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As online ads fail, sites mine cryptocurrency
Between the incessant headlines and chatter on social media, it feels like everywhere we go some libertarian evangelist appears asking us if we have a second to talk about the blockchain -- like a religious wingnut lurking outside the grocery store.
Japanese company will pay part of workers' salaries in Bitcoin
Employees at a Japanese firm will soon be able to receive part of their salary in Bitcoin, if they're feeling brave enough. GMO Internet, which offers a range of web-related services including a Bitcoin exchange, will pay workers up to 100,000 yen (about $890) starting in February. "Employees can receive salaries by Bitcoin if they want," a company spokesperson said. "We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it."
Armed robbers steal $1.8 million worth of cryptocurrency
The Manhattan District Attorney has charged a man with robbery and kidnapping after he swiped a digital wallet containing a fortune in ethereum cryptocurrency. Louis Meza and an associate allegedly held up the victim at gunpoint after luring him into a vehicle, then stole his keys, wallet and cellphone. Meza used the keys to enter the victim's apartment and make off with his digital wallet. Shortly afterwards, he transferred $1.8 million in "ether" cryptocurrency to his own wallet.
Indiegogo makes it easy to hop on the cryptocurrency bandwagon
There's a frenzy over cryptocurrency at the moment (helped in no small part by bitcoin's sky-high value), and Indiegogo is determined to milk the trend for all it's worth. The crowdfunding site has partnered with MicroVentures to enable investments in the initial coin offerings (ICOs) that are all the rage as of late. If you think a new digital cash format is going to be the next big thing, you now have a potentially easier way to pour money into it -- and you don't need to be an accredited investor, which limits the scope of many ICOs. The first offering on tap is the Fan-Controlled Football League, which is running a pre-sale for $5 million tokens for 10 days after this writing.
First US bitcoin futures start trading at 6PM Eastern
Bitcoin is one step closer to becoming a part of the mainstream financial world. Cboe is launching the first US bitcoin futures exchange at 6PM Eastern, giving speculators a chance to bet on the value of the cryptocurrency through a listed (XBT), regulated entity. You don't use a digital wallet or otherwise require bitcoins -- instead, you trade and settle futures contracts using cash, with a $10 minimum price interval and a $1 transaction fee from January onward. There aren't any price limits, and you can short your futures (that is, immediately sell them in hopes of turning a quick profit) if your broker allows it.
Craigslist sellers can now specify if they accept bitcoin
Next time you sell old furniture, you can use it as a chance to add more bitcoins to your stockpile. Craigslist now gives you a way to specify in your listing whether you accept virtual currency. Blockexplorer News has noticed a new checkbox option that says "cryptocurrency ok" when you create a new ad, which does make sense for Craigslist transactions. Since the website doesn't vet buyers or sellers, paying with virtual coins means you won't have to worry about getting fake bills and bounced checks, and you won't have to give a total stranger your bank details for payment.
Cryptocurrency mining marketplace loses $64 million to hackers
A cryptocurrency marketplace called NiceHash has suffered a security breach that left its bitcoin wallet tens of millions of dollars lighter. Slovenia-based NiceHash connects miners, or people selling their hashing/computer power, with people willing to pay for that power. Andrej P. Škraba, the marketplace's head of marketing, told Reuters that the company was targeted by "a highly professional attack" that involved "sophisticated social engineering." He also revealed that the infiltrators got away with 4,700 bitcoins -- or around $64 million.
Steam no longer accepts bitcoin for game purchases
Have you been stockpiling bitcoin to go on a Steam shopping spree? You'll need to change your plans. Valve has stopped accepting bitcoin due to a combination of high transaction costs (up from 20 cents in the beginning to $20) and "volatility" in the cryptocurrency's value. While the virtual cash has never been especially stable, its worth has taken a roller coaster ride over the past few months. Its value has been skyrocketing lately (one bitcoin is worth $13,300 US as of this writing), but it has also crashed hard -- Valve cited a 25 percent drop "over a period of days" as an example. That fluctuation creates a huge problem if you make a purchase and it doesn't complete before the usual bitcoin price guarantee elapses, as you may have to pay an outstanding balance and a second transaction fee.
