Author: Anthony Di Iorio

Note: Shu Wang, the founder of Simple Coin Card, will be at the Decentral meet-up tonight (December 10) to answer your questions.

 

Gift cards are a convenient and simple way to give people what they want while also allowing them to make choices in their purchases. Now, Simple Coin Cards make it easy to give the gift of bitcoin.

 

Simple Coin Cards look like regular plastic gift cards and come in a variety of pre-set amounts that match Canadian currency denominations: $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100. They have a one-time key on the back that is activated on purchase. All you do is scratch and reveal the key, visit simplecoincard.com, enter the key, and deposit your coins to the wallet of your choice. Don’t have a wallet? You can easily click on the link provided to create your own Rushwallet in seconds.

 

After the recipient has deposited their gift in their wallet, they can start spending their coins.
The website also has a list of links to places where you can spend your bitcoins.

 

Because Simple Coin Cards come in a variety of denominations, they are a fantastic way to introduce your family and friends to bitcoin. Anyone who has ever used a gift card or a phone card will find the card platform familiar and safe.

 

While Simple Coin Cards make excellent gifts, they are also a year-round alternative to using a bitcoin ATM to purchase bitcoin in person. The fees are comparable at 10% (deducted at the time of redemption) and the rate of exchange is derived at the time of purchase from the best available price among the Canadian exchanges. Cards are portable and don’t require a prolonged Internet connection to get your coins.

 

Security

All funds that support any activated Simple Coin Cards are stored in a secure hot wallet, while funds for unactivated cards are kept in cold storage. Each card has a unique, one-time use key on the back. Once the key has been entered into simplecoincard.com and the bitcoins have been transferred into the user’s wallet, the card is no longer active and can be discarded. Cards are not refillable or reusable.

 

Where to purchase Simple Coin Cards

Right now, Simple Coin Cards are available to purchase in person exclusively at Decentral Toronto, 64 Spadina Ave. Simply come in during our regular office hours and ask for Simple Coin Cards at the front desk.

After the frantic spending hype of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday is a welcome palate-cleanser. And just as we did on those first two days, the Bitcoin community is holding its own event: Bitcoin Giving Tuesday — a project organized by Bitcoin Black Friday, the BitGive Foundation and the Bitcoin Foundation.

 

The number of charities accepting bitcoin donations is on the rise. It’s one more way that they are able to engage with a set of committed donors while reducing their overhead costs. Donated bitcoin can be recorded as a non-cash gift and then exchanged for fiat, without the high transaction costs normally associated with credit card payments.

 

Bitcoin donations also have the capacity to reach farther around the world. Many remote territories, especially in the developing world, do not have access to the infrastructure needed to run credit card or PayPay systems. But they can accept bitcoin.

 

Now that the start of holiday gift shopping has officially begun, this is the day that we’re encouraged to think about giving a gift to a worthy cause. The bitcoin community has often expressed the desire to change the world for the better. Bitcoin Giving Tuesday is another way that we can do this.

 

For a list of organizations that accept bitcoin, visit bitcoingivingtuesday.org. You can also donate directly through the website: 100% of all donations will go to the non-profit of your choosing.

 

You’ll also find more inspiration at the Twitter hashtag #BitcoinGivingTuesday and on the main thread at /r/Bitcoin.

It’s Cyber-Monday — want to take advantage of some deals AND spend your bitcoins? There are a few options.

 

Perhaps the easiest thing to do is use bitcoin to buy electronic gift cards for some of your favourite online stores and then shop as usual. There are some excellent sites out there that offer gift cards. Even if you don’t take advantage of Cyber Monday sales, these are still great options for online holiday shopping with bitcoins.

 

YesToBitcoins.com offers gift cards in a dozen different countries – just select your country from the drop-down list to see which stores are offering cards. Depending on where you live, there is a good selection of retailers to choose from; for example, there are offers from Roots, Lululemon, Amazon, and Starbucks. E-cards will be sent to your email address within 24-hours, so you might still be able to get it in time to shop today. If not, there are still plenty of deals to be found in the next few weeks — or save it for Boxing Week specials!

