Could bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies be used to aid terrorist groups? That’s the question officials from the U.S. Special Operations Command asked members of the bitcoin industry this week in a meeting Tampa, Florida. While not an entirely secret event, the Virtual Currency Workshop was a closed-door conference seeking to determine the potential for anti-American […]
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 […]
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Blockchain.info has retained Marco Santori in a new role as global policy counsel. Santori is well known within the bitcoin industry, and currently serves as the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s regulatory affairs committee. In addition to his legal work for the Bitcoin Foundation, Santori also writes about […]
In February, two Florida men were charged with money laundering for selling bitcoin to two undercover agents in a sting operation. The case has already been challenged on a variety of fronts, including the validity of the claim that a bitcoin transaction would even qualify under Florida’s laws as “money,” but thus far those claims […]
There are few people in the bitcoin world with as much name recognition as Andreas Antonopoulos. As an advocate for the technology and cultural force of bitcoin, Antonopoulos has been given countless presentations, lectures and interviews explaining what the crytocurrency revolution is, why it matters, and how everyday people can participate. When the mainstream looks […]
In a blog post on the Bitcoin Foundation website, Global Policy Counsel Jim Harper announced today that the organization has hired lobbying firm Thorsen French Advocacy to represent the bitcoin industry in D.C. Thorsen French is a relatively small lobbying firm, but it has a solid track record of representing its clients’ interests on Capital […]
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 […]
As the developer of the cross-platform Java library BitcoinJ, Mike Hearn knows a thing or two about the status of the overall bitcoin protocol. Until recently, Hearn was a developer at Google, but he recently decided to take the relatively risky step of moving into bitcoin full time. During an interview with the Epicenter Bitcoin […]
Last week, the Bitcoin Foundation announced a plan to finally solve one of the digital currency’s nagging problems: The lack of a Unicode-approved symbol. Although bitcoin has officially used the symbol of a capital “B” with two vertical strokes through it (in the style of the U.S. dollar), that symbol doesn’t exist in the Unicode […]
Shortly after the election of entrepreneur Brock Pierce to the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, members of the organization began a campaign to oust him. Citing Pierce’s controversial history with troubled dotcom-era startup Digital Entertainment Network, foundation member Patrick Alexander terminated his membership in protest. Alexander was shortly joined by another nine members, who also […]