A venture capital group headed by tech investor Tim Draper and former AOL CEO Steve Case has raised $4 million in seed money for “white-label” exchange startup Vaurum. Based in California, Vaurum is one of many companies working to build high-volume bitcoin trading platforms that can be easily integrated into existing commodity and stock-trading systems….
In a report published today on Business Insider, bitcoin-business consultant Tim Swanson names his top 10 startups that use blockchain-based technology. Swanson limited his list to companies no longer operating in pre-launch “stealth mode,” and which he believes to already offer a viable service. Several of Swanson’s picks are hardly unknown in the bitcoin community:…
In May of 2013, Forbes writer Kashmir Hill spent a week living on bitcoin. Or trying to, at least. With bitcoin still little known outside of tech and black-market circles, and the media attention around the late 2013 price boom still months away, Hill struggled to find merchants who had even heard of bitcoin, never…
Earlier today, China’s five largest bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement on the Twitter-like social-networking site Weibo. The statement acts as both a mea culpa for the ongoing problems in with bitcoin in China, as well as the first public announcement of a move towards self-regulation for the exchanges. The five participating exchanges are OKCoin,…
After nearly six months of quiet pressure, the long-rumored People’s Bank of China “bitcoin ban” is finally materializing. Earlier today, major Chinese exchange BTC China announced on its Twitter account that it had suspended yuan (RMB) deposits from the Bank of China. This was the second such notice from BTC China, the first being posted…
In many emerging-market countries, most average people are still too poor to afford relatively expensive items like computers and smartphones. Even if they can afford such luxury items, access to reliable internet providers can be just as elusive. In fact, the only piece of modern technology that has significant market penetration in these comparatively poor…
Currency agnostic crypto-payments system Ripple announced a partnership with Munich-based internet bank Fidor Bank AG today. The San Francisco payment network provider will supply Fidor with support for its cutting-edge payment protocol, which is fully compatible with bitcoin, alt-coins and fiat currencies. Fidor is no stranger to the cryptocurrency community, partnering with virtual currency exchange…
Bitcoin’s venture capital pool grew significantly this week with the launch of a US$30 million fund created by Australian financial technology investors Future Capital. The Future Capital Bitcoin Fund (FCBF) will make “equity investments, globally, into companies facilitating payments, exchanges, trading and smart property rights based around the Bitcoin and other digital currency ecosystem.” Although…
It’s no secret that the U.S. government views bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with a healthy dose of skepticism. For all of the technological innovations introduced by bitcoin, it’s difficult for any national security-focused agency to not see future threats in a semi-anonymous form of currency that can move vast amounts of money across the world…
The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions issued a warning on virtual currencies last week, adding one more official notice on the topic from state-level authorities in the U.S. The statement offered the now-common warnings about cryptocurrency, namely the current price volatility, the lack of oversight and regulation, the association of virtual currency with criminal enterprises,…