 

Purse.io lets you use bitcoin to buy anything from Amazon at a discount — first-time users get a discount of about 8% on top of any Amazon savings — so you can take advantage of Cyber Monday sales and then some. The process is a bit convoluted to set up but once you sort it out, the deals are excellent. (Hint: you will need to uncheck the “Don’t Spoil My Surprises” button which is NOT where they tell you it is. Go to the wishlist drop-down menu labelled “List Actions” on the right side of the page — NOT near your profile picture — and select “Update list profile.” There you can uncheck the box.)

 

Gyft has a Cyber Monday promotion happening, but it’s only available in the US. If you are in the US, you can get 5% Points back on any purchase plus an extra $50 for every $1,000 you spend with Bitcoin. Like YesToBitcoins, Gyft allows you to buy gift cards to many online retailers like Best Buy, Sears, Game Stop, and The Gap.

 

Want to book a getaway? Expedia has several Cyber Monday deals today and they’ll let you pay in bitcoin.

 

Do you have any other suggestions for shopping online with bitcoins? Let us know in the comment section below!

 

Image credit: By Rexhep-bunjaku (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Wednesday Dec. 10th. 7pm.

This week we are pleased to announce that Martin Fernandez, the Founder and CEO of btctrip.com, will join us at 7:30pm during the Decentral Toronto Bitcoin Meetup Group.

Mat Cybula wants you to help spread some cryptocurrency love around on social media. That’s why he and his team have come up with Cryptiv (www.cryptiv.com), a social microtransaction platform that facilitates transactions of digital currencies of social media like Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch.

 

Cybula says he started Cryptiv as a tipping service — “like a thumbs-up with money attached” — but found that with the limited number of people who use and understand bitcoin and other digital currencies out there, it was hard to get it off the ground. He decided that what was needed was a way to incentivize people to use digital currencies.

 

He noted that one of the beauties of Cryptiv is that you can send coins to people who don’t even have a wallet yet. They receive a notification that someone has sent them some coins and then they will look into what it is they just got. It’s a way to get new people started so they can “learn and earn” and hopefully explore the space.

 

Cryptiv started about five months ago, and since then, the team has worked closely with its users to improve on the product and find better ways to achieve their goal of wider cryptocurrency adoption. The results of their market research will result in a new and improved Cryptiv website, due to launch in a few weeks.

 

Other plans for the future include the expansion of its social media reach. Cybula hopes to add Github, Reddit and Facebook tipping options over time. At the moment, Cryptiv uses a Chrome extension to integrate its functions with its social media partners, but it plans to roll out a Firefox extension as well, with a Safari extension sometime down the road.

 

Cybula walked the meet-up crowd through a Cryptiv transaction. Once the user downloads the Chrome extension, a little “giftbox” icon appears right on the social media postings. So if you want to tip someone’s tweet, for example, you just click on the little giftbox and send them a set amount. They are notified about the tip and invited to collect it — even if they don’t have an existing wallet already.

 

There is no charge for anyone to send or receive coins with Cryptiv.To avoid fees on micropayments, all transactions are done off the blockchain.

 

According to Cybula, Cryptiv has noted that there is a high rate of acceptance among people who receive tips, and that they in turn are likely to pass along their tips to someone else. However, should any coins go unredeemed, they are returned to the sender after 30 days.

 

Where Cybula sees some of the most interesting potential for micro-incentivization is among the content creators of the world: bloggers, journalists, musicians, artists etc. He recognizes that these creators are rarely compensated appropriately for their work. Tipping could be a “godsend” for them and allow those of us who consume content to support their efforts more easily.

