Coin News

The development team behind alternative digital currency digibyte has raised $250,000 as part of a new strategic partnership.

Brand Me Crypto is a new initiative being sponsored by Bitcoin-friendly payment processor Vogogo and cryptocurrency exchange Cryptsy. Their website is currently accepting logo designs to “Brand Crypto.”  Brand Me Crypto recognizes that the mainstream media’s preferred use of physical Bitcoin coins to represent not only Bitcoin, but every other cryptocurrency in existence as well, is more […]

The post Brand Me Crypto Offers $10,000 Prize for New Logo to Represent All of Cryptocurrency appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

A new research note from financial giant Citi suggests participants in the next USMS auction may be able to obtain bitcoins at a deep discount.

The Bitcoin Foundation has warned that two unaffiliated clone websites are trying to con users out of their funds.

Do you hear that? The ringing bells? See the flashing lights? Feel the Earth shake just a little? Is your “Spidey Sense” tingling? If your name were Mastercard, the answer would be “Oh, hell yeah!”, because they are in the path of a train that is barreling down upon them. That train is Bitcoin, and the […]

The post Mastercard Attacks Bitcoin in Australia appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin micropayments startup ChangeTip has raised $3.5 million in a new seed round, tapping Pantera Capital, Bold Start Ventures and others.

As this article is my debut article here at cryptocoinsnews.com, I will endeavour to explain the tool I rely on more than any other when trading Bitcoin, forex or commodities. It is called the Gann Square. Unfortunately, like most of William Gann’s remarkable discoveries, the Square is overlooked, misunderstood and largely unknown to the trading […]

The post The Bitcoin Market Through a Gann Lens appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

BTC China's recently launched mining pool has already produced over $1.2m-worth of bitcoin, the company says.

MasterCard has spoken out against bitcoin's perceived risks and called for a regulatory "level playing field" for payments systems including bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Foundation website has a post by guest bloggers Tony Gallippi, Jason King, Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees and Gavin Andresen, all very well known names in the Bitcoin community, to announce the Hal Finney Bitcoin Fund for ALS Research. Hal Finney, one of the pioneers of Bitcoin, lost his 5-year battle with ALS on […]

The post Get on TeamHal and Support the Hal Finney Bitcoin Fund for ALS Research appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Coinbase now allows account holders in 16 US jurisdictions to maintain US dollar balances for instant bitcoin trades.

The investor and writer who once proclaimed Bitcoin as nothing more than Tulipmania 2.0 is releasing a new book on Bitcoin titled”The Bitcoin Big Bang.” Brian Kelly has been appearing on shows and writing articles for CNBC on Bitcoin. Granted, when he appeared on CNBC’s Fast Money his excitement over Bitcoin was not motivated by the […]

The post Tulipmania 2.0 Critic – Brian Kelly Releasing Book about Bitcoin: “The Bitcoin Big Bang” appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin firms and organisations are partnering with the #GivingTuesday campaign to boost generosity and promote cryptocurrency as a tool for giving.

The popular website Gawker has an article, published yesterday, about the Disney World Coins in the Kingdom Bitcoin Conference on October 4 and 5. Not very timely, but the article titled “Magical Thinking: Bitcoin Gathers at Disney” seems to follow a political agenda, so I guess timeliness isn’t important. The author, Sam Biddle, is no […]

The post Gawker bashes Disney and Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

By Byron Kaye

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A top Australian law enforcement agency is investigating bitcoin's role in organized crime, a senior official said, just as politicians and financial regulators embrace the digital currency as a legitimate part of modern business.

The investigation into bitcoin's crime links by one authority as others embrace it highlights the crossroads governments have reached as they struggle to regulate the five-year-old "cryptocurrency", a method of making anonymous payments which has surged in popularity around the world.

Australian Crime Commission Executive Director Judy Lind revealed for the first time that investigators will monitor "misuse of virtual currencies to facilitate criminal activity" at a national and international level, under an operation named Project Longstrike.

"We know that virtual currencies including bitcoin are used as payment methods to facilitate illicit trade on the darknet," Lind told Reuters in a statement, referring to a hidden part of the Internet where information can be shared anonymously and without revealing the location of its source.

