10 Exciting Things About Bitcoin - Right Now

1) The success of Bitmit - Bitcoin's eBay. Over 550 listings and growing rapidly.

2) The boom happening over at Silk Road. While I don't condone the illegal applications of Bitcoin, the site's success if further proof that Bitcoin is a technology that fills a gap.

3) The appeal and rapid growth of Ogrr.com, which is bringing in hundreds of new users each month and expanding exponentially.

4) Mt.Gox is about to launch "e-commerce solutions" this week.

5) Recent discussions regarding making Bitcoin truly anonymous.

6) The upcoming completion and launch of Bitcoin.com by the good folks at Tradehill (currently down).

7) The popularity of coinworker.com.

8) The announcement of the upcoming Bitcoin Conference in London.

9) Through no fault of their own, tens of thousands of Bitcoins were stolen from various high profile Bitcoin businesses. Why is this good news? Not a single user was impacted as the owners chose to absorb the losses. It was also the first time that a major hack or closure didn't impact Bitcoin's market value.

10) And the most exciting news of all: you can now tip cows for Bitcoins.

Read more »

Silk Road Growing in Popularity at Impressive Rate

On the Bitcointalk Forums, Blitzboom posted a recent snapshot of the Silk Road Forum stats, showing the site is growing rapidly.

On a monthly basis, more users are joining the Silk Road Forums than the Bitcointalk Forums!

Read more »

'Bitcoins for Christmas' Donates 85 BTC to Habitat for Humanity

The March 1st deadline for reclaiming non-redeemed Bitcoins came and went and a non-trivial amount of Bitcoins were left in the 'Bitcoins for Christmas' sleigh: 85 BTC worth over $400.

As was promised, the leftover Bitcoins were donated to Habitat for Humanity, where they will be put to good use building homes for the less fortunate.

Thank you everyone for participating, especially the sponsors who helped us cover a portion of the development and hosting costs. 74 gifts were sent, totaling 250 BTC.

We look forward to doing it again next year!

Read more »

Bitcoin Network Marks Three Consecutive Months of Steady Growth

Showing its resiliency, the Bitcoin network has continued to grow steadily since December of 2011, and is now on pace to challenge the network computation capacity previously hit at the peak of the 2011 "bubble".

Source

Through all the politics, hacks and cons, this here is the proof that Bitcoin isn't going away anytime soon.

Vires in Numeris!

Read more »

Bitcoin Arms Dealer Goes Live

First there was the drugs...

Then there was the sex...

And now, there's the violence...

Color me... not surprised.

Read more »

Bitcoin Quickly Becoming the Western Union for Virtual Wealth

A quick apology to my readers: my day job has been a little nuts and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, but I will nonetheless take the occasional break to work on the blog. My enthusiasm and interest in Bitcoin has not waned in the least, and I'm still extremely excited about its prospects.

---

If you haven't already read my article on Ogrr.com from October of last year, I encourage you to have a read. At the time, I felt Payward Inc. was tapping into the most logical and relevant market for Bitcoin; four months later and I dare say they've proven me right.

Since they opened their doors to the public, Ogrr's user base has expanded rapidly, with nearly 1300 members signed up as of today, and 800 registrations in the last month alone. More importantly, Payward's Jesse Powell reports that a large chunk of the new membership are gamers first and Bitcoin users second, meaning the site is doing a fantastic job as an ambassador for Bitcoin.

Ogrr's growth can be attributed to the fact that Bitcoin is hands-down the most efficient and inexpensive means for gamers to move their online wealth from one virtual world into another (or to the real world). Other sites, like BitMit, Bitcoin's most successful auction site, are also being used by gamers in a similar fashion.

In December, when Ars Technica touted Bitcoin as a potential competitor to currency-moving companies like Western Union, the article failed to touch on the potential for Bitcoin to impact the way virtual currencies are traded, which is a far more natural application for Bitcoin.

For the moment, there's merely a crack in a massive dam holding back a multi-billion dollar virtual goods industry from spilling into the Bitcoin economy. This crack will quickly widen in the coming months. Even today, I could conceivably slay a bunch of monsters in World of Warcraft and buy my very real dinner with the proceeds.

Thanks to the archaic banking system, Bitcoin isn't (yet) the easiest means of transferring wealth between the United States, Europe, or Japan, but it is definitely the easiest way to transfer wealth between Britannia, Norrath, and Azeroth. Based on Ogrr's performance to date, we're going to see Bitcoin catch on pretty quickly amongst the "citizens" of these worlds.

Read more »

Bitcoin Jesus is Getting Ready to Perform Another Miracle

Roger Ver, a.k.a. "Bitcoin Jesus," is on a mission to get Bitcoin into the big time:

"What sort of bounty is still available if I can convince the following company to accept Bitcoins publicly on their website?

Publicly traded on the Nasdaq
Stock price currently over $40
Market cap of over $500,000,000
Anual sales of over $300,000,000
Worldwide customer base.
Would greatly benefit from accepting Bitcoins as a payment method."

Who could it be???

Read more »