Welcome To Bitcoin, USA: St. Petersburg Merchants Embrace Cryptocurrency Before 'Bitcoin Bowl'

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At The Alligator Attraction in Madeira Beach, Florida, tourists can learn about koi fish, take photos with a tortoise, or feed huge alligators. But come Monday, visitors who stop by the attraction will be able to do something even stranger: Theyll be able to pay for those experiences using bitcoin.

The Alligator Attraction is one of 86 businesses in Madeira Beach -- a 2-mile-long town near St. Petersburg -- that are gearing up to accept bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency. Thats because Madeira Beach is a partner of the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl football game and recently became the first city in the world to officially embrace bitcoin.

Its the age of technology. Its time to move forward with payments, said Sonny Flynn, the business manager of The Alligator Attraction and two other Madeira Beach businesses that are set to begin accepting bitcoin.

Madeira Beach has always been a tourism hotspot, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year who want to relax on the small towns sugar white sand beach, go deep-sea fishing off its shores, or have dinner and drinks at its boardwalk eateries. But after Madeira Beach was picked to host the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowls annual Beach Bash event through 2016, the citys leaders figured they could get themselves extra publicity and lure more travelers by becoming a tourism destination for bitcoin users around the globe.

Late last month, the city passed a resolution to begin accepting bitcoin for certain payments. Residents can now use the cryptocurrency to pay for boat fuel and fishing tackle at the city-run marina, and come next year, theyll be able to pay for parking tickets using the code-based money. In the meantime, city officials are in a mad rush to sign up as many businesses as they can by Christmas Eve, the day of the Beach Bash.

That event is expected to draw as many as 5,000 visitors to the small town to watch the players from the University of Central Florida and North Carolina State University as they compete in silly beach events like Hoola Hoop and belly-flop contests before they face off on the gridiron. By then, Madeira Beach officials hope it will be possible for tourists to go the entire day in the city making payments using nothing but bitcoin.

"Bitcoin users are very loyal to it. Theyre into it, and if they find a city where they can go and use it, they are going to book their vacation there, said Misty Wells, a spokeswoman for Madeira Beach.

To use bitcoin in the real world, consumers have to sign up for a bitcoin wallet. They can do that through services such as Trucoin or Airbitz, which will be signing up fans at the game on Dec. 26. After that, consumers exchange dollars for bitcoin, and then go to a merchant that accepts the cryptocurrency. At the point of payment, the merchant will show the consumer a code that they scan using their smartphone. The code tells their bitcoin wallet who to send the payment to, which occurs after the consumer enters the amount owed and approves the payment.

Madeira Beach officials hope to get more than 100 merchants, or more than 80 percent of the citys businesses, signed up to accept bitcoin by game day. Helping them in that effort is BitPay, a bitcoin-processing startup based out of Atlanta and the title sponsor of the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl through 2016. BitPays goal for the game is to get bitcoin further into the mainstream, said Stephanie Wargo, BitPay vice president of marketing.

"We thought that this was a nice, easy, fun introduction to the masses on what bitcoin is, Wargo said. The game needed it to be somewhere that we could make a destination place that even after the bowl game all of these businesses could still attract bitcoin consumers to their business. We wanted to make sure it was some place that you would want to come and visit. Being next to the beach, it makes it quite nice.

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Welcome To Bitcoin, USA: St. Petersburg Merchants Embrace Cryptocurrency Before 'Bitcoin Bowl'

FTP Episode 001 Minecraft Gaming Bitcoin, Mining and Altcoin Discussions – Video

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FTP Episode 001 Minecraft Gaming Bitcoin, Mining and Altcoin Discussions
Fun Time Podcast Episode #001 Join us for some Minecraft Gaming with discussions about Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining and the Altcoin markets. http://funtimepodcast.com (under construction) #hypergg...

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FTP Episode 001 Minecraft Gaming Bitcoin, Mining and Altcoin Discussions - Video

Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum, Proof of Stake, The future of Bitcoin – Video

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Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum, Proof of Stake, The future of Bitcoin
Join us and our very special guest, Vitalik Buterin, the inventor and co-founder of Ethereum. If you have any questions or topics you would like to suggest for the show, please email them to...

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Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum, Proof of Stake, The future of Bitcoin - Video

Russians move into bitcoin as ruble tanks

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Transaction volumes between the ruble and digital currency bitcoin enjoyed their biggest day of the year on Tuesday as the Russian central bank failed to halt the ruble's tumble.

