Bitphone Becomes First Bitcoin Phone Company, Skype Competitor

Bitphone Becomes First Bitcoin Phone Company, Skype Competitor

While Skype has proved to be a great leap in telecommunications, a new service called Bitphone is attempting to reinvent and improve how we communicate by using bitcoin as low-cost infrastructure and payment method for encrypted calls right from your browser. The telephone has actually made a lot of progress over the last generation. Remember back in the 1980’s when you had to deposit US$0.25 to make a call on the payphone? You had to share a phone, and its germs, with who-knows-who, if you could find a public phone that wasn’t broken. Common pay phones didn’t take dollars, pennies, or....


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Bitphone, The World’s First Encrypted Skype Competitor, Closes Down

Late on Tuesday, I received a very sad email from Gavin Stevens, founder of Solid Cloud, and creator of Bitphone, the first-ever encrypted, Bitcoin-accepting online video calling service. The contents were sad, but the tone was not of remorse, but of anger and frustration. They had contacted me, as a Bitphone user on their list, to alert me that they were shutting their digital doors for good due to “regulatory requirements.” Broke Bitphone’s Launch 18 Months Ago. Having gotten to know Stevens since the launch, interviewing him, and connecting with him on LinkedIn, this is a very sad event....

BitPhone Offers Encrypted Voice and Video Calls Paid with Bitcoin

Freedom of association. Privacy. Free speech. Basic rights that many of us take for granted are under increased governmental scrutiny in today’s digital age. Private emails, phone calls and now web-based video calls are all routinely inspected in the name of national security, at least in Western cultures like the U.S. and Great Britain. The Guardian reports that Skype has provided “backdoors” to state-run surveillance programs like PRISM for years. In light of these disclosures, the tech and cryptography communities have stepped in to develop encrypted alternatives designed to preserve....

Death of a Bitcoin Dream: Founder Gavin Stevens on Bitphone’s Demise

Bitphone recently announced to its users via email that service was being closed down, and Bitcoinist caught up with Gavin about the circumstances surrounding the startup’s untimely demise. Interview with Bitphone Founder, Gavin Stevens. Starting a new business is very difficult, and starting one inside of a new technological niche market is even more daunting. Gavin Stevens, the founder of Solid Cloud, created a new concept known as Bitphone in the spring of 2015 that created a new way for Bitcoin users to communicate online, creating an encrypted version of Skype, in effect. You could do....

BitPhone Shuts Down Service, Cites Regulatory Issues

BitPhone, cryptocurrency based voice and video calling platform has shut down due to increasing regulatory pressure. Poorly drafted regulations have again started to haunt Bitcoin businesses. Many cryptocurrency platforms have fallen victims to the fiasco, choosing to either move away from a particular market/location or shut their shops entirely. BitPhone is the latest company to succumb to the injuries inflicted by regulations. The cryptocurrency-based encrypted voice and video calling platform has announced the end of its brief 1.5-year stint. According to BitPhone’s announcement, the....

Bitcoin and Regulation: Lessons from the Early Days of Skype

Michael Jackson, former COO of Skype and current venture capital investor at Mangrove Capital Partners, explores how bitcoin companies can learn from the early struggles Skype had with regulators across the globe. For all the differences between Skype and bitcoin, there are many similarities. Both products use fundamental changes in technology to enable new opportunities, and they both remove the existing organizational hierarchy of their respective industry. As such, parallels can be made and valuable lessons can be learned from the early days of Skype. The bitcoin industry seems to be....