In the last few months, Bitcoin has gone from fringe tech curiosity to a potential dark horse in the race for the future of international commerce. Not surprisingly, it has caught the caught the attention of cautious U.S. regulators, skeptical central bankers and scapegoat-craving politicians. To ensure that the Bitcoin movement has a seat at…
Following the example of Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff recently took to Twitter this morning to announce his new-found interest in Bitcoin. The message was simple: “Bought some bitcoin this morning. Buckle up.” The tweet follows a message on Sunday from Rascoff, where he mentioned he was “reconsidering my skepticism on Bitcoin” thanks…
Mt.Gox officially filed for U.S. Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection. Although Mt.Gox has already filed for bankruptcy in Japan, the U.S. filing will allow for additional cross-border protections under international law. With an outstanding debt of ¥6.5 billion and missing 850,000 BTC belonging to users the world over, the move to protect Mt.Gox’s U.S. assets is…
Back in November, the Bitcoin community was electrified when at 194,993 BTC transaction was identified on the blockchain, representing about $147 million at the time. Since that time, speculation about what the shift was and why it happened has been rampant, with theories ranging from Richard Branson consolidating his newly revealed wallet to a return…
Yesterday, hackers gained access to the personal blog of Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpeles (currently offline), using the space to release over 700 MB of data that appeared to come from the now-shuttered exchange’s internal database. The contents looked damning, hinting that Mt.Gox either had (or at least thought they had) nearly a million BTC in…
Last week, Newsweek declared Temple City, California, engineer Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto to be the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. This launched a media firestorm, and unleashed a swarm of investigation from the world media and armchair detectives across the internet. The more details came in, the worse it looked for writer Leah McGrath Goodman’s…
On Thursday, Wikipedia and Wikia founder Jimmy Wales posted a tweet that he was “Playing with BTC” and had bought 0.1 BTC (around $65) via Coinbase. He also posted the address of the account so his Twitter friends could follow along. Wikipedia does not currently accept Bitcoin for donations, but with Wales tinkering with the…
Within moments of Newsweek claiming to have identified mysterious, possibly pseudononymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto as retired Temple City, California, engineer Dorian S. Nakamoto, many in the Bitcoin community immediately began crying foul. A modest man living a quiet existence with his 93-year-old mother suddenly had his life turned into a media circus, all on…
Last month, eBay CEO John Donahoe set the virtual currency world abuzz when he mentioned in a discussion about Bitcoin on Bloomberg TV that the company’s PayPal branch was “building a digital wallet that can take multiple types of currency.” Today, finance writer Brian Cohen uncovered details about eBay’s wallet, outlining the details of a…
Speaking at SXSW yesterday, Google’s Director of Ideas, Jared Cohen, claimed that Bitcoin-like payment system are clearly not going away. “I think it’s very obvious to all of us that cryptocurrencies are inevitable,” Cohen said. “There’s lots of value to it, [but] there’s a danger to it not being regulated.” While Cohen does believe that…