London has decided it wants to be the epicenter for bitcoin.
U.K. authorities have voiced strong support for digital currencies — bitcoin included — as a way to help the market evolve, reported Reuters, highlighting London as a $5 trillion-a-day global currency market. British leaders have also discussed steps to innovate digital currency markets by regulating it lightly in order to avoid legal pitfalls.
The tech enthusiasts, however, are leading the charge to make London the “real-world hub” for the trade of cryptocurrencies, and bitcoin seems to be the first logical step, as well as the technology that powers it: the blockchain. Bitcoin and digital currency already have a strong following — like the 2,200 member group called CoinScrum — which gets together to talk ideas about how to evolve the market.
The British government has also been a strong proponent on digital currencies, as long as it can regulate them, as a method to prevent money-laundering and illegal trading. Like other bitcoin and cryptocurrency proponents, supporters in the U.K. have spoken about the possibilities of extending the blockchain’s uses — particularly because of the efficient and cost-effective manner money can be traded via the technology.
“London has been the home of financial innovation for hundreds of years,” Nicolas Cary, co-founder of the bitcoin wallet service Blockchain, told Reuters. “It would be a historical mistake not to make this the home of digital currencies. There’s an incredible amount of talent and experience here.”
So why London and why not the U.S.? Perhaps New York’s financial district?
Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center in Washington, D.C., told Reuters that it’s simply a “different attitude” in the U.K than the U.S. It’s more positive, he said, and there’s more of a push toward finding a constructive solution toward regulating the cryptocurrency.
Last week, bitcoin hit the presidential campaign trail with Rand Paul, Buttercoin bitcoin exchange went belly up, and iGot, an Australian-based bitcoin exchange, launched its merchant services side. This, week, bitcoin got more support in countries like Canada and India and it found a new place in the hearts of a political party in Finland called the Pirate Party. But on the dark side, bitcoin continues to get tangled into legal matters and raised more concerns about people using it to buy illegal goods (and images).
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More charities are turning toward bitcoin as a way to reduce transaction costs when collecting donations. A report in The Wall Street Journal highlighted why major charities like Save the Children, American Red Cross and Greenpeace are looking toward the digital currency to save time and money.
“We want to remain contemporary and relevant to current and future generations,”Ettore Rossetti, director of social media and digital marketing at Save the Children, said in an interview. “We don’t only want to be your grandmother’s charity, we want to be your grandchild’s charity. One way to do that is to accept bitcoin.”
A new report shows pedophiles may be using bitcoin to buy child sexual abuse images and other illegal material online. The Internet Watch Foundation report warns that the “most prolific commercial” child sexual abuse websites are accepting bitcoin as a payment option. The report allegedly uncovered 37 websites selling images for bitcoins in a four-month period. Because of bitcoin’s decentralized nature, the ability to buy and sell illegal goods has been a main critique of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
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