Lifeboat Foundation

Will Conley — Slash Gear

Bitcoin miner Milly Bitcoin has done a little citizen letter-writing, and the results should make virtual currency miners breathe a sigh of relief. Milly Bitcoin’s mining company Atlantic City Bitcoin last June wrote to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requesting an official administrative ruling on whether ACB must register as a money transfer service. FinCEN has now replied, and the answer is no.

ACB requested the ruling because there has been much confusion as to whether mining — and spending the proceeds — constituted a money transfer service. This may seem a ridiculous question to virtual currency aficionados, but the confusion arose because some businesses dealing in virtual currencies do indeed operate as money transfer services. Mining and spending virtual currency, however, is not a transfer service. Such was the ruling by FinCEN.

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BANGALORE: Tarun Thadani, the proprietor of a vintage-themed pizza outlet in the posh Worli area of Mumbai, thinks he is making history. On Saturday, his restaurant Kolonial announced that its patrons can pay in bitcoins instead of rupees, thus laying claim to the title of being India’s first eatery to accept the new-age currency. “Right now, people are a bit sceptical about bitcoins, but it’s going to become big. I am testing the waters,” said Thadani, 30, who is a bitcoin owner and a host to several bitcoin meetups at Kolonial.

Continue reading “From eatery to meetup, entrepreneurs increasingly accepting 'bitcoins' in India” »

“One day, millions of car parts could be printed as quickly as newspapers and as easily as pushing a button on theoffice copy machine, saving months of development time and millions of dollars,” so starts a media statement Emirates 24|7 just received from Ford.

Continue reading “Mustang 3D-prints engine… Wait, what?” »

Terence Lee for Tech in Asia

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, has decided not to intervene on whether businesses can accept Bitcoin as a means of transacting goods and services.

“Whether or not businesses accept bitcoins in exchange for their goods and services is a commercial decision in which MAS does not intervene,” it told Singapore-based Bitcoin trading platform Coin Republic in an email.

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By Mohana Ravindranath — The Washington Post

In May, brothers Guiseppe and Mario Lanzone started a Peruvian food business in Washington, hoping to cash in on the District’s enchantment with food trucks.

Today, the two are betting on another trend: a virtual currency called Bitcoin. The Lanzones decided a few weeks ago they would be accepting Bitcoin, announcing the change in a tweet to their 800 followers.

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By Julie Bort — Business Insider

Here’s an interesting idea: Maybe your company could be raising extra money by using its data center to mine for bitcoins at night.

The thought was half seriously suggested by Jason Langone, director of Federal Sales at a hot Valley startup called Nutanix. He wrote a blog post that explains how it could be done.

Rob Wile

Online retail outlet Overstock.com will start accepting Bitcoins as early as the end of Q2 2014, according to CEO Patrick Byrne.

They will be the first major online retailer to do so. The news was first reported on newsBTC.

Byrne told us by phone this afternoon that he considers himself a believer in the Austrian economics school, which says fiat currency, like the U.S. dollar, is fundamentally flawed since it is prone to inflation and manipulation. Bitcoin, like gold, is immune to this, since there is a fixed supply.

“Philosophically, we support Bitcion,” he said.

Ernst & Young LLP is predicting a rise in demand for certain types of insurance, such as cyber and nanotechnology.

The consulting firm announced Tuesday the release of the EY 2014 US Property-Casualty Insurance Outlook, which recommends that P&C carriers “invest in innovation of product development processes and delivery to meet rising demand for protection.”

For example, according to the report, a lack of “any meaningful history” with nanotechnology indicates that potential risks are not easy to assess.

“The emerging applications of nanotechnology in the manufacture or use of medicine, cosmetics, drug delivery, robotics, materials science and other products and systems create potential liability exposures,” EY noted. “Examples include bodily injury (analogous to asbestos exposure) and environmental damage from nanoparticles escaping uncontrolled into the air or water supply.”

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