A new Bitcoin exchange for the UK

If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men) are working with a newly formed exchange called Bit121 https://bit121.co.uk/

The first thing we noticed about the site is that it's in Barclays colours, trivial as it sounds it was not a good first impression, with the Libor scandal still fresh in my memory. However you never know if they may have decided to lead the way into the brave new world of digital currency, One thing's for sure Barclay's backing will add legitimacy to the people on main st, and this is only a good thing. Time will tell as to what happens next and to how close the relationship is between bit121 and Barclays. We assume that the company (bit121) have just been a bit clever with their marketing and they are not terribly close to Barclays at all, we will know when barclays blocks their accounts and you have to withdraw your Bitcoin to another wallet.

As always the moral of the story here is not to store too much Bitcoin or any crypto in a website wallet, only store what you are prepared to gamble, it's definately NOT a safe place to leave currency, regardless of who's backing the site (alledgedly).

And so onto China and the news that 3rd party payment providers are also not allowed to use Bitcoin. In a country which makes it's daily bread on denying human rights why are we not surprised, does it matter? Yes, because it will keep the Chinese people in economic slavery just a little while longer. We will keep away from political topics though and just focus on the currency. We are still to go critical in UK or USA so there is much more room for growth against FIAT and in general usage terms, which is what is being forgotten by new Bitcoin fans, It's value against the Dollar or Pound are not the most important factor. It's usability is much more important.

This brings us to Litecoin, We will definately analyse this in greater detail in our next post. We see it as the Mini-disc to Bitcoins Cassette tape. It's not going to dominate for long but if it succeeds Bitcoin even briefly then buying it now at $30 a coin would be a very shrewd investment. It's much more difficult to own Litecoin and use it, but that will be easily remedied in the future when developers start 'forking' (nerd speak for converting) Bitcoin software to work with Litecoin.

We will be opening our account with Bit121 and sending them the documents they need (assuming it will be driving licence and utility bill) today. We will let you all know how we find their service.

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If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men)...