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By strengthening direct consumer oversight, Bitcoin may shift consumer protection from law and regulation to reputation and trust, and even to mathematical proof of good service.
May 14 -
Don't think of it just as currency or a new set of payment rails. To get a full sense of Bitcoin and its implications for banking, you have to think bigger than that.
February 25
The promise of Bitcoin is to
Circle Internet Financial, which aims to make the digital currency user-friendly for merchants and consumers, plans to offer customers phone support, according to a
"In an area as new and innovative as digital money, end-users need to have trust and confidence in the companies that store their digital assets," Allaire and Neville write. "If a large transaction doesnt go through, you want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone."
Especially if all you know about Bitcoin is what you read in the papers.
Circle is launching in the wake of the February collapse of Mt. Gox, once the largest exchange for trading bitcoins, where
Phone support at Circle will initially be available for "limited business hours," Allaire says in an email. The company has a customer operations team in its headquarters city of Boston and is hiring internationally, he says. Circle's service, which will be showcased Friday at the Bitcoin Foundation
An early slogan of the Bitcoin community was that it allowed the user to "be your own bank." But Circle, which has raised $26 million in venture capital, is betting that more consumers will want to enjoy the benefits of instant, low-cost transfers and cryptographic privacy without the hassles of securing their
"For a lot of the early enthusiasts, the ability to download a piece of software, secure your own money on your own machine, print out paper wallets, put them in your safe, have that total control, is liberation. And it is for those people," Allaire says in a forthcoming American Banker video interview. "But to the average person in the world, that's terrifying complexity and risk."
