Beijing-based bitcoin ATM maker BitOcean announced the release of a new, two-way machine this week. According to a report on CoinDesk, the kiosk-style ATMs are designed to compete against similar Robocoin and Lamassu machines. In addition to allowing users to buy and sell bitcoin directly from the the ATM through a “bank level experience,” the […]

One of the biggest concerns with third-party bitcoin services like Coinbase is this: Who controls the private keys? If you host your own wallet on a mobile device or PC, or even have a printed paper wallet, ultimately you control when and how BTC moves from your private address to another. That’s not the case […]

As bitcoin’s price continues to decline, miners have gotten even more bad news. The projected difficulty is currently expected to jump 17.94% on Thursday, climbing from roughly 29 billion to 35 billion. The network hashrate, the key factor in determining difficulty, has grown dramatically in recent days, rocketing up from 213 Petahash per second to […]

In July of 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Trendon T. Shavers with defrauding investors in a bitcoin-targeted Ponzi scheme. Shavers claimed to have created a bitcoin-based arbitrage system, the Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST), and promised investors 7% interest per week on their BTC loans. Instead, the BTCST was a classic Ponzi […]

Earlier this week, Bangladesh’s central bank issued a new warning strongly suggesting that bitcoin use was now a criminal offense in the country. Bank officials later told news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) that anyone found guilty of using or selling bitcoin in the country could be sentenced to up to 12 years in jail. Bangladesh […]

It’s all too easy for the bitcoin community to lose sight of the bigger investment trends. For almost all of bitcoin’s history, is has existed in a bubble, completely removed from the forces that drive forex trends and commodity prices. As we mentioned yesterday, that era appears to be coming to an end. Bitcoin’s price […]

The competition between Coinbase and BitPay looks like it has spilled over to the API battlefield. Yesterday, Coinbase released Toshi, an open-source bitcoin node with a JSON API for developers. Today, BitPay responded with their own API update, packed with new features, updates, and fixes. Not to be outdone, the BitPay API is built on […]

Bitcoin payment-processing and currency exchange startup CoinPlus announced yesterday that it had raised €172,500 ($220,000) in its seed funding round. The Luxembourg-based company launched in early July following legal clarifications of bitcoin’s status in the country by the Commission de surveillance du secteur financier (CSSF) in February. No list of investors has been published, and […]

Earlier this week, bitcoin startups on the politically independent U.K. holding of Isle of Man were faced with potentially catastrophic news. The island’s primary treasury service provider, Capital Treasury Services (CTS), announced it was severing its relationship with all digital currency businesses. It has since been revealed that the CTS decision was made under pressure […]

Until late last week, bitcoin prices had been hovering in the $475 range, down a bit from the $500 to $650 range seen since May. That changed on Saturday, when the bottom seemingly dropped out from the BTC price, sending it on a steep decline to around $428 (at time of writing). While price volatility […]