Seeking to Solve Bitcoin's Banking Dilemma

When Fidor Bank's Michael Maier spoke to CoinDesk in June, the Internet bank COO framed his industry as one that bitcoin would grow to challenge directly, suggesting at the time that its partnership with Kraken demonstrated its intent to accept this future and even cooperate with it.
However passive these statements may have seemed at the time, they came into sharper focus on 31st October, when Fidor announced it would team with its San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange partner to launch "the world's first cryptocurrency bank".
The unnamed project seeks to build a regulated financial institution that would help bitcoin startups that have struggled to secure and maintain accounts even for day-to-day business.
Given this backdrop, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell sees his company's most prominent collaboration with Fidor as more than an exercise in bringing another first to the ecosystem. In a new interview, Powell positioned the specialized bank for cryptocurrencies as a necessity should the ecosystem succeed at delivering on bitcoin's full technological potential.
Powell said:

"For Kraken to be a viable business long term, for most players to be viable, we need to see the pie grow. That’s what we want to do with Fidor, is create a bank with the specific mandate to bank bitcoin companies and provide reliable banking to end-users of bitcoin."

By providing stable banking partnerships to companies in the ecosystem, Powell aims to, in turn, return lost time and energy to the community. In the process, he will also expand his business beyond one that targets market makers and bitcoin companies with a VC-backed order-book exchange.
However, Powell contends that Kraken has the experience it will take to rise to the challenge and deliver on its goal.
"We’ve talked to more than 200 banks in the last year-and-a-half about banking bitcoin companies, and the successes are the ones you’ve seen so far, the 1% success rate," he said. "[The bitcoin community] can’t go on wasting time. How many man hours is the industry wasting talking to banks? It’s just insanity."

A 'bitcoinized' financial institution

Though Powell was clear on the goals the project is set out to achieve, his statements suggest that Fidor and Kraken are far from solidifying any concrete plans on the types of services they will provide. As the original release relayed, even the name of the bank – BICONDO, BYSE Bank or Cryptocurrency Bank – remains a matter of debate.
However, Powell indicated that the bank does intend to offer certain services to clients, like the ability to borrow against bitcoin assets and invest in lending products.
"We hope to leverage blockchain technology to offer some additional services and 'bitcoinized' traditional financial services," Powell added.

Read more:
http://www.coindesk.com/kraken-seeking-solve-bitcoins-banking-dilemma/

8,000 Convenience Stores in Argentina Sell Bitcoin

BitPagos has launched Ripio, a new bitcoin brokerage service that allows consumers in Argentina to buy small amounts of bitcoin at more than 8,000 convenience stores.
To achieve this goal, Ripio will integrate with TeleRecargas, a popular mobile phone service that allows consumers the ability to prepay for cell phone plans at a network of partner convenience stores across Argentina.
Argentina and Palo Alto-based bitcoin merchant processor BitPagos raised $600,000 from prominent bitcoin angel investors earlier this year. The company’s CEO Sebastian Serrano told CoinDesk that Ripio aims to target underbanked consumers as well as existing bitcoin users who want an easy way to buy bitcoins at a physical location.
He explained:

“You can go to any location, give them your account in Ripio and the amount of pesos you want to get in bitcoins. Boom: you have some bitcoins. It’s going be extremely easy to use and to buy bitcoins easily, securely and near you, even if you don’t have a bank account. We think that this is going to push adoption.”

For now, the service will only be available in Argentina, though Serrano sees the service as broadly appealing to consumers in other Latin American markets that could benefit from an easy bitcoin buying solution.
In particular, Serrano said BitPagos is looking to expand Ripio to Venezuela, but that this program expansion will take time to achieve.

How Ripio works

While Ripio works primarily at physical locations, Serrano indicated that users must first complete an initial registration on the platform’s website.
Users next print their Ripio ID and search the service’s map for available stores. Still, Serrano is confident that these elements of the service will be convenient for on-the-go users or those still learning the basics of bitcoin management.

Read more at:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitpagos-brings-bitcoin-8000-convenience-stores-ripio/