TOKYO: A Japanese company will start paying part of its employees’ salaries in Bitcoin, as it aims to get better understanding of the virtual currency, a spokeswoman said on Friday.

GMO Internet, which operates a range of web-related businesses including finance, online advertising and internet infrastructure, will start paying up to 100,000 yen ($890) monthly by Bitcoin to its employees in Japan from February next year.

“Employees can receive salaries by Bitcoin if they want to,” company spokeswoman Harumi Ishii told a French wire service.

“We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it,” she said.

The offer will be open to around 4,000 employees of the GMO group in Japan, she said.

The company started a Bitcoin trading and exchange business in May.

And next month, it will join the so-called “Bitcoin mining” business — gaining the right to receive new Bitcoins as a reward for helping keep the network secure by approving transactions.

World Bitcoin prices have surged globally this year, soaring from less than $1,000 in January to $17,000 this week.

From its very humble beginning, Bitcoin has now risen to its amazing SUPERSTAR status among the investment vehicles available to anyone with money to invest in the many markets we have globally. You can go for gold, stocks, forex, derivatives and even real estate in the search for a better return on investment (ROI). We all want to have a better return principally because we all want money...money we can use for different projects and personal use as well.

With the recent surge of Bitcoin's price, are you proud that you are one of the many who have already been invested with Bitcoin and is now enjoying the good ROI others can be looking for? And in addition what can be the best ways we can show this feeling of being proud to be in Bitcoin?

As for me, am not just proud but also happy because I am part of the Bitcoin story and whenever a friend can be inquiring about it I always make sure that he/she gets the basic information as well as the possible risks involved as nothing is risk-free in

I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

"You can already buy pizza, hotel stays, illegal drugs, and assassinations using Bitcoin. And now, you can get a college degree.

The University of Nicosia, which is located in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, announced today that it will allow students to pay tuition in Bitcoin, the first higher education institution to do so. University of Nicosia charges between $6,700 and $33,600, depending on the program, for tuition. Seeing as each Bitcoin is currently worth about $685 – a price that can, and likely will, rise and fall by the day – you’d need about 49 Bitcoins per year for full-time studies.

In addition to accepting Bitcoin to pay for tuition, the University of Nicosia (UNic for short) has also launched a new Master of Science Degree program in digital currencies. The degree is meant for business professionals, government officials, and entrepreneurs, and will help them “better understand the technical underpinnings of digital currency, how it will likely interact with existing monetary and financial systems, and what opportunities exist for innovation in digital currency systems,” according to the university. The new Master’s program will be available both online and on-campus starting in 2014.

Considering that Bitcoin is still a relatively new currency, with governments still grappling with how to handle it, UNic’s innovative tuition payment program might seem a bit premature. But according to Dr. Christos Vlachos, a member of the Council of the University of Nicosia and the university’s Chief Financial Officer, digital currencies like Bitcion are the future, and there’s no reason to wait.

“We are acutely aware that digital currency is an inevitable technical development that will lead to significant innovation in online commerce, financial systems, international payments and remittances and global economic development,” said Vlachos in a statement. “… In this light, we consider it appropriate that we implement digital currency as a method of payment across all our institutions in all cities and countries of our operations.”

Cyprus is perhaps more intimately linked to Bitcoin than many other countries. The country was one of the hardest hit in the global financial collapse that hit in 2008, and its residents reportedly began investing their euros in Bitcoin en masse as the country’s financial institutions floundered.

It’s unclear how many students will take advantage of the new way to pay for classes – especially considering that the value of a Bitcoin can often double or triple overnight."

You thoughts?

hello, im a miner, i was told to use a segwit wallet instead of a normal one, right now im using electrum wallet, but fees are killing me because high tx
so i have some question

1. can i migrate all my bitcoin to a segwit wallet without paying any fees or a low one?
2. i can send to any bitcoin adress? or just to other bitcoin segwit enabled wallet?
3. can i mine in any pool and just set it to pay to my segwit wallet? or i have to mine a special segwit bitcoin?

The current rise of Ripple is quite significant, at market cap Ethereum the long standing 2nd is way below Ripple now and its still going very strong.
I personally know many people who want to get into crypto are getting in via Ripple only.
So I know its a big IF but, if this trend keeps going, can it even surpass bitcoin?

Is bitcoin in danged or being dethroned as No. 1 at coin market cap

It's perhaps one of the worst currencies in the world for everyday transactions. It's only good for transactions greater than $10,000, for now. As time goes on it will only be good for TX greater than $100,000. Any small TX would be useless to make with bitcoin.

Visa, Amex, Mastercard, will continue to dominate. Bitcoin really has no place in the financial world in this aspect....

Hi btkers , discussion about the relationship between governments and cryptocurrencies.
Why don't governments officialise the use of cryptocurrencies .
Can these cryptocurrencies affect countries economy?