Diamond Circle To Discontinue Bitcoin Wallet Service
Diamond Circle Ltd., an Australia-based manufacturer of bitcoin ATM machines and a developer of bitcoin services, will cease its free wallet service within seven days, according to company founder and CEO Stephen Rowlison. Rowlison advised users of the service to login to https//portal.diamondcircle.net and transfer bitcoins to another wallet.
“We will make a statement concerning the purpose and reasons behind this decision within the next few days,” Rowlison said in an email. “Thank you for registering your card and we hope to bring you good news in the future on whether this service will be re-activated.”
Diamond Circle provided a payment network for crypto-currency storage and exchange, according to its website, www.diamondcircle.net. The company provided the hardware, software and service support for peer-to-peer money transfer in and out of personal bitcoin wallets. The company also offered a bitcoin debit card and a bitcoin point-of-sale device.
The first bitcoin ATM
In March 2014, CCN.com reported Diamond Circle developed the first cashless bitcoin ATM. The bitcoin ATM employs what is called near field communication (NFC), a set of communication standards that enables two devices to establish radio communication by bringing them into proximity with each other. To buy bitcoin, the user uses a Visa or MasterCard branded ATM to buy a Diamond Circle debit card. The debit card costs $5 and can also function as an offline storage wallet.
Diamond Circle installed its bitcoin ATM at the Bluff Café, Burleigh Heads, by the Gold Coast’s Surfers Paradise in the state of Queensland Australia, according to an announcement in September 2014. The announcement said that by only supporting Visa and Mastercard for the purchase of bitcoin and cards, the bitcoin ATM reduces security threats. The bitcoin ATM also reduces the cost of holding cash, thus increasing margins and ongoing residual payments to distributors and owner/operators, the company noted. The machine accepts retail barcode scanners that allow consumers to check out purchases without operator assistance.
The NFC debit cards are Apple SDK capabilities dependent on iPhone 6 which has NFC, the company noted. Diamond Circle also said it planned to sell card readers for use at gas stations, parking meters, mass transit including taxi cabs and by the local trader without a cash risk.
Also read: First Intel Inside Bitcoin ATM
Digital currency exchange
In July of 2014, Diamond Circle announced it joined Fix8MT to develop a digital currency exchange trading technology for bitcoin. The announcement described Fix8 as “the fastest open source C++ FIX (financial information exchange) Protocol Framework.” The partnership aimed to develop a robust, high-performance execution platform using next generation open source FIX framework as well as other technologies.
The company’s main office is in Eagle Heights, Australia. It also has an office in Coventry in the United Kingdom under the name Diamond Circle UK Ltd.