The ruble plunged more than 11 percent against the greenback Tuesday its steepest intraday fall since 1998 as traders dumped a currency that has crumbled on the back of weaker oil prices and sanctions against Russia by the West.

Volatile trading continued on Wednesday, with the currency gaining over 10 percent against the dollar, although it remains down 13 percent on the week.

Other than the dollar, the beneficiaries of this flight from Russia appeared to be the euro, the yen, sterling -- and bitcoin. Data from bitcoincharts.com, which tracks financial and technical statistics for bitcoin, shows that transaction volumes with the ruble spiked on Tuesday spiked to 819 from an average of 230 trades for the last 30-day period. This was close to a 250 percent increase in transactions and was the highest volume seen since December 2013, according to the website.

"The news coming out of Russia is indeed unparalleled," Bobby Lee, the co-founder and CEO of prominent Chinese bitcoin exchange BTC China, told CNBC via email.

Read MoreRussia starts selling its foreign currency stock

"The high trading volumes with the ruble is to be expected, given the flight away from this struggling currency. Bitcoin is therefore a natural destination, as well as other strong central bank currencies."

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Russians move into bitcoin as ruble tanks

Was Bitcoin the Worst Investment of 2014?

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David, thanks for joining us.

Good morning.

A lot of people, including the producers of the show are constantly making one of me because i was and am such a bi tcoin believer.

It has come down from $1100 to $350. does that bum you out?

If you look at december of 2012, bitcoin was $13. if you have been a long-term holder of this asset, that's a pretty good return.

And more important than the short-term price movements, you've seen these incredible announcements in the last few days.

Take microsoft -- you know, it does not get much larger than microsoft as far as companies that could be accepting bitcoin.

And more importantly, we see a huge user growth in people creating bitcoin wallets.

If you are having these great announcements and support, why is a trading like you know what?

I think it is a long-term valuation creation.

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Was Bitcoin the Worst Investment of 2014?

Monkey Cage: Bitcoins financial network is doomed

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Tim Lee at Vox argues that Bitcoin is destined to succeed not as a currency but as a financial network.

Its a mistake to think about Bitcoin as a new kind of currency. What makes Bitcoin potentially revolutionary is that its the worlds first completely open financial network. Think about the internet. It didnt seem like a very practical technology in the 1980s. But it was an open platform that anyone could build on, and in the long run it proved to be really useful. The internet succeeded because Silicon Valley have created applications that harness the internets power while shielding users from its complexity. Bitcoin applications can work the same way.

The Bitcoin network serves the same purpose as mainstream payment networks such as Visa or Western Union. you want to build a business based on one of those networks, you have to get permission from the owner. And thats not always easy. To use the Visa network, for example, you have to comply with hundreds of pages of regulations. The Visa network also has high fees, and there are some things Visa wont let you do on its network at all. Bitcoin is different. Because no one owns or controls the network, there are no limits on how people can use it. One obvious application is international money transfers. Bitcoin is a payment network that happens to have its own currency, not the other way around.

This looks, initially, like a plausible and attractive argument. But from a political science perspective, it misses something very, very important. There is a reason why you have to comply with hundreds of pages of regulations to use the Visa network that goes beyond Visas selfish corporate interests. That reason is government. Governments regulate payment networks very heavily, for a wide variety of reasons, which include making sure that people dont use these networks to support activities that governments dont like. They use financial intermediaries as points of controlthat allow them to control who does business with whom. The Obama administrations undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, delivered a speech four days ago that copiously illustrates this point.

Over the past decade or so, one important way that the United States has protected our nations core interests, projected power, and exercised leadership on the world stage is through the increasing use of financial measures. Far from just focusing on terrorist financing and money laundering, my office in the Treasury Department is now regularly called upon to help advance a variety of U.S. national security and foreign policy goals. financial measures have become far more powerful tools of statecraft, and their effects are multiplied in a world defined by economic interdependence.

Compare, for example, Jeffersons failure to our ongoing efforts to use sanctions to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Together with partners around the world, we have imposed what many believe is the most effective set of financial and economic sanctions in history. Carefully designed and customized to maximize pressure, they have impeded Irans ability to acquire material for its nuclear program, isolated it from the international financial system, drastically slashed its oil exports, and deprived it of access to a sizeable portion of its oil revenues and foreign reserves. Not surprisingly, the impact on Irans economy has been dramatic: its budget deficit and inflation have spiked, the value of its currency has sharply declined, foreign investment has all but dried up, and overall economic activity has stagnated.

