Bitcoin

Remember the giddy highs of $1000 Bitcoin? That’s so two weeks ago. Lately, the virtual currency is in the midst of another of of its famous crashes — or swoons if you prefer — as bad news trickles in from overseas. Here’s a chart, via Bitstamp, that shows the latest price tumble. The currency reached Continue Reading →

It appears not only people in the tech world believe Bitcoin is the currency of the future — one of the US’ biggest banks also sees legitimacy in the virtual currency. Bank of America published its first research report on Bitcoin on Thursday saying that the digital currency could become a major contender to other Continue Reading →

Last year Oxford University Press split its word of the year honors between the US and the UK, but for 2013 there’s one word to rule them all — and it is “selfie.” The term beat out contenders like twerk, bitcoin, and binge-watch, due largely to its remarkable uptick in usage. According to research conducted Continue Reading →

Members of Congress will get a crash course on bitcoin on Monday, the digital “currency” that allows users to conduct transactions online. In just five years the virtual currency has gone from being worth pennies to nearly $600 a piece. It has funded nascent democracy movements as well as a huge underground marketplace for illegal Continue Reading →

Only 27 percent of store purchases were made with cash in 2011, a number that’s projected to continue declining in the future, according to the Huffington Post. Credit card transactions accounted for 66 percent of in-store purchases. It looks like plastic might soon be following cash out of store doors, however, due to the digital Continue Reading →

Bitcoin.org released a security advisory over the weekend warning the Bitcoin community that any Bitcoin wallet generated on any Android device is insecure and open to theft. The insecurity appears to stem from a flaw in the Android Java SecureRandom class, which under certain circumstances can produce numbers that aren’t truly nondeterministic. This can allow Continue Reading →

In the case of a Texas man accused of massive Bitcoin-based fraud, a federal judge has ruled that bitcoins are “a currency or form of money,” and are therefore subject to relevant US laws. The case revolves around Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST), a virtual Bitcoin-based hedge fund that many suspected of being a scam. Continue Reading →

E-commerce leviathan Amazon is taking a step into social gaming: Amazon Coins, its new virtual currency, is now live in the U.S. To kick it off, Amazon announced that it would put $5 worth of the currency — equivalent to 500 Coins — into all Kindle Fire users’ accounts to use on apps and in-app Continue Reading →

Imagine a world where the Nasdaq, the Nikkei and the FTSE all failed within the span of a week and you have an idea how crazy the world of virtual currency trading has become. Wired reports that a new study from computer scientists Tyler Moore of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Nicolas Christin Continue Reading →

PayPal currently doesn’t have much of a relationship with the virtual currency Bitcoin, but that may soon change. The company’s president David Marcus seems to be very interested in the virtual currency, and says his company is “thinking about” potentially including it one day, according to a Bloomberg video interview published on Wednesday. Bitcoin wasn’t Continue Reading →