Coin News

Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple Labs, has announced the sale of his sizable stake in the platform's native currency.

In the same breath, government officials list bitcoin as a potential threat to national security, but if you wish to fund political committees, they will accept cash, credit, check, and bitcoin, the digital currency they can’t control. On Thursday, May 8th, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted in favor of accepting bitcoin as payment in support of political committees. Unlike like last fall, when officials hesitated to allow bitcoin donations, this year they quickly passed the measure 6-0. The vote also allows political action committee (PAC) members to purchase and sell bitcoins, but officials must convert them to U.S. dollars before depositing them into a campaign account. It’s unclear what changed the minds of FEC members. Citing the possibility for […]

The post Govt. Dislikes Bitcoin, Unless It’s For Politics appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Just the name “altcoin” evokes a sense of disdain–altcoin, as in “alternative to Bitcoin,” a copycat late to the scene. Why do we persist in using such terminology when altcoins and Bitcoin are all cryptocurrencies of the same basic category? Many long-time Bitcoiners accuse altcoin developers of pump and dump schemes, longing to be early adopters, and envious of their fortunes. There are some good reasons to pay attention to emerging cryptocurrencies, however. Like any tool, one size doesn’t fit all, and different cryptocurrencies function more or less effectively in different scenarios. For example, while Bitcoin’s pseudoanonymity strikes a fine balance, there are times when a citizen might wish to have total anonymity; conversely, we might want to use a […]

The post The Role and Future of Altcoins appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Just the name “altcoin” evokes a sense of disdain–altcoin, as in “alternative to Bitcoin,” a copycat late to the scene. Why do we persist in using such terminology when altcoins and Bitcoin are all cryptocurrencies of the same basic category? Many long-time Bitcoiners accuse altcoin developers of pump and dump schemes, longing to be early adopters, and envious of their fortunes. There are some good reasons to pay attention to emerging cryptocurrencies, however. Like any tool, one size doesn’t fit all, and different cryptocurrencies function more or less effectively in different scenarios. For example, while Bitcoin’s pseudoanonymity strikes a fine balance, there are times when a citizen might wish to have total anonymity; conversely, we might want to use a […]

The post The Role and Future of Altcoins appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

More Bitcoin ATMs for the UK Bitcoin now has multiple dedicated Bitcoin ATMs in London, allowing the public to buy and sell Bitcoin for cash. This makes London one of the leading cities for these machines globally. UK Bitcoin based startup SatoshiPoint has just announced the installation of three Robocoin ATMs that will be live from Friday, May 30th. To celebrate, they are throwing a Bitcoin bash. This official launch party will be on the same Friday at Old Street Tube location Nincomsoup, starting from 6pm. The Launch party will be in conjunction with Bitcoin POS XBTerminal, who is also crowdfunding investment through crowd funding platform BanktotheFuture. A second launch party will be held a little later, to celebrate the […]

The post SatoshiPoint Bitcoin ATMs UK appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This article first appeared at Bitcoin Not Bombs. I had the opportunity to sit down with Cody Wilson, the creator of the world’s first 3D printed gun and founder of Defense Distributed, at the Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ. We were both there to give talks on Bitcoin and the event was put on by radio host Ernest Hancock of Freedom’s Phoenix and Declare Your Independence. In this interview we discuss philosophy, decentralized resistance, Dark Wallet, Defense Distributed, and the role of humor in activism. I really enjoyed talking with Cody, who is fascinating and frank in this interview, and we covered a lot of ground. Cody highlights the effectiveness of doing activism without asking permission and how Kafka-esque the […]

The post Cody Wilson and M.K. Lords Discuss Dark Wallet and Philosophy appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Coinbase has partnered up with American beer company Budweiser in an attempt to reach a new demographic. The new initiative is specifically in conjunction with Budweiser Made in America (BMIA) Concerts to give concert attendees $10 worth of Bitcoin for free. The Budweiser Made in America festival is held annually at over thirty cities building […]

The post Budweiser and Coinbase partner to give concert goers free Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

There is a new digital currency app in town and it is giving ZeroBlock a run for the money. A California startup, Blockstreet has released its first iOS application, providing everything bitcoin and altcoin. Currently in Alpha stages, the application made its debut in the App Store last week, giving users access to Bitcoin and Altcoin prices, market cap, news and information, along with a fully functional currency calculator. While most other applications just offer information on Bitcoin, Blockstreet provides up-to-the-minute information on everything happening in the world of digital currency. Blockstreet CEO Ken Feldman runs the company from a Bitcoin incubation space called Bitropolis in Santa Monica. Their aim is to be the mobile Wall Street of the crypto […]

The post Live Tracking of All Things Bitcoin and Altcoin with Blockstreet appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

