DinoCrypto

Alternative bitcoin exchange Bitfloor shocked users last week by announcing it was shutting its doors. The exchange said that its US bank account was closing, and it wouldn’t be able to handle the same volumes as it was used to. “Unfortunately, our US bank account is scheduled to be closed and we can no longer […]

Open-source software projects are starting to use bitcoins as a way to pay programmers for their work. Open-source software is developed under a license that enables anyone to view and modify its source code. Many commercial projects use open-source code, and popular software such as Linux is based on it. Although most open-source developers volunteer, […]

Q1 2013 is practically ancient history for bitcoin, given its severe price movements this month, but it’s worth a look back to see just how far the digital currency has come since the beginning of the year. Just a few months ago, “bitcoin was a $100 million ‘idea’ with growing interest from a niche community,” […]

A record $50,000 of bitcoins were traded in Argentina during the second week of April. Bitcoin’s sixfold price increase this year is enticing to Argentines whose savings have been taking a hit from 25% annual inflation. Local agent Rodolfo Andragnes said that while local trading of bitcoin still equals less than 0.1% of the almost […]

As bitcoin continues to gather steam, the burgeoning conference circuit surrounding it continues to grow. This year sees at least two important conferences scheduled, each on either side of the Atlantic. The Bitcoin Foundation is to run a conference from May 17-19 in San Jose, California. Scheduled sessions at Bitcoin 2013 will cover subjects including using […]

A Kansas resident has started a bitcoin fundraising campaign to raise money for a Boston hospital, in response to the Boston bombing. Trey Copeland registered bitcoinsforboston.com on April 16, the day after the bombings in Boston, which struck at 2:50pm eastern time. The site asks for people to donate bitcoins to help the Boston Medical […]

Bitcoins might seem new to much of the “mainstream” economy, but some businesses outside that realm have already found good reasons to try out the digital currency. In particular, the perception of greater privacy in bitcoin transactions is appealing to online businesses that deal in erotica, porn and other “adult” forms of paid entertainment. For […]

What is the fastest way to mine bitcoins? It depends what type of architecture you’re using, but graphics cards are losing the battle to faster devices. Graphical processing units (GPUs) have traditionally been used for mathematically intensive operations. They are designed to handle floating point numbers, which are used in the calculations necessary to display […]

Want a pizza delivered? Hungry for some Chinese takeout? Restaurant delivery service Foodler is now accepting bitcoins from customers placing online orders for food. Foodler handles online ordering for takeout and delivery services from more than 12,000 restaurants across the US. Customers with Foodler accounts can now choose a bitcoin payment option on their account […]

IG Index, a UK-based company that offers spread betting on financial markets, has begun offering binary betting on the bitcoin market. The limited risk binary offering enables clients to take a position on the value of bitcoins, where bets are expressed as odds that an event will or won’t occur. IG’s offering lets people bet […]

How disruptive an impact could digital currency have on national governments and institutions? Gideon Samid begins his analysis by recounting another disruptive moment in history: Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s 1914 assassination in Sarajevo. How does Samid – an assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University – make the argument for […]

E-Gov Link, a hosted application provider for government agencies, says it is integrating bitcoin payments into its suite of products, paving the way for local governments to let citizens pay their bills with the digital currency. E-Gov Link said it made the decision following the recent US Department of the Treasury’s guidance on parameters for […]

New York City-based bitcoin startup Coinsetter has taken its first outside investment by closing a seed round of funding totaling $500,000. The round was led by Barry Silbert, the CEO and founder of SecondMarket, and tech entrepreneur Jimmy Furland. Silbert invested in the company through his Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. Tribeca Venture Partners, a venture capital […]

Remember how, a few years ago, we were briefly made to believe that all our Google searches were helping to melt the planet? If you recall how that claim was quickly debunked, it should come as no surprise that mining bitcoins might not be as much of an environmental disaster as a few sources have […]

At first glance, especially to a digital currency neophyte, OpenCoin might not look that different from Bitcoin. Look beyond the superficial similarities, though, and the two ventures in virtual money couldn’t be less alike. That’s especially true in terms of the people – and money – behind the currencies. Bitcoin, after all, was birthed in […]

Digital currency promises to solve some problems of the “real money” world, among them the difficulty of making quick, secure global payments without having to pay a middleman steep fees to exchange one currency for another. While bitcoins have proven they can do the trick, the currency comes with its own problems. Bitcoin can take […]

So how big an impact are bitcoins really having on the global economy? The latest market stats show the digital currency continues to show a growing influence on “real” money. Among some recent stats: As of April 2013, more than 11 million bitcoins have been mined so far; The market cap for bitcoins now exceeds […]

A lot of attention has been focused in recent years on the energy and carbon footprint of the internet. The giant server farms that drive the world’s web activities need to get their power from somewhere and – as environmental groups frequently point out – that power still tends to come from sources like coal-fired […]

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are proposing a cryptographic extension to bitcoin that could enable fully anonymous transactions on the network. The extension, called Zerocoin, works – as NewScientist explains it – by “allowing bitcoin users to leave their coins floating on the network for someone else to redeem, on the condition that they can […]

This week the price of a Bitcoin soared to more than $260 – albeit for a short period of time. This was helped by a surge in media interest. This week has seen the number of articles on Bitcoin and virtual currency explode to an all time high. Journalists appear to be enjoying another internet […]

What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a digital currency that uses an open-source, peer-to-peer protocol to conduct, verify and record transactions. It is a decentralized form of currency not backed by any government or financial institution, or pegged to the value of any hard commodity such as gold. Bitcoins are digitally generated according to an algorithm […]

What determines the value of a bitcoin? You might as well ask, “What determines the value of a dollar?” (Or a euro or a yen … or even gold.) The basic economics of supply and demand helps to account for much of the value of anything: if more people want something than the market is […]

As bitcoins become more widely recognized and used, would-be bitcoin users have a growing number of ways in which they can acquire the digital currency. In the earliest days, An Introduction to Bitcoins notes, converting a local currency into bitcoins often required a face-to-face encounter with other fans in the same area. Mining new bitcoins […]