Bitcoin Trading Volume Concentrating in Largest Exchanges

The vast majority of bitcoin trading volume has traditionally been handled by a relatively small number of exchanges.However, the latest data indicates that volume has concentrated even further as smaller exchanges are being pushed aside, leaving them with a much lower share of the total volume of bitcoins traded than just a few months ago.Lost monopolyPrior to the start of its decline in mid-2013, Mt. Gox had what amounted to an effective monopoly...

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How Bitcoin is Changing Everything

Perhaps the single most prominent, and telling, feature of bitcoin today is its massive controversy in the media. Not a single day goes by without an article or televised mention about its dangers, risks, and dubious mainstream appeal.Many in the mainstream seem set in their beliefs that bitcoin is a fad, or even worse a ponzi scheme, and is destined to fail. Yet when was the last time a ponzi scheme attracted global attention and prominent venture...

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TigerDirect Tops $1 Million in Total Bitcoin Sales

Florida-based online high-tech retailer TigerDirect passed $1m in total bitcoin sales on 13th March, less than two months after it began accepting the digital currency.TigerDirect began taking bitcoin on 23rd January, partnering with Georgia-based merchant processor BitPay, and has been active at incentivizing its budding bitcoin customer base.Steven Leeds, director of marketing at Tiger Direct, told CoinDesk that his company has been very pleased...

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Menufy Now Supports Bitcoin Payments at 400 US Restaurants

US-based online restaurants service Menufy has integrated Coinbase into its e-commerce platform, allowing consumers to spend bitcoin at hundreds of US restaurants.Menufy didn’t make much of a fuss out of the news, however – the Coinbase deal was announced only on Twitter and reddit.The company says its service is available in nearly 400 restaurants across 28 states.Continue reading at CoinDesk March 14, 2014 at 08:5...

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Mt. Gox Issues Chapter 15 Statement

Mt. Gox has filed a petition to protect itself in the US as it tries to reorganize.The defunct bitcoin exchange said that a petition for Chapter 15 protection was filed in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas on 10th March, and a temporary relief order was issued the same day. The preliminary relief order is scheduled for confirmation on 1st April. The exchange stated:“This means that the effect of the Civil Rehabilitation applies...

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Warren Buffett Urges Investors to ‘Stay Away’ from Bitcoin

Renowned investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett spoke out about bitcoin for the second time in as many weeks, calling the digital currency “a mirage” in an interview with CNBC on 14th March.The comments follow Buffett’s first statements on bitcoin on the network on 3rd March, when he suggested that bitcoin was not a currency, writing it off as a passing fad.Buffett was similarly dismissive of bitcoin again in his latest interview, at...

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For us by us: What Bitcoin needs to do to move out of the crypto-enthusiast box

Barriers to Adoption The fascinating emergence of Bitcoin has been powered largely by a “for us by us” dynamic, the growth of specialists intimately involved with cryptography, embraced by highly technical people of a wider variety. Eventually this bubbled up to the venture capitalist world, with a concerted attempt to “bring Bitcoin to the masses,” including PR campaigns like that recently waged by Marc Andreessen in the New York Times.Although...

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ASICS for Litecoin. Here They Come.

An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They are specially designed pieces of hardware for performing the hashing algorithms necessary to mine a specific coin and verify hashed transactions. These pieces of hardware are designed and manufactured to perform necessary hashing and nothing else.With the increasing valuation of Bitcoin, in fiat terms, the economic viability of ASICs begun to make sense some time ago. The development of...

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Australian Tax Office Explains Bitcoin, Intends to Tax it

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has provided businesses with some more guidelines on how it intends to deal with bitcoin, stating that income and profits derived from bitcoin transactions are taxable.The letter, sent to an Australian bitcoin entrepreneur in response to a request made last June, was a private ruling to specific questions and noted its contents were valid only to that case. But it gives digital currency businesses in the country a...

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Coins for Bands Hope to Disrupt Music Industry

Altcoins targeting specific communities are starting to emerge. This month sees the introduction of two separate cryptocurrencies aimed at musicians. Songcoin and FUNK each take different political and technical approaches to helping the independent music economy.Songcoin is the brainchild of Pimovi, a subsidiary of Australian natural gas exploration firm The Chancellor Group.Co-founded by Kasian Franks, who formerly founded now-defunct multimedia...

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Xapo Raises $20 Million for Ultra-Secure Bitcoin Storage

California-based bitcoin security company Xapo has raised $20m as part of an initial round of fundraising led by Benchmark, Fortress Investment Group and Ribbit Capital.The funding round is the second largest public round in the bitcoin space, trailing Coinbase’s $25m Series B completed in December, but coming in ahead of Circle’s $9m Series A round in October.Founded by Wences Casares, former CEO and founder of digital wallet startup Lemon, the...

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Mobile Ad Platform Vungle Offers Publishers Payouts in Bitcoin

Good news for mobile app developers who want more options when getting paid from their advertising revenue: mobile advertising platform Vungle has just announced plans to offer their publishers the option to receive payments in bitcoin.Vungle is one of Silicon Valley’s fastest growing companies in the mobile app monetization space, and after receiving $17m in series B fundraising last month, the tech company is looking to expand its reach.The move...

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Pock.io Becomes First UK Retailer to Sell Gift Cards for Cryptocurrencies

Consumers in the UK can now use their bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to buy gift cards for major online retailers like Amazon, Google Play Store, ASOS and Starbucks.Launched at the end of January, Pock.io has become the first British service to exchange retailer gift cards for digital currencies – with eight different cryptocoins currently accepted.Pock.io CEO and co-founder Rusty Nash said that the driving force behind the launch of this service...

