2016

Bitcoin's price approached $1,000 per coin in late December 2016, marking a significant milestone and reflecting the cryptocurrency's substantial gains throughout the year.

Skrill, the London-based payments firm owned by Paysafe Group, has started accepting Bitcoin deposits from some users. The company, formerly known as Moneybookers, made no official announcement about

Axoni has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Wells Fargo and Euclid Opportunities, the venture arm of ICAP. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Thomson Reuters, Andreessen Horowitz, FinTech C

Unocoin, a bitcoin startup in Bangalore, has partnered with Bitwage to let Indian workers receive their paychecks in rupees or bitcoin from employers elsewhere in the world. Bitwage, based in San Fran

A new social platform called Yours is enabling micropayments in Bitcoin to compensate content creators. The initiative is spearheaded by Ryan X. Charles, who previously worked as a cryptocurrency engi

Kik Interactive announced plans to develop a native cryptocurrency token for its messaging platform, aiming to create a decentralized payment system within the Kik ecosystem.

Lisk, a blockchain platform built on open-source technology and featuring sidechain capabilities, has reached a critical milestone by stabilizing its main network. This transition marks a shift away f

While the financial sector continues to dominate blockchain spending and experimentation, emerging technologies are rapidly gaining traction across diverse economic sectors. Anticipated spending in 20

At a Coinscrum gathering with decidedly political overtones, the author of Mastering Bitcoin explored how policymakers worldwide increasingly view financial autonomy with alarm. Antonopoulos examined

Circle removed bitcoin trading from its payments app this week, completing a transition it began by setting user accounts to display fiat balances. CEO Jeremy Allaire told the Wall Street Journal that

South Korea's major financial firms are coordinating development of blockchain technology. The Korea Financial Investment Association convened 21 financial investment firms and five blockchain compani

The Stellar Development Foundation has added four organizations to its payment network: Coins.ph, Flutterwave, ICICI Bank, and Tempo. All aim to make cross-border money transfers faster and cheaper in

OpenBazaar released version 2.0 of its decentralized marketplace platform, enabling peer-to-peer commerce without centralized intermediaries or platform fees.

Within Bitcoin's ecosystem, significant momentum has built behind those calling for a protocol modification to expand the blockchain's capacity beyond its current restrictions. For more than twelve mo

IBM and India's Mahindra Group are building a blockchain system to handle invoice discounting, a process in which suppliers borrow against unpaid invoices. The work comes as banks and companies grappl

Major financial players stand to gain significantly from embracing bitcoin, which offers a compelling set of advantages over traditional currencies—including a predetermined supply cap, independence f

The IRS and Department of Justice are seeking detailed customer records from Coinbase covering three years of transactions. Last week, the DOJ filed court paperwork requesting the names and account in

Charlie Shrem and Jason Granger announced Intellisys Capital yesterday at CoinDesk On Tap in New York. The investment company pairs Shrem's bitcoin background with Granger's real estate and private eq

China's tightening capital controls created unprecedented demand for bitcoin as citizens sought to move wealth outside the country, driving bitcoin prices to record levels in Chinese markets.

Smartrac, the world's largest provider of radio-frequency identification products and Internet-of-Things hardware, unveiled dLoc, a document verification and authentication system that anchors paper r

R3, the blockchain consortium backed by leading financial institutions, faced a significant setback when Goldman Sachs withdrew from the collaborative initiative.

Factom, a blockchain firm specializing in data authentication, has won financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a healthcare records platform for the organization.

An Indian-based mining pool called GBMiners now controls 3 to 4 percent of Bitcoin's total computational power, placing it in the top ten globally. Amit Bhardwaj, the pool's co-founder, supplied undis

Blockchain technology was a key topic of conversation at last month’s Finance Disrupted event...

The Hyperledger Project, a collaborative initiative hosted by the Linux Foundation, announced that membership had grown to 100 organizations, demonstrating substantial enterprise interest in permissioned blockchain development.

# The Murky Ties Between Crypto Promoters and Failed Schemes SteemCash currently features Michael Taggart as a prominent figure, with the cryptocurrency personality asserting that he helped establish

IBM and a Singapore blockchain startup called KYCK! announced a partnership on the opening day of the first Singapore Fintech Festival, a week-long event that drew close to 11,000 people from more

TumbleBit recently emerged as a Bitcoin privacy tool that works on the current protocol without requiring modifications. Like CoinJoin and CoinShuffle, it doesn't force users onto alternative blockcha

Florida's early vote looked strong for Clinton. Democrats show up in the early voting period when states offer it, and the numbers in Florida, Nevada, and other swing states suggested a good night was

BitX, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency startup, won approval to enter the Financial Conduct Authority's regulatory sandbox in the UK. The company offers consumer wallets, exchange services, and APIs

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority greenlit blockchain startup Epiphyte to build an alternative clearing and settlement system for British financial institutions, using Bitcoin as the backbone for c

Jeff Garzik, the CEO and co-founder of Bloq and a former Bitcoin core developer,...

