As a company, we pride ourself in supporting emerging technologies. As way back as the late 1990s we were at the forefront of working with prominent ongoing developments and web advances. While others were struggling with clunky Perl and TCL interpreters we had made the leapt to “Personal Home Page“, or as we all know it now, the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor which is now considered the go to language for dynamic websites.
You may have seen over the course of the last year we have been adding the option to use Bitcoin’s to pay for stock and now our “Out of the Box” and web design services can be paid in the same way.
What the hell is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralised peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet.
Who created Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called “cryptocurrency”, which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first Bitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on Bitcoin.
Who controls the Bitcoin network?
Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can’t force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.
How does Bitcoin work?
From a user perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows a user to send and receive bitcoins with them.
Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the “block chain”. This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own Bitcoin addresses.
Is Bitcoin really used by people?
Yes. There is a growing number of businesses and individuals using Bitcoin. This includes brick and mortar businesses like restaurants. While Bitcoin remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing fast.
Daily Transactions
What does it mean for you and your XTrader account?
Lower prices.
Unlike banks, merchant accounts and Paypal we do not incur high transactions fees when processing Bitcoin transactions. Typically the fee we will incur is 1% opposed to Paypal’s 3.2%
As with everything we do here at Xtrader, we work hard to ensure you have the best possible opportunities in the adult industry. If you choose to fund your Xtrader drop ship account using Bitcoin’s then we will pass on the transaction savings to you and you will receive an additional 2% to your funds balance and 3% discount on any web design or “Out of the Box” solution.
How to buy and store Bitcoins.
We recommend LocalBitcoins.com as a reputable place to buy and store your Bitcoins.
Once you have created your LocalBitcoin.com account you can then purchase Bitcoins from people who are offering them for sale. You can see in this screen shot below that 1 bitcoin is about £550. This does not mean you have to buy an entire Bitcoin. Like conventional money you can buy as little as you need. A single Bitcoin is divisible into smaller units. All the way down to eight decimal places, or 0.00000001 BTC to be exact.
Once you start a Bitcoin purchase LocalBitcoins.com will control the trade and places everything in Escrow so both you and the seller are protected. You make the payment to the seller and then the Bitcoins are released to you from the Escrow. From start to finish it takes about 10 minutes. You can see here this trader has an average trade time of 12 minutes.
The Bitcoins are then stored in your digital wallet within your LocalBitcoin account to use when you need them. Like all currencies Bitcoin’s fluctuate both up and down in value so do not sit on too much unless you like a bit of a gamble to see if they go up in value and you could then sell them yourself and make some profit. Who knows, you may be a wiz at currency trading and you just didn’t know it.
Paying for goods online or adding funds to your XTrader balance.
When paying for goods online with merchants that accept Bitcoins when you checkout you will see something that looks like this. You are presented with the sellers Bitcoin address and the amount that is required to pay for your order.
You then log into your LocalBitcoin account and send the value of Bitcoins to that address. Once you send the Bitcoins the payment screen will acknowledge the receipt of the transfer and you are done. Completion of the Bitcoins between you and the seller takes about 20 minutes,
If you would like to discuss Bitcoins in more depth please don’t hesitate to get in touch.