This week, an interesting NFC Bitcoin payment system that uses NFC and works at any place that accepts credit cards has gone into alpha testing. Read up on OneBit below. HP posted an interesting article that outlines the power of the Bitcoin blockchain as a basis for contracts (and replacing lawyers?)

It also looks like Mike Tyson might be getting his own branded ATMs—but the company that is launching the product has raised some initial suspicions.

International Business Times UK published thoughts on examining venture capital into Bitcoin projects that investments will double year-over-year from 2014, meaning that $800 million will flow this year.

Also, if you’re into trading card games check out Spells of Genesis, an interesting emerging title that still feels a little light on details, but extremely big on popularity in the Bitcoin community. SoG promises a card trading system and a currency system that will be tradable for bitcoins and operate on the Counterparty protocol (making cards actual assets.)

Mike Tyson Bitcoin ATM celebrity coup or scam?

World renowned boxing champion Mike Tyson took to Twitter this week to announce and endorse the “Mike Tyson Bitcoin ATM” in a tweet with the statement, “Changing the way we get change.”

The ATM, planned to launch August 30 of this year, would offer cash to bitcoin services in under 20 seconds, touting itself as faster than Tyson’s knockout record of 30 seconds.

Mike Tyson’s ATM, screenshot of http://www.miketysonbitcoin.com/

While Bitcoin ATMs are not a new thing in the Bitcoin industry, SiliconANGLE writer Duncan Riley thought something was suspicious about the whole thing. Much of his problem with the company behind the Mike Tyson ATM, Bitcoin Brands Inc, is the vaporous nature of the company’s details and the enigmatic over-the-counter (OTC) stock offering.

After the airing of Riley’s concerns, CoinDesk contacted the site’s domain owner, Peter Klamka, refuting the claims that the Mike Tyson ATM might be a scam. Klamka added that Bitcoin Brands currently operates two ATMs, one in New York and another in Montreal.

OneBit NFC Bitcoin payment system goes into alpha

OneBit, a Bitcoin wallet app that allows payments at any credit card accepting merchant via NFC, last week announced the alpha stage of development.

The application started out life as an NFC payment tool developed at a MasterCard Hackathon by entrepreneur and OneBit CEO Toby Hoenisch. The tool originally used MasterCard’s PayPass and could be used to pay in bitcoin at MasterCard accepting stores.

MasterCard helped OneBit connect with a card issuer to raise funding for the development, but Hoenisch has made it clear that the company has no partnership with MasterCard.

“To be clear: We don’t have [an] official partnership with Visa or Mastercard,” he wrote in the Reddit announcement thread. “But we also don’t need one. The risk would be that they force all of their thousands of issuing banks to stop doing business with bitcoin companies. The issuing banks are quite independent, so I don’t see this happen.”

Aside from adding tap-to-pay NFC capabilities to bitcoin payments at any credit card accepting merchant, Hoenisch also promises no fee transactions on market rate bitcoin payments.

As the project is currently in its alpha stage only a handful of devices have been shipped to testers around the world. Early access signups are available for those interested on OneBit’s website.

Hewlett-Packard shows continued interest in Bitcoin

The folks at Bitcoin.com caught an interesting tweet from HP on July 25th that shows HP knows something about Bitcoin.

With #Bitcoin, the contract is the entire transaction. Period. http://t.co/Sprf4yWOQQ pic.twitter.com/aQI8EtJHKS

— HP (@HP) July 25, 2015

The tweet refers to a blog post at HP that shows a fascination with how Bitcoin works and an interest in the blockchain. Particularly, it shows an interest in the concept of “smart contracts.” The tagline, “In Bitcoin, the transaction is the contract.”

In Bitcoin, the contract is the transaction itself: one party sending another funds. But in commercial banking or investments, smart contracts could execute unknowably complex contingencies based on the terms of the contract, all in real-time, with total transparency to the agreeing parties.

HP’s writer comments that the protocol and infrastructure of the blockchain provides for the capability to deliver difficult-to-defraud contracts. Although the article suggests that the blockchain could “replace lawyers,” really the takeaway is that as a ledger it’s a great place to store information you want to prove exists.

This the same impetus behind companies such as Factom, who partnered recently with the government of Honduras in order to provide security and proof-of-existence for land registry in the country.

$800 million expected to be invested in bitcoin this year

Treasury Insider reports that when the International Business Times UK explored data compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CoinDesk the analysis revealed that Bitcoin-related investments should double year-over-year since 2014.

This year has been huge in investments for Bitcoin ventures, including the $116 million in VC raised by 21, Inc., $28 million for Ripple Labs, $50 million for Circle, Inc. and $78 million for Coinbase Inc.

The report also cites that much of this interest is coming because Bitcoin has stabilized somewhat over previous years and is becoming more useful as a currency. However, IB Times UK also notes that merchant interest in Bitcoin remains at only 50%. This is reflected in studies that SiliconANGLE has done into bitcoin adoption amid merchants, which shows that 2014-2015 adoption flattened, while investments jumped.

While it’s true that Bitcoin has become much more stable than previous years, another factor that may be good analysis of the leap in Bitcoin-related venture capital is the emerging interest in the Bitcoin blockchain as a technology infrastructure. Nasdaq, the government of Honduras, and HP, MIT, Microsoft and others have shown increasing interest in the Bitcoin blockchain and this continues to give businesses and VC firms a reason to have confidence in firms looking to innovate on the technology itself.

WSJ argues that blockchain technology in corporate environments has a ways to go

In a recent article, Owen Jelf and Sigrid Seibold  at the Wall Street Journal argue that blockchain technology has great potential in the corporate environment but because it is yet untested and still nascent, it may have a long way to go. Both authors are directors at Accenture, business strategy consulting company.

The article cites how Nasdaq is currently researching and implementing a version of blockchain technology for its private shares market service. The stock market company has also accelerated its implementation in preparation for delivering it to clients as well.

The authors write: “To be used by financial institutions, including capital markets firms and insurers, blockchains must supplant the costly methods introduced by bitcoin with a mechanism that guarantees security, privacy and speed without paying for anonymous consensus.”

In summary, the authors end up saying that blockchain technologies “present an enormous opportunity for the world’s banks and financial institutions” and that those institutions “have moved quickly to make investments in it.”

It may still be early in the blockchain technology growth sector to know how well it will fit with finance and corporate, but most indicators are strong.

Spells of Genesis token sale launches soon on Shapeshift

Spells of Genesis is an interesting blockchain-connected trading card/arcade game published by Geneva-based EverdreamSoft SA that will fund itself via a crowd sale of game assets. This is possible because currency in the game are represented on the Bitcoin blockchain via ownership and transferable between players via blockchain transactions.

Artwork from Spells of Genesis, “Satoshi”, copyright EverdreamSoft

The game currency, BitCrystals, is going on sale at a rate of 15,000 BitCrystals per BTC (or $0.016 per BitCrystal.) The price of the BitCrystals will increase every 5 days and the sale will automatically end when enough BitCrystals are sold in a 30 day period.

The sale is being launched on Erik Voorhees’s registration-less cryptocurrency exchange site ShapeShift.io.

The BitCrystals token sale will officially launch on August 4th, 2015 on the official site BitCrystals.com.

More information about the game and the BitCrystals token sale is available at Bitcoinist.net.

Expect more coverage from SiliconANGLE about the progress of this game and perhaps a review of the gameplay.

photo credit: via reddit member huevos_de_acero; and Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license)