China Has First Retail Store to Accept Bitcoin as Payment
November 28, 2013 Leave a comment
China Has First Retail Store to Accept Bitcoin as Payment
11-28 14:23 Caijing
The move drew attentions from many Bitcoin lovers, but no transaction has been made so far.
China now has its first retail store willing to accept Bitcoin despite the country’s central bank has recently denied legitimacy of the growing popular virtual currency. The store in Harbin, the capital city in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province allows customers to pay by scanning QR codes in their Bitcoin wallet, a mobile phone app which can also covert Chinese Yuan into equivalent Bitcoin based on real-time exchange rate.The move drew attentions from many Bitcoin lovers, but no transaction has been made so far.
Prices of Bitcoin on Wednesday soared to over $1,000, for the first time, since it was created in 2008 by someone under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. Growth has exceeded 7600 percent this year.
Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China said last week that the central bank, for now, has no intention to accept virtual Bitcoin as legitimate currency.
He, however, showed personal interests in the thing and said Chinese people are free to be a part of Bitcoin trading.
Beijing’s response came days after the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission both accepted the legitimacy of Bitcoins at a Monday’s hearing while Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve said he has no plans to regulate the currency.
In order to make the virtual currency widely accepted, more than 250 retailers are banding together this year in Bitcoin Black Friday on November 29 when people could pay for holiday shopping in Bitcoin.
As much as 7,500 stores and hotels worldwidem, mostly in western countries, have reportedly accepted Bitcoin as payment.
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