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GoCoin to Support Dogecoin Following Good News for Miners

International payment platform GoCoin has today announced plans to support dogecoin.The move means merchants using the platform will soon be able to accept payments in the canine currency, in addition to GoCoin’s existing currencies, bitcoin and litecoin.“We’ve been carefully prioritizing the latest altcoins, and dogecoin really stands out as a viable currency due, in large part, to the strength of its community,” said GoCoin founder and CEO Steve...

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Bank of England: Digital Currencies are Similar to Commodities

The Bank of England (BoE) has published an article on the role of money in the modern economy and one topic was the future of digital currencies and payment technologies. The currency v commodity debate has been going on for a while and the Bank of England is clearly on the commodity side of the argument.“Digital currencies are not at present widely used as a medium of exchange. Instead, their popularity largely derives from their ability to serve...

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The Geostrategic Implications of Bitcoin

Argument for the US leading Bitcoin adoption The US exports inflation through the US Dollar’s status as a reserve currency. Over time as countries adopt Bitcoin as legal tender alongside their FIAT currencies, whether voluntarily or not, the Eurodollar inflows will rise as the world shifts from USD to BTC as the reserve currency. As those inflows rise, the value of the dollar falls precipitously, creating runaway inflation, perhaps “hyper”.The...

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Multisig: The Future of Bitcoin

Over the past month we have seen a large number of Bitcoin services dramatically fall over into the abyss. Silk Road 2, the intended successor to the Silk Road anonymous marketplace that was shut down in October last year, lost $2.7 million worth of BTC consisting of all of its users’ account balances and is struggling to figure out how and if it will ever be able to relaunch. MtGox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange with over 90% market...

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Pybitcointools Multisig Tutorial

There has been a large amount of interest in multisignature transaction technology in the past year, especially with the recent announcement of CryptoCorp. If you want to play with multisig technology yourself on the command line, here are the gritty details of how to do it. First, run sudo pip install bitcoin to install the Python Bitcoin library. Then, to generate the three private keys, run the following:> k1=`pybtctool random_key`> k2=`pybtctool...

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Bitcoin Derivatives Platform BTC.SX Resumes Trading After Mt Gox-Induced Freeze

Derivatives trading site BTC.SX has resumed trading after a few weeks of downtime induced by the Mt. Gox collapse. The company has signed BitStamp as its new exchange partner, said BTC.SX CEO Joseph Lee.BTC.SX suspended its operations until further notice on February 25, after Mt. Gox imploded. At the time, Lee told CoinDesk that he had no prior warning from the exchange, even as a business partner. BTC.SX went to Gox to trade bitcoins on behalf...

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Inside North America’s ‘$8m-a-Month’ Bitcoin Mining Operation

In a perfect world where mining difficulty was lower, bitcoin prices were higher and a warehouse full of mining rigs could be run by one man, Dave Carlson, the owner of North America’s largest bitcoin mining operation, could be earning $8m a month.However, just like reports of bitcoin’s death, reports of Carlson’s personal earnings are, unfortunately for him, exaggerated.With the mainstream media continuing to paint bitcoin as a modern-day gold rush,...

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Goldman Sachs: Bitcoin Isn’t a Currency But Underlying Tech Holds Promise

A new Goldman Sachs report on digital currencies has found that while bitcoin is not a practical currency, its underlying ledger technology could hold promise.The top-of-mind report, entitled ‘All About Bitcoin’, appears to have been compiled recently and it is possible Goldman Sachs commissioned it following the highly publicised Mt. Gox collapse.The report outlines the basics, citing bitcoin’s advantages and shortcomings, backed by statements from...

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Inside Bitcoins NYC Names Circle, Blockchain CEOs as Keynote Speakers

Inside Bitcoins New York has announced its keynote speakers for this year’s conference to be held from 7th to 8th April at New York’s Javits Convention Center.Headline speakers at the event will include Circle’s Jeremy Allaire, who will give the opening keynote; and Blockchain‘s Nicolas Cary, who will present the afternoon keynote on the 7th April.In addition to these notable speakers, a second event track has been added to day two of the event,...

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Perseus Telecom Launches Digital Currency Initiative, Integrated Exchange

Perseus Telecom has launched a new initiative with the aim to provide industrial-strength security for bitcoin exchanges, e-commerce, online gaming and multimedia sites.Perseus started accepting bitcoin payments just last month. The company is a provider of high-speed communications used by hedge funds, trading firms and media organisations in major financial hubs from London to Tokyo.The company’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) is being introduced...

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Finnish Firm Transforms Web Kiosks into Bitcoin ATMs

Bitcoin ATMs are on the march across the globe, with machines recently being launched in Dublin and London. In addition to the well-known manufacturers like Robocoin and Lamassu, however, other companies are trying to hop on the ATM bandwagon, including one Finnish company that’s taking a slightly different approach.Deltacom Finland Oy, founded in 2001, is a family business based in Helsinki. The small company was started by father and son team Timo...

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BitPay Dumps Texas Gun Retailer

Central Texas Gunworks LLC found itself without a Bitcoin payment processor last week as Atlanta based BitPay abruptly dropped the firearms seller from service. According to the company’s owner, US Army veteran Michael Cargill, the move came without warning or explanation. This, in spite of the fact that his company is a duly licensed firearms dealer engaged in lawful commerce in a gun-friendly state. As a result, Central Texas Gunworks had no choice...

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Singapore Bitcoin ATM Producer Tembusu Gets $300,000 Seed Funding

Singapore bitcoin ATM producer Tembusu announced today it has closed its seed funding round and raised over S$300,000 (US$236,600), just one and a half weeks after launching its first machine and after the company itself was valued at S$5.1m (US$4.02m).Company spokesman Jarrod Luo said the extra capital would form the bulk of the working capital the startup requires to “fulfil its outstanding machine orders in a timely fashion”, including stockpiling...

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