Bitcoin Payments
Ferrari To Accept Bitcoin and Crypto Payments In Europe
Luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari announced it will expand the ability to pay with Bitcoin and crypto to its European dealerships starting this month. The move comes after Ferrari first began accepting Bitcoin and crypto payments at its US dealers last year.
JUST IN: Luxury Cars Manufacturer Ferrari to accept #Bitcoin and crypto payments in Europe. pic.twitter.com/PxT7Z7OwbP
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 24, 2024
Ferrari said the rollout to Europe will occur by the end of July, enabling customers to purchase new vehicles using Bitcoin and crypto. The company plans to expand the Bitcoin payment option to dealers worldwide by the end of 2024, where legally permitted.
Ferrari continues its partnership with leading Bitcoin payments processor BitPay to process the payments. When a purchase is made in Bitcoin, BitPay instantly converts it to traditional fiat currency for Ferrari’s dealers to remove exposure to Bitcoin and crypto volatility.
The ability to pay with Bitcoin and other crypto caters to Ferrari’s tech-savvy customer base with sizeable Bitcoin wealth. It also taps into growing mainstream adoption, as more major companies accept Bitcoin payments including Microsoft, AT&T, and travel site Expedia.
Ferrari said accepting Bitcoin and crypto provides customers with additional flexibility and convenience in purchasing the company’s luxury vehicles. The automaker saw strong demand after enabling Bitcoin payments in the US last year.
As luxury and high-end brands adopt Bitcoin payments, it helps legitimize the asset class as a currency and not just an investment. The ability of consumers to spend Bitcoin at more retailers was also cited as a factor in the recent Bitcoin market rally.
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Shares in China-based crypto mining chip designer Nano Labs rose slightly after announced it is now accepting Bitcoin as payment for its goods and services through a business account on Coinbase.
In a Nov. 11 statement, the Huangzhou-based crypto mining chip maker, which is listed on the Nasdaq, said the move was part of a “commitment to embracing the latest in financial technology” as demand increases for “digital currency transactions in the technology sector.”
Nano Labs said it was taking a “proactive stance in the evolving digital economy” as crypto “adoption continues to grow, particularly among businesses seeking efficient and secure cross-border transactions.”
According to Nano Labs, adopting Bitcoin (BTC) will provide “greater payment flexibility,” but it didn’t offer any details about whether it intends to keep the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.
Following the announcement, shares in the Nasdaq-listed company rose 2.81% to $3.29.
Nano Labs’ share price saw a slight uptick after an announcement about accepting Bitcoin as a payment option. Source: Nasdaq
However, it hasn’t been enough to offset a share slump over the last month,which fell over 60% from a high of $8.33. It’s also nowhere near the all-time high of $96.20 set in July 2022, soon after the company was listed on the Nasdaq.
A growing number of companies are now accepting crypto as payment for some of their services.
Microsoft allows users of its Xbox store to pay in Bitcoin. McDonald’s adopted crypto as legal tender in its locations in El Salvador and Lugano, Switzerland.
The NBA franchise Dallas Mavericks also adopted Bitcoin as a payment option for club products and game tickets through BitPay.
China’s love-hate relationship with crypto
Beijing cracked down on crypto activities in May 2021, shutting down multiple mining firms and suspending crypto trading. However, authorities’ stance appears to have relaxed in recent times, despite an attempt to crack down on Tether in January.
In September, former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei urged China to closely examine advancements in crypto during a speech at the Sept. 28 Tsinghua Wudaokou Chief Economists Forum in Beijing.
Related: China still controls 55% of Bitcoin hashrate despite crypto ban
A few days earlier, a Shanghai Intermediate People’s Court in China recognized Bitcoin as a unique and non-replicable digital asset and acknowledged its scarcity and inherent value in a Sept. 25. report. Another Chinese court came to a similar conclusion on Sept. 1.
Earlier this year, Hong Kong’s financial regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), also approved the first spot Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) ETFs on April 24.
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As an Indian Bitcoiner returning home recently, I found myself using UPI digital payments repeatedly for everyday spending.
UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is India’s real-time bank-to-bank payment system that has become ubiquitous for making payments by scanning QR codes or using phone numbers. It’s enabled even street vendors and tiny shops to accept payments online.
Given the difficulty of getting cash change and vendors needing to keep the card machines, UPI is often the only payment option.
And I have to admit; it’s incredibly fast, cheap, and easy to pay merchants through UPI apps compared to fumbling with Bitcoin Lightning wallets, custodial or non-custodial. The money moves instantly for free, and the process is familiar to all parties.
