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Coinbase unlocks instant cryptocurrency purchases
Want your bitcoin purchases in a hurry? That's doable now that Coinbase has opened up instant purchases for cryptocurrency. Whether you're a fan of ethereum, litecoin or plain old bitcoin, you're covered here. Previously you'd have to wait a few days between the initial purchase and actually being able to spend it. Coinbase says that you can buy up to $25,000 and gain access to it immediately. The functionality is available to "many" customers stateside right now and it will roll out to more people soon. Seeing that this deals with ethereum, if you've been waiting to pick up Ghostface's cyrptocurrency now you can do that with a quickness.
Ghostface's cryptocurrency demands bulletproof wallets
At this point it's kind of surprising that Wu-Tang Clan hadn't gotten into the cryptocurrency game. After all, even Burger King is doing it and Wu-Tang Financial was all about diversifying your investments. Ghostface Killah has picked up the baton, though, announcing Cream Capital will be seeking a $30 million initial coin offering (ICO) for his branded bitcoins.
South Korea cracks down on use of digital cash for crowdfunding
South Koreans who were planning to raise funds using cryptocurrency will have to find an alternative method. The country has decided to follow in China's footsteps and has banned raising money through all forms of virtual currency, according to Reuters. As TechCrunch noted, businesses around the globe have raised over $1.8 billion this year using the method known as initial coin offering or ICO. It's a convenient way to gather funding for various products, but it's not regulated and could easily be used to scam millions out of investors.
Showtime websites used visitors’ browsers to mine cryptocurrency
Over the weekend, visitors to Showtime's website or its streaming site ShowtimeAnytime might have noticed their computers slowing down a bit. That's because someone slipped in some JavaScript into the sites that caused them to siphon off processing time from users' browsers in order to mine the cryptocurrency Monero. The Register reports that the software took up as much as 60 percent of visitors' CPU capacity.
SEC is getting serious about bitcoin fraud and fake news
The US' Securities and Exchange Commission has to deal with a lot more than classic financial crimes these days: it has to worry about everything from insider trading hacks to the integrity of the latest digital currencies. To that end, it's creating a Cyber Unit that will focus its enforcement team on digital offenses. These include hacks, such as attempts to obtain insider info or to compromise trading platforms and accounts, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
The world's first blockchain smartphone is in development
Sirin Labs, the company behind the $14,000 Solarin smartphone, is now developing an open-source model that runs on a fee-less blockchain. The Finney -- named in honor of bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney -- will be the only smartphone in the world that's fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic coins. Or so says the company, which is launching a crowdsale event this October (date to be confirmed) to support the phone's development.
China is clamping down on smaller bitcoin trading channels
China's crackdown on bitcoin could extend well past big commercial exchanges. Wall Street Journal sources claim that the country is leaning toward a "comprehensive" ban on bitcoin trading channels, such as over-the-counter platforms that help buyers and sellers find each other. It's not certain that this would forbid peer-to-peer trades (such as through messaging apps), but it would likely entail blocking access to foreign exchanges. You couldn't just turn to an American exchange like Coinbase if China-native outlets aren't available.
Pirate Bay 'borrows' visitor CPUs to mine virtual coins
Piracy websites can't really depend on ads, so how do they make money? By using your PC's processor cycles, apparently -- whether you want to or not. Visitors to The Pirate Bay have discovered JavaScript code in the website that 'borrows' your processor for the sake of mining Monero digital coins. It doesn't always happen (it mainly appears in search results and category listings), but you'll definitely notice the sharp spike in CPU usage when it kicks in.
Wind energy mines digital cash to support climate research
Climate change is frequently described as a vicious cycle that depletes the very resources needed to fight it. In the case of Julian Oliver's latest project, however, it could almost be described as virtuous. His Harvest project uses a 700W wind turbine to power a PC mining cryptocurrency (specifically, Zcash) that directly funds climate change research. In other words: the more the symptoms of climate change manifest themselves, the more money goes toward fighting that change. It was commissioned as a piece of art, but it's a very practical design that could find plenty of uses in the real world.
China might shut down the country's bitcoin exchanges
China has never been a fan of digital currencies like bitcoin, and now the country appears bent on a major crackdown. In the wake of China's recent ban on initial coin offerings (where you raise funds for a new cryptocurrency), Wall Street Journal sources understand that Chinese officials are ordering the shutdown of domestic bitcoin exchanges. The timeline isn't clear -- one says the closure decision had already been made, while another heard the process would take "several months." If the scoop is accurate, however, the motivations are clear.
