“Welcome to the new economy,” boasts a sign at the entrance of the self-styled Bitcoin Embassy in the heart of Tel Aviv. The sparely furnished property opened a few months ago to support a community of Bitcoin fanatics, perhaps the most active in the world, who are out to build just that – a next-generation trading system based on the digital currency. At least two dozen startups have popped up in Israel over the past year with a view to creating tools that will allow the currency to be used in almost any kind of transaction – from buying shoes to sending remittances or issuing company stock. Israeli companies are pioneers in hi-tech fields like cryptography, fraud prevention, and semiconductors, all of which interact with the Bitcoin universe. That makes the country as much of a Bitcoin hotspot as Singapore or California’s Silicon Valley, says Eli Novershtern, principal of Israel’s biggest venture capital firm Pitango, which manages assets worth over $1.6 billion. [Source]