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…
As Mt.Gox was falling apart, the “Two-Bit Idiot” blog on Tumblr was one of the rare sources of well-sourced, reliable information. Written by self-professed “entrepreneur and former VC” Ryan Selkis (who also writes under the name Ryan Galt), the blog was the first to leak the damning internal memos that all but proved Mt.Gox was…
In a dramatic new survey by Viacom’s brand research division Scratch, the mid-20s generation known as “millennials” have made their views about banks and the banking industry unambiguously clear: They don’t like banks. Period. The three-year study of 10,000 millennials, the “Millennial Disruption Index,” showed a general sense of skepticism and hostility towards banks. According…
In a recent conference at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, university CFO Dr. Christos Vlachos gave a presentation about Bitcoin to the Cypriot government and Cyprus Stock Exchange. The highlight of the presentation was a formal proposal to the government for “Converting Cyprus into a worldwide hub for Bitcoin trading and processing.” According to…
While the mainstream media was distracted yesterday with the possible reveal of Satoshi Nakamoto, something massive was brewing in the blockchain. A long-dormant address moved 180,000 BTC (around $113,500,000 at today’s price) to several other addresses, and then those split even further. The initial address has several connections to Mt.Gox, fueling rampant speculation about who…
Last month, the seven bands of the Lakota Nation adopted their homegrown Bitcoin variant, MazaCoin, as their official currency. The new virtual currency joins a slew of similarly local projects, such as Iceland’s rapidly rising Auroracoin, in the ever-growing cryptocurrency community. What makes MazaCoin interesting, however, is that the Lakota Nation is technically a sovereign…
Yesterday, Newsweek published a story by reporter Leah McGrath Goodman claiming to have located the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Within hours of that story’s publication, the Associated Press released their own version of the story, with an extensive interview with Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, who claims he had nothing to do with the creation…
Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Vault of Satoshi announced today that it would be halting all U.S. operations, effectively immediately. Citing concerns about the “increasingly hostile” regulatory environment in the U.S., the exchange announced their decision via their Facebook page. The post also mentioned the warnings of Bitcoin Foundation and BitInstant founder Charlie Shrem in a recent…