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One of the most powerful forces driving the use of bitcoin as a currency is ecommerce, and one of the world's most bitcoin-progressive countries is the Netherlands. Hence, it comes as no surprise that one of the Netherlands most prominent ecommerce merchants, Fonq.nl, now accepts bitcoin. Go to www.fonq.nl and you can purchase gifts, housewares and fashion merchandise using bitcoin in addition to a number of other payment options. Shoppers can pay with iDeal (an online payment service), credit card, PayPal and bank transfer, post-delivery, and now bitcoin. The fact that the Dutch ecommerce retailer didn’t make a big splash about […]

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CoinDesk has rounded up some of the top bitcoin and blockchain-related headlines from across the globe.

Bitcoin price was traded above yesterday's high in energetic trade today. The size of component price waves is both larger and more volatile than what we saw earlier this year, or even earlier this month. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3-hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a $29 discount using the code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 14h00 UTC OKCoin 3Mth 1-Hour Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier today: If the Fib lines at $377 (OKCoin 3Mth) and 2300 CNY give way, then the next […]

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Students at West Virginia University (WVU) have proposed an innovative blockchain-based voting system for the university’s upcoming Student Government Association (SGA) elections. The Student Government Association in WVU is currently debating the notion of using blockchain-based voting at polling stations as opposed to legacy voting machines, according to The Daily Anthenaeum, the student-run university newspaper. The newly proposed voting system is based on an iPad application that would allow students to vote for the next President and Vice President of the Student body. Students running for the positions are expected to announce their candidacy on December. The blockchain-based voting platform […]

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Jan Hammer, a partner at Europe's biggest venture capital fund Index Ventures, says we may have just passed the peak for tech valuations, which have been spiralling ever higher this year.

Rocketing valuations of tech companies — particularly in the US — have led some to worry that we could be in the middle of an inflating tech bubble. Uber is often held up as a prime example — the company is now worth over $50 billion (£33.2 billion) but is thought to be unprofitable.

Revered Silicon Valley venture capitalist Michael Moritz recently slammed a boom in "subprime" unicorns — private tech businesses worth over $1 billion (£660 million) — and Fortune's private equity and venture capital investor Dan Primack reported an atmosphere of fear in the Valley.

Hammer told Business Insider: "You can look back and say maybe that was the top. We're not seeing valuations continue to escalate upward from maybe where they were one-quarter ago.

"We have really had somewhat of a correction, certainly in the public markets, and in a number of instances we've actually seen already a slight correct in private markets."

High profile tech companies such as Snapchat and Zenefits have both seen their paper valuation reduced in recent weeks by mutual fund Fidelity. In one particularly brutal case, Fidelity reduced the value of its investment in e-cigarette company Njoy from $9.5 million (£6.3 million) to just $12 (£7.97).

But, despite valuations losing momentum, Hammer doesn't actually think we're in a bubble. He says the "opportunity has never been bigger" for both investors and entrepreneurs, thanks to the rise of mobile — which makes reaching a big audience easier — and cloud computing — which brings the cost of setting up a startup down.

Hammer told Business Insider: "The bubble may be if you're seeing "me too!" investments, with investors piling indiscriminately into the third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth copy of the same thing.

"What we spend our time doing is trying to find really original thinking entrepreneurs who come up with really disruptive ideas."

Index Ventures is the biggest venture capital investor in Europe and has backed success stories including Asos, BetFair, Etsy, Funding Circle, and Just Eat, as well as Facebook in the US. 

Hammer says fluctuations in paper value don't actually matter all that much to private investors like Index.

"Our business is really to separate amazing companies from the good one or OK ones," he says. "That job doesn't really change. Here at Index we spend most of our time trying to work out who are the winners and valuation is kind of a consequence of that."

Hammer specialises in fintech (financial technology) and has backed companies including multi-billion dollar Dutch payment startup Adyen, international money transfer service TransferWise, and US bitcoin processing company BitPay.

He calls out Adyen as a prime example of the kind of "amazing" company he and his colleagues look for, saying: "There are hundreds of payments companies but they [Adyen] are the only one that have built the full stack.

"They provide what banks do (what is called merchant acquiring), they provide the transaction processing, which is what FirstData and these large $25 billion companies do, and then they provide payment acceptance — you go on a website or mobile and pay with your card or PayPal.

"People do each of the slices but there's only Adyen that does all three across Europe, America, and Asia. So that's pretty Unique."

Read a full interview with Jan Hammer on fintech, the state of European technology, and what Index is excited about on Business Insider tomorrow.

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Genesis Mining, the world’s leading bitcoin cloud mining provider, announced their most significant milestone yet today: the acquisition of their 100,000th customer. Since launching in early 2014, Genesis Mining has separated themselves from the competition with their dedication to transparency, community activism, and constant innovation, which has allowed the company to scale faster and more effectively than many other companies in the industry. In July of this year, the company announced Genesis Hive, a tool that provides enterprise-level cloud mining management to mining companies and providers. In August of this year the company announced Life Inside a Bitcoin Mine, which […]

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Both Bank of England and Europol are seeking interns with knowledge of Bitcoin and the blockchain. The announcements, which indicate an increasing awareness of the technologies among European government institutions, follow last month's ruling by the European Court of Justice that Bitcoin transactions are exempt from VAT. Bank of England will select their interns through an open competition in which university students are invited to submit proposals for new uses of the blockchain. Applicants are invited to work in groups of up to six people to identify new kinds of businesses or products that can be created with the blockchain […]

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Bitcoin compliance startup Polycoin was recently accepted into two incubators, one backed by Citi and the other by Nordea.