PayPal is integrating Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin, and the U.S. regulators shut down ASIC-miner manufacturer Butterfly Labs. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 39:
- PayPal has begun to integrate Bitcoin. The payment processor will allow merchants of digital goods to accept the virtual currency. Digital goods include “ringtones, games and music” and might therefore not seem like a lot, but an implicit endorsement by PayPal marks a milestone in the acceptance of Bitcoin.
- An even bigger step towards going mainstream was made by Litecoin and Dogecoin. PayPal did not just partner up with Coinbase and BitPay, but also with GoGoin which supports these two digital currencies. The CEO of GoGoin confirmed that the partnership meant that PayPal would also support Litecoin and Dogecoin.
- Despite the positive news to Dogecoin in particular, the coin did lose 20 percent of its value over the past 24 hours. Although it is still up 10 percent compared to Tuesday when the announcement was published.
- For a long time pre-ordering ASIC-miners has resulted in negative experiences for many consumers, as they could only hope the manufacturer would actually deliver and do so within a reasonable time frame. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now come to their aid and has successfully shut down Butterfly Labs, which often did not deliver or only when the machine had already become useless. The move will hopefully shake up the industry and put an end to these deplorable business practices.
- NuBits was officially launched this week. The hyped digital currency promised to deliver “the most important development in the cryptoasset space since Bitcoin was released” but turned out to be nothing more than a flawed concept that uses inflation to combat decreasing value. Unsurprisingly, the price of Peercoin immediately tanked following the release losing almost 30 percent.