While I’m huge on censorship-resistant, private, and decentralized money, Bitcoin and UPI’s convenience are hard to ignore. UPI processes over 14 billion monthly transactions across over 450 banks with no fees.
By comparison, Lightning is dealing with low liquidity, channel balancing headaches, and clunky user experiences (which keep improving with custodial wallets with some tradeoffs).
Of course, the privacy implications of an almost fully digital system controlled by centralized third parties make me cringe and sound dystopian. But most Indians happily surrender privacy for convenience time and again.
So, even as a Bitcoiner, I can’t see most Indians ditching UPI to start using Bitcoin lightning en masse for day-to-day payments anytime soon, apart from Bitcoin circular economies. The incentive needs to be there. And let’s be honest – Lightning still confuses Bitcoiners, let alone my uncle!
Maybe down the road, privacy concerns or currency devaluation could drive Indians toward Bitcoin payments. But for now, UPI has too much momentum and network effect.
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Bitcoin scaling proposal Ark is getting closer to reality. After a year of research focused on refining the reference implementation, Ark Labs announced today the completion of a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Tim Draper and his firm, Draper Associates. While the technical feasibility of Ark’s approach was initially debated, today’s announcement is a strong show of confidence for the future of the protocol and the builders behind it.
Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, Ark Labs’ co-founder Marco Argentieri expressed excitement about the road ahead, suggesting Ark is ready to provide a significant lift to existing scaling efforts.
“This funding will accelerate our efforts to make Bitcoin transactions as simple and user-friendly as possible, making fast, low-cost user-friendly transactions powered by Bitcoin a reality for potentially billions worldwide.”
Initially conceived as an alternative to the Lightning Network, Argentieri emphasizes that his company’s immediate focus is on supporting the adoption of Bitcoin’s popular Layer 2 solution.
“Lightning has made tremendous strides recently,” he said. We believe we can leverage this network effect to bring Ark to market and enhance the self-custodial experience for existing Lightning users.”
Ark addresses these challenges by utilizing trustless servers, allowing Lightning users to mitigate the difficulties typically encountered with operating Lightning infrastructure. A recent trend in reducing the costs of on-chain operations related to liquidity management has been to rely on custodial or federated options such as the Liquid sidechain.
“Unfortunately, this approach introduces custodial trade-offs that conflict with Bitcoin’s original vision. Ark has the potential to overcome these challenges at scale without compromising trust,” says Argentieri.
Asked about his motivation behind the investment, lead investor Tim Draper echoed the sentiment:
“Soon many people around the world will live on the Bitcoin standard. Today, we have to focus not only on how to buy and store Bitcoin but how to use it as a medium of exchange for everyday purposes. Ark’s architecture allows for seamless Bitcoin payments, in a way that stays true to its core principles of decentralization and self-custody”
One of Ark Labs’ early challenges was to transform the Ark protocol from a raw concept into a fully realized solution. According to Argentieri, the initial documentation and parameters proposed by its creator were not fully fleshed out and sometimes hindered a broader understanding of the technology.
“Many of the concepts lacked full development, and the arbitrary numbers being discussed failed to capture the protocol’s flexibility, particularly in addressing liquidity issues,” he explained.
Perhaps the most notable confusion has been around the need for covenants. Bitcoin covenants are smart contract restrictions that limit how and where future transactions can be spent, enhancing security and control over funds. While covenants can significantly contribute to the user experience around Ark as well as potentially improve capital efficiency, Argentieri insists that a good number of use cases can already benefit from a “covenant-less” version:
“Different types of users can leverage Ark’s features. While mobile clients are more challenging right now, using pre-signed transactions is a viable alternative to covenants for online servers.”
He also believes his company is well-positioned to deliver the first production service that can validate the potential of the technology. “When Ark is operational with actual capital deployed and large numbers of users benefitting from the infrastructure, it should help make a strong case for covenants”.
The team recently released an alpha version of the covenant-less implementation, now available on GitHub. Soon to follow will be the Ark Node, an Ark-enabled wallet, allowing users to send, receive, and swap Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, all within a user-friendly dashboard. Interested users should sign up on the website to receive updates for the closed beta testing in early September, with a broader rollout expected later this year.
Joining this funding round are Bitcoin-focused funds Axiom and Fulgur Ventures, along with prominent angel investor Stephen Cole. Allen Farrington, general partner at Axiom, shared his enthusiasm for the project: “We are excited to support what appears to be a substantial breakthrough in broadening Bitcoin’s utility as a means of payment and bringing increased sophistication to the financial infrastructure of the network.”
Ark Labs invites developers, top talent, and potential partners to contribute to its efforts.
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