This week marks the emergence of the largest-to-date investment made in a Bitcoin startup with the secretive 21 Inc. receiving $116 million. While it’s hard to tell what 21 intends to do with the money, discussed below, it’s seems obvious it might have something to do with the Bitcoin blockchain and the Internet of Things.

Also this week, ShapeShift, a registration-less cryptocurrency exchange, announced a funding round and also revealed that it is CEO is none other than Bitcoin luminary and entrepreneur Erik Voorhees. BitPay announced a partnership with Heartland Payment Systems, adding a potential 300,000 businesses to BitPay’s portfolio. And ZapGo, a mobile money app that uses Bitcoin as its payment network, announced its launch and Android app.

Finally, another article appears making an argument for gaming and bitcoin out of BTCFeed with “Bitcoin Can Boost Freemium Games BigTime.”

At $116 million, 21 Inc. marks the largest bitcoin startup investment round

This week saw mysterious Bitcoin startup 21 Inc. receive $116 in investment funding from a top crop of lead investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Qualcomm, and RRE Ventures. Other investors of note include PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, eBay co-founder Jeff Skoll, Zynga co-founder Mark Pincusl, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

The last big funding round to any Bitcoin company was Coinbase with $75 million in series C investment in January.

Although Matthew Pauker, CEO of 21, has been somewhat cryptic about what is company will do to help mainstream Bitcoin technology, it seems likely that the target of the company may be to combine blockchain technology with Internet of Things projects. This is expected because of the company’s partnership with Qualcomm (a manufacturer of mobile devices and mobile chips) and commentary from investors about Bitcoin’s blockchain technology over Bitcoin as a currency.

It is possible to sign up for more information at 21’s website; and for job seekers, 21 is looking for engineers, developers, customer support–almost everything.

Erik Voorhees’s ShapeShift requires no log in.

Erik Voorhees’s ShapeShift is a really cool idea

CoinDesk caught the news that ShapeShift, a less-than-traditional cryptocurrency exchange platform, landed £525,000 in seed funding from investors Barry Silbert and Roger Ver—and, at the same time, revealed that the platform was created by entrepreneur Erik Voorhees.

ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange allowing for a simple exchange between 25 different digital currencies. It differs from the traditional exchange structure in that users do not need to login or register.

As part of the statement on the funding announcement, Voorhees revealed himself as the company’s CEO and creator. Initially he had operated under the moniker Beorn Gonthier—a reference to a shape-shifting man from J.R.R. Tolkin’s The Hobbit.

The front page of ShapeShift prominently displays a pair of boxes that include a dropdown for choosing currencies, entering a payment address, option return address, and the exact amount to exchange-into. Once triggered, the website asks for a deposit of the amount needed to make the exchange and will wait 10 minutes for that to happen. After that, the site completes the exchange and the “shapefhited” currencies go into the deposit address.

ShapeShift also offers a browser plugin called ShapeShift Lens as well as an embeddable JavaScript button for websites called Shifty Button.

BitPay partners up with Heartland Payment Systems

In a recent blog post, Bitcoin merchant payment processor BitPay, Inc. announced a new referral partnership with Heartland Payment Systems Inc. As part of the collaboration, Heartland will now refer customers to BitPay’s payment platform.

This partnership with Heartland is extremely lucrative for BitPay and the Bitcoin industry because Heartland delivers services to over 300,000 businesses and services and has grown to become the fifth largest payment processor in the United States. Heartland may now add Bitcoin to its list of services that include solutions for credit, debit, prepaid card processing, etc. by using BitPay.

ZapGo wants to be the M-Pesa of Bitcoin

A new startup named ZapGo wants to use Bitcoin as a payment network to enable mobile money transactions and become the “M-Pesa of Bitcoin.” Mobile money apps have a strong market in places where mobile devices (such as smartphones) are prolific but credit cards and central banking is poor, such as Africa. M-Pesa, referred to in some ZapGo press, is an already existing mobile money app system that serves Kenya’s smartphone users. ZapGo hopes to provide a similar service, just using Bitcoin.

ZapGo’s killer app is that it uses Bitcoin as a medium of exchange and not necessarily the currency of exchange—this means that two people participating in a money transfer with ZapGo do so in their native currency and Bitcoin is used behind-the-scenes to exchange value.

Of course, people who use ZapGo can also exchange in bitcoins should they choose meaning it can also be used anywhere bitcoin payments are accepted (or accept bitcoin payments).

ZapGo is currently integrated with four bitcoin exchanges: Kraken and Coinbase in Europe, BitX in South Africa and Coinapult in Central America.

Bid and ask rates for ZapGo’s transfers are derived from the Kraken exchange and customers are currently charged 2% when sending bitcoins and 0.34% when receiving bitcoins. Fees are associated with loading offshore accounts and transacting at bitcoin exchanges. According to the website, normal mobile payments are free and instantaneous.

The ZapGo mobile app is currently available for Android via the Google Play store. For more information check out ZapGo’s detail page.

Bitcoin Wikipedia entry trending suddenly?

Earlier this week a Redditor noticed that Bitcoin searches on Wikipedia had jumped 3,000% over the week (Wikitrends) and that trend appears to be continuing as now the same trends page reports over 10,000%.

It’s hard to say precisely what is driving this sudden spike in interest. Speculation in the thread suggests recent media attention—citing the discovery of a Bitcoin miner in uTorrent. But it’s not easy that’s the cause as Google’s trends show Bitcoin’s search metrics barely twitching in 2015.

Article: Bitcoin Can Boost Freemium Games BigTime

It’s hard to disagree with a headline that hits close to home with this reporter’s own expertise—gaming and Bitcoin—and the conclusion seems almost forgone. Freemium gaming and mobile gaming over the years have seen huge expansions in payment models that attempt to leverage microtransactions: get a user to purchase $10 in in-game currency and then have them spend it in small pieces.

An article from BTCFeed entitled “Bitcoin Can Boost Freemium Games BigTime” does an excellent job arguing this point citing that few people actually make in-app purchases–approximately 1.5% in January 2014, according to the Swrve Monitization Report.

The fact that microtransactions are not “micro” at all (the $10+ buy in being an example) may be a large barrier for many impulse buys when looking at in-game items that run sometimes fifty cents for a hat or similar virtual item. As Bitcoin matures, a fifty cent transaction could be feasibly simple and painless for a virtual hat with a peacock feather in it. A consumer need only pop open a Bitcoin wallet, click the right button, and viola: user gets a hat, game company gets paid.

Already mobile gaming companies and MMORPG publishers are beginning to join Bitcoin acceptance including Bigpoint Games, Zynga, Jagex Games Studio (publisher of RuneScape). The BTCFeed article identifies Coinplay as well, an indie game platform, that joined up with GoCoin for bitcoin processing.

The ground of mobile gaming, MMORPG gaming, and all the freemium market is already fertile with digital currencies, all corporate bound and separate, and it’s the perfect place for bitcoin acceptance to grow.

photo credits: Screenshot from ShapeShift; and Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license)