner."

Just who is Ripple Labs in discussion with? Sounds like we might find out soon... and it could be big.

Who do you think it could be, and when Welly refers to "actors in the ecosystem," is he talking about banks, or is he talking about merchants? Please comment below!

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This Will End Poorly

I don't care how awesome Bitcoin is; all signs point to a massive bubble:

tradingview.com

You can't go parabolic forever!

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"Bitcoin Black Friday" Parters with "Fight for the Future"

Site: http://bitcoinblackfriday.com
Site: http://www.fightforthefuture.org/

BITCOIN BLACK FRIDAY PARTNERS WITH FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE

Energizing Bitcoin’s Second Annual Black Friday Event

Bitcoin Black Friday (formerly known as Bitcoin Friday) announced today a partnership with Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group best known organizing the first massive protests against SOPA in 2011. Fight for the Future will be providing Bitcoin Black Friday with resources, viral organizing knowledge, and grassroots experience. Through this partnership, Bitcoin Black Friday aims to appeal not only to Bitcoiners, but to any internet user looking for a better way to pay for goods online.

“Before Bitcoin Friday, in early 2012, people were wondering whether Bitcoin could even exist as a currency, whether people would ever spend their hoarded bitcoins.” The founder of Bitcoin Friday, Jon Holmquist, remarks, ”Last year’s wildly successful event alleviated those fears.” The idea is simple: Bitcoin merchants opt-in for a free listing on the site and list their ‘deal’ that is only redeemable during Bitcoin Friday. Last year’s deals were wide-ranging from 20% off a WIKISPEED car to 25% off VPN services. Participating merchants saw anywhere from 2x as many sales to some merchants having their best single day of sales ever. BitPay, the largest Bitcoin payment processor, recorded their largest amount of orders placed in a single day during Bitcoin Friday, and other Bitcoin payment processors universally reported similarly high results.

This year, Bitcoin Black Friday is occurring on November 29th, the same day as Black Friday, and will include a much larger selection of merchants. Instead of being able to fit all participating merchants on one page, the website will now be split up into categories. About 500 bitcoin-accepting merchants are going to be participating.

New this year for Bitcoin Black Friday is a charity section. If Bitcoin consumers have a few bitcents in their wallets after their shopping sprees, they can donate directly to one of the many charities and nonprofits accepting bitcoin, such as the Internet freedom group Fight for the Future or Sean’s Outpost.

Bitcoin Black Friday is not only online. The digital currency Bitcoin is gaining an increasing amount of ‘meatspace’ businesses. To celebrate Bitcoin brick-and-mortar merchants, Bitcoin Black Friday Parties will be occurring around the globe at locations that accept bitcoin payments in person. In Berlin, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and in other major cities, these parties will bring Bitcoiners in the community together, to bond over cocktails and love of cryptocurrency.

“We are extremely excited to be helping with this year’s Bitcoin Black Friday,” said Fight for the Future co-director Holmes Wilson, “Bitcoin is so close to mainstream adoption, and moments like this can help push it over the edge.”

Over the last year, Bitcoin has risen in value, popularity, and adoption. The growth of Bitcoin is being tracked by the massive growth in merchant adoption. Last year’s event drew in about 75 merchants. This year’s event will pull in more than 500. More and more people around the world are turning to bitcoin as an exciting, secure, and innovative online currency. Bitcoin Black Friday will help rally the growing bitcoin community and help merchants connect to a new vibrant and global market.

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1 For more specific numbers: http://codinginmysleep.com/bitcoin-friday-results/

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Put that Obsolete Bitcoin Mining Hardware to Good Use and Earn XRPs!

Ripple Labs just announced another XRP giveaway:

While you donate computing power to useful projects such as testing HIV and cancer drugs, or discovering new materials for renewable energy applications, you will earn points which can be exchanged for Ripples (XRPs).