My $200,000 bitcoin odyssey
This was not what I expected to be doing with my October. But there I was, on a flight to Hong Kong, hoping I would be able to retrieve $200,000 worth of bitcoin from a broken laptop. Four years ago, I was living in Hong Kong when a fellow journalist named Mike* and I decided to invest in bitcoin. I bought four while Mike went in for 40; I spent about $2,000 while he put in $15,000. At the time, it seemed super speculative, but over the years, bitcoin surged and Mike seemed downright prescient. I had since relocated to Los Angeles and had been texting Mike about the 2,000 percent rise in our investment. *Name changed for anonymity. Strangely, I wasn't getting much of a response from him. He had 10 times as many bitcoins as I did -- shouldn't he at least have been excited? Finally, when the price of one bitcoin broke $4,000 this summer, I sent him this message: "You do still have those bitcoins right?" That's when he broke it to me: "Maybe not ..." Here's what happened: At some point in 2013, Mike had rightfully become concerned about security. He initially kept his coins in an exchange called LocalBitcoins. Exchanges are commonly used to buy and sell cryptocurrency, but you shouldn't keep your coins there. The most infamous bitcoin scandal to date was when Mt. Gox, an exchange based in Japan, lost 850,000 of its users' bitcoins. Exchanges can also suddenly close, as some did in China this year when the Chinese government suddenly made them illegal. Any serious cryptocurrency investor will tell you that your coins are best kept in "cold storage" (an offline hardware wallet). That's what I'd done with mine, but Mike hadn't gone that far three years ago when he started thinking about security. Instead, he set up a software wallet. It was a good step, but he would soon learn, it was not foolproof.
SEC Cyber Unit's first charges target cryptocurrency fraud
The Securities and Exchange Commission's new Cyber Unit has filed its first charges since being formed in September. The unit's case is being brought against a company called PlexCorps, its founder Dominic Lacroix and his partner Sabrina Paradis-Royer and the SEC claims that Lacroix and Paradis-Royer were actively defrauding investors. PlexCorps was engaged in an initial coin offering (ICO) -- which was selling securities called PlexCoin -- that had already raised around $15 million since August and it was fraudulently promising that investors would see a 13-fold profit in just under one month. The SEC obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt the ICO.
UK plans crackdown on criminals using Bitcoin to launder money
The UK government wants to increase regulation around Bitcoin by expanding financial regulations imposed by the European Union. It follows growing concerns that the cryptocurrency is being used to facilitate crime, including drug dealers, brothels and gangs. Stephen Barclay, economic secretary for HM Treasury, revealed in a notice that British legislators were negotiating amendments to the EU-wide 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. It would bring Bitcoin exchange and wallet providers under the purview of relevant national authorities, forcing them to carry out due diligence on customers and report suspicious activity. Traders would also be required to disclose their identities, according to The Guardian. "We are working to address concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies, by negotiating to bring virtual currency exchange platforms and some wallet providers within Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation," a Treasury spokesperson told Engadget. All of this would be a huge shake-up in the cryptocurrency community. At the moment, it's possible to remain anonymous while dealing in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and similar digital money. That freedom is part of the appeal, of course, alongside their distributed ledgers and decentralised structures. The flip-side is that Bitcoin now has a reputation for fuelling all sorts of criminal activity. As Business Insider reports, the Metropolitan Police recently held a crime briefing to discus the problem. It said Bitcoin ATMs are increasingly being used to deposit cash without alerting its officers. "If you move large quantities of cash around it leaves you vulnerable to other criminals," detective chief superintendent Michael Gallagher, head of the Met's Serious and Organised Crime Command added. "It's in their own interest, in terms of protection, to use this." The UK expects its negotiations with the EU to end in the next few months. If they're successful, the British government will need to create or amend domestic legislation to enforce the new rules. In the meantime, Bitcoin users are free to operate as normal. The currency's value currently sits at more than $11,200, a record high. It is, therefore, no surprise to see more regulators looking twice at Bitcoin's impact on the international economy. John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, told the Telegraph that his cross-party group was likely to hold an enquiry next year. "It would be timely to have a proper look at what this means," he said. "It may be that we want to speed up our use of these kinds of things in this country, but that makes it all the more important that we don't have a regulatory lag."
