Bitcoins are still expanding their reach in both the virtual and real worlds, even if their value seems to dip up and down on a whim at times. Today, Microsoft announced that Bing users can quickly find out just how much their Bitcoins are worth in over 50 other currencies.
The Bing blog states that it has teamed up with Coinbase, which offers a digital wallet for Bitcoins, to provide the conversion data for the search site. A separate post on the Coinbase web site offers more information:
With nearly 1 million consumer bitcoin wallets, 4,000 API key applications, and over 23,000 merchants on our platform, Coinbase has its finger on the pulse of bitcoin activity and value around the world. We are thrilled that Bing search and Coinbase data are working together to enable users to easily search and understand bitcoin value ...
While Microsoft apparently has no problem showing folks how much Bitcoins are worth in U.S. dollars, U.K. pounds, euros and others, we wanted to find out if they had plans to actually accept the currency for buying products from sites like the Microsoft Store or for buying digital content like Xbox games, music or movies. We contacted Microsoft on this subject but a spokesperson told us, " We are focusing on the conversion of Bitcoin at this time and don’t have anything else to share."
Ironically, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was asked about how he felt about digital currencies like Bitcoin in his Reddit AMA today. He replied that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was involved in digital money but that unlike Bitcoin they don"t want to support anonymous funds. He did say that digital currency should catch on in the next five years in India and parts of Africa, adding, "Digital money has low transaction costs which is great for the poor because they need to do financial transactions with small amounts of money."
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft