Coin News

New details have emerged in the saga of Bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Last night, the London Review of Books published an incredibly detailed, 35,000-word story about the recent turmoil of Craig Wright, an Australian businessman who claims to have invented Bitcoin. The story offers plenty of fascinating tidbits about the entire Wright saga, but fails to answer a question that’s fundamental to the story: How did a man so obsessed with security get hacked so damn badly?

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Two years after buying roughly 30,000 BTC, investor Tim Draper is still passionate about the technology as well as competing blockchain offerings.

Editor's note: This is a guest post by Steve Patterson and the opinions offered are those of the author alone. Until recently, I’ve remained...

The post The DAO Was Not Hacked | Mt. Gox 2.0 appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

With $250 million on the line, Ethereum is moving at lightspeed as the latest unsybilable miner voting shows they almost unanimously back the fork, with more than 90% in favor. Gavin Wood, founder of Ethcore, the company that develops Parity, one of Ethereum’s clients, confirmed the soft-fork has been merged stating: “[T]he development branch of […]

The post Ethereum’s Soft-fork Unanimous, Hard-fork Uncertain appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

 Facebook is sticking with Peter Thiel despite the backlash against him for funding the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that financially crippled Gawker. At today’s Facebook shareholders meeting, the company voted to re-elect Thiel as one of its board of directors. He received enough votes to stay on. Facebook’s entire board was re-elected, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Reed… Read More

Alleged bitcoin creator Craig Wright is reportedly moving to secure patents focused on blockchain and digital currencies.

Australian businessman Craig Wright, the man who previously claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, is looking to amass a massive number of patents that is predictably centered around blockchain technology.  Bitcoin is garnering plenty of attention in recent times due to its tremendous surge in value. Headlines are being written with investor gurus among […]

The post ‘Bitcoin Creator’ Craig Wright Is *Actually* Looking to Patent Blockchain Technology appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Many people argue that private blockchains, run by private firms, are useless, since they make users dependent upon a third party ‒ the firm...

The post What Are the Use Cases for Private Blockchains? The Experts Weigh In appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The bitcoin price chart took a bearish turn earlier today and analysis looks at the most likely support levels where the bulls might be entrenched. 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 […]

The post Bitcoin Price in a Down-Draft appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

U.K.-based Bitcoin startup Caricoin recently announced the launch of a Bitcoin wallet for the Caribbean. The wallet has been developed in...

The post Caricoin Launches Bitcoin Wallet for the Financially Underserved in the Caribbean appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

What a Brexit would do to the US economy really boils down to what happens to the dollar.  

Britons will vote on Thursday to decide whether the UK should remain a part of the European Union or not.

The UK is one of the region's most important economies. And because of possible negative-growth ripples throughout the region, the prospect of a Brexit has worried traders. 

The key channel of any pass through to the US would be the dollar, according to Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy at UK-based Standard Life Investments, which manages $370 billion in assets. 

The biggest question, he said, is whether a rise in the dollar would be driven by a flight to safe assets, or by signs that the Federal Reserve is responding more aggressively to economic growth. 

"The direction of the currency and the rationale for the currency" are extremely important, he told Business Insider. 

Doing the Fed's work

In theory, a stronger dollar would raise the prices of US exports, as dollar-denominated goods become more expensive for buyers with weaker currencies.

At the same time, it would make imports cheaper for US consumers, which is deflationary. Even lower inflationary pressure than we've seen so far this economic cycle would give the Fed more reason to be dovish and delay further interest rate hikes. 

"Do we see the Federal Reserve saying yet again 'we don't need to move on interest rates because monetary conditions in the United States have already been tightened and they're being tightened by the move in the dollar?'" Milligan said. 

If the answer to that is yes, the Fed could mirror its response to the surge in the dollar from mid-2014 through 2015, when it delayed rate hikes. 

Another possible beneficiary of a flight to safety in the wake of a Brexit would be US Treasurys. The recent rally in global bonds including Treasurys sent the 10-year yield to two-year lows. Some analysts attributed this to a flight to safety ahead of the referendum. 

However, Milligan argued that Treasurys are instead being driven by major investors, including central banks, who find it difficult to invest in any of the nearly $8 trillion worth of government bonds with negative yields. 

And while there might be some treasury buying that's part of a flight to safety, the key thing to watch is the dollar. 

