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Bitcoin Company BitGold connects with USA's biggest banks
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The Bitcoin firm BitGold, which is a Canadian international savings and payments service, that enables individuals and businesses to transact with physical gold, has announced that it has successfully created a direct link with nine of America's biggest banks.
The firm also announced that it has successfully activated a "
secure and direct link through a proprietary authorization with Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, US Bank, USAA, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Capital One and even American Express" which enables a user to verify his identity and authorize his account to purchase or redeem gold or to settle them back directly to his bank account.
This feature is unlike the traditional Automated Clearing House (ACH) confirmations, and the Bitcoin firm also quipped that the updates it has made are the product of listening to consumer feedbacks.
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Stanford Joins NYU and Duke in Offering Bitcoin Course
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Stanford is joining NYU and Duke University in offering a course on bitcoin - kicking off with a free security webinar tomorrow.
The college's new course, Crypto Currencies: Bitcoin and Friends, launches on 21st September. Besides Stanford students, it will be open to professionals completing their graduate certificate in cyber security.
Computer Science professor Dan Boneh, an expert in applied cryptography, will lead the course - which tackles security across the entire bitcoin ecosystem. In a release he said:
"The technology behind bitcoin and other crypto currencies can be an indispensable tool for protecting information."
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Bitcoin, and Therefore AVRA, Took Another Step Forward Today (AVRN)
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Last week, while the stock market was getting its head handed to it, other things were still going on.... things that matter. One of those easy-to-overlook things was another step forward for the credibility and adoption of Bitcoin as common alternative currency. With that step forward, AVRA Inc. (OTCMKTS:AVRN) also takes a step forward, as it's one of the few companies that's offering simple, turn-key solutions to companies looking to start accepting Bitcoins.
The news is simple enough. Last week, Stanford University joined NYU and Duke by adding a Bitcoin course to its curriculum. The class -- officially being called Crypto Currencies: Bitcoin and Friends -- is aimed as professionals seeing a graduate certificate in cybersecurity.
With a third major name in academia now legitimizing Bitcoin by offering classes surrounding the cryptocurrency, it's even more difficult to suggest the digital currency is just a curious little side project that's gotten a surprising amount of mainstream attention. Indeed, businesses intent on ushering in the usage of Bitcoin, whether the number of consumers that use Bitcoin has reached a profitable level yet.
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| How Bitcoin ETFs are Opening Markets |
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An upcoming Korean Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that tracks the price of Bitcoin has been announced by asset management firm Korea Investment Management, a subsidiary of Korea Investment Holdings Co (KIH). Started in 2002, KIH has more than $21B USD under management.
ETFs track an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund. Unlike mutual funds, an ETF trades like a common stock on a stock exchange.
The new ETF will track the price of bitcoin as it trades on Korbit, the largest of South Korea's bitcoin exchanges, and will be traded on the sole securities exchange operator in South Korea, Korea Exchange (KRX). Investors can trade in the KRX securities markets through a trading account at one of many security companies with KRX membership.
"The main difference between ETFs and other types of index funds is that ETFs don't try to outperform their corresponding index, but simply replicate its performance. They don't try to beat the market, they try to be the market."
In 2012 the very first regulated bitcoin fund launched. An ETF simply named "the Bitcoin Fund," which is traded exclusively on the Hedge Fund Marketplace platform, Exante. The fund achieved the biggest single investment vehicle gain in world history, with a 4,847% return, when Bitcoin's price spiked at the end of 2013. EXANTE is under the jurisdiction of the European regulator MiFID.
In July 2013, the Winklevoss twins filed their application for an ETF in the US. "The investment objective of the Trust is for the Shares to reflect the performance of the price of Bitcoins, as measured by the Winklevoss IndexSM ("Winkdex®"), less the Trust's expenses."
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