Bank of England Payment Settlements Offline: Home Purchases Impossible

Large purchases including those of housing and real estate in the United Kingdom have stalled today as the Bank of England's Real Time Gross Settlement Payment System is down. As a result banks in the UK can not settle large transactions between each other, though small transactions are processed with a different system. Continue reading

IBM Pays To Divest Chip Business

IBM announced today that they will pay GlobalFoundries 1.5 Billion dollars over three years in exchange for GlobalFoundries taking over their microchip business. GlobalFoundries was itself created in 2009 when AMD divested from manufacturing.  As part of the deal GlobalFoundries is getting paid to acquire IBM's semiconductor manufacturing facilities and personnel with the exception of a small team of researchers remaining with IBM. The number of things IBM still does continues to shrink.

Spain to Issue More Online Gambling Licenses

With Spain's Gaming industry facing declining fortunes, regulators seek to issue more online gambling licenses. Spain notably has the highest tax on Gross Gaming Revenue in Europe and a number of established online betting operations in Spain have been relinquishing their licenses due to cost. El Ministerio de Hacienda y Administraciones Publicas has ruled in that past that they suppose online gambling operations in Bitcoin ought to apply for licenses when they operate in Spain.

Kraken Considers Purchasing MtGox Assets As It Pushes Into Japan

Payward1 run exchange Kraken is headed to Japan with plans to begin offering its service by the end of this October. Founder and CEO Jesse Powell believes Kraken has the expertise required to meet demand for a Japanese Bitcoin exchange. Kraken won't be the first exchange to launch in Japan since the collapse of MtGox with BitOcean and BtcBox having beaten them to the punch earlier this year. Continue reading


  1. Investors include Hummingbird Ventures, Trace Mayer and the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund. 

Daniel J Bernstein Speaks on Keeping Crypto Insecure

Yesterday Daniel J Bernstein gave the Keynote speech at the 11th Hackers To Hackers Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A PDF of his slides is available here, and the slide text is presented below for those with PDF aversions. The talk presented a narrative of how an attacker could manipulate the cryptographic ecosystem to culture insecurity. Continue reading

Coinfloor To Raise Capital Meanwhile Nefario Has Left

Coinfloor, the largest exchange for sterling/bitcoin transactions, is set for a round of capital raising1 which will be used to launch a Bitcoin fund and enable customers to trade a wider variety of currencies for bitcoin. From Tuesday, Coinfloor will begin accepting customer deposits in USD, Euro as well as the Polish Zloty. Continue reading


  1. It is rumoured that the funding round will raise £1m. 

Moopay Goes From Robusto To Busto

Moopay, which owns and runs Moolah.io, are insolvent and will enter into liquidation after it was revealed that a bug allowed attackers to withdraw double the amount they had deposited. At this time, there is no record of any Moopay details in the bankruptcy and insolvency register used in the UK although it's reasonable to expect that the details have yet to be entered. Continue reading