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Bitcoin price headed lower today in a $8 sell-off (Bitfinex) catalyzed by the news that Silk Road’s Lars Ulbricht had been sentenced to life imprisonment & OKCoin was dealt another PR blow. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive […]

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Changpeng Zhao left OKCoin earlier this year, with the company owing him $10,000 and apparently feeling no obligation to pay him. A company that doesn’t treat its employees well will inevitably have other problems, and so Zhao’s exit could have served as a warning for the rest of the community, including Roger Ver, who says […]

The post Former CTO of Bitcoin Exchange OKCoin Changpeng Zhao Speaks Out about Scams and Trading Bots appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Bitcoin remittance startup BitSpark, alongside four other fintech startups, won the Innotribe 2015 Singapore Semi-Finals held Thursday at the Red Dot Design Museum. The event was organized through a partnership with NextBank Asia and sponsored by international bank Wells Fargo and European startup accelerator Level39. BitSpark will now progress to the finals, which will be held in October at Singapore Sibos, where it will have the opportunity to win $50,000 and as well as support from the international payment network SWIFT. Other winners of the Singaporean competition were social consumer credit rating startup Trustingsocial, automated risk management platform provider Jewel Paymentech, online payment processor Codapay, and mobile payments solution provider goSwift. Each of the 15 startups that participated in the […]

The post BitSpark Wins Innotribe 2015 Singapore Semi-Finals and Announces New Offline Service appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

On  February 4, 2015, a young man named Ross Ulbricht was convicted of seven charges laid in a U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan. On May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. He was accused of being the owner and operator of the Silk Road website, the most popular online drug marketplace. The indictment charged Ulbricht in seven counts, including narcotics trafficking, narcotics trafficking by means of the Internet, conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit or aid and abet computer hacking,  conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering. Filmmaker Alex Winter has written, directed, and produced a film outlining the story […]

The post Deep Web Documentary Shines Light on the Rise and Fall of the Silk Road appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Each transaction that occurs on the block chain takes up a little bit of space, and these transactions all get squished into a virtual box (a block). Bitcoin currently operates with a 1MB limit. What this means is that only so much information it can process in each block, this currently comes to roughly seven […]

The post Bitcoin-Xt Pushing Ahead With Bigger Blocks appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Disaster-plagued cities. Hellish landscapes. Post-apocalyptic society. It’s just your average day in California. With one special exception: A 9.6 earthquake has rippled up and down the state, unleashing unimaginable devastation. That’s the plot of San Andreas—but could any of this happen in real life? Let’s ask SCIENCE.

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A 31-year-old former Eagle Scout got life in prison Friday for running the world's biggest illegal marketplace, and his parents have stood by his side during the entire trial.

Ross Ulbricht was convicted In February of all seven counts he was charged with including trafficking drugs on the internet, narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, running a continuing criminal enterprise, computer-hacking conspiracy, and money-laundering conspiracy.

Following the life sentence without parole, his mother, Lyn, was "shocked, upset, distraught," Bloomberg Businessweek's Bob Van Voris tweeted along with a picture of Ulbricht's stricken mother. 

Ross Ulbricht's mom, Lyn Ulbricht. "Shocked, upset, distraught" by life sentence received by son. pic.twitter.com/YZIA7GupXE

— Bob Van Voris (@BobVanVoris) May 29, 2015

Ulbricht's parents spoke out just a day before his conviction in February about their frustration with trial of their son, who was accused of running the online drug emporium Silk Road under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts (a reference to the cult movie "The Princess Bride").

Lyn Ulbricht, spoke to CNN Money, maintaining her son's innocence. "The most frustrating thing is that evidence that is favorable to Ross is being suppressed," she told CNN. "This came out in the cross examination for the first witness."

The evidence Lyn referred to emerged during defense attorney Joshua Dratel's cross-examination of federal agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan. That agent investigated Silk Road for two years and admitted at the end of the trial's first week that, Mark Karpeles, founder of the now-defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was the DHS' main suspect only a month and a half before Ulbricht's arrest.

Der-Yeghiayan confirmed that at one point he sought a warrant to search Karpeles’ gmail account based on “probable cause” that the Mt. Gox owner had secretly administered the Silk Road in a bid to boost the price of bitcoin, Wired reported. In an affidavit, Der-Yeghiayan also mentioned an interview conducted between Forbes' Andy Greenberg and Dread Pirate Roberts in 2013 "that sounded very much like Karpeles."

The defense suffered a major blow when, the following week, Judge Katherine Forrest dismissed this part of the Der-Yeghiayan's testimony as "hearsay" and instructed the jury to disregard any mention Der-Yeghiayan had made of Mark Karpeles during the cross-examination.

"He never came across Ross' name but did ... pinpoint another name which he said was Mark Karpeles," Lyn continued, in the CNN Money interview. "He was closing in on Karpeles when another DHS agency [inadvertently] tipped off Karpeles."

The stricken testimony incriminating Karpeles was not the only part of the trial Ulbricht's family and supporters found frustrating.

"We believe there were significant errors at trial, including the limiting of defense cross-examination, the preclusion of defense experts, and the exclusion of certain defense evidence in the form of documents and other exhibits," Ulbricht's lawyer, defense attorney Joshua Dratel, said in an emailed statement to Business Insider.

Ulbricht's supporters have alleged that the case could have a huge impact on internet freedom, as it is one of the first times an individual has been charged for building a website. 

Ulbricht was arrested by the FBI at a public library in San Francisco in October 2013. After many delays, his trial began in Manhattan on January 13.  

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Bitmine AG, the Swiss Bitcoin mining hardware producer which CCN recently reported was facing multiple lawsuits in regards to undelivered hardware and broken promises, has declared bankruptcy in the Swiss city of Bellinzona. In a lengthy note posted to their website, Bitmine explained their insolvency, complete with a breakdown of costs versus income. Cold comfort […]

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