Coinhako, a Singapore bitcoin wallet and exchange, is raising capital to expand across Southeast Asia after strong early traction in Malaysia. The company launched there in June and has seen what CTO

Zcash officially launched its blockchain on October 28, 2016, introducing the first major cryptocurrency to implement zero-knowledge proof technology for optional transaction privacy.

Decentral, the creators of popular cryptocurrency wallet Jaxx have announced that they plan to...

The regulatory landscape for startup funding just got a major shake-up, and AirBitz—a prominent bitcoin wallet maker headquartered in San Diego—is among the first to seize the opportunity. The company

The longtime Bitcoin Core developer who once helmed the project's technical direction made a striking return to public discourse, appearing recently on The Bitcoin Podcast. Gavin Andresen, notable for

Launching its public alpha phase within the coming weeks is Fundonomy, an innovative blockchain-based crowdfunding and credibility framework built atop the Ethereum Classic network. The platform democ

Dash, the seventh-ranked cryptocurrency by market value at over $78 million, announced a partnership with Shake this week to let Dash holders spend their coins through Visa networks. Using Shake Debit

TechCrunch unveiled its first documentary series this week, \"Truth Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain,\" bringing together a diverse array of voices—venture capitalists, policymakers, and sector

Ten prominent institutions operating within Luxembourg's fund management ecosystem have joined forces to establish Fundchain, an industry consortium dedicated to investigating blockchain's capacity to

Blockchain-focused firm Factom has announced the close of a $4.2 million Series A investment, with venture capitalist Tim Draper serving as lead backer through Draper Associates. The round also drew p

More than 50 attorneys and academics established the Digital Currency and Ledger Defense Coalition to protect the constitutional rights of blockchain developers and safeguard civil liberties in the sp

Unocoin, the Bangalore bitcoin exchange, closed a $1.5 million Pre-Series A round led by Blume Ventures. Digital Currency Group, Boost VC, Bank to the Future, Bitcoin Capital, FundersClub, Mumbai Ange

Velocity announced a Testnet Alpha for its Ethereum-powered derivatives platform. Traders can bet on price movements using long or short contracts, with the initial version limited to ETH/BTC using pl

Hong Kong-regulated exchange Gatecoin has begun offering trading in FirstBlood's 1ST token, marking the platform's entry into a decentralized gaming ecosystem built atop Ethereum. The FirstBlood netwo

Bitcoin miners occupy an outsized place in how people imagine the network functions. Brian Armstrong, who runs Coinbase, has promoted the idea that miners vote on protocol changes. Paul Sztorc, an eco

Bitcoin Core has a reputation problem among developers. The software works, but navigating it is laborious. Purse, the popular bitcoin wallet service, grew frustrated with the status quo. They built B

Needham & Company raised its bitcoin price forecast to $848 from $655 in the first half of 2016. The firm has underwritten major offerings, including Google's IPO in 2005, and serves as manager or co-

Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina and Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado announced the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, crediting Coin Center's advocacy as crucial to the launch. The news followed House

Financial institutions and technology firms have increasingly turned their attention toward the cryptographic infrastructure underpinning Bitcoin rather than the currency itself. While figures like JP

Cryptocurrency wallet Jaxx has announced plans to integrate litecoin into its platforms and apps following "significant community demand."

Wirex's cryptocurrency debit cards have earned positive marks from customers. The company has now expanded which digital currencies can fund those cards, announcing an integration with Shapeshift that

Deloitte announced the development of a blockchain-based loyalty program demonstration, showcasing enterprise use cases for blockchain technology in customer rewards systems.

French banking giant BNP Paribas' securities services division is moving forward with plans to leverage blockchain technology in the crowdfunding arena. The subsidiary has signed on renewable energy p

House members voted to pass a resolution on September 12th backing financial technology innovation across multiple sectors, including blockchain and alternative currencies. The vote totaled 385-4, wit

Monero's price surged significantly in late 2016 as darknet marketplaces adopted the privacy-focused cryptocurrency as an alternative to bitcoin for transactions.

