In a census of 100 U.S. retailers that are also , over half have said that they would accept bitcoin as payment. Square is a payment processing provider with a large, nuanced offering for point of sale.
Dan Dolev, an analyst at , said, “This result is surprising, especially amid bitcoin’s elevated volatility.” The results of the survey point to a remarkable, almost inevitable acceptance of cryptocurrency among retailers.
Squares Income Streams Not Yet Visible
, CEO of Twitter and Square founder, said that “bitcoin, for us, is not stopping at buying and selling.” He was commenting on the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February 2018.
“We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry and we want to learn as quickly as possible.” The company’s emerging prospects have elicited some comments pointing to it being “like Amazon in its early days.”
Wallstreet resident Nomura’s Dovey also said that:
“Undoubtedly, the success of the Cash App … is a significant achievement. Currently, an individual can set up the app in minutes and send peer-to-peer payments, store money, receive their paycheck and buy and sell bitcoin.”
Dovey was referring to Square’s November 2017 project that allowed some beta users to purchase via its Cash App, an app that enables users to send money to their friends. The company went on to say in January 2018 that is was making the option available to nearly all users.
Nomura Instinet confirmed its buy rating for , listing merchants’ openness to accepting in-store. It is apparent to Nomura and other observers that Square has a large and yet untapped opportunity to extend cryptocurrency payment solutions to its clients, a prospect well met by the retailers survey results show. Dolev confirmed $64 as a price target for Square shares, which would be a 23.5 percent upside to Tuesday March 13, 2018’s close.
The published survey results :
“Sixty percent of the participating merchants (we note that we surveyed U.S. merchants only) would be willing to accept bitcoin in lieu of USD payment. This is particularly interesting given the volatility in bitcoin in recent months.”
Users Already On Board
Some seven million people already use the company’s Cash payment app, allowing users to purchase almost throughout America. In the survey, the 31-40 age group was the highest representation, with around 40 percent of respondents falling into that group. The respondents spanned a diverse range of industries, and all had a minimum of $100,000 in annual revenue.
The frequent need to address slow transaction times, often high fees and the volatile circus bitcoin has been on the markets at times all make many analysts skeptical of the digital asset as a legitimate currency.
Although bitcoin and many others are constantly trying to address scalability issues, the persistent reputation of digital coins as slow and complicated makes many retailers in the U.S. still largely hesitant about virtual payments. According to Yelp, only 28 restaurants in Greater New York City currently accept bitcoin.
However, the firm hinted there is a possibility that they are looking to to operate in New York state; this regulatory requirement has in the past from the state.
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bitcoin mining heavyweights , which controls over 60 percent of the entire bitcoin network hashrate, has hinted towards funding the creation of blockchain-centric private central banks.
Blockchain Powered Central Banks
In a keynote speech at the organized by the and Georgetown University’s , the mining manufacturer disclosed that Bitmain is seriously considering investing in 20 to 30 startups that would function as blockchain private central Banks.
The distributed ledger powered institutions would bridge the gap between the fiat world and the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Jihan Wu opined that private central banks are different from traditional central banks and “are better at creating more convenient user experiences for consumers.” He is also aware of the lucrative market that lay in such a venture:
“We all know that a central bank is a very profitable business.”
The successful entrepreneur declared that his company is interested in working with private central banks that would also be responsible for issuing private currency as a service and in absolute compliance with the necessary laws governing the blockchain industry.
“We at Bitmain are very interested in private central bank startups that are going to use blockchain technology to issue private currencies and set it as a service, in a legal way. We would like to invest in 20 to 30 startups whose efforts are focused on this unique emerging economy,” he said.
Other Ambitions
Although Bitmain is already the biggest bitcoin miner so far, the firm is not relaxing on its oars. Wu has even revealed the firm’s ambition to extend its mining operations to Canada.
This move comes from the fact that the North American country is cryptocurrency friendly with abundant electricity. Plus, the Chinese government can just wake up one day and decide to crush Bitmain’s mining operations to its authoritarian nature and lack of support for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
It might interest you to know that Bitmain has also been investigating for quite some time now and has created AI solutions. Despite these developments, mining will remain company’s most reliable revenue generator.
Crypto Regulation
Contrary to the opinions of some analysts who, in the past, claimed that the crypto markets would finally consolidate around some established coins, Wu doesn’t agree with that speculation and has said that:
“The fact is that bitcoin is declining and we can see that lots of other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Dash grow very fast, and you just cannot explain if you think the theory is right that the market will consolidate.”
The business mogul firmly believes that the over 1,500 coins and tokens that exist in the crypto ecosystem today all have something to offer since there is nothing like a perfect cryptocurrency.
“There are no perfect cryptocurrencies on the market, so the market will require more cryptocurrencies,” he declared.
That being said, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission () has always been against unregistered ICOs that engage in the sales of securities. In the latest development on March 7, 2018, the SEC has stated that all crypto trading platforms that help users exchange tokens generated from initial coin offerings must be appropriately registered.
Wu opined that he sincerely believes a lot of tokens can be categorized as securities but the regulators need to formulate helpful guidelines that won’t crush innovation.
“Most tokens will very likely fall into the definition of a security and will be subject to the regulation of a security. But I believe regulators need to prepare a good answer on how to deal with such business innovations.”
On February 26, 2018, BTCManager that an open letter was written by the anonymous founder of Cobrabitcoin stating the need to change the bitcoin proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm in order to end Bitmain’s dominance of the bitcoin network.
Now, Bitmain wants to diversify their dominance by funding blockchain central banks that will issue cryptocurrencies. Will this move go down well for the entire bitcoin industry or will it attract more criticisms? Only time will tell.
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