There is a new digital currency app in town and it is giving ZeroBlock a run for the money. A California startup, Blockstreet has released its first iOS application, providing everything bitcoin and altcoin. Currently in Alpha stages, the application made its debut in the App Store last week, giving users access to Bitcoin and Altcoin prices, market cap, news and information, along with a fully functional currency calculator. While most other applications just offer information on Bitcoin, Blockstreet provides up-to-the-minute information on everything happening in the world of digital currency. Blockstreet CEO Ken Feldman runs the company from a Bitcoin incubation space called Bitropolis in Santa Monica. Their aim is to be the mobile Wall Street of the crypto […]

The post Live Tracking of All Things Bitcoin and Altcoin with Blockstreet appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The latest ATM manufacturer on the scene has a compact one-way machine with compliance features ready for any jurisdiction.

CoinDesk speaks to Forbes' Kashmir Hill, who spent one week living on bitcoin, about bitcoin's big picture.

Allowing immigrants to send money to relatives without crazy fees is a great Bitcoin use case, but isn't very feasible yet.

Today, bitcoiners the world over will celebrate the anniversary of the world's most expensive pizza.

Eight hours of sleep is too long to be disconnected from the ever-changing crypto landscape. Currency urgency permeates business dealings, investor interests and journalistic pursuits. We are literally involved in a world that is changing at a truly phenomenal rate. Try to keep up, will you? The Speed of Business If “The Social Network” taught us anything, it’s of the importance of getting there first.  Technology moves fast, and bitcoin is an excellent example of this. For business owners and entrepreneurs with ideas, getting to market first is everything. Take BitAccess, a locally-run business out of my hometown of Ottawa, Canada. The co-founders literally came up with their idea for Bitcoin ATMs (BTMs) at a pub, over drinks, with their […]

The post Bitcoin is on Speed appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin's greatest potential is as a global payments network, to power transactions that are extremely low-cost, virtually frictionless, and easily flow across national borders.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's paid research service, we looked into all the reasons why Bitcoin shows promise as a technology that may one day threaten other forms of payment, including cash, credit cards, and money transfers. 

Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Consider: 

• Bitcoin is scalable: The design may place a strict limit to how many units can be created — 21 million. But each coin can be divided into 100 million pieces, which will allow it to scale as a payments technology.
• Bitcoin dispenses with the need for intermediaries. It allows for the simple and secure transfer of value online, without intermediaries, including the credit card networks and card-processing companies that rely on skimming transaction fees for their revenue.
• Specialized Bitcoin payment processors are stepping in to address price volatility. Bitcoin's transaction confirmations can take 10 minutes or even longer. Bitcoin payments processors serve as intermediaries and clear transactions in seconds, and also help merchants to avoid exchange risk.
• In the U.S., regulators have been largely friendly to Bitcoin.
• Bitcoin dramatically reduces transaction fees: Bitcoin's efficiency and low cost in comparison to legacy payments tools will ultimately prove too tempting for merchants, individuals, and business-to-business billing. Bitcoin processors charge only 1% to process bitcoin transactions, compared to the 2 to 3% often paid by merchants for credit card processing.

In full, the report:

• Explains how Bitcoin works. 
• Examines the problems Bitcoin was created to solve and the elegant solutions it provides which have clear advantages over the current payments system. 
• Gives an insider's view of Bitcoin through exclusive interviews with Bitcoin industry executives.
• Explores the open questions surrounding Bitcoin pertaining to security, volatility, and regulation and provides potential answers to these questions. 
• Analyzes the players in the legacy payments system which Bitcoin has the potential to eliminate if it catches on as a transaction network. 

For full access to all BI Intelligence's charts and data on the Payments Industry, sign up for a free trial.

Join the conversation about this story »

Last weekend was an important weekend for Bitcoin. Bitcoin 2014 was held in Dutch capital Amsterdam. For three days, the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam became the place-to-be for everyone who loves Bitcoin. We saw many keynote speakers and panels discuss the future of cryptocurrencies. Among all the ideas and hopes for the future, there were also […]

The post Bitcoin 2014: Exclusive interview with Jumio’s Marc Barach appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Financial crime lawyer Christine Duhaime is planning to write the world’s first law book covering digital currencies.

The new block chain API could make it far easier for developers to build on top of bitcoin technology.

This article will introduce some of bitcoin’s Mind-Bending amazing abilities only few people know. As you read this list, remember your favorite so can impress your friends with your new incredible bitcoin knowledge.   1.  Fun with programmable money     Bitcoin wallets are like personal debit cards that you can create and assign yourself to store your bitcoin. Some new wallet versions can be programmed with bizarre abilities. You can program features like GPS coordinates on your phone that make the money unavailable off if your kid leaves the city. You can also create “treasure hunts” where coins will suddenly be released for you to use if you find yourself in the right place at the right time. You may also release money […]

The post Twenty Mind-Bending Secrets About Bitcoin appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel has partnered with Robocoin to place an ATM inside of its property.