Siam Commercial Bank's venture arm, Digital Ventures, has become the first Thai financial institution to invest in a blockchain startup, backing Ripple's $55 million Series B funding round. \"Siam Comm

Three additional cryptocurrencies—Steem, Lisk, and Digicash—have received approval from Apple for listing on the App Store. The tech company's portfolio of supported digital assets now encompasses nin

Ethereum Classic appears here to stay. Despite criticism and uncertainty, the blockchain maintains sufficient computational power and market value to sustain ongoing interest and potential growth. The

During the opening half of 2016, venture capital poured $290 million across more than 30 funding rounds targeting blockchain and Bitcoin-focused enterprises, per analysis from Juniper Research. Three

Bitspark, a bitcoin remittance startup headquartered in Hong Kong, has signed a Master Agreement with Vitaxel Group to enter the Malaysian market.

Provenance, a London-based blockchain startup, completed a six-month trial tracking fish and social claims through supply chains in Indonesia. The company partnered with the International Pole and Lin

After receiving "overwhelming flood of requests from the crypto community," cryptocurrency wallet Jaxx has added support for Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum pushed through a hard fork to return funds to users caught in The DAO contract exploit. Mining power shifted to the new chain almost at once. Some Bitcoin block-size advocates seized the mome

“Big Four” audit firm Ernst & Young (EY) has revealed the six startups it has selected for its 2016 blockchain-focused EY Startup Challenge. The six startups will head to Canary Wharf, London for the

Rosa Shores founded Clearvoter, a platform for civic engagement connecting voters with activism groups and each other. MiningPool met with her to discuss the upcoming beta launch and the role blockch

Rather than watch from the sidelines as R3 Banks experiment with blockchain innovations, credit union organizations have decided to build their own consortium. Launching CULedger, a platform d

WISeKey released WISeID 6, an updated application for protecting personal data and managing digital identities on a blockchain. The platform lets users control their digital ID while keeping their sec

Bitcoin payments still require users to scan QR codes or manually copy and paste long alphanumeric address strings. That friction has finally started to disappear. Two competing standards—BIP-47 and B

Visa Europe Collab is piloting a blockchain-based settlement system with Blockchain Tech LTD, known as BTL Group. The proof-of-concept program will enable banks to move funds across borders and curren

Seeking to enhance transparency across its trade verification systems, the Kimberley Process has begun exploring blockchain technology as a potential solution for streamlining diamond authenti

Physical bitcoins don't work. Bitcoin is digital money. When people put bitcoin onto metal coins, they get a novelty item at best, a scam at worst. Most designs etch the private key into the metal, th

IndieSquare and EverdreamSoft have joined forces to launch a blockchain gaming platform arriving in September. IndieSquare manages Counterparty wallets and APIs, providing backend infrastructure for c

Roy Zou discovered Bitcoin through a technology blog feed on Google Reader. A Chinese entrepreneur trained as an engineer, he was impressed by Bitcoin's core ideology. When Ethereum Classic launched o

KeepKey, an American hardware wallet maker, and ShapeShift announced a partnership allowing customers to trade cryptocurrencies from their device in two clicks. Neither company had collaborated with a

One year ago, Ian Demartino and I launched MiningPool with the intention of building...

Tether has released EURT, a token representing euros and operating on the Bitcoin blockchain. Each EURT token corresponds to one euro held in a Taiwan banking trust, matching the structure of Tether's

Official copyright registration through your nation's copyright office remains irreplaceable. I need to emphasize this because Blockai has faced some skepticism about its value proposition. Yet Blocka

Bitfinex introduced BFX tokens as a creative compensation mechanism for users whose bitcoin were stolen in the August 2016 hack, converting customer losses into equity-like claims.

During remarks at the American Financial Services Association's Vehicle Finance Conference in Las Vegas, a top PricewaterhouseCoopers executive explored how blockchain systems might reshape se

Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency remittance platform Bitspark has entered into an agreement with Vitaxel Group, positioning the company to expand operations into Malaysia. Through this arrangement, cust

The Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange suffered a major security breach resulting in the theft of approximately 120,000 bitcoin, valued at around $72 million at the time.

