The Leftover Bits 28/4/15: Circle Asking For Some Cash, Govern With The Swarm and Overstock Details Emerge

Welcome to the Leftover Bits, your source for daily bitcoin news.

Circle Raising Some Cash

Circle is in the middle of a USD $40 million funding campaign that looks to set the company’s evaluation at USD $200 million, according to Fortune.

Circle is a web wallet, payment processor and exchange. Similar to Coinbase, Circle attempts to simplify the Bitcoin experience while also complying with government regulation as much as possible. Circle has not confirmed the funding round, but Fortune does claim to have confirmed it with “multiple sources.”

It isn’t exactly the most titillating news, but it does showcase the enormous value investors see in the Bitcoin space, despite the price. If Circle does indeed get a USD $200 million valuation, that is while working within a currency whose entire market cap currently sits at a mere USD $3.2 billion. Does that mean they see Circle as 6.25% as valuable as the entire ecosystem itself, or, more likely, investors see growth potential in both Circle and Bitcoin the currency and technology.

More Details Emerge as Overstock Files With SEC For Crypto Stock

What, exactly, Overstock plans to do with blockchain technology still isn’t known. We just know that Patrick Bryne loves himself some crypto. What we do know is this: Overstock hired some developers from CounterParty to build a cryptocurrency related project, and then let them go. We also know that they host a wiki that explains how companies can use cryptocurrencies already released to crowdfund their projects.

Yesterday, Wired reported on an Overstock.com filing with the SEC to release its stock using the Bitcoin blockchain or something similar to it. The entire filing can be read here. The key paragraph in the filing is what Wired already quoted.

“We may decide to offer securities as digital securities, meaning the securities will be uncertificated securities, the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies”

There are other aspects of the filing that Wired missed, we have an article that goes over three of them, you can check that out here.

Swarm [is] Your Government

A few companies, now, are trying to fulfill the seemingly overly enthusiastic goal of replacing governmental services with some sort of distributed, cryptocurrency-backed, system. BitNation and the Blockchain Factory’s iNation are two of the most visible.

Swarm, known for crowdfunding projects such as the excellent Bitcoin Comic as well as some impressive technologies, is pivoting its focus to nonprofits and charity organizations as well as providing something akin to a basic income for all participants.

Every time a project is launched on Swarm, some of its tokens are distributed to every Swarm holder. It’s part of a concept called “distributed abundance” and it may be an early prototype of how we run societies in the future.

I think it is a little early in the game for something like this to be entirely successful, but that is the great thing about the cryptocurrency economy: it lets people experiment, and experiments like this are sure to move the conversation forward, regardless if they are successful at what they originally set out to do.