In a report released today, investment banking giant J.P. Morgan examined the recent “saga” of troubled Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox. Authored by Morgan’s head of foreign exchange strategy, John Normand, the one-page report is a follow-up to their more general profile on Bitcoin released earlier this month. The contents of the report itself seem to be…
Earlier today, the offices of “bank like” Bitcoin service provider Neo opened in Cyprus. The company provides many of the financial services of a bank, such as savings and business accounts, as well as providing access to funds through a debit card-like system powered by their sister company, Bee. The launch is already being hailed…
Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpeles quietly resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation yesterday. The resignation, which was effective immediately, was confirmed today by Bitcoin Foundation spokesman Jinyoung Lee Englund, speaking with the Reuters news agency. Immediately following the resignation, Mt.Gox also deleted the entire contents of it Twitter feed. There has been no comment from Mt.Gox about…
Investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has made an initial assessment of Bitcoin, deeming it “a bit dangerous” as a commercial offering. In a report leaked to TechCrunch, the bank claims that “it has become hard to separate the effect of hype surrounding the currency from its fundamentals.” The Goldman report cites the lack of a…
The Central Bank of Jordan initiated a new policy this week blocking financial companies from using Bitcoin. The bank’s Executive Director, Maha Bahu, informed The Jordan Times yesterday that the CBJ had released new rules to all banks in the Kingdom prohibiting them from dealing in all virtual currencies, and in Bitcoin in particular. The…
In what is likely to be seen as a step towards increased U.S. regulation of virtual currencies, the Chairman of the US Senate’s Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), Senator Tom Carper (D-Del), endorsed the creation of task force on the topic by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. The “Emerging Payments Task Force”…
Yesterday, police broke up the small, loosely organized protest outside Mt.Gox’s offices in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Police told the protestors that the demonstration was illegal, and warned them not to return without a “demonstration license.” According to protest organizers, the police were called by other tenants of the building who had grown tired of the…
Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne was profiled on Forbes today, speaking at length about his views on the future of Bitcoin. One of the most interesting revelations is that Byrne personally cashed out “several million dollars worth” of gold to convert to Bitcoin. This appears to directly contradict speculation that Overstock and other companies were adopting…
Bitcoin payment service provider BitPay just unveiled a powerful new tool for simplifying merchant transactions. The Bitcoin Payment Protocol enables users to simply “click on a payment link, or scan a QR code, and the wallet software offers two simple choices to the user, pay or don’t pay.” Current Bitcoin payment systems generally require users…
Last week, the Bank of Thailand issued a statement reversing its previous stance that trading in Bitcoin violated national law. This announcement prompted Thailand’s only Bitcoin exchange, Bitcoin Co Ltd, to resume trading in baht, the national currency. Yesterday, Thailand’s central bank issued a new statement that effectively reverses their last stance, once again calling…