The organizers aim to promote bitcoin in the Baltic state, which has previously seen a tough stance from authorities.

The Dogecoin community leveraged its vibrant online community to vote little-known NASCAR driver Josh Wise into the sport’s All-Star race. Unfortunately, this online support did not have a comparable on-the-ground counterpart. Dogecoin Votes Josh Wise into NASCAR All-Star Race NASCAR is an expensive sport, so it is dominated by drivers who belong to wealthy teams […]

The post Vibrant Dogecoin Community Does Not Translate Into On-the-Ground Support for Josh Wise appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

A Canadian software developer is fusing two of the most interesting open source projects of the 21st century: Git and bitcoin. Yurii Rashkovskii calls his project Gitchain, and it's now backed by about $10,000 raised on the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

Renewed optimism saw the bitcoin price pass the $500 mark for the first time in weeks this morning.

KryptoKit, the Chrome extension that functions as an encrypted messenger and Bitcoin wallet, suddenly had its security privilege revoked Tuesday morning. he extension was removed from Chrome for less than an hour, but in the digital currency world this type of action can irreparably harm a product’s reputation – especially for a browser extension which […]

The post KryptoKit False Alarm Reveals Chrome’s Love For Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The Bitcoin craze has some crazy cheesy beginnings, delivered hot and fresh to one lucky dude’s door

Buried beneath the myriad of indistinguishable pump-and-dump altcoins, every now and then a cryptocurrency is born that truly revolutionizes the field. While this doesn’t necessarily obsolete Bitcoin–the protocol can be upgraded at any time–it’s important to examine these new coins in order to keep up the pace of innovation. Take Gridcoin, for example. Some background: one of the primary arguments against Bitcoin has been the wastefulness of its mining network, which consumes massive amounts of electricity. Instead of crunching arbitrary numbers, many in the community have hypothesized that all of that processing power could be put to more practical. A mining algorithm, however, must meet very specific conditions (immensely difficult to calculate one way; arbitrarily easy to calculate in reverse–among […]

The post Putting the Blockchain to Work For Science! appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Buried beneath the myriad of indistinguishable pump-and-dump altcoins, every now and then a cryptocurrency is born that truly revolutionizes the field. While this doesn’t necessarily obsolete Bitcoin–the protocol can be upgraded at any time–it’s important to examine these new coins in order to keep up the pace of innovation. Take Gridcoin, for example. Some background: one of the primary arguments against Bitcoin has been the wastefulness of its mining network, which consumes massive amounts of electricity. Instead of crunching arbitrary numbers, many in the community have hypothesized that all of that processing power could be put to more practical. A mining algorithm, however, must meet very specific conditions (immensely difficult to calculate one way; arbitrarily easy to calculate in reverse–among […]

The post Putting the Blockchain to Work For Science! appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Businesses that accept Bitcoin are blooming up everywhere. Sometimes it can irk me that some businesses accept Bitcoin but do nothing to promote it; however, this is not the case for the co-founders of the budding flower marketplace, BloomNation.com. I spoke with two of the co-founders, Farbod Shoraka & David Daneshgar; unfortunately their other co-founder, Gregg Weisstein, was unable to join, but Farbod and David shared their inspiring mission to help small florists with me. Farbod, David and Gregg met freshman year in college over ten years ago. Farbod and David went to Berkeley together and Gregg was at UC Santa Barbara. After college, they all went their separate ways. Farbod went into Mergers & Acquisitions, David traveled playing professional […]

The post BloomNation – Disrupting the Flower Industry appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Well I attended Bitcoin 2014 in Amsterdam and it was a blast. I met lots of people who I’ve been emailing/skyping with over the last six months so that’s always fun. The conference had a few keynote talks for all and all the rest was broken out into four parallel tracks, which is always annoying as one wants to attend more than physically possible. There was a robust collection of exhibitors (approximately 40ish) on the show floor and that was fairly impressive for such a young conference. Each session in the tracks had at least 100 or more like 150 attendees. Although I have no other Bitcoin conferences to compare it to, this conference seemed to consist of about 70 percent […]

The post Bitcoin 2014 Roundup appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Individual Japanese politicians are interested in bitcoin despite the government's hands-off approach, as the local ecosystem goes post-Gox.

Famed finance personality Peter Schiff's precious metals company now takes bitcoin, but he remains skeptical about digital currencies.