Those of you with obsolete Bitcoin mining hardware (i.e. GPUs) can once again earn money by joining the Ripple Labs Team in the World Community Grid. Note that not all projects support GPU mining, but definitely CPU mining.

While I doubt this was an intentional jab at Bitcoin, it's sort of making a point that Bitcoin mining is a little wasteful.

Giveaway instructions can be found here.

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Bitcoin Revolution Spreads to Togo! #BitcoinAfrica

After reading the following trip report I can just say WOW! It is awesome how the information about new technology is spreading, and even more awesome when people are so quick to see the benefit for them.

Below is quote from Elvis, who is helping Borja on the #BitcoinAfrica tour.

"I'm Elvis, the travel mate of Borja and I am also helping with the bitcoin project. Today I will be sharing the last stories until Cotonou (Benin) where we arrived today.
We crossed Burkina Faso in just 2 days, after being in Mali where we had an amazing experience, kind people, beautiful scenery, Burkina was quite a change for us.
People were friendly sometimes and the scenery was nice in the north but after the capital it changed a lot and we didn't even stop for a single picture.

But luckily things changed again, after entering in Togo I felt for the first time that I was in the real Africa, the dense forests, tall trees, no tarmac and the people seem very nice and friendly. The border crossing was fast and easy and no bribes.

We started driving trough the big dust of the big trucks crossing the pistes of orange soil, it was beautiful but after 30Km and the sun going down the visibility was pour so we decided to stop and look for a place to sleep.
The scenery was great around us and we spotted a little tribe with bambo/mud houses so we quickly decided to approach the chef of the tribe and ask for permission to camp with them. After talking in their local language and many people giving their opinion they said yes.


The chef initially told us to sleep in his house with his 2 wife's but they had suck a nice big tree in the back so we mounted the tents there and during the process of mounting everything we had half of the tribe looking at us, amazed with our gear and us, the way people looked at us was funny, all the kind of reactions and I believe some of them never seen a white person or motorbikes like ours.

So after a long day we had to shower and we pretty much showered around the manual water pump in the middle of the field and it was already dark, but it was better than many crappy hotels we were.

The sky was amazing, for the first time we saw it so clear and full of stars and after a nice meal time to recharge batteries.

Next day we headed south and Borja was unlucky with another puncture, but all good and we quickly found a "mechanic" to fix it. During the process we had the opportunity to listen to the stories of some people that were surrounding us and we were amazed with the difficulties that this people have to make a living. So we share some ideas and explain them how things work in Europe and they kept saying, "This is Africa"! A place with loads of corruption and where you need to have contacts to be able to accomplish your business goals.
So it was a good opportunity to explain about BitCoin and they were amazed and some of them even wrote down the website of localbitcoins.

Pucture fixed and we headed to Lomé and found a place at the beach. We stayed a few days to service the bikes and some administration. We also visit the Fetish Market, only white magic is what they say and visited the waterfalls in Kpalimé, all very nice experience.

During our stay, we luckily found a person interested in buying bitcoins and it was a pleasant transaction, just a few delays due the Internet, (we had dinner while the trade was done) in Africa you need to be very patient.

So this is it, we just arrived in Cotonou and more stories will follow."

Up to date, the success rate for spreading Bitcoin to Africa has been pretty good! Please if you know any people willing to exchange from the next locations, contact Borja on LocalBitcoins or create your own ad to your country for free.

Benin -Cotonou
Cameroon -Douala
Nigeria -Abuja
 Republic of Congo -Brazzaville
Democratic Republic of Congo -Kinshasha
Angola -Luanda
Namibia -Windhoek
Bostwana -Gaborone
South Africa-Cape Town

 

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Bitcoin Price Charts

Thanks to dc-charts.com for the new Bitcoin price chart that can be seen on the right-hand side of this blog. If you're a webmaster or a blogger, I highly recommend dc-charts!

There are many other options available, including charts and widgets for the most popular alt-coins.

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