1. Filipinos Can Now Withdraw Money from 450 Bank ATMs, Thanks to Bitcoin Firm
On Monday, Carlo Caraluzzo reported that Coins.ph created a new service that will make remitting money back to the Philippines cheaper than most available services.
“The company is releasing a mobile app that allows their customers to deposit funds anywhere in the world through a Bitcoin ATM and send it to someone in the Philippines. They are also able to deposit from a Bitcoin balance being held in a Coins.ph online wallet.”
2. The Tor Onion Is Under Attack and Rapidly Disintegrating
On Tuesday, Caraluzzo reported that an attack on the Tor network — that was anticipated — was underway.
“The question of whether Tor is still safe to use is up for debate. Understanding that the Tor network is centralized, we know that it can be compromised because attackers would merely need to extract five unexpired signing keys. This would allow them to make up their own consensus and point people to their own relays.”
3. Coinffeine Unveils Decentralized Exchange
On Monday, Alyssa Hertig reported on Coinffeine’s early demo in Madrid of its decentralized exchange concept.
“The idea behind the exchange is to give users the option of exchanging bitcoin for fiat directly over the Internet, bypassing middlemen like Bitstamp and the defunct Mt. Gox exchanges. Users can connect directly with other users and make the exchange over the protocol. They call it a ‘BitTorrent for your bitcoins.’”
4. SpaceBit, the Future of Money and Private Keys Stored in Space
On Monday, Cheryl Hulseapple reported on a project that could stow away users’ private keys far beyond any government’s reasonable claim of jurisdiction.
“The founders of SpaceBit, the first decentralized space company, plan to put the vault where no government can claim to own it. They want to enable people to be able to store their private keys beyond state bounds, where crypto wallets will be protected from the prying eyes and hands of those who believe that they have special rights of ownership.”
5. 950,000 Reddit Notes Set to Be Given Away in the Fall of 2015
On Sunday, Diana Ngo reported on the blockchain-based digital asset that Reddit intends to launch in 2015.
“Social networking service Reddit announced its new decentralized digital asset project based on blockchain technology — ‘reddit notes’ — with a total of 950,000 units that the company said it will be giving away in the fall of 2015.”
Elsewhere
In writing for the Huffington Post about Friday night’s Bitcoin Bowl in St. Petersburg, Florida, Robert Moran offers a nice year-end summary of what happened in 2014:
“The Bitcoin Bowl is a perfect end to 2014, the year that ‘the future’ happened. After all, 2014 was the year in which American retailers started selling 3D printers, the U.S. Navy began mounting lasers on its ships, humans landed robots on Mars and an asteroid, analysts began asking whether home based solar power could kill off American utilities, and state-sponsored hackers raided Hollywood.
“It's only appropriate that we'd end the year with the Bitcoin Bowl.”
Also, this actually appeared on live TV in the United States on Friday night:
Market activity
The Christmas week saw some pretty strange activity across bitcoin markets.
We started off the week with a little upward momentum in the price after finding sub-US$320 lows last Friday. Last weekend, the price got back above that mark, and we started Monday with a price of about US$327.
The price steadily rose through midweek, approaching the $US340 mark, before falling back to around US$320 on Christmas Day and rebounding to around $US330 to close out the week.
On Friday night / Saturday morning, we saw some significant downward pressure — perhaps #bitcoinbowl tip recipients selling off? — that pushed the price to around the US$330 mark.
Meanwhile, transaction numbers almost breached the 100,000 mark on Christmas Eve, but transaction numbers fell by nearly 30% on Christmas Day. That makes sense, though. Enough of the world spends most of this day with their families that commerce across the globe tapers off.
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