SmartContract has launched Smart Oracles, a platform designed to connect blockchain networks with traditional financial infrastructure and data sources. The American startup's solution bridges Ethereu

Mining power that once loomed as a threat to Ethereum Classic has shifted into its corner. Chandler Guo, a prominent GPU operator in the Ethereum ecosystem and head of Bitangle, previously warned he w

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman sat down with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong at Coinbase's San Francisco office. They talked about the moderation practices on /r/Bitcoin, whether Reddit should remove subreddit

Major cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex has now embraced Ethereum Classic, the alternative chain that emerged following the July hardfork. The listing marks another significant development in the increa

New York-headquartered blockchain consortium Agentic Group marked its arrival in the United Kingdom with the opening of its London base on July 25th, extending its European footprint. This marks the s

Poloniex added Ethereum Classic to its platform yesterday morning with no advance notice, setting off a firestorm in the digital currency community. ETC is the version of Ethereum that runs on the ori

Ethereum Classic launched as a separate blockchain, maintaining the original Ethereum protocol code and representing a fundamental split in the community over immutability principles.

Ernst & Young is bringing back its third startup challenge, this time focusing on blockchain applications for two sectors the firm views as ripe for disruption: digital rights management and energy tr

The Ethereum network underwent a controversial hard fork that reversed the DAO hack and returned stolen funds to investors, with significant community implications.

Charlie Shrem walked out of federal prison this week. The former CEO of BitInstant and Bitcoin Foundation founder announced his release in a blog post titled \"Onward,\" in which he described his plans

Bitcoin has already found success as a payment system for certain types of online...

RSK Labs is building Rootstock, a Bitcoin sidechain designed to support smart contracts. The platform runs contracts the way Ethereum does, but with a critical difference: it settles and moves value i

Bitcoin has proven its staying power across eight years of upheaval since its creation in 2008. The blockchain technology that powers it delivers security, transparency, and reliability precisely when

Charles Hoskinson, who founded Ethereum before leaving in June 2014, discussed smart contracts and Ethereum's hard fork debate during a Coinscrum Members Club appearance. Hoskinson now runs Input Outp

The European Union proposed new anti-money laundering regulations that would extend to cryptocurrency exchanges, requiring customer identification and transaction reporting.

The Winklevoss twins' cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has signed a sponsorship agreement with the eSports organization Echo Fox to integrate digital currency into competitive gaming. The eSports indust

The DAO breach and the surrounding dispute about restoring funds through a hard fork have dominated cryptocurrency discourse in recent weeks. Only Bitcoin's halving event came close to matching the at

The fintech giant behind Alibaba's payment systems, Ant Financial, has announced an ambitious push into blockchain technology, starting with its charitable giving platform. With a valuation ex

Ranked among Brazil's biggest banks, Banco Bradesco will test a blockchain-powered digital wallet and mobile payments app in Paraisopolis, a neighborhood on São Paulo's south side. The bank tapped eW

Bitcoin's second halving event reduced the block reward from 25 bitcoins to 12.5, occurring at block 420,000 on July 9, 2016.

Since its introduction by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 through the seminal whitepaper titled \"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,\" Bitcoin has functioned as both a digital store of value and a

Booz Allen Hamilton's Middle East office released a report this week pushing Gulf states to build blockchain infrastructure for their smart city plans and emerging financial systems. The report also e

Ethereum attracts investors with promises of decentralized autonomous organizations and smart contracts that could reshape how the world operates. Rootstock took a different path. The Buenos Aires sta

A Silicon Valley startup called Chronicled has developed a way to authenticate designer sneakers using blockchain technology. Rather than relying on labels that counterfeiters can copy, the company em

Coinbase announced a Series C funding round of $75 million, bringing the cryptocurrency exchange's total raised to over $100 million and reflecting confidence in the exchange's business model.

Pierre Gramegna, Luxembourg's finance minister, addressed the crowd at the World Economic Forum's 10th Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, with a sweeping prediction about blockchai

A protracted intellectual property battle is unfolding for Litecoin in European Union courts, where the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization must defend its own name against a tradem

An unknown attacker exploited a vulnerability in The DAO's smart contract code, draining approximately $60 million worth of ether tokens in a matter of hours.

IBM Research and China UnionPay E-payment Research Institute have unveiled a new blockchain system for loyalty bonus points exchange among multiple banks.

When we reached out to Slock.it about a blog post from Stephen Tual claiming that the vulnerability allowing attackers to steal over 3 million ether from the DAO had been patched, the company did not

ConsenSys announced funding to support its mission of building decentralized applications and tools on the Ethereum blockchain, establishing itself as a major Ethereum ecosystem developer.

Bitfury began deploying its 16nm ASIC mining chip in mid-2016 with efficiency of 0.06 joules per gigahash and 40 gigahashes per second per chip, advancing mining hardware into a new generation of performance.

