The digital peer-to-peer currency known as Bitcoin has taken another turn due to the launch of a new credit card from Hong Kong, highlighting the ferment that continues around Bitcoin.

The electronic money – aka digital peer-to-peer network – known as Bitcoin refuses to vanish, much to the annoyance perhaps of central bankers jealous of their money creation powers and security agencies worried about illicit commerce and fund transfers. With a number of major firms such as Expedia, the travel/flight/hotels-booking site, and Dell, the computer firm, accepting Bitcoin payments, however, the phenomenon seems to have legs. Price swings in Bitcoin have been sharp in recent years. Even among some ardent free marketeers, there remain sceptics, for all that they like the idea of genuinely non-political money, and rather as they are attracted to some re-working of the gold-based monies of the past. (To view some previous articles about Bitcoin, click here and here.)

In this brief article, Chris Hamblin, editor of Compliance Matters and Offshore Red, both sister publications to this news service, examines developments out of Asia.

Hong Kong Bitcoin Exchange ANX has started to issue the world's first Bitcoin debit cards and it is being hailed as a “game-changer”. Ken Lo, the company's chief executive, said in a recent interview: “ANX has been around for a year and a half so far. We've brought a lot of firsts to the industry. We created the first exchange; we brought the first debit card into the Bitcoin world.”

"Bitcoin is not widely accepted by a lot of the merchants so what we need is a lot of merchant adoption. Because the technology is not at a user-friendly level at the moment, we need to merge it back into the traditional payment networks. The new debit card allows people to take your Bitcoins [and] send [them] to a very unique address on the debit card and be able to top up in either Hong Kong dollars or US dollars and then now you can use this debit card on any of the traditional e-commerce sites or brick-and-mortar stores,” Lo continued.

"One example is if you wanted to use your Bitcoin to buy something on Amazon, now you [can] just load it onto a debit card and now you can use the debit card on Amazon. In Hong Kong, ANX is a money-service operator and fully licensed to remit money, transmit money and do foreign exchange,” Lo said.

On the subject of wider Bitcoin acceptance, Lo said: "XBox and Microsoft recently announced that they're accepting it, a couple of months back Expedia accepted it. Dell and all these other consumer-facing brands [have as well]. Why would Microsoft dick around with Monopoly money? There has to be a certain demand, there has to be a certain level of security or they wouldn't believe in it or support it.”

"Hong Kong has an Octopus card, which is a lot more convenient than a lot of things elsewhere in the world. For Bitcoin to displace something that's already up is going to take a bit of time, but I see that even people who use Octopus as a payment vehicle will be using Bitcoin in the future,” Lo said.

Bitcoins constantly yo-yoing price, however, is going through one of its customary troughs at the moment, having fallen below $300 in recent days (most recently around the $270 per Bitcoin rate).