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Barclays, one of the the UK's largest banks, will begin to accept Bitcoin later this year. Unless another high street bank rushes to accept Bitcoin, Barclays is set to become the first major bank in the UK, US, and Europe to accept Bitcoin. At the time of publishing, one bitcoin (BTC) is worth about 150 or 204.
According to a report in The Sunday Times, Barclays currently has 75 staff at two of its research labs in London working on accepting Bitcoin. Like most companies and organisations that decide to accept Bitcoin, Barclays won't deal directly with the cryptocurrencyrather, the bank will work with an as-yet-unknown Bitcoin exchange. One possible candidate is Safello: a Stockholm-based Bitcoin startup that Barclays invested in earlier this year.
To begin with, the roll-out will be slow: only charities will be able to pay bitcoins into Barclays bank accounts. Presumably, if everything goes as planned, a larger swath of Barclays customers may be allowed to pay bitcoins into their accounts.If they and other banks start to accept BitCoin as currency then it makes the currency all that more "official" and it'll probably regain some of that "old" fame. Maybe stock up while they are still "cheap" ?