Hardware wallet users seeking offline security have had few good options. Some run a computer disconnected from the internet to store private keys. Others write the keys on paper and hope the physical

Ripple cleared a major regulatory hurdle. New York's Department of Financial Services approved the company to sell and custody XRP, its native digital asset on the Ripple Consensus Ledger. The approva

International money transfer firm MoneyGram has entered into an agreement with Earthport, an Internet-based payments infrastructure company, to create a pathway enabling consumers to deposit funds str

The smart contract revolution began when Ethereum launched in mid-2015, sparking widespread interest in decentralized autonomous organizations, decentralized applications, and programmed contracts. Li

BTCTurk, Turkey's biggest bitcoin exchange, saw trading volume spike after PayPal announced it would exit the market. The payments company could not secure the permits needed to continue operating, an

The WIRED Money conference takes place June 23rd at The British Museum in London, with fintech startups and established banks coming together to examine the industry's future. The one-day event featur

Bitcoin Core's developers have spent much of the past year defending their work to skeptical observers. The reference implementation's dev team improved its communication strategy over the last six mo

A research paper from Dino Mark (Smartwallet founder), Vlad Zamfir (Ethereum Foundation), and Cornell professor Emin Gün Sirer outlines nine potential vulnerabilities in The DAO's voting system. The r

Swedish bitcoin mining company KnCMiner filed for bankruptcy after raising $32 million, citing high energy taxes, rising competition from Chinese miners, and the impending July 2016 bitcoin halving.

The DAO, a distributed autonomous organization built on Ethereum, has crossed the $150 million threshold, becoming the world's largest crowdfunding campaign by a significant margin.

Japan formally recognized bitcoin as a legal method of payment through new regulatory legislation, signaling mainstream acceptance and creating a framework for regulated cryptocurrency exchanges.

Johnson Lau, a Bitcoin Core developer, has proposed a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal aimed at expanding the network's scripting language. It builds on BIP 114, which he also authored. MiningPool spoke

A new social media venture backed by blockchain technology has entered its testing phase, featuring a novel approach where content contributors and moderators can monetize their participation. Steem

Mention Ethereum to any of its advocates and you'll promptly hear about decentralized autonomous organizations. These distributed entities represent a fundamental concept the smart contract network wa

Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange platform ANX International has announced a new service that will...

The exchange Bittrex has placed a hold on digital assets totaling more than $100,000 believed to originate from Cryptsy's seized accounts. According to court filings, James D. Sallah Esq., the court-a

Speaking in a recently conducted AMA session on the Chinese crypto platform 8btc, Gavin Andresen — the Bitcoin Foundation's Chief Scientist — doubled down on his commitment to Bitcoin Classic and its

Blockchain will dominate discussions at the Fintech Storm India Summit 2016, which opens Thursday in Mumbai. The two-day conference will feature a dedicated half-day workshop with the National Payment

Roger Ver was on the Crypto Show, the only terrestrial radio program in the nation covering cryptocurrency. Broadcast from Austin on 90.1 FM Wednesday and Sunday nights and rebroadcast internationally

Adam Back, president of Blockstream, outlined his approach to Bitcoin's capacity problem at a recent talk in Prague's Paralelni Polis. The roadmap tracks with what Bitcoin Core contributor Greg Maxwel

Ethereum-based investment platform The DAO has already accumulated more than $13 million in digital assets during the opening three days of its token distribution event. Operating as a decentralized a

Australian academic Craig Wright announced through a blog post and cryptographic signatures that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, a claim that immediately faced skepticism.

Steam customers can now purchase games, software, and hardware using bitcoin. BitPay manages the payment processing through the store. Leaks and official hints made this outcome unsurprising. In Febr

New York Times Best Seller Jim Rickards Explains Why Bankers Have Incentives To Demonize Bitcoin & Gold. Read The Full Story With MiningPool.co.uk

Valve is bringing Bitcoin to Steam, the world's largest PC game platform. The company sent an announcement to developers and publishers outlining how the payment method will work alongside existing op

Shapeshift came back online April 20th following a detailed security post by CEO Erik Voorhees that laid out what happened during the breach. Three separate incidents—one involving a now-fired employe

R3 announced the development of Corda, an enterprise-focused blockchain platform designed specifically for financial institutions and complex multi-party transactions.

