A Weekly Update Delivered to your Inbox every Monday View this email in your browser This Week In Digital Currency | BTC:$358.44 (8.68%) | LTC:$3.60 (0.66%) | DOGE:$0.000224 (1.75%) | NXT:$0.02 (5.26%) | PPC:$0.77 (2.53%) | BLK:$0.035 (12.90%) | DRK:$2.75 (61.76%) | Tweet Share +1 Our second post in our new Banking on Bitcoin series has been released, Misunderstanding Mindsets. Bob Fogg is an anonymous finance insider and our newest contributor at Coinprices. He works at a large buy-side firm, which provides him with an intimate view of the industry.



Excerpt:



When bitcoin gets brought up in my office, the idea of it being part of our future societal infrastructure is dismissed with remarks such as, “sounds like a ponzi scheme to me.” Granted, comments like this are semi-facetious, but there is still a level of seriousness to them. There are plenty of good arguments for why individual digital currencies such as bitcoin, litecoin or ripple may not succeed, however most of these arguments focus on individual technical reasons (such as the increasing size of the blockchain or the diminishing payoff from mining) that are specific to each currency. These individual arguments have nothing to do with the concept of digital currencies being part of the future of society. In most cases, the comfortably privileged lives of first world citizens makes it difficult for them to embrace digital currencies; more specifically, it is one’s inability to step outside of his specific viewpoint and reflect in an abstract manner. On Tuesday, Norwegian digital currency exchange, Justcoin, announced that they were shutting down, due to issues with securing a bank account. Justcoin Exchange was founded in 2013 with its office in Oslo, Norway. Justcoin was founded by Klaus Bugge Lund and Andreas Brekken. At the time of their closure, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, and Stellar were being traded on their platform. They were the #1 exchange by volume traded for both Ripple and Stellar, #11 for Litecoin, and #14 for Bitcoin.



As the news broke we immediately reached out to the Justcoin team who assured us that all customer funds were safe and withdrawals were being processed. We have since received confirmation from multiple Justcoin users that their withdrawals did in fact go through, and we have not heard from any users who have had withdrawal issues.



This week, we sat down with Justcoin CTO and CoFounder, Andreas Brekken, to discuss the recent closure of their exchange.



CoinPrices: First, can you give us a little background context on your banking relationship in Norway?



Andreas: Our bank is by far the largest in the country. We had meetings very early on. Two tech startup founders and -a lot- of bankers. There weren't enough spots at the large meeting table. Some of the bank's attendees literally had to stand during the meeting. They were very intrigued, checking out our website and related forums during the meeting. The guys from risk and compliance had a lot of questions and we affirmed that we were willing to commit to existing regulation and work together.



Since then we've been doing alright. Most issues have been complaints from us regarding slow processing times in the bank.



The blow came last week when we were told that digital currency (they call it virtual currency) is to be banned throughout the bank corporation.



CoinPrices: Have all customer deposits been returned?



Andreas: Out of our 68 645 customers, there are 1 263 users (1.8%) who still have at least 10 EUR (12.50 USD) or more left in their accounts. We will be contacting these customers using every method we can to make sure they withdraw their funds as soon as possible. Our guys at support@justcoin.com will help you find new wallets.



CoinPrices: What led to your bank account closure? Was there any government involvement in the closure?



Andreas: Banking is complicated. The systems are old, management cost is high and fraud is rampant. We don't know exactly why they shut us down. My guess is that the clash between the new (Bitcoin) and the old (traditional banking) does not fit in their business model.



CoinPrices: Do you have any advice to other Norwegian Bitcoin startups?



Andreas: If your business model is dependant on a banking relationship, then find someoneo who already has one. Or better, stay away from fiat if you can. If you can, find an investor that understands that Bitcoin is a faster, cheaper, easier and more secure to move/store value. Make sure that investor has a long term perspective and a lot of cash.



CoinPrices: Do you feel you would have been able to stay open if you were located in the EU?



Andreas: Establishing a new banking relationship would take months. With operational costs running and no revenue from fiat/bitcoin trades coming in, we'd be in trouble anywhere in the world.



CoinPrices: You have contributed so much to the bitcoin and digital currency communities, what are your plans going forward?



Andreas: First of all, I'm working on open sourcing a lot of our work. We've already been very active in the tools used by Hive/Coinpunk/etc. and want to contribute more.



We've had a lot of digital currency investors and startups reach out to us. People even flew in unannounced to speak with us. A lot of interesting opportunities have been presented to us the last day -- and please keep them coming. One door closes and many more open.



Our team believes in Bitcoin and we believe that we have a lot more to offer. Pantera Capital released their monthly Bitcoin report this week. The report discusses Blockstream's Sidechains proposal as well as various price metrics. The FBI, in partnership with law enforcement worldwide, took down the Silk Road 2.0 and various other "darknet" sites this week. Within hours there was already a Silk Road 3 up and running. Roughly a year ago, the feds took down the original online illicit marketplace, the Silk Road. Want to make sure you didn't miss a single thing this week? You can view every top digital currency related story of the last 4 months, on our website and in our Android app. Still in the News... The public comment period for the NYDFS Bitlicense Guidelines ended three weeks ago. You can read all public responses at our



According to Superintendent Lawsky, the next steps are as follows:

1) NYDFS will read and make public all comments.

2) NYDFS will release redrafted guidelines.

3) NYDFS will open up another public commentary period. You can read all public responses at our Bitlicense Hub 1) NYDFS will read and make public all comments.2) NYDFS will release redrafted guidelines.3) NYDFS will open up another public commentary period.

4) NYDFS will release final regulations with 45-60 days for companies to comply. Check out our new layout! We just rolled out the new version of CoinPrices. Our homepage is meant to be your central hub to all things digital currency.



Our redesigned news feed tracks all of the most important digital currency news from around the web, linking directly to the primary source whenever possible. Many of our competitors use automated algorithms to populate their respective news feeds, choosing quantity over quality, but our feed is curated by our editorial team ensuring higher quality links. Our feed never has duplicate items, only links to reputable sources, and includes all major news items occurring throughout the day. The entire news feed archive will be easily searchable, coming soon.



We have upgraded our graphing capabilities, giving you more customization, and making it simple to compare digital currency performance to other asset classes. All of the coins we track can now be plotted directly against the performance of major indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nikkei 225, popular commodities such as Gold or Oil, and most major stocks. We are also now tracking the 24hr volatility for all coins. There are still many glitches with our new graphing implementation, and we appreciate your patience as we work through the issues. We plan to add many more features over the coming days/weeks.



We'd love to here your feedback on the changes. Let us know what you think on twitter or by email.

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