The reason that the U.S. can do this is because it has a lot of effective control over financial networks. It can put pressure on banks (including foreign banks, which have been fined billions of dollars for not complying with the U.S. sanctions regime) to isolate Iran from the international system. In Cohens words:

Put simply, financial institutions everywhere need dollars to serve their customers, and thus require access to U.S. banks through correspondent accounts to settle their customers transactions. That means that foreign banks are especially attuned to our sanctions.

Because so many international transactions are (a) settled in dollars and (b) settled across payment systems run by banks and other financial intermediaries that are vulnerable to U.S. pressure, the U.S. can use these systems to exert political control. Now, imagine the likely response of the U.S. (and the E.U., and, for that matter, China) to a payment network which is designed from the ground up to be decentralized, so that it is impossible for any specific intermediaries to really control payment flows from one actor to another. Such a network would be impossible for states to control. The U.S.wouldnt be able to use it, for example, to squeeze Iran out of the world financial system. If such a network ever showed signs of really becoming established (rather than being a relatively small-scale thought experiment, and money suck for libertarians with more ideology than good sense), the U.S.would ruthlessly act to isolate it from the international financial system.

And that is the story of Bitcoin. Up to this point, regulators have largely tolerated Bitcoin as a curiosity and experiment. While Bitcoin allows consumers to buy illegal drugs on Tor Hidden Services sites like Agora and Evolution, they dont do so on a sufficiently large scale to really cause enormous alarm. Regulators still dont know quite what to do with Bitcoin. But if Bitcoin were ever to threaten to become a truly decentralized payments network, owned by no one, and with no one e.g. capable of implementing Know Your Customer rules, regulators would know very well what to do with it. Theyd introduce regulatory guidances and pass laws to freeze it off from the regular financial system. Very possibly, Bitcoin could still survive at the margins (as the Hawala system has survived). However, it would be isolated, and in no position to threaten Visa or Mastercard, let alone the underlying payment and messaging services that really underpin the world financial system.

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Monkey Cage: Bitcoins financial network is doomed

Why There's Confusion Over Valuing Bitcoin

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Bitcoin presents a new type of nontraditional, highly technical, experimental, and global digital instrument to our already complex world. That fact should not conjure fear. It should engender excitement.

When I caught wind of Bitcoin as a newly minted MBA in the summer of 2012, I immediately scoffed. At the time, one bitcoin was trading at around $10, with a total market cap of about $50 million, which I thought was outrageous. It was a new, unregulated, "imaginary" Internet currency. Even though I initially rejected the idea as utopian, it stuck with me for some time thereafter.

Fast forward to early 2013, when the European banking crisis was reaching a fever pitch and Cyprus was on the verge of the first modern bank "bail-in." As the bitcoin price began to rise rapidly on a daily basis, and the situation in Europe continued to deteriorate, I decided to remove my "I know everything" MBA grad cap for an "I know nothing" crypto dunce cap. And, boy, am I glad I did.

The more I read, watched, and listened to bitcoin experts attempt to explain the most confusing and thought-provoking advancement since the Internet, the more fascinated I became, not only with the idea of frictionless transactions, but also by the idea of stateless currency.

Given the complexity of bitcoin (economic, financial, political, ideological), there are many topics of discussion that deserve specific attention in their own right. The Digital Currency Council does an excellent job of providing an overview of these issues in its free courses. In today's piece, we will focus on one of my favorite, and most misunderstood, topics: bitcoin valuation.

Valuing bitcoin: A traditional perspective First, I think it is important to give readers an idea of just how difficult it is to categorize bitcoin for valuation purposes. Unlike equities, bonds, and real estate, bitcoins create no cashflow. Most traditional financial analysis is based on terminally valuing an asset's or entity's discounted cashflows in order to determine a fair present value price for those future cashflows. In the case of equities, the earnings of a particular company that are distributed as dividends can be theoretically extended in perpetuity and discounted at current "risk-free" interest rates, thus creating what is knows as a discounted cashflow (DCF) valuation. Since bitcoin has no cashflow, this method of valuation is not useful.

With regard to stocks, thousands of companies in hundreds of industries provide a pool of potential comparables to value companies from a comparative and/or historical perspective. Again, there is only one bitcoin (and it is the first of its kind), so there is no use for this methodology, either. There are "altcoins," but they are not proper comps for bitcoin. (That is a topic for another day).