Blockstream executives say they'll finish building sidechains within a few months. Greg Maxwell, the company's CTO, told MiningPool that his team expects to deliver a new version within two months, w

Ransomware criminals distributing the infamous CTB-Locker strain have found a novel method to deliver decryption keys to their victims: the blockchain itself. Sucuri, a security firm, first documented

Ethereum is gaining traction in Asia as traders begin swapping bitcoin for ether. Gatecoin, a Hong Kong-based exchange focused on cryptocurrency and digital assets, has witnessed a sharp rise in new s

ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, recovered from a security breach involving approximately $230,000 in stolen cryptocurrency, implementing new security measures.

In a recent interview with Bitcoin Uncensored, Bitcoin Core contributor and Bloq Co-Founder Jeff...

During the COALA Blockchain Workshop NYC last week, 150 experts discussed the challenges and opportunities related to blockchain technology.

The formerly notorious Cryptsy exchange operator Paul Vernon has apparently launched a new trading platform operating from mainland China, a representative of the new site has disclosed. While that

South Africa's biggest banks and corporations are testing blockchain technology to cut operational costs and speed up their transactions. Banks are shifting from exploration to serious investment in b

The Lightning Network, viewed by many Bitcoin Core developers as the primary solution for transaction scaling, could reach a usable state this summer. Built as a layer on top of the blockchain itself,

Purse.io lets you spend bitcoin at Amazon. Amazon doesn't accept cryptocurrency, so services like Purse fill the gap. Gyft and eGifter sell Amazon gift cards for bitcoin—eGifter returns points to your

Software development firm 3Pillar Global specializes in crafting digital products that generate revenue across financial services, media, entertainment, health, and data sectors. The company has been

London-based blockchain technology investment and development company Coinsilium will be hosting its first Blockchain...

The head of Zcash, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, brought some sobering perspective to the Bitcoin conversation recently when he appeared on the Epicenter Bitcoin podcast. A veteran of the cypherpunk movement

Australia's government announced that bitcoin would no longer be subject to goods and services tax, eliminating double taxation when used for purchases and eliminating a significant barrier to adoption.

BNP Paribas selected eight financial technology startups for its L'Atelier accelerator program. The Paris-based bank will fund and mentor the companies over four months, with each team receiving 100,0

Steemit, a blockchain-based social media platform that rewarded content creators with cryptocurrency, officially launched, introducing a novel model for content monetization.

Jonas Nick, a testing engineer at Blockstream, recently presented research on Bitcoin privacy at Zurich's Blockchain Meetup, laying out seven steps for protecting transactions from surveillance. Star

The value of Banx cryptocurrency has experienced a dramatic collapse following its listing on the Bitshares network, where genuine market transactions finally became possible for most holders. Trading

Wirex has added PayPal as a funding option, allowing customers in 39 countries to purchase bitcoin and load their debit cards through the payment service. The London-based company, which rebranded fro

Samson Mow, the COO of BTCC, has positioned himself as a vocal opponent of Bitcoin Classic. During a recent appearance on The Bitcoin Game with host Rob Mitchell, Mow discussed his company's backing o

Lisk's network launches this month. The project raised over 4,600 BTC, roughly $1.9 million, through a coin offering that started in February and runs through the end of March. Upon launch, the team w

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee convened cryptocurrency industry leaders Wednesday to discuss digital currencies and blockchain technology. The Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade subcommittee

Humble Bundle restored Bitcoin payments this week after pulling them for about seven days. The gaming bundle site brought the feature back with one change: Bitcoin buyers now face a $2.50 minimum orde

Ethereum released version Homestead on March 14, 2016, implementing critical protocol upgrades and stability improvements following the Frontier launch.

A Twitter user with an egg for a profile picture promised something Cryptsy victims desperately wanted: their money back. Operating as @cryptcracker1 and posting on Bitcointalk, he claimed to possess

Sam Cole, CEO of KnCMiner, left the door open to reviving consumer mining hardware at the DC Blockchain summit this week. Speaking after the public event wrapped, Cole said the company would consider

When Satoshi Nakamoto shared the Bitcoin white paper on a cryptography mailing list in 2008, the first responses were predictable. The network won't scale, critics said. Seven years later, people work

At the DC Blockchain Summit, a convergence of cryptocurrency advocates and federal authorities created a rare moment of dialogue surrounding digital asset regulation. The tenor was agreeable and subst

Bitcoin proponents are sounding increasingly confident in the cryptocurrency's fundamental design, even as headlines have painted a picture of technological distress and potential collapse. At the 201

According to Deloitte's latest analysis, most digital currencies currently in circulation lack sufficient real-world utility and will likely disappear, while government-issued cryptocurrencies could m

Banks want blockchains. Blockchain enthusiasts built their ideals around decentralized systems that don't need banks. The disconnect explains something about the billions flowing into blockchain devel

