Instant cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has completed its fund-raising of US$1.6 million; Nick Szabo says banks must go permissionless to get all of blockchain’s benefits, and more top stories for September 9.
SEP 9 DIGEST: ShapeShift Raises $1.6 Million; Nick Szabo Says Banks Need Permissionless Blockchains to Survive SEP 8 DIGEST: AXA Bank Considers BTC for Remittance Market; Bitcoin Group’s IPO Back on Track French investment banking firm AXA is eying to use bitcoin for remittances; Australia-based Bitcoin mining operator Bitcoin Group is closer to being listed on the Australian stock exchange ASX, and more news
SEP 7 DIGEST: Ashley Madison Bitcoin Blackmail Reaps Profits; Final Silk Road BTC Auction Likely for 2015 Research indicates that blackmailers may have extracted thousands of dollars in bitcoin from those seeking to buy silence in the Ashley Madison hack and more news
SEP 4 DIGEST: CoinWallet Conducts 'Stress Pre-test’; Hollywood Agency to Adapt MtGox Story CoinWallet ran a “stress pre-test” on the Bitcoin network in preparation for the real “stress test” next week, the MtGox story might be adapted as a movie, and more news
SEP 3 DIGEST: Proposed California Bitcoin Bill Adds New Reporting Requirements and Coinbase Expands to Singapore The latest version of California's “BitLicense” adds new reporting requirements to licensed businesses, Coinbase expands its services to Singapore, and more top stories for September 3.
SEP 2 DIGEST: Bitcoin Devs Pen Open Letter to Community; UK Gov’t Explores Blockchain for Recordkeeping Bitcoin developers representing some 90 percent of the commits to Bitcoin Core in the last years have written and signed an open letter to the Bitcoin community and more news
SEP 1 DIGEST: Silk Road Investigator Pleads Guilty to Bitcoin Theft; Goldman Sachs Analyst Says Blockchain Will Change Asset Ownership Former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges plead guilty to stealing over US$800,000; a Goldman Sachs global investment research analyst praised blockchain technology, and more news
AUG 31 DIGEST: Barclays to Enable Charitable Bitcoin Donations; Coinbase Expands to Canada Barclays announced that it will allow people to make donations to charities in bitcoin; bitcoin exchanges and wallet companies are developing strategies to deal with the CoinWallet's upcoming “stress test”, and more news
AUG 28 DIGEST: Major Mining Pools Support BIP100; Tree Signatures Proposed by Blockstream's Pieter Wuille Bitcoin mining pools BTCChina, BitFury, KnCMiner and 21 Inc. are now publicly backing Core developer Jeff Garzik's BIP100 block size limit proposal, and more top stories for August 28.
AUG 26 DIGEST: Big Mining Pools Oppose Bitcoin XT Fork; Tor Vulnerability Suspends BTC Black Market Operations A significant chunk of mining pools has taken a fierce stand against Bitcoin XT; the largest currently operating bitcoin black market has decided to halt operations due to a Tor de-anonymizing vulnerability, and more news
AUG 25 DIGEST: 8 Leading Bitcoin Companies Pledge Support for BIP101; Bitcoin Exchange Rate Falls Below $200 BitPay, Blockchain.info, Circle, KnCMiner, Bitnet, Xapo, BitGo and itBit have agreed to implement Gavin Andresen’s BIP 101; F2Pool instead backs BIP100; the bitcoin exchange rate fell below US$200 and more top stories for August 25.
AUG 24 DIGEST: Stanford Offers Bitcoin Course; Glidera Launches Non-Custodial Bitcoin Buying Service for Wallets The Californian Stanford University School of Engineering will offer a new course on Bitcoin, Glidera has launched a service that allows wallets to use an API to buy and sell bitcoin directly, and more news
AUG 21 DIGEST: Mark Karpeles Re-Arrested in Japan; World Wide Web Consortium to Launch Web Payments Working Group Tokyo police has served another arrest warrant on Mark Karpelès; the World Wide Web Consortium prepares to launch a Web Payments Working Group and more top stories for August 21.
AUG 19 DIGEST: First Bitcoin Block in Support of Bitcoin XT Mined; BTC Price Plunges Over 13% to 2-Month Low The first Bitcoin block in support of Bitcoin XT has been mined by Slush Pool; the bitcoin price has plunged over 13% and more top stories for August 19.