Moving to bonds or other interest-bearing instruments, they too provide steady and somewhat predictable cashflows due to the interest coupons that holders of the securities collect at set periods of time. Once again, we run into a problem with bitcoin due to the lack of regular cash payments, though this can be programmed into the blockchain as an added protocol layer. (Again, that is for another time.)

Lastly, real estate projects -- at least those purposed for investor profit and not for proprietor dwelling -- also produce steady cash revenue in the form of rents and homeowners' fees that act just as dividends and interest payments. No surprise that bitcoin cannot fit into this category, either, given its currency/commodity-like properties.

So the obvious question is still "What is the value of a bitcoin, and how do we derive it?"

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Why There's Confusion Over Valuing Bitcoin

Houston Comets – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Houston Comets Conference Western Founded 1997 Folded 2008 History Houston Comets (1997) Arena Compaq Center (19972003) Toyota Center (20042007) Reliant Arena (2008) City Houston, Texas Team colors Red, Silver, White, Blue Championships 4 (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000) Conference titles 4 (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000) Mascot Haley[1] Official website wnba.com/history/teams_familytree.html

The Houston Comets were a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team based in Houston, Texas, United States. Formed in 1997, the team was one of the original eight WNBA teams and won the first four championships of the league's existence. The Comets were the first dynasty of the WNBA and won more championships than any other team in the WNBA. The team was folded and disbanded by the league in 2008 because new ownership could not be found.

The Comets were also known for courting great women's basketball stars. The team had among its members Cynthia Cooper (the WNBA's first MVP), college and national team standout Sheryl Swoopes, Kim Perrot, who succumbed to cancer in 1999, and college stars Michelle Snow and Tina Thompson.

The Comets were one of the founding teams in the WNBA. They capped off the league's inaugural season in 1997 with a win over the New York Liberty in the WNBA championship game to win the WNBA's first championship. When the league expanded the next season, the Comets were moved from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference. In 1998, they put together a win loss record of 27-3 for a .900 winning percentage - a WNBA record that still stands. They went on to repeat as championships, defeating the Phoenix Mercury in the first-ever WNBA Finals that year due to the championship game being extended into a three game championship series.

In 1999, led by what was already known as the Big Three, (Cythnia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson), the Comets survived a highlight-film, last-second, court-to-court, game-winning shot by the Liberty's Teresa Weatherspoon in Game 2 of the finals to beat the Liberty in three games and win their third straight title, this one after the death of teammate Kim Perrot, who died of cancer. In 2000, the Comets went all the way to the Finals again, and beat the Liberty in two games to win their fourth title in a row. 2000 was the Comets' last championship and last WNBA Finals appearance in franchise history.

After Cooper retired in 2001, Houston clinched the playoffs with a 19-13 record, but lost in the first round in a sweep to the 2001 eventual champion Los Angeles Sparks. In 2002, when Swoopes was injured most of the year with a torn ACL, the Comets were able to qualify for the playoffs with a 24-8 record, but lost to the Utah Starzz in 3 games. In 2003, they qualified to the playoffs for the 7th straight year, but they lost in the first round to the Sacramento Monarchs in 3 games. They missed the playoffs for the first time in franchise history with a record of 13-21 in 2004, but returned to the playoffs with a 19-15 record, finishing 3rd. In the first round, the Comets knocked out the 2004 defending champion Seattle Storm in 3 games, but lost in the conference finals to the Sacramento Monarchs in a sweep, which Sacramento later became WNBA Champions in 2005. Houston would return to the playoffs with an 18-16 record, but lost to the 2005 defending champion Sacramento Monarchs in another sweep. 2006 was the last playoff appearance for the Houston Comets. After the Comets' season ended in 2006, the Comets underwent major front-office changes during the off-season. In October 2006, team owner Leslie Alexander (who also owns the NBA's Houston Rockets team) announced he was selling the Comets, and longtime Head Coach Van Chancellor resigned in January 2007.

On January 31, 2007, the WNBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the team to Hilton Koch, a Houston-based mattress and furniture businessman. Two weeks later, Comets assistant coach Karleen Thompson was named to become the team's new Head Coach and General Manager for the 2007 season.

For the 2007 season, they would miss the playoffs for the second time in franchise history after starting the season 0-10, resulting in a 13-21 record.