Feedzai fights fraud using machine learning and big data analytics. The San Mateo startup, founded in 2011, partners with payment processors, banks and merchants to identify criminal activity across s

The FTC closed its enforcement action against Butterfly Labs and founder Sonny Vleisides last month with a settlement totaling $19,000—$4,000 against Vleisides as an individual and $15,000 against the

A year after Nick Sullivan, ChangeTip's CEO, gave an interview to the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast outlining the company's philosophical stance on decentralization, those ideas are turning into code. The

Ross Ulbricht remains in federal prison serving a life sentence for operating The Silk Road, the darknet marketplace that prosecutors say he founded and controlled. His conviction came after a trial t

Blockstream, a Bitcoin technology company focused on scaling solutions and sidechains, announced a Series A funding round of $55 million, reflecting investor confidence in its technical vision.

Back in early 2013, engineers at Bell Laboratories—the legendary research division of Alcatel-Lucent—submitted a patent application for an innovative approach to cryptocurrency transactions. The filin

E-Coin, the London-based bitcoin debit card and multi-signature wallet company, is stepping back from that singular identity. The firm, now operating under the Wirex Limited brand, plans to expand int

Safe Cash, a San Francisco payments startup, claims its blockchain can process 25,000 transactions per second. That dwarfs Bitcoin's throughput by 3,000 times and surpasses Visa's average capacity by

Wladimir van der Laan, who leads Bitcoin Core's development work, expressed cautious support for the Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus agreement in an email exchange with MiningPool. The argument over sca

Technology has transformed how people work and communicate, but security threats have followed. Your messages reach anyone on earth in seconds, yet a third party might intercept them. Criminals found

Bitcoin Classic proposes a hard fork that would increase the blockchain's block size limit to 2 MB. It triggers when 750 of the last 1000 blocks announce support via coinbase transactions. Gavin Andr

Federal regulators are setting a significant precedent with their charges against Homero Joshua Garza. The SEC's complaint marks the first time the agency has classified mining contracts as securities

Washington DC will host its biggest blockchain conference since Bitcoin in the Beltway wrapped two years ago. When the DC Blockchain Summit convenes on March 3rd, organizers have a different agenda th

Following Mike Hearn's exit from the Bitcoin project in January, mainstream outlets rushed to declare the cryptocurrency's demise inevitable. The consensus among those actually working within Bitcoin'

The trustee overseeing seized MtGox funds announced that thousands of creditor claims have been processed. Kraken, the San Francisco bitcoin exchange appointed to assist the court trustee, received 9,

Tokyo's premier bourse operator has joined forces with Big Blue's Japanese unit to pilot blockchain systems for settlement infrastructure and related functions. The initiative kicks off next m

IBM announced the availability of blockchain-as-a-service on its Bluemix cloud platform, allowing enterprises to develop and test blockchain applications without building infrastructure from scratch.

Consensus mechanisms and decision-making frameworks have captured the attention of Bitcoin participants in recent months, and Mastering Bitcoin's Andreas Antonopoulos addressed these themes during an

Two new research papers confirm what bitcoin developers have feared: brain wallets leave users' money vulnerable to theft. Ryan Castellucci, working with other researchers, published findings in two

The Tallinn Stock Exchange will introduce a groundbreaking shareholder voting mechanism later this year, marking Nasdaq's second venture into blockchain applications. The exchange has partnered with E

The SEC sought a default judgment against GAW Miners and ZenMiners, two mining companies controlled by Homero Joshua Garza, for over $10 million after neither company responded to its complaint. The a

notwithstanding Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper outlined the concept of simplified payment verification (SPV), not all of the suggestions in this section of the paper have been implemented by t

Cryptocurrency advocates often blame banks for what's broken in finance. Banks took customer savings and invested them in risky mortgage packages without disclosure. When those investments collapsed i

Five of Britain's leading money managers are investigating whether blockchain could slash their costs by eliminating go-betweens. Schroders, Aberdeen Asset Management, Columbia Threadneedle, Aviva Inv

Equibit Development Corporation, a Canadian blockchain software firm, closed an angel funding round worth $150,000 from a United Kingdom investor. The company valued itself at $3 million. EDC's CEO a

The block size debate carries into 2016 with no resolution in sight, even though it started as a technical discussion among developers. The debate has devolved into name-calling. Both camps have slung

Skuchain closed a funding round with backing from Digital Currency Group, Amino Capital, and Fenbushi Capital, a venture firm based in China that focuses on blockchain investments. The Mountain View s

