Stripe Ceasing WooCommerce Bitcoin Payments

Stripe Bitcoin Patrick Collison

Stripe has announced that it has decided to stop accepting Bitcoin through its payment gateway. Stripe was a pioneer in online cryptocurrency payments, and was the first major payments company to incorporate Bitcoin into its platform back in 2014. The last day for Stripe Bitcoin payments will be April 23rd, 2018. This is a bummer for anyone who uses WooCommerce and wants to accept Bitcoin. WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress sites. Why Is Stripe No Longer Accepting Bitcoin? The problem, as conveyed by Patrick Collison, one of…

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What is Kodak’s Coin Built On?

KodakCoin

It seems ridiculous, but shares of Kodak (KODK) spiked on Tuesday when it announced that it would be launching a venture called KodakOne, an “anti-piracy” service that will use a new cryptocurrency called KodakCoin. Since the announcement on Monday, Kodak’s stock has rallied up almost 57%. What is KodakCoin Built On? Kodak will not be launching its own crypto-coin from scratch. Like many businesses that have ventured into coins and tokens, KodakCoin will be built on the Ethereum network. Ethereum is considered a “2nd Generation Blockchain”… It is a cryptographic…

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5 Reasons Bitcoin is Rising in Value

Physical Bitcoin Currency

What’s interesting about Bitcoin (and other legitimate cryptos such as Litecoin and Ethereum) is that, other than faith, there is no underlying value to them. There are no accepted valuation or economic models that are taught in business schools that they defy… No price earnings ratios, no underlying mortgage backed securities, no ratings agencies… Anyone with apparent authority and knowledge of cryptocurrencies can have a legitimate opinion about what might happen. The Winklevoss brothers can claim that Bitcoin will reach $1,000,000 per coin simply because they make the leap from…

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What Will Probably Happen With Bitcoin

What will probably happen to Bitcoin

What will probably happen to Bitcoin is that it will be displaced by a new cryptocurrency launched by a massive company with huge structural network effects. The promise of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, is that they offer a solution to security problems introduced in transactions involving trusted third parties (TTPs). However, Bitcoin has issues as a currency. Instead, it is mostly speculated on as a store of value, akin to “Gold 2.0”. As a currency Bitcoin could easily be replaced by an established giant… Bitcoin, which is open source, could fall…

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What is Litecoin and Should I Buy It?

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin (ticker: LTC) is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was founded by Charles “Charlie” Lee (aka “@satoshilite” on Twitter). Mr. Lee is a former employee of both Google and Coinbase. What is the History of Litecoin? Litecoin was released on 10/7/2011 on Github as an open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. The name “Litecoin” is a trademarked term in the U.S. and Singapore. Litecoin was an early “fork” of the original Bitcoin core. However, Litecoin is technically different than Bitcoin in a few ways. Specifically, Litecoin was created to…

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Coinbase Should Be Worth More Than Bitcoin

Coinbase worth

It occurred to me this morning that I trust Coinbase more than I trust Bitcoin itself. As THE broker, for all intents and purposes, of any of my cryptocurrency transactions, and the keeper of my wallet, Coinbase is the gatekeeper to anything crypto for me… (at least in terms of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin). If you want to trade Cardano, you’ll need to look elsewhere. How Valuable Is Coinbase? It was recently revealed that Coinbase earned over $1 billion in 2017. This is amazing for a company that is only…

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Scary, Volatile, Bitcoin…

You know that scary music recording that you hear every year playing at someone’s house on Halloween…? That was the music that was playing in my head this morning as Bitcoin launched to almost $12,000 before cratering to the mid $8K range and then heading back up north of $10K. Watching the price of Bitcoin this morning made me think of those pictures of Wall Street traders with insane looks on their faces while they observed the ticker symbols. Bitcoin was up 14% in what looked like a few minutes…

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Bitcoin $10,000

Bitcoin Hit $10,000 Bitcoin hit $10,000 on Coinbase about 30 minutes ago. Bitcoin and Ethereum are becoming cryptocurrency brands. The more new stories that refer to them, and the more companies that trade them, the greater the mystique. I’ve noticed that Coinbase’s focus on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin seems to help those cryptocurrencies. People who use Coinbase, which apparently is a lot, have no other options but to buy those currencies on the Coinbase exchange. Coinbase is probably the most well known cryptocurrency exchange, and it doesn’t offer trading of…

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Cryptocurrencies and Power Laws

Vanguard AUM

There are dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of cryptocurrencies out there. However, there are only a handful of cryptocurrencies that anyone who has some knowledge of cryptocurrencies has ever heard of: Bitcoin (BTC) Ethereum (ETH) Litecoin (LTC) Bitcoin Cash Ripple It’s likely to stay this way forever because of something called a power law.. Power laws work in a “winner take all” sort of way, rewarding the winner in a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species of whatever with the vast majority of the rewards… Cryptocurrencies are no different.…

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