Bitcoin Brief

The big news for UK bitcoiners this week is that Coinbase - a San Francisco based bitcoin exchange, has just started accepting 3D secure card payments. What that means is that you can now buy bitcoin with your debit or credit card online instantly, just like you would buy pizza. It take about 5 minutes to set up your account, and then it’s a case of plugging in the amount you want to spend, selecting your card as payment method, and pressing the buy button. Personally I then prefer to send my bitcoin to a secure wallet of my own so that coinbase no longer have to look after it for me. Why should you care? This service has been running in the USA for a good while now, and is considered one of the most prominent services worldwide. The big 5 UK banks have refused to give them access to the faster payments network, just like they’ve refused to give a corporate bank account to any bitcoin related company thus far, and so until now we have been limited to using wire transfers which take a few days to clear, and