Why An Award-Winning Architecture Firm Will Now Accept Bitcoins

An award winning design firm in Singapore claims to be the first of its kind to accept bitcoins.

TOPOS Design Studio said it would begin accepting the digital currency in an effort to improve savings and efficiency, according to Coindesk.

"Bitcoin not only provides our clients with another form of payment option, it lowers our operational costs and increases the efficiency of our payment system for our overseas accounts," Design Principal Alan Fan, who founded TOPOS Design in 2005, told Coindesk.

As a company, TOTOS Design Studio hadn't considered accepting the digital currency until employee Amy Buxton spoke to Bitcoin Exchange, a local ATM company.

"As a company we hadn't really considered it until we spoke to Zann Kwan from Bitcoin Exchange and she highlighted the many benefits of us as a company accepting bitcoins, especially as a number of our projects are overseas," Fan said.

Using the digital currency could also lead to expansion of the firm's international customer base, since they won't face any exchange rate.

The studio doesn't plan to convert bitcoin payments into other currency either - it intends to keep them as an investment and use they when they can.

"As we would like to keep the bitcoins we shall not be using a merchant payment processor, unless of course we require working capital, however we foresee that we will build up our bitcoins and hopefully use these as a means of payment for business transactions in the future," Fan said.

The architectural and interior design firm, which is headquartered near Singapore's central business district and operates internationally, has won seven International Design Awards in the past two years and has been shortlisted for two others.

Projects fall into all major areas, including hospitality, corporate, commercial and residential. It also has offices in Hong Kong and Dubai.

The legitimacy of Bitcoins has been questioned since its beginning. The currency has been criticised as a means for criminals to launder money and purchase contraband and illicit services. The U.S. government has cracked down on that and the value of bitcoin's value dropped substantially late last year.

However, it's still very much alive.

Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, recently purchased nearly 30,000 bitcoins in a U.S. government auction and they can also be used to make purchases on websites as large as Overstock.com.