On December 12, 2007, team owner Hilton Koch announced that the Comets would be moving from the Toyota Center to Reliant Arena for the 2008 WNBA season.[2] This resulted in a loss of fans. The Compaq Center drew 13,000 fans, but the Reliant Arena could only house 7,200. In 2008, the Comets' final year, they only drew an average 6,000 fans per game and sold out four games.[3]

In 2008, Koch put the team up for sale, with an asking price of $10 million. No investors stepped up. The WNBA took over management of the Comets and disbanded the team in December 2008.[4] They stated that they would only be suspending operations in 2009, which some people saw as a sign that the franchise could be revived if an investor came in. Comets players were sent off to other teams in a dispersal draft.[5]

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Houston Comets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comets top Fairfield in battle of unbeatens

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The battle of unbeatens was ruled by the color green Tuesday night.

Mason High Schools boys basketball team never trailed and got double-digit scoring from Kyle Lamotte (15), Spencer Cline (13) and Matt King (11) in a 60-49 triumph at Fairfield.

It was the first loss for first-year FHS coach John Cecere, who watched his squad shoot 39.6 percent from the floor.

Losing hurts, no doubt about that, said Cecere, whose team is 3-1 overall and 2-1 in the Greater Miami Conference. Its a good indicator of where we are right now, but its not where were going to end up.

Mason was outstanding tonight. Youve got to tip your hat to them. But I like my group. They work hard every single day in practice. Were going to get better as a staff, and the players are going to get better too.

The Comets man-to-man defense set the tone and didnt allow the hosts to find an offensive rhythm until late in the contest.

Were not trying to fool anybody, Mason coach Greg Richards said. Weve been doing that for a long time, and we feel like thats what we hang our hat on. We do that in practice every day.

In the first half, I thought we played as well as we can play defensively. We tried to take things away because their weapons are tough. We tried to keep the ball out of spots where they could hurt us. I think we did that in the first half. The second half got a little touchy.

T.C. Wells and Qawi Rucker paced the Indians with 15 points apiece. Wells fired in 11 points in the fourth quarter, when Fairfield chopped a 48-31 deficit to 54-46 with 2:35 left.

We ran a couple iso plays for me, and it started opening up, said Wells, who didnt have a field goal in the first three stanzas. I got open looks, so I took them.

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Comets girls claim title at MJIT

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The Melfort Comets junior boys and girls both came out with top four finishes at the Melfort Junior Invitational Tournament (MJIIT) hosted at MUCC on Friday, December 12 and Saturday, December 13. The junior clinched the title on their home court, while the junior boys finished third. Junior girls Comets coach Kelly Linnell attributed the teams victory to solid fundamental basketball. The girls played well, we are a very young team, but our skills are very strong, our fundamental skills are very strong, Linnell said. We have strong fundamental basketball skills and the girls play really well. The girls play as a team they pass the ball and they play together and help out on defense, she explained. The Comets starting lineup is composed of two Grade 9 players and three Grade 8 players. The junior girls Comets clinched the title with a 39-28 victory over the Prince Albert Carlton Crusaders on Saturday evening. Rachel Linnell scored 18 points to lead the Comets. Alexa Hangs added 10 points. In the semi-final on Saturday afternoon the Comets defeated the Birch Hills Marauders. Hangs led the Comets with 14 points. Rachel Linnell added eight points. The junior girls opened with a 52-9 victory over St. Brieux on Friday afternoon. Hangs led the Comets with 12 points, while Linnell added 10 points. The junior boys Comets placed third after defeating Birch Hills 56-46 on Saturday afternoon. Nathan Wehrkamp and Kris Daryl Remonde each had nine points scored with three field goals from beyond the three point arc. Ralp Bagsit and Levi Wright each added seven points in the victory. In the semi-final game the Comets lost 40-34 to St. Brieux to drop to the third place game. Remonde led the Comets with 15 points. The junior boys opened with a 47-29 victory over Osler on Friday afternoon. The Comets had balanced scoring with Daniel Laosebikan scoring six points, Geland Malaggay scoring five points and Matthew Degerness adding four points. The title on the junior boys side was claimed by Meadow Lake who defeated St. Brieux 52-45 on Saturday evening. Prince Albert Carlton earned the B side title with a 44-42 victory over Osler. Claiming third on the girls side was Birch Hills who defeated Meadow Lake on Saturday afternoon. michael.oleksyn@sunmedia.ca @melfortjournal

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Comets girls claim title at MJIT