28 Mar 2014 / Bloomberg – Bitcoin isn’t just for buying and selling cupcakes and cameras anymore.
A crop of entrepreneurs, backed by investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and BitAngels, are betting that the technology behind the virtual currency can be used for a range of financial tasks now handled by banks, exchanges, e-commerce providers and other middlemen.
Invictus Innovations Inc., Ripple Labs Inc. and other startups are harnessing Bitcoin’s underlying code for such tasks as authentication, which means making sure that a buyer isn’t posing as someone else, and verification of payments to ensure that a transaction is valid. If successful, the new tools could reduce the fees shouldered by buyers and sellers in the $1.22 trillion global electronic-commerce market, as well in financial services, cloud computing and other areas.
“People are just starting to realize that Bitcoin isn’t a currency and a payment system, it’s the Internet of Money,” David Johnston, co-founder of BitAngels, a group of investors in Bitcoin-related startups, said in an interview. “It’s a really exciting time.”
BitAngels is currently considering more than 30 projects in the Internet-of-Money category, Johnston said.
There’s growing recognition, even among financial firms, that Bitcoin’s underlying design can be used for any transaction requiring some degree of verification. In a report this month, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said while Bitcoins probably won’t be viable as a currency, the basic technology “could hold promise.” Bitcoin’s future as the Internet of Money was one of the hottest topics at the CoinSummit conference in San Francisco this week…. Read more
