We’ve all probably heard of Bitcoin, the infamous online digital currency that has made waves and swept the internet. Although not all situations involving Bitcoin have been positive as it’s value has fluctuated up and down more times than we can count, Bitcoin still remains a very real online currency that has refused to go away. Even OUYA is apparently accepting Bitcoin for the purchase of the console now, which they seemingly started doing sometime in December. The really interesting thing about Bitcoin is that it is completely untraceable, so with the right combination of things, your history of online purchases could be entirely unknown to anyone but yourself. Perhaps this is one of the reason why it’s established itself as such a popular alternative. Perhaps not. The fact remains though, that Bitcoin is obviously here to stay.
In response to that, a United States Startup company called Coinbase is doing everything in their power to try and bring Bitcoin to a more mainstream audience. It has since recently raised a sum of $25 million for their funding campaign to help them bring Bitcoin payments to Android. Coinbase, which also offers a consumer wallet and a standalone merchant app that allows physical retailers to accept Bitcoin as payment, has released an SDK that should assist in getting others to enable support for the Bitcoin Android payments. The SDK is an open source project and is already available on GitHub, but it doesn’t just allow the use of Bitcoin payments in Android, as it has also added other payment methods like Debit and other forms of transactions that were previously unsupported.
This is truly a monumental day for Bitcoin as a currency, as it should open a whole new world of possibilities for growth of users that might not have otherwise ever used the currency in the first place. A lot of people are beginning to recognize mobile payment options as a decent alternative, and with the possibility of using Bitcoin in lieu of things like Paypal or Google Wallet, it will certainly net Coinbase and Bitcoin some exposure. Do any of you use Bitcoin currently? Would you start to use it if this SDK introduces Bitcoin as an option for mobile payment inside Android Apps? You can find out more about Coinbase and their SDK at the Coinbase Blog, and let us know what you think in the comments.