Burger King is using cryptocurrency as a loyalty program in Russia
Rather than give you another punch card or plastic loyalty card for your wallet, Burger King has a different idea for rewarding its customers: cryptocurrency. In Russia, The BK Lounge has started issuing Whoppercoins when people buy food. Save enough and you can redeem them for nuggets, burgers and King Bouqets Buckets in the country. A billion Whoppercoin have been issued thus far via the Waves platform, and more will follow if demand does.
Fidelity lets clients view their bitcoin balance on its site
Fidelity Investments announced in May that it would soon let its clients view their bitcoin and other cryptocurrency balances on its website, provided it was stored on Coinbase. Embracing unregulated cryptocoins was seen as a bold move by the brokerage company, and certainly uncommon among financial institutions. Today, Fidelity made good on its promise: Once users authorize the site to access their data from Coinbase, they can check their bitcoin savings.
Coinbase will support newly-minted Bitcoin Cash after all
Earlier this week, disgruntled members of the bitcoin community successfully split a new cryptocurrency off from the main branch. Bitcoin Cash, as it's called, attempts to speed up transactions, a key problem with bitcoin's aging structure. But the new alternative currency will only survive if users invest in it. Some cryptocurrency exchanges said they wouldn't back it due to its instability, but one of those holdouts, Coinbase, just announced that it's come around and will support Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin feud splits the currency in two
This morning, bitcoin split into two currencies -- the original and Bitcoin Cash. The hard forking, as it's known, resulted from heated debate over the cryptocurrency's future, since the aging tech behind blockchain has prevented easy scaling. While a new code upgrade called SegWit2x was introduced last week as a compromise, dissenters still decided to start backing Bitcoin Cash and fork off in their own direction. The community anxiously waited for financial fallout after the schism, but aside from a temporary 7 percent drop in bitcoin value this morning, the split seems to have avoided disaster. Whether Bitcoin Cash sticks around is another question.
AMD is unintentionally profiting from cryptocurrency miners
A digital gold rush always has one obvious winner: the people who make the tools necessary to mine in the first place. AMD, for instance, has found itself the beneficiary of an increase in demand for its graphics cards, although it doesn't believe that it's a sustainable, long-term business. The company revealed as much during its earnings, with profits in the graphics card business increasing by 51 percent year on year.
Bitcoin grows up and gets its first federally regulated exchange
Bitcoin is set to be given the same financial safeguards as traditional assets. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has granted LedgerX, a cryptocurrency trading platform operator, approval to become the first federally regulated digital currency options exchange and clearinghouse in the US. Despite reaching dizzying new highs this year -- and overtaking the value of gold -- Bitcoin has so far gone unregulated. LedgerX's new role will allow investors to hedge against price swings in digital currencies in the same way that traditional assets are protected.
AMD and NVIDIA go after Bitcoin miners with new video cards
Dedicated digital currency miners know the importance of good graphics cards -- modern GPUs have enough general-purpose computing power to process money formats like Bitcoin much faster than a CPU alone. They've never really been suited for non-stop number crunching, though, and it looks like both AMD and NVIDIA hope to change that. CNBC has discovered that ASUS is making currency mining-oriented video cards using both vendors' chipsets. The AMD-based Mining RX 470 and NVIDIA-based Mining P106 are ultimately using off-the-shelf GPUs (the RX 470 and GTX 1060 respectively), but are fine-tuned for running around the clock.
Bitcoin is worth more than ever, but it's losing clout
To say that Bitcoin has had a roller coaster ride would be an understatement. Between regulatory hurdles, heists and its all-too-common use in online crime, it's sometimes a surprise the cryptocurrency has survived. However, it's faring well -- so well, in fact, that the value of a coin just topped $2,000 US for the first time. While it's mostly a symbolic milestone, it reflects confidence stemming from regulation (particularly in big Bitcoin markets like China and Japan) and a rapid rise that saw its value soar hundreds of dollars in a matter of weeks.
Russia hopes legitimizing Bitcoin will thwart crooks
Russia's existing stance on bitcoin and other digital currencies is... less than welcoming. You could face website bans and prison time just for using it. However, the country is making an about-face on the idea. Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev tells Bloomberg that Russia hopes to recognize cryptocurrencies in 2018. Officials still have to determine how they will categorize this virtual money (assets? Cash? Securities?) sometime in mid-2017, but it's now more a question of "when" than "if." Of course, this isn't a purely benevolent move -- it's really about cutting back on crime.
SEC rejects Winklevoss twins' plan to trade Bitcoin as stock
A plan from the Winklevoss twins that would have allowed stock traders to buy and sell Bitcoin without setting up a personal Bitcoin wallet has been denied by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In an order handed down on Friday, the commission declared that the unregulated nature of Bitcoin markets would have made the proposed fund too difficult to monitor, and therefore ripe for fraudulent activity.
