Original author: Gleb Kostarev
Coin News
Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam didn’t hesitate to set lofty goals for his company entering 2014, as he quickly predicted his company would enroll no less than 10 billion-dollar businesses in its services before the year’s end.
It was a bold claim for the bitcoin merchant processor. At the time, Coinbase had enrolled just one billion-dollar merchant, Overstock.com, and despite enthusiasm that more would come aboard, months would pass without another major announcement.
Then, just as quickly, the company’s stable of major names expanded. In late May, the second billion-dollar merchant joined the ecosystem with the addition of satellite TV service provider DISH, and just as quickly, major brand names like Expedia and Dell followed suit.
To date, the bitcoin ecosystem has six billion-dollar merchants, and four of them accept payments through Coinbase. TigerDirect and Newegg accept bitcoin through Coinbase’s rival BitPay.
The man at the helm of this quick narrative turnaround is Adam White, the company’s business director. White oversees a team of four employees whose job it is to educate merchants about the benefits of bitcoin, and ultimately, to convince them that aligning with bitcoin is right for their brand.
White told CoinDesk that, across the board, he has seen his team’s conversations with major merchants become easier, remarking:
“They’re beginning to understand that it’s more than just a digital currency, that it’s more than a payment network, it’s a real bottom-line benefit to merchants and consumers.”
In a new interview with CoinDesk, White opened up about the company’s success with major merchants, delving into how this conversation is becoming easier for his team every day.
Starting the conversation
Using Dell as an example, White illustrated how Coinbase’s typical conversations with potential merchants proceed, often taking months of deliberation to complete.
White said that his team first reached out to Dell prior to the company’s decision to go private last October, and that Dell was specifically targeted because the company believed it had a customer base that would overlap with the average bitcoin user.
This led to follow-up conversations covering bitcoin’s basics, the benefits it could provide Dell, and how the integration would work.
The talks weren’t greeted with an initial green light, however. But that soon changed, according to White:
“They reached out to us a couple months later and said, ‘This is something that Michael Dell and our team want to do. We’re now a private company and have the flexibility to really respond to our customers’ needs, and this is something our customers really want. Can you help us turn this on ASAP?’ We said: ‘Absolutely’.”
From there, Dell took the lead on the integration, with Coinbase playing its typically supporting role, assigning a dedicated engineer to help Dell’s team understand the documentation and ensure the integration went smoothly.
Then and now
White said that when he joined Coinbase in October 2013, after departing his previous position as a product manager for gaming company Activision Blizzard, conversations with major merchants went much differently:
“At that point, it was difficult to point to other name-brand merchants and publicly traded companies like Overstock that were using bitcoin and actually show them here is real top-line revenue growth and bottom-line cost savings.”
It wasn’t just the addition of one company, however, that was solely responsible for the transition. Rather, he said that it was companies like Overstock and CheapAir – two of the company’s larger, early clients – that were able to demonstrate real success in taking bitcoin payments. White added:
“Now, we’re showcasing those results and it really helps change that conversation from what could be to what’s been happening, and we’re able to, in a general sense, model out what the impact would be and it helps the merchant assess their opportunity cost.”
Notably, CheapAir recently announced it passed $1.5m in total bitcoin payments processed, while Overstock is expected to soon expand bitcoin to its global customers.
White went on to say that success stories like these are helping more merchants to understand the opportunity of accepting bitcoin, and to look at Coinbase as a partner.
“I think when they take that closer look, they really get excited about it. It eliminates risks like chargebacks, fraud, credit card scams, and now they’re realizing there’s a way to work around that and that bitcoin is the best solution for it,” he said.
Emphasizing overall adoption
White said that although the exposure provided by billion-dollar merchants does benefit the entire community, Coinbase doesn’t necessarily emphasize these businesses over others that may more broadly spur overall enrollment.
For example, he said, platforms like Spree and Shopify that allow thousands of smaller businesses to benefit from bitcoin are just as important as billion-dollar merchants.
“While we hope to bring on those billion-dollar merchants, it’s important for us also to bring on billion-dollar platforms and sites that favor the mass adoption of bitcoin,” White said, adding:
“At the end of the day, we want to bring bitcoin to as many merchants as possible.”
Image via Coinbase
Coinbase
Original author: Pete Rizzo
Original author: Jon Southurst
Original author: Stan Higgins
The company did not release a fee schedule prior to launch. However, it suggested costs would be limited to a one-time charge of $15. On its FAQ page, the company said that the initial fee covers the cost of issuing and shipping the card.
