Is bitcoin hardware maker CoinTerra looking to expand beyond the mining game? According to a new report published today by CoinDesk, the Austin, TX-based company has acquired Hungarian bitcoin software maker Bits of Proof (BOP) for an undisclosed sum. BOP CEO Tamás Blummer will join CoinTerra as Vice President of Enterprise Software, bringing the developer’s […]
Could the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) BitLicense shutter long-running mining pool BTC Guild? Recent discussions about the impact of the disclosure rules in the proposed regulations may result in the closure of the mining collective. In a statement published on July 19, BTC Guild’s operator said that compliance with the new rules […]
In June, behemoth bitcoin-mining pool GHash.io briefly gained more than half of the total network hashrate, a move that caused many to question just how secure bitcoin’s much-touted decentralized network really was. The situation was a wake-up call for many, as it meant that the long-hypothesized “51% attack” wasn’t as implausible as many experts had […]
In a short press release published over the weekend, bitcoin mining hardware maker BitFury announced the launch of a new venture capital fund to provide cryptocurrency startups with much-needed seed money. Dubbed BitFury Capital, the fund will “accelerate other parts of the [bitcoin] ecosystem through strategic partnerships, and expansion into adjacent business opportunities.” In addition […]
Ask any bitcoin miner about the constant grind of mining difficulty increases, and you’ll rarely hear anything positive. From the miners’ perspective, a rapidly rising difficulty doesn’t mean that the network is growing healthily and becoming more secure, it means that their already thin profit margins will be taking another hit. A single, double-digit jump […]
In an update posted to the Bitcoin Foundation blog yesterday, Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen explained the implementation of the long-rumored “floating” transaction fee system. While previous versions of Bitcoin Core had hard-coded (yet optional) fees to miners for including transactions in blocks, version 0.10 will alter the wallet code to allow high-priority transactions to happen […]
In its latest security report, McAfee Labs turned its attention to bitcoin mining malware. While botnets for bitcoin and various alt-coins is on the rise, McAfee’s analysis claimed that even highly powerful networks of zombie machines were ineffective at mining. Even allowing for zero cost for hardware and power, most cryptocurrency algorithms long ago passed […]
Few organizations in the bitcoin community have been the subject of such heated debate as GHash.io. On the one hand, GHash has created one of the most user-friendly, efficient and low payout-variability pools in the cryptocurrency world, leveraging their own dedicated cloud mining system to encourage high rewards for independent contributors. On the other, GHash […]
Bitcoin cloud mining company PetaMine controls about 1150 TH/s of hashing power, accounting for just under 1% of the current network hashrate. The company has generally pointed its miners at mega-pool GHash.io, but with that group recently coming under serious criticism for having more than 51% of the total network’s hash rate, PetaMine’s organizers have […]
Yesterday, mining pool giant GHash.io controlled fully half of the hashing power of the entire bitcoin network. For a distributed network that relies on trustless consensus, having the majority of the “voting” power controlled by a single mining pool is more than a little problematic. Most notably, it opens up the bitcoin network to the […]