In a recent blog post, the Oxford Dictionaries Online has announced the latest additions to its online dictionary of current English. Amongst which are colloquial words known as Internet speech such as “selfie”, “twerk”, “TL;DR” and “emoji”.
... srsly?
More interestingly, the term “bitcoin” has been added, and is being defined as;
bitcoin, n.: a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank.
Pioneered by Satoshi Nakamoto, this is the next step in consolidating the presence and growth of this convenient and untraceable virtual currency. Bitcoin is obtained through a special piece of software program that solves puzzles for block rewards - a process called mining.
Just like earning a wage over a time spent labouring away, one block of bitcoin is rewarded as the code is ‘mined’. Bitcoin has it’s own exchange rate and can be traded for any accepting currency - a trade the Malta Financial Services Authority has gladly embraced.
More interestingly so are the implications for bitcoin when your average Joe accepts it on a daily basis for services and/or product exchange. Not operating within the realm of typical currencies, bitcoin is has no central bank and relies solely on an Internet-based P2P Network.
Finnish HTML5 software developer SC5 has adopted bitcoin as a currency with which it’s employees can opt to have part of their salary paid in. Having stated to be “doing this just out of curiosity to try out new things”, SC5’s Martti Malmi claims that this allows for an innovative, competitive and secure means of Internet commerce.
It is still unclear as to what will happen when SC5 files its taxes.
SC5 also accepts payment from its clients in bitcoin - one amongst a few other Internet companies accepting the currency including Mega, Reddit and WordPress.
We are interesting in seeing what implications this relatively new currency has for the existing and still developing job market. Still finding it’s foothold as an emerging currency in a changing economy, we can predict that there will be new opportunities arising in the payments industry; amongst others.
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