The plans over the next year to fund efforts to create a set of best practices for merchants accepting Bitcoins as well as conduct a payments-oriented conference in Silicon Valley early next year, Peter Vessenes, who will be the foundation's chairman and executive director.

Its other plans include creating a opt-in certification process for businesses accepting Bitcoins and funding a development team lead by Gavin Andresen, a foundation board member and lead developer for the overall .

Bitcoins are transferred using a peer-to-peer system that employs "miners" to cryptographically verify transactions to ensure people are not trying to double-spend their currency. All transactions are entered into a publicly accessible . The ledger shows a person's 32-character alpha-numeric address, which is used to transfer funds, but no more identifying information of the involved parties.

Promoters of Bitcoin say the very low fees charged to send currency to other people makes it attractive to businesses using traditional banking systems. Transactions are also irreversible unless the receiver of a Bitcoin wants to transmit it back to a sender, eliminating the risks businesses face of possible chargebacks when transacting with credit cards.

Since Bitcoin launched in 2009, the exchange rate used to move it into government-issued currency by Bitcoin exchanges has fluctuated widely. A small but of retailers are transacting in Bitcoins, but greater adoption by merchants is seen as a way to stabilize exchange rates. Software tools for merchants are .