Venezuela will start its own digital currency to beat sanctions
The authoritarian streak of Venezuela's recent leaders has cost the country dearly. Mismanagement and sanctions have crippled its infrastructure, its money is increasingly worthless and the public is fuming. President Maduro thinks he has a solution, though: creating the country's own cryptocurrency. The "petro" will be backed by Venezuela's key natural resources (diamonds, gas, gold and oil) and, in theory, will help it get around the "financial blockade" imposed by the US and other nations.
Coinbase must share users' cryptocurrency data with the IRS
Coinbase will be forced to share the financial information of 14,355 users with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), following a California federal court ruling. The move follows a year-long battle between the cryptocurrency company and the IRS, which believes a high number of customers are failing to report holdings on their taxes. Coinbase has some six million users, but fewer than 1,000 have officially declared cryptocurrency activity.
Square tests buying and selling bitcoin inside its payment app
Square Cash moved beyond sending money in February 2016 when it started letting users store their funds in account reserves, digital wallet-style. Starting today, you can use the service's mobile app to stash another type of currency: bitcoin. But only select users are seeing the feature.
New UK Visa card lets you spend Bitcoin like normal money
With Bitcoin trading at all time high, investors are working out whether it's best to sit on their stockpile or make the most of it while they can. For those wishing to utilise their investment, opportunities can be limited, with only a small number of big companies currently supporting cryptocurrency transactions. London Block Exchange (LBX) wants to change that. It's launching a new Visa debit card that will let users spend their Bitcoin (and other digital currencies) anywhere across the UK.
Code mistake freezes up to $280 million in digital currency
Imagine if one person's code error deprived you of a pile of money, and there was no guarantee you'd get your funds back. Wouldn't you be hopping mad? That's how many cryptocurrency owners are feeling right now. The digital wallet company Parity is warning users that a large volume of Ethereum funds have effectively been frozen after code contributor devops199 claims to have accidentally deleted the library needed to use multi-signature wallets (those that require more than one signature to move funds) created after July 20th. Devops triggered a long-unpatched bug that turned Parity's wallet contract into a standard multi-signature wallet, making every wallet "suicide" and erase the guiding library code.
Bjork's next album comes with free cryptocurrency
Icelandic music star Bjork is famously experimental with just about everything, so it's no surprise that she's now working on bringing blockchain into the music industry fold. Her people have announced that she's partnering with British startup Blockpool to put the technology at the center of her next album release, not only letting fans buy the record with cryptocurrency, but actually giving them digital cash for doing so.
SEC warns celebs about legal dangers of bitcoin endorsements
When celebrities endorse things on social media, a lot of people tend to take their word for it. Now that some of them have also begun endorsing a controversial means of crowdfunding called "initial coin offering" or ICO, which was recently banned in China and South Korea, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has had to step in with a warning. Since ICOs are an unregulated means to raise money using cryptocurrencies, people could use them to sell products that don't exist or to entice investors to sink their money into projects that will never materialize. That's why SEC has decided to be on the lookout for celebrity ICO endorsements to protect potential investors.
Russia hopes to launch its own digital currency
Russia has been talking openly about the prospect of creating its own cryptocurrency, and it looks like the country might turn those words into action. Local news outlets report that Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov has confirmed plans to launch a state-controlled digital currency. Don't expect to generate virtual rubles with your PC any time soon, though. While it would use blockchain to decentralize control and improve trust, you reportedly can't mine it -- instead, it'd be issued and tracked like conventional money. This would theoretically let Russia boost its internet economy without tying the fate of its currency to other countries or third-party brokers.
Politifact inadvertently hosted a digital currency miner
You might expect a pirate website to use something as shady as a secret cryptocurrency miner, but that's now becoming a problem with above-board sites -- and it's not on purpose. Politifact visitors have discovered that the site was inadvertently hosting JavaScript code that hijacked your processor to mine virtual coins. The fact checker tells TechCrunch that it has removed the code and is investigating just how it got there, but it's more than a little alarming that such a popular page (3.2 million views per month) could be susceptible to parasitic code that bogs down your PC.
