Bitcoin Comes to Facebook, Apple, and the Dish Network

As government agencies have started

assessing ways to regulate Bitcoin, big companies nationwide
have begun to warm up to the decentralized, cryptographic
currency.

Facebook can now be used to send or receive Bitcoin payments
with friends through QuickCoin, which launched on May 21.
All a user has to do is log in through the social media site, find
a friend, click send, and the specified amount is automatically
transferred. One disadvantage that advocates of Bitcoin have had to
grapple with in bringing the currency mainstream is the relatively
long wait time that it normally takes for the block chain—the
public ledger for transactions—to confirm a transfer of Bitcoins.
Quickcoin was developed in a way that allows for transfers to be
instantaneous regardless of time or day, though. 

Apple has angered many Bitcoin enthusiasts over the past several
months by inexplicably pulling popular Bitcoin wallets such as
Coinbase and Blockchain from their app store. Some users were so
enraged that they resorted to
obliterating their iPhones. Apple reconciled with customers at
the Worldwide Developer’s Conference earlier this week. They
unveiled their new
App Store Review Guidelines, with an added section on digital
currencies that will now allow Bitcoin applications to be developed
and used on iPhones. Section 11.17 explains, “Apps may facilitate
transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do
so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the
territories in which the app functions.”

Dish Network
announced last Thursday that it would begin accepting Bitcoin
as payment for their pay-TV subscription service in the third
quarter of 2014, making it the largest company in the world to
start using Bitcoin. It will be using Coinbase as its payment
processor. Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase, said, “We’re
excited to support DISH and their current and new subscribers for
their bitcoin transactions. This is a large step forward in the
growing momentum of customers paying companies in bitcoin for
things we do every day, like watching premium TV.”