In this Bitcoin Weekly we take a little look at the state of economic stability of Bitcoin itself by talking about a few things that have to do with exchanging, trading, and working directly with BTC. To start, Coinbase thinks it has a solution to the “microtransactions” problem that plagues not just fiat money over-the-Internet transactions but also Bitcoin—which many people were hoping would solve that outright with the ability to fraction BTC almost infinitely. Next, a new exchange that works exclusively with altcurrencies has launched in the US, Crypto Street is now in full open beta.

And finally, MtGox has partnered with web-defense and -acceleration platform Akamai to increase not just the security of their websites, but the stability with heavy amounts of traffic, and reduce latency during trades overall. Showing that as MtGox continues to grow, the exchange also keeps working to grow up.

Coinbase seeks solution to making microtransactions plausible and painless

In a recent blogpost, Coinbase–a now almost household word when Bitcoin is discussed–talked about a new service they’re providing that allows users to transact BTC exchanges with portions as small as 1 satoshi (or 0.00000001 Bitcoin.) When this is done it’s completed instantly, confirms instantly, and has no fees. The reason? Because Coinbase is making the exchange off-block–i.e. it doesn’t use the usual protocol to make the exchange (at least not at first) meaning there’s no mining fee accrued.

This exchange, of course, can only happen between Coinbase account holders.

The reason why even BTC has obstacles to microtransactions is because of the fees associated with current auditing model (to entice miners to take your transaction quickly) as BTC increases in value against other money smaller quantities will come into use. In the end, even small miner’s fees make the exchange of fractions of Bitcoins cost far more than they’re worth.

Fortunately, the Bitcoin protocol has something that helps make microtransactions more plausible and Coinbase intends to use it: bundling together multiple transactions into one to mitigate fees. Coinbase also usually pays those fees themselves for customers. When enough off-block microtransactions happen, upon reaching about 0.01 BTC in value Coinbase will send them back to the blockchain (and pay the fees.)

The only problem with this is that off-block exchanges won’t have the security of a transaction recorded and audited onto the blockchain. However, their security is only lowered until the trigger level is met when it goes back to the blockchain.

For a while now, Bitcoin has been seen as a possible solution to many of the issues that face microtransactions; but many obstacles still remain. Coinbase hopes that by providing what is essentially BTC microtransction escrow it will open up a whole new horizon.

Read more at the Coinbase blog.

Crypto Street Cryptocurrency exchange has gone open beta

The invitation period is over for people interested in getting into one of the newest cryptocurrency exchanges also named after a road: Crypto.ST has officially launched into open beta. We first noticed this interestingly named exchange in the May 8th Bitcoin Weekly and now we finally get to tell people that they can get in without invitation as of July 29th.

Currently Crypto Street differentiates itself from other exchanges on the market in that the exchange currently supports trades between cryptocurrencies. Currently supported are Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Feathercoin–with the expectation that Namecoin and Primecoin have been slated for addition next. The criteria for additional cryptocurrencies being added to the stable includes: strong community support, the current market adoption, and core developers who are committed to continually supporting and releasing updates.

“We want to encourage a strong economy between the various altcoins,” said CEO Shamoon Siddiqui, “and that’s why we’re starting with a no-fee model. But of course, that will change in time.”

Having an exchange that works entirely with altcurrencies is an interesting creature when it comes to trading in virtual currency. Much of the Bitcoin community has grown up with exchanges such as MtGox that originally assisted in bringing BTC to people with money (such as USD or EUR) more exchanges have grown up to change BTC for other country-based currencies since.

Crypto Street has seen over 1,000 registered users since opening to the public on July 29th and no doubt will bring a new and interest market for trading between different cryptocurrencies. In fact, the addition of an exchange that provides easy access to exchanging between the popular altcurrencies will indeed be an interesting service in the current market.

MtGox teams up with Akamai to make trading BTC easier

Akamai comes up often on SiliconANGLE as a provider of services that accelerate access to web and media content as well as protecting websites from DDoS attacks. So when news came down the pipe that MtGox is partnering up with Akamai to make the Bitcoin exchange service more stable, it made a lot of sense.

“Mt. Gox is now proud to be supported by Akamai, meaning that mtgox.com is hosted on thousands of servers all around the world, connecting our customers at their local level,” MtGox said in a recent statement. “Not only does this massively increase our protection, but since the transition the performance and speed of mtgox.com has been greatly improved. Both factors are very important for the next few items. Structurally we’ve moved from being a hosted service to being entirely self-hosted, meaning that we have much more flexibility in what we want to do and have full control of our data center. This is a major step up for Mt. Gox in our evolution.”

The history of the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world has been one rife with security issues, instability, and no small amount of curiosity about what would happen next. One of the problems with growing extremely quickly is outgrowing your britches, and MtGox did that over and over.

Of course, right on Akamai’s doorstep is protecting against DDoS, and this is something that MtGox is no stranger to.

The partnership will probably also lower the effects of lag and backed up trades on MtGox’s system, which has also been a source of instability lately.

If anything, this upgrade shows that MtGox is still committed to providing a better experience for BTC trading as it seems like the exchange will not be overtaken anytime soon as the world’s biggest and that also means it needs the world’s best security.