“Merchants will pay all fees just as they do for debit and credit cards but there won’t be a fee for the customer,” Xapo stated.
Unfortunately, the ambiguous wording of Xapo’s statements led many customers to conclude there would be no additional fees for using the card, an opinion evidenced by the strongly negative response to the company’s update.
Failure to communicate
A potential driver of the strong consumer backlash was that the release of additional pricing information came after many users had already signed up to receive the card.
The result was that a number of separate reddit conversations arose to address the topic, with individual posts highlighting the card’s specific pricing policies and availability eventually giving way to more general posts criticizing the company’s overall marketing of the product.
Further, message board comments ran the gamut from overwhelmingly negative to sympathetic, with a small number of users noting that Xapo’s final product was likely influenced by poor US regulation and the difficulties inherent in the company’s bid to acquire a traditional financial partner to support the offering.
Ongoing issues
Xapo’s Debit Card has been a source of strain for the company since its initial announcement.
At the time of the launch, Xapo had indicated to news sources including TechCrunch and CoinDesk that MasterCard’s payment network would supply the rails for the debit card transactions.
MasterCard quickly moved to separate itself from the offering, telling CoinDesk:
“MasterCard does not have a relationship with Xapo. There is no card program currently available.”
However, Xapo told CoinDesk that it had secured a partner for the card offering as of early July, and that the delays in the shipment were purely product-based.
A spokesperson for Xapo said on 3rd July:
“We took a bit of extra time with early testing to make sure the experience is as smooth as possible for our customers.”
CoinDesk has reached out to Xapo for comment, but at press time, the company had declined to comment on the situation. However, Xapo is expected to publish a blog post addressing the controversy.
Image via Xapo
XapoXapo Debit Card
Original author: Nermin Hajdarbegovic
BitVC, the Hong Kong-registered subsidiary of China-based digital currency exchange Huobi, has officially opened its margin trading and digital currency savings accounts to the international public.
Huobi’s margin trading platform BitVC and its ‘Yubibao’ wallets, which also function as interest-bearing savings accounts, had been in an invitation-only beta phase since June.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Huobi’s Robert Kuhne said that more than 5,000 users had signed up and used their accounts during this trial period, with about 30% of current BitVC account holders residing outside mainland China.
Kuhne went on to discuss how the company’s Yubibao wallets were proving especially popular, and that the company’s recent international awareness efforts had spurred enrollment, saying:
“At The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) bitcoin conference in Chicago last month, there was quite a lot of interest from the media and attendees, with many people asking for invitation codes. But now BitVC registration is open to everyone.”
Yubibao savers earned a cumulative total of 350 BTC over the trial period, he added.
Earning interest with ‘Yubibao’ wallets
Depositing funds into a Yubibao wallet implies that you are making those funds available for use by margin traders. Rather than users making individual loan offers and waiting in a queue as occurs with other similar systems, BitVC/Yubibao puts all available funds in a single pool for faster results for both traders and investors.
Yubibao wallet accounts are available automatically when a users registers an account with BitVC. These accounts are aimed more at regular consumers than professionals – there is no minimum amount a user can deposit, though there is a maximum of 500 BTC and 40,000 LTC.
Interest is paid daily, with the average rate hovering around 0.02-03%. BitVC guarantees Yubibao users’ funds – its system includes automatic margin calls to ensure traders have enough assets to ensure their loans, and the company says it maintains a large bitcoin reserve to cover any losses.
BitVC’s security measures include SMS verification, Google Authenticator, backup passwords and a backup contact should an account sit unused for a long period of time.
Courting the pro trader market
Other large Chinese and Asian exchanges, such as Beijing-based OKCoin and Hong Kong’s Bitfinex, have also sought to attract the region’s population of finance professionals with margin trading, live statistics and more full-featured mobile options.
Continuing regulatory uncertainty in the US also leaves traders in the world’s largest economy with no full-fledged local option, giving Asian and European exchanges a head start.
With BitVC, however, Huobi is the first Asian exchange to launch an entirely separate name and brand to separate more sophisticated operations like margin trading from its primary exchange business.
Images courtesy BitVC
AsiaChinaHuobi
Original author: Jon Southurst
Original author: Nermin Hajdarbegovic
Original author: Pete Rizzo