Wed. December 3rd. 7pm

Sign up on meetup.com

Wed. November 19th. 7pm

This week we’re pleased to announce that Mat Cybula will be our guest. Mat is the CEO of Cryptiv (cryptiv.com), a gateway for online micro-transactions and digital tipping.

 

Sign up at meetup.com

 

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Every Wednesday is Bitcoin Wednesdays at Decentral in Toronto. Anyone is welcome to join us for Canada’s largest Bitcoin meetup. Our goal is to attract enthusiasts, merchants, finance folk, bitcoin miners, developers and anyone in fact interested in learning more about Bitcoin and decentralized systems and platforms. While you’re here try out our Bitcoin ATM, the first to be installed in Toronto.

 

Our venue — Decentral — is a event space, co-working and incubator / accelerator facility focused specifically on Bitcoin, blockchain, and decentralized initiatives.

Post Update: December 18, 2014:
The Mycelium iOS Wallet is now available from the iTunes Store (free).

 

Since 2009, Mycelium has been developing a range of innovative bitcoin-related products: the Mycelium android bitcoin wallet; Entropy, an Indiegogo-funded, hardware-based paper wallet generator; and the secure Bitcoincard that can sign transactions offline or on a mesh-network. This past week, Dmitry Murashchik beamed into the Decentral Toronto Bitcoin Meet-up to discuss these projects and give us some insights into what’s coming down the development pipeline.

 

Some of you may recall that Entropy raised over $31,000usd on Indiegogo this year, a campaign that was notable in part because it also included the option to support the project using bitcoin. The Entropy device itself is a USB-based hardware module that you can plug into a printer to generate paper wallets, and includes the option to print 2-of-3 split keys using Shamir’s Secret Sharing algorithm. For security, it uses static-RAM (SRAM) cells to generate completely random states, and hence produces a high degree of entropy. How much entropy? Over 9000 bits. Of course, all of this is for naught if your printer stores a copy of what gets printed; choose a cheap printer (one you’re sure doesn’t store data), instead of a networked office printer to print your private keys.

 

Dmitry also gave us an update on the Mycelium Bitcoin wallet, which just received a 2.0 upgrade. The most notable new feature is Heirarchical Deterministic (BIP0032) address generation, a feature that improves anonymity and security by generating a new public address for each transaction; it also makes wallet backups a lot easier than with the previous version.

 

One of the features that has been retained in the wallet app, fortunately, is LocalTrader, a localbitcoins-like feature that connects buyers and sellers directly. Despite the impressive potential here, Dmitry mentioned that it hasn’t seen as much usage as he and the team would like. At the moment, LocalTrader charges a 0.2% fee per transaction, but Dmitry says that Mycelium is looking into lowering transaction fees in the near future, based on feedback from clients; hopefully that will help increase adoption.

 

Dmitry also touched on developments regarding the highly anticipated Bitcoincard. This type of “debit card” system is the cornerstone of the Mycelium project. This was the first project that the Mycelium team started working on, but their other projects jumped the queue and have been released before this one. Part of reason for the the delay, according to Dmitry, is that this card is “a technology ahead of its time.” He explained that this sort of innovation is very difficult in terms of development.

 

The goal of the card is to be a wireless and self-sustainable “stand-alone device that acts as an electronic wallet” without need for an immediate internet connection. When it’s released, each card will have a range of 300 metres and can be used as part of a “mesh” network, enabling users to sign and send bitcoin transactions without being directly connected to the internet. Aside from acting as a hardware wallet, this card should make using bitcoin possible anywhere on the planet and under any political or technical situation (such as in cases where there is physically no internet access or access has been blocked by a government regime). No projected price range for the cards was given, but it is expected to be quite low to allow for reasonably widespread adoption.

 

On the software side, we’ll also start to see many new features in future releases, including CoinJoin support, a plan to move the transaction broadcast servers to Tor, multi-sig options in the app, and 2-factor authentication. Their focus, quite clearly, is security and privacy — something we all welcome.

Wed. Nov. 12th. 7pm