SEE ALSO: Stocks are ripping higher after polls show a Brexit is less likely

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NOW WATCH: All 460 Sports Authority stores are closing — here’s when clearance sales begin

Australia’s top law firms are preparing themselves for the disruption of blockchain-led ‘smart contracts’ with the technology expected to threaten thousands of jobs and the role of lawyers’ intermediating commercial negotiations and disputes that will soon be automated by computers. On Friday, Allens, one of Australia’s biggest law firms, sent a report to its clients […]

The post Blockchain & Smart Contracts Could Spell Doom for Corporate Law Firms appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin’s oldest trade organization has voted in a new, relatively unknown executive director.

More than $19m worth of bitcoin is now being sold at auction, though few details are available on participants involved.

By Byron Kaye and Jeremy Wagstaff

SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Craig Wright, the Australian who claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, is attempting to build a large patent portfolio around the digital currency and technology underpinning it, according to associates of his and documents reviewed by Reuters.

Since February, Wright has filed more than 50 patent applications in Britain through Antigua-registered EITC Holdings Ltd, which a source close to the company confirmed was connected to Wright, government records show.

Interviews with sources close to EITC Holdings Ltd, which has two of Wright's associates as directors, confirmed it was still working on filing patent applications and Britain's Intellectual Property Office has published another 11 patent applications filed by the company in the past week.

    "None of this has stopped," one person close to the company said. The person declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Wright did not respond to requests seeking comment.

The granting of even some of the patents would be significant for banking and other industries that are trying to exploit bitcoin technologies, as well as dozens of start-ups scurrying to build business models based around it.

Financial institutions are expected to spend more than $1 billion this year and next on projects linked to the "blockchain" at the heart of bitcoin, according to a survey by boutique investment bank Magister Advisors.

The blockchain is a public database that by-passes money-based payments by recording all transactions digitally. It forms the core of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by maintaining a decentralized record of all transactions.

Proponents say it has the potential to disrupt financial services by making payments and the settling of securities transactions, in particular, far cheaper.

Patents that Wright has applied for range from a mechanism for paying securely for online content to an operating system for running an "internet of things" on blockchain.

A patent schedule, one of a number of documents relating to the applications shown to Reuters by a person close to the EITC Holdings, outlines plans to apply for about 400 in total.

"SATOSHI NAKAMOTO"?

The London Review of Books (LRB) on Saturday ran an article by novelist and journalist Andrew O'Hagan quoting associates of Wright's as saying that they were working on filing several hundred patents.

O'Hagan, who has spent extensive time with Wright and others close to him, quoted the associates as saying that Wright's patents would then be sold "for upwards of a billion dollars". The article did not explain how this valuation was reached, how far the process of contacting purchasers had gone or whether it was still active.

Nearly all the British filings involve the term "blockchain" or its more generic description, the "distributed ledger". The patent approval process typically takes several years.

"It looks like he is trying to patent the fundamental building blocks of any blockchain, cryptocurrency, or distributed ledger system," said Antony Lewis, a consultant on bitcoin issues to whom Reuters showed the patent titles and some of the texts.

Wright, 45, has cut a controversial figure after some media last year identified him as the mysterious "Satoshi Nakamoto", who distributed a paper and later software that launched bitcoin in early 2009. Wright failed to persuade a skeptical bitcoin community in May that he was Nakamoto, performing a U-turn on his promise to provide further proof and saying that he lacked the "courage" to put "years of anonymity and hiding behind" him. He has since kept a low profile and declined interviews.

While there is no conclusive proof about his authorship of bitcoin, documents seen by Reuters suggest that Wright has had a deep association with the cashless money system since long before it went live.

(Reporting by Byron Kaye and Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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Signatories are being asked to sign a new petition from Change.org to get Walmart to accept Bitcoin payments directly as consumers struggle to spend their bitcoins on everyday purchases. For many digital currency enthusiasts acquiring bitcoins is the easy part; however, for many it’s not always so easy spending it, particularly when it comes to […]

The post Petition Seeks Walmart to Accept Bitcoin appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin price has been in the spotlight of the financial media lately with its soaring value and is understandably getting plenty of attention. In a televised interview on Bloomberg, an executive at BitPay – the largest payment processor in the industry, outlines his reasons for the price swell. Sonny Singh, chief commercial officer at BitPay […]

The post BitPay Executive Weighs in on the Bitcoin Price Surge appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Allianz Risk Transfer and Nephila Capital Ltd. have used blockchain smart contract technology to conduct a natural catastrophe swap in a pilot test, demonstrating that processing and settlement can be accelerated between insurers using blockchain-based smart contracts.   The test indicates blockchain-based contracts can also be applied to other insurance and investment transactions. Cat Bonds […]

The post Allianz Trails Blockchain Tech for Catastrophic Swap Instruments appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.