On January 12th Blu-Bin, a Burlington-based 3D printing business, received a cease and desist letter asking for the shutdown of the state's only Bitcoin ATM. The number of Bitcoin ATMs throughout the world is booming significantly, although concerns of the privacy of the individuals using these machines have arisen. The US has attempted to heavily regulate Bitcoin ATMs with KYC, thus usage of one sometimes requires personal data such as a social security number, a palm print or taking a picture of the user's face. Continue reading
Author Archives: thestringpuller
PseudoNode Proxy Fools Bitcoin Full Node Incentive Program
Vessennes' Bitcoin Foundation recently sponsored a full node incentive program that pays full nodes registered with a Bitcoin address weekly if deemed eligible. The incentive program's goal is to estimate the size of the Bitcoin network by finding all reachable nodes running bitcoind version 0.8 or higher, likely in an attempt to lower the barrier necessary for a possible fork. Continue reading
New Security Standard Announced at DevCore
Bitcoin’s history has been plagued with security issues from Bitcoinica to MtGox. At the DevCore conference hosted by Vessenes’ Bitcoin Foundation a new security standard was announced called the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (CCSS), which aims to provide general guidelines for best practices in regards to security involving cryptocurrency. Continue reading
The Hard Fork Missile Crisis
As previously reported, Gavin Andresen proposed increasing the block size and later attempted to describe the economic and political implications of such a proposal. In both instances he was met with furious backlash from the community.
Today Gavin posted on his personal blog an article titled "Looking before the Scaling Up Leap", stating "My goal is to prove that it is safe to raise the maximum block size from 1MB to at least 20MB" along with "I'll argue we should schedule a hard fork." Reddit soon blindly praised Gavin for his work, with comments such as "Fork it hard." Continue reading
Coinbase Tracing User Transactions
Coinbase has been banning user accounts that send Bitcoin to gambling sites, such as Satoshi Dice or Seals With Clubs. Earlier today a reddit user made a post stating Coinbase banned his account for allegedly purchasing cannabis products with coins purchased from the service. The user provided screenshots of email correspondence with the Coinbase support team, which states the remaining coins in the user's wallet may be withdrawn, but will not be able to utilize the purchase or selling services Coinbase provides. Continue reading
50 Cent on Accepting Bitcoin
On the Seth Meyers' Late Night show, rapper 50 Cent described his feelings about the cryptocurrency: Continue reading
Reddit Goes Full Redditard with Reddit Notes
In February of 2013, Reddit began accepting bitcoin for Reddit Gold. The company then went on to hire Ryan X. Charles as a Cryptocurrency Engineer, tasked with a secret project revealed today as Reddit Notes.
The company recently raised $50 million, which could be the result of the company's inability to remain profitable long term, as the company closed the 2013 fiscal year in the red, resulting in the "daily reddit gold goal" meter. Now being valued at $500 million, the company stated its desire to give back 10% of its equity to its user base via cryptocurrency. Continue reading
Microsoft Xbox and Mobile Marketplace Now Accepts Bitcoin
Microsoft Accounts, which includes Xbox Live users, now allow the "redemption" of Bitcoin for a dollar amount credit. This credit may be used as payment for Xbox Live Services and products. Windows Phone users may also use the credit to make purchases in the Windows App Store. Other well known Microsoft products, such as Windows and Office, are not available for purchase using this method. Continue reading
Onename Raises $1.5 Million in Seed Funding for Decentralized Authentication
It was confirmed this week Onename has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. On Wednesday, the company announced on their blog they would be open-sourcing a set of tools including a suite to utilize their in-development Openname Auth, a protocol for decentralized and password-less authentication. These set of tools work with their already open source protocol upon which Onename is built on called Openname, which in turn is built upon Namecoin. Continue reading
BIP-65: Revisiting nLockTime
Peter Todd and Gregory Maxwell submitted BIP65 at the beginning of October. The proposed change attempts to improve the network's behavior in handling "locked transactions", by introducting a new opcode OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY. Yesterday, Jeff Garzik sent out a tweet hinting the protocol improvement may be approved relatively soon: Continue reading