NeuCoin launched to reasonable skepticism. Altcoins promised the world and delivered vaporware. This one delivered. Late last month, the digital currency integrated into Jango, the popular music stre

Cambridge Blockchain took the grand prize at the Santander InnoVentures Blockchain Challenge on January 27 in New York. Eight blockchain startups competed for the $15,000 award and the chance

Eric Lombrozo runs Ciphrex and has long contributed to Bitcoin Core development. He outlined a vision for Bitcoin's future at the recent Blockchain Agenda Conference in San Diego, focusing on how the

Executives from the world's biggest banks and financial firms gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and wrestled with the same question: could bitcoin and blockchain technology resha

Jonas Schnelli has been pushing code to Bitcoin Core since April 2013, when his first pull request landed in the repository. Over the years he accumulated 220 commits, making him the sixth-ranked cont

MiningPool has never been enthusiastic about advertising. We've tolerated ads as a stopgap while we build a reader support model. Brendan Eich, who created JavaScript and ran Mozilla as CEO, is now b

Digital Asset Holdings closed a funding round exceeding $50 million, with backing from Citi, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, ABN AMRO, Accenture, the Australian Securities Exchange, Broadridge Financial Solut

Bitcoin startups raised roughly $1 billion in venture capital during 2015, the strongest year the industry had experienced. Vinay Gupta, a cypherpunk in blockchain development, predicts a much larger

Georgetown University will host the DC Blockchain Summit on March 3rd, with the Chamber of Digital Commerce unveiling three additional speakers today. These newly added speakers complement an already

Hong Kong-headquartered digital asset trading platform Gatecoin is moving forward with plans to bring bitcoin and blockchain services to the African continent through a partnership with a local financ

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Peter Smith, head of the Luxembourg-headquartered Blockchain company, announced a landmark collaboration with Dubai's government to transition its entire administ

Gavin Smith and Marcie Terman founded First Global Credit in 2014 with a combined 35 years in financial services. The company broke new ground by becoming the first brokerage to let traders use bitcoi

[Note: The photo above is of IMF Director Christine Lagarde. used for illustrative purposes but it should be noted she did not author the report. It was, as mentioned in the article below, written by

Chinese financial regulators have issued serious warnings regarding MMM Global and its domestic variant, characterizing both operations as unlawful. The alert surfaced through Caixin, a major Chinese

The UK government published an official report examining blockchain technology and blockchain, exploring implications for financial regulation, record-keeping, and technological innovation.

Kraken, the European bitcoin exchange founded in 2011, is acquiring Coinsetter and Cavirtex, expanding its reach into North America. The deal represents the largest consolidation in bitcoin exchange h

Bitcoin developers divide on how to scale the network. Some advocate for larger blocks to boost transaction capacity. Others champion the Lightning Network. This architectural choice matters because i

Mike Hearn walked away from Bitcoin last week, calling the cryptocurrency a failed experiment. He'd be the most hated man in the community if Cryptsy's collapse weren't still fresh. Hearn spent years

Mike Hearn announced his exit from Bitcoin this week, declaring the technology a failure. The longtime developer and champion of the project said he was stepping away. We spoke with Blockstream CEO Au

Crowdaura, a startup developing blockchain solutions for financial services, joined Accenture's Innovation Lab in London. It's the only fintech blockchain startup in the program and also participates

Prominent Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn published a lengthy article declaring that the Bitcoin experiment had failed due to governance failures and scaling limitations.

Earthport, the London-based payments network, launched a new platform that gives banks direct access to the Ripple blockchain through a single API connection. The Blockchain Hub, or DLH, lets

Snapcard's CEO Michael Dunworth flew down to Brazil to present Bitcoin and blockchain technology to government officials and central bankers. The biggest surprise during his visit came from how much k

Consulting giant Accenture has named 15 companies selected to participate in its prestigious London-based Fintech Innovation Lab, a three-month intensive program designed to accelerate technology deve

Joshua Garza, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur who previously led GAW Miners, faces a significant legal setback after failing to respond to federal regulators. Kathleen Shields, an SEC prosecutor, has

Banx.io has offloaded less than 1% of its total token supply in the three months since this publication first examined the project. Six months prior, creator Mark Lyford told readers that half the Ban

France's academic landscape is about to be transformed by a Paris-based engineering institute committed to pioneering blockchain-based diploma verification. The Leonardo da Vinci Engineering School, c

Bitcoin regulation divides audiences at industry conferences. Some entrepreneurs embrace compliance requirements. Others reject any government oversight. Disagreements over regulation have intensified