"Organized crime groups continue to make use of darknets to harbor trading in illicit commodities, including child exploitation material, illicit drugs and firearms, stolen credit card and identity data, and hacking techniques."

Project Longstrike is just the latest example of Australia's determination to crack down on bitcoin-enabled crime. Last month, Australia said it extradited to the United States the alleged primary moderator of Silk Road, a website where people bought illegal drugs like heroin using bitcoins.

In October, police seized Queensland state's first bitcoin automated teller machine five months after it opened, with media reporting police believed it was being used by a former motorcycle gang member to deal crystal methamphetamine.

Regulators around the world are wary after the Mt Gox bitcoin exchange filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo earlier this year, saying it lost some 850,000 bitcoins - worth about $300 million at current prices - in a hacking attack.

Like many countries, Japan has allowed bitcoin trading to continue without establishing a full set of rules on its legal status. U.S. authorities are yet to agree to cohesive laws, while the United Kingdom is seen as a world leader because it has classified bitcoins as a currency.

Australian authorities are also trying to facilitate legal bitcoin trades in a country where use of the currency is exploding. Between its 23.6 million people, Australia has an estimated 7 percent of the $5 billion worth of bitcoins now circulating, with reports of online retailers, real estate agents and even pubs accepting bitcoin payments.

The Australian Taxation Office has published a guide for bitcoin traders on how to declare their investments, and a parliamentary inquiry is trying to lay the groundwork for a broader regulatory approach to the digital currency.

But David Glance, director of the University of Western Australia's Centre for Software Practice, said Australia appeared to be sending mixed messages.

"Politicians singularly fail to understand what (the digital economy) is all about. They latch onto trends and buzzwords," he said, referring to the tax office guidelines and parliamentary inquiry.

"There still isn't a problem that bitcoin solves, other than buying drugs," he added.

Darknet sites including Silk Road and its successor Silk Road 2.0 did about $3 billion of turnover annually in the year to November, Glance said, equivalent to more than half the total bitcoins now in circulation.

WILD WEST

Senator Sam Dastyari, who is running the parliamentary inquiry, said bitcoins offered a way to "shake up" Australia's "stale" banking industry. A regulatory system is needed that policed crime without restricting the currency, he said.

"There is going to be a place for some kind of digital-style currency. There is inevitability that it will play some kind of role," Dastyari said.

"Do you go and start regulating it first, or wait for the IMF to do it first and come on board?"

Australia could soon see the world's first direct share market listing of a virtual currency exchange, in a sign of how rapidly bitcoin businesses are entering the mainstream.

Melbourne-based start-up Bitcoin Group hopes to raise A$20 million ($17 million) and plans to file a prospectus by Christmas which will not include financial forecasts.

Bitcoin Group Chief Executive Officer Sam Lee compared the currency to the early "wild, wild west" days of the Internet, and shrugged off concerns that it mainly served as a vehicle for illegal transactions.

"We've moved far beyond that now," he said.

"We expect (bitcoin currency) to clean itself up as more capital and more smart people flow into the ecosystem."

(Editing by Stephen Coates)

Join the conversation about this story »

The World Bank cuts its 2014 GDP growth projections for the three nations worst hit by Ebola, saying their economies continue to be crippled.

Coinbase has added USD wallets for verified users who reside in the United States. Currently, residents of only 16 states are eligible for the wallets. The new USD wallets allow users to buy bitcoins instantly without using a credit card. Also read: Coinbase and RewardsPay Bring Bitcoin to iTunes, Facebook and Grooveshark Buy Bitcoins Instantly […]

The post Buy Bitcoins Instantly Using Coinbase USD Wallets appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Nxttycoin is the ownership mechanism for the Nxtty encrypted messaging Android app (the iPhone version is in development and should release soon). The Nxttycoin price rose in anticipation of the app’s release, but the app has failed to catch on in the Google Play store. Consequently, the Nxttycoin price has fallen almost 50% in the […]

The post Nxttycoin Price Plummets As Encrypted Messaging App Fails to Catch On appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.