AUG 17 DIGEST: Bitcoin XT Released, Reddit Mods Accused of Censorship, and Dark Web Markets Processed more Bitcoin than BitPay in 2014 Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen have launched Bitcoin XT, new research has found that marketplaces on the dark web frequently process more bitcoin transactions than BitPay, and more news
Bit-Exodus Continues: Remittance Service Rebit and Cloud Miner Genesis Mining Leave New York In an ongoing trend of Bitcoin companies withdrawing their services from New York in response to the BitLicense, two more businesses have exited the Empire State.
AUGUST 14 DIGEST: itBit Won't Use Bitcoin for its Banking Project and 22 Bitcoin Companies Have Applied for the BitLicense New York-based Bitcoin exchange itBit has revealed that it won't use Bitcoin for its upcoming Bankchain project, the NYDFS has so far received 22 BitLicense applications, and more news
AUG 12 DIGEST: Visa to Start Blockchain Research; LocalBitcoins & BitQuick Join NY Exodus A recent Visa report indicates that the major international credit card firm is planning to research blockchain; LocalBitcoins and BitQuick are withdrawing their services from NY in response to the BitLicense, and more news
AUG 11 DIGEST: Tokyo Police Suspect Karpelès Embezzled Funds; US Bank Regulator Calls for Balanced Bitcoin Oversight Regulatory bureau for banks within the United States Department of the Treasury called for a “balanced” approach to Bitcoin regulation and more news
AUG 10 DIGEST: Estonian Central Bank Denies Blockchain Reliance; TigerDirect Reports Impressive Bitcoin Growth The Estonian central bank has denied statements by Deutsche Bank suggesting that the Estonian banking system relies on blockchain technology to secure information and more news
AUG 7 DIGEST: G7 Pledges Support for 'Appropriate' Bitcoin Regulation; Market Research Analyst Qualtrics Adds BTC Rewards G7 representatives announced support for “appropriate regulation” of virtual currencies; online survey giant Qualtrics added bitcoin as a rewards option and more news
AUG 6 DIGEST: Tokyo Court Says Bitcoin Not Subject to Ownership; Intel Hiring Crypto Researcher A Tokyo judge has ruled that bitcoin’s are not subject to ownership; Intel is hiring a researcher to investigate hardware and software to advance decentralized ledgers; and more news
AUG 5 DIGEST: Overstock Unveils Blockchain Trading Platform; Symbiont Issues Securities via Bitcoin Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has unveiled his company's long awaited blockchain-based private and public equities trading platform tØ; Symbiont has issued the first Smart Securities on the Bitcoin blockchain, and more news
AUG 4 DIGEST: Mt. Gox ‘Ran out of Funds 6 Months before Going Bust’; Australia Warms towards Bitcoin as Currency Defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox is said to have ran out of money six months before it filed for bankruptcy; an Australian government inquiry has set the stage for Bitcoin to be treated like a national or foreign currency, and news
Bitcoin Core Developer Proposes 17.7% Yearly Block Size Growth; Still No White Smoke In the ongoing debate regarding Bitcoin's block size limit, Bitcoin Core developer Pieter “sipa” Wuille has published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) to increase the maximum block size by 17.7% per year, starting in January 2017.
AUG 3 DIGEST: Mark Karpelès Admits to Tweaking MtGox Account; Overstock Sells US$5m Cryptobond Mark Karpelès is believed to have manipulated his own account on the bitcoin exchange by millions of dollars Overstock has sold a US$5 million “cryptobond” to New York-based trading firm FNY Managed Accounts, and more news
JUL 31 DIGEST: Former Mt Gox CEO Faces Fraud Charges; Ethereum Finally Launches The Tokyo police is reportedly charging former Mark Karpelès on suspicions of fraud; the long-awaited app network Ethereum has finally launched, and more news.
Accenture: Blockchain Has Great Potential, Currency Needs to Go In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, technology consulting firm Accenture directors Owen Jelf and Sigrid Seibold argued that blockchain technology will reshape the financial sector.
Former NYDFS Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky Denies BitLicense Cronyism Allegations Benjamin Lawsky denied allegations from the Bitcoin community suggesting he created the BitLicense as a setup for his newly established legal firm, The Lawsky Group.
Skype Co-founder Funds Blockchain Based Startup Marketplace Funderbeam, an Estonian company that offers data-intelligence on startups for angel investors, has announced it will launch a blockchain based trading platform for startup-investment.