In terms of total assets and market capitalization, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is the largest bank in the world. The ICBC controls nearly $15.5 trillion in assets, and had a net income of more than $200 billion dollars in 2011. As powerful as the ICBC is, however, it still answers to…
It’s no secret that the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have high hopes for their soon-to-launch Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust (WBT). What may be more suprising, however, is just how mainstream the “Winklevii” plan to make their new exchange traded fund (ETF). Rather than testing the waters by listing on a smaller exchange, the brothers plan to…
After months of delay, the US Federal Exchange Commission (FEC) has ruled that political campaigns and political action committees (PACs) can accept bitcoin donations. The FEC’s draft advisory opinion originated from a request from Make Your Laws PAC, Inc. (MYL), and treats bitcoin donations as in-kind donations rather than cash donations. Under the ruling, bitcoin…
One of the bitcoin’s greatest innovations is cryptographically provable ownership. It’s one of the core building blocks of the blockchain, and arguably one of the most powerful security features ever devised. If BitID’s new authentication protocol works as promised, it could also become a game-changing method for account verifications. Currently, users are able to share…
If the results of a new survey published by the Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) are to be believed, Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors are extremely optimistic about the future of bitcoin as both a financial tool and investment opportunity. The survey was backed by BIT’s parent company, SecondMarket, and responded to by a pool…
Under increasing pressure from the People’s Bank of China, two of the “big five” Chinese bitcoin exchanges have announced plans to alter their business models. Although the PBoC issued new rules in December dramatically limiting access to the country’s banking system for bitcoin-based business, those rules have only been meaningfully enforced in recent weeks. Several…
In March, software engineer and bitcoin blogger Jameson Lopp posed an interesting question on CoinChomp: How many Bitcoin nodes is enough? To his surprise, Lopp found that while it was relatively easy to determine the number of nodes in the Bitcoin system, it was impossible to determine how well those nodes were performing. And even…
In a new alert issued today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned investors about the increased risks of fraud from virtual currency-related schemes. The new SEC alert is an update to their previous cautionary release about virtual currencies, which warned of potential Ponzi schemes using digital money. Innovations and new technologies are often…
Are bill-payment systems the first mainstream application of bitcoin? In the last few weeks, several new international services have launched allowing customers to pay for everything from utility bills to taxes using cryptocurrencies. Over at CoinDesk, reporter Jon Southurst takes a look at these new payment services. Southurst notes the launch earlier this year of…
In its first major acquisition since raising $25 million in venture capital funds last year, Coinbase has bought the company behind content-sharing platforms Kippt and Inc. Although never well-known outside of the Silicon Valley startup community, the Y Combinator-based Kippt project was seen by many as an innovative sharing platform with an exceptionally powerful API….