According to a post in the Bitcoin Forum, titled

Bitcoin-Central, first exchange licensed to operate as a bank. This is HUGE

Bitcoin-Central (https://bitcoin-central.net/) “is getting, through a partnership with Aqoba and the Credit Mutuel, allowed to operate as a bank, (or more precisely a PSP which is basically the same as a bank, just without the debt-money issuing part).”

The feat was achieved by Paymium, a ‘Money over IP’ Bitcoin transfer agency with connections to the French banking regulators. How? Here is the forum post which gives some more detail.

At Paymium we spent lots of time and energy talking about Bitcoin to our regulating bodies, the Banque de France, the ACP (French equivalent of the American SEC), TRACFIN (AML French supervising body) etc. We engaged all these resources with one goal in mind : get these people to know Bitcoin, advocate our beloved crypto-currency and listen to them, help them think until they finally reach the same conclusion as we did : there’s nothing wrong with people being free.

There’s nothing wrong with people freely exchanging value, we don’t hurt anybody, we’re not forcing anyone to use Bitcoin, we simply want to see our dream and the future of money become a reality.

After all this patient work and lobbying we’re finally happy and proud to announce that Bitcoin-Central.net becomes today the first Bitcoin exchange operating within the framework of European regulations. Since 2010 we kept learning, when mtgox got kicked out of France for not complying with the law we learnt from it, when our banks gave us a hard time we learnt from it, when we discussed with smart people on these very forums we learnt from it.

From monitoring the regulatory field we learned that TRACFIN knew about Bitcoin, that the ECB knew about Bitcoin. And that they were both worried.

So we felt that if no one went there, and told these people about Bitcoin, they would come to us anyway.

We’re therefore extremely proud and happy to announce that Bitcoin-Central.net will be raising the bar for all the other exchanges, at least the ones operating in Europe.

We’re announcing today that Bitcoin-Central.net is getting, through a partnership with Aqoba and the Credit Mutuel, allowed to operate as a bank, (or more precisely a PSP which is basically the same as a bank, just without the debt-money issuing part).

More at Bitcoin-Central, first exchange licensed to operate as a bank. This is HUGE

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This week in the dramatic and sometimes comedic world of Bitcoin, the internet’s favorite crypto-currency:

1- Bitcoin Friday, an event occurring today!

Black Friday in the US refers to the day after Thanksgiving Day, which is traditionally considered the first day of the holiday shopping season. It’s generally the busiest shopping day of the year, resulting in huge profits for retailers – thus, putting them “in the black.

Bitcoin Friday is based on a similar idea, with Bitcoin exchanges and merchants who accept the currency offering promotional sales as a way to get Bitcoin users shopping.

via http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/bitcoin_friday_sale_event/

Bitcoin Friday is a collaboration of 75 Bitcoin merchants to invigorate the Bitcoin economy. BitPay is already reporting record amounts of orders being placed using their merchant services. Several online stores are reporting that they’re out of stock. This event truly is a digital Black Friday existing outside of the banking infrastructure.

For a full list of sales, visit http://bitcoinfriday.com.

2- Bitcoin Store, a new electronics store accepting Bitcoin at competitive prices.

Roger Ver, known in the Bitcoin community for operating Memory Dealers and for a number of efforts marketing Bitcoin including a billboard and a radio ad, has announced that he is starting a new Bitcoin business: an all-purpose electronics store. The Bitcoin Store is already online, with thousands of products available for sale

via http://bitcoinmagazine.net/bitcoin-store-opens-all-your-electronics-cheaper-with-bitcoins/

The Bitcoin Store is the first real attempt at doing what Bitcoin does best, undercutting conventional payment processors. Since the Bitcoin Store does not need to pay processing fees, their prices can undercut both Amazon and NewEgg. This store presents an interesting challenge to Amazon and NewEgg, the two megastores need to either adapt or watch as their customers switch to the cheaper Bitcoin Store.

To view all the 500,000 available products on the Bitcoin Store, visit: http://bitcoinstore.com

What in the wide world of anonymity, drama and payments will Bitcoin bring us next week! Tune in again to find out.

-Jon

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This week in the dramatic and sometimes comedic world of Bitcoin, the internet’s favorite crypto-currency:

1- The Bitcoin Foundation was announced in the last days of September.

The Bitcoin Foundation has proposed three main goals: Standardizing and maintaining the code that is Bitcoin by funding the development of the project, protecting the Bitcoin protocol with both technological and legal work, and finally promoting Bitcoin.

This non-profit organization is aiming to mirror other successful open-source foundations, such as the Linux Foundation. The Bitcoin Foundation has a board populated with the who’s-who in the Bitcoin community. Not everyone is a fan of the foundation, some Bitcoin community members have expressed caution at both this attempt at centralization and the involvement of too much “industry” by the inclusion of several Bitcoin business owners on the board.

2- The Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange (GLBSE) closes

The first attempt at funding Bitcoin businesses using Bitcoin and crowdfunding has been closed by its owner James McCarthy, better known by the username Nefario. This closure occurs in the midst of rumors of an SEC investigation into Bitcoin ponzi schemes. Only a month ago, McCarthy gave an optimistic presentation at the Bitcoin Conference 2012 in London.

The sudden close of the GLBSE exchange has already led the community to appeal for a truly decentralized solution to crowdfunding online. In the Bitcoin world, failures seem to be digested as early and imperfect iterations in the process of finding optimal solutions.

3- Intense competition arises among Bitcoin mining hardware companies

Lastly, the never ending arms race known as Bitcoin mining is heating up again with multiple vendors offering new powerful ASIC mining rigs. Butterfly Labs (BFL), BitcoinFGPA, and Avalon ASIC are the main contenders.  BFL recently updated specifications on their mining rigs. It will be interesting to see which firm delivers their products first, and which firms fail to measure up to their predicted specifications.

What in the wide world of anonymity, drama and payments will Bitcoin bring us next week! Tune in again to find out.

-Jon

The post Monitoring Bitcoin – Bitcoin Foundation, GLBSE Closure, and the ASIC Arms Race appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Starting Friday and continuing until Sunday, speakers and guests from around the world will gather in London to discuss Bitcoin and its future. Notable speakers include Richard Stallman (Founder of the Free Software Movement), Max Keiser (American finance broadcaster with a show on RT), Denis Roio (a.k.a. jaromil, a long time free software movement activist) and Birgitta Jonsdottir (Current member of the Icelandic parliament and former Wikileaks spokesperson).

Featured below are three talks complete with descriptions, these examples will give a taste for what the Bitcoin conference will be like:

Richard Stallman, Digital Freedom: the context for Bitcoin – Saturday, Room C – 16:00 – 17:00

Freedom in the digital society is threatened in many ways. Stallman will present several of these threats, and explains how a currency such a Bitcoin can help protect us from some of them.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, No Privacy – No Freedom – Saturday, Room C – 14:00 – 14:30

Jonsdottir will focus on the importance of encryption, privacy and freedom. Direct democracy and accessibility of information in her talk.

Pavol Luptak, How to build free-markets and other anonymous services – Sunday, Room A – 13:00 – 13:30

The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how it is possible in the current non-anonymous and controlled Internet to build and maintain highly anonymous TCP services necessary for free-markets e-shops. It will be explained how it is possible to interconnect _anonymously_ Tor onion services to non-anonymous server housing/domains and how to conduct a free-market business for the most time. At the end of the presentation a perfect voluntary Gamma system will be described.

Topics range from Seasteading to the macroeconomics of Bitcoin. The conference this year also features a lot of notable Linux users. View the full list of speakers here, and the schedule for talks here.

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