Today on the Sourceforge hosted Bitcoin-development mailing list Gavin Andresen has threatened to leave his present group of Bitcoin software developers over their objections to his demands for a rapid hardfork of the Bitcoin network. In the event his demands are not met Gavin plans to join Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT project which is a fork of the Bitcoin client where Hearn implements patches that Gavin's current affiliated developers find too risky to implement in any mainline Bitcoin client. If Gavin defects to Bitcoin-XT he plans to work with Hearn to lobby merchants, miners, and businesses to move to Bitcoin-XT. Previously Mike Hearn was responsible for the March 2013 Bitcoin network crisis. The full text of Gavin's message is mirrored below for posterity. Continue reading
Category Archives: Altcoins
PayPal Settles With US For Sanctions Violations
PayPal, an early and centralized attempt at establishing a primitive form of Internet money, has announced a settlement with the United States Treasury Department. PayPal will pay the Treasury Department 7.7 million United States Dollars for having disregarded sanctions enacted by the United States Government against Iran, Cuba, and others. Examples of transactions and accounts PayPal admits allowing span from 2009 to April 2013 when PayPal enacted a system to screen in real time for prohibited payments. PayPal reports spending substantial effort over the past two years to strengthen its ability to comply with sanctions.
Amid Decision To Close, AllCrypt.com Reports Hot Wallet Theft
Off the back of an announcement that the AllCrypt.com bitcoin/altcoin exchange would be going offline as of the 31st of March due to low trading volume, the site now reports that its hot wallet has been emptied to the tune of about 42 BTC 37 BTC1 The alleged theft comes just one month after AltCrypt.com's twitter account claimed that its users bitcoins were safe due to the site being "too small and insignificant" to matter. Continue reading
It was at first claimed on the AllCrypt.com website that the theft totalled 42 BTC – 12 BTC owned by the site and 30 BTC owned by users. The AllCrypt.com twitter account claims different figures. ↩
Chinese Yuan Passes Australian, Canadian, Hong Kong Dollars in International Use
A new report by SWIFT shows that the Chinese Yuan (RMB) rising in use for international payments compared to a number of other nationally issued currencies. This surge highlights the constant instability suffered by users of fiat currencies as the increased internationalization of the RMB makes it more difficult for the users of other alternative national currencies to market their chosen value token to new users. The RMB is presently the fifth most popular national currency for payments usage behind the United States dollar, the Euro, the Pound which was formerly Sterling, and the Japanese Yen. The Yen is particularly vulnerable to losing adoption and popularity versus the RMB as it is only 0.52% more popular as of the time covered by this SWIFT report.
CAVIRTEX Shutting Down, Withdrawals "Temporarily Disabled"
CAVIRTEX, Canada's most prominent CAD-BTC exchange and staunch advocate for government regulation, announced earlier today that it will cease operations effective March 25th, 2015. Continue reading
Bter.com Alleges Theft Of 7170 BTC
The altcoin exchange Bter.com today announced the alleged theft of 7170BTC from what the exchange claims was a cold wallet. The first signs of problems appeared earlier today when a now removed messaged greeted Bter.com visitors: Continue reading
Excoin Exchange To Shut Down Amid Claims Of Theft
The altcoin exchange Excoin has announced that it will soon shut down after alleging that an attacker was able to withdraw all the bitcoins from the exchange.
With a trading engine written in Go, Excoin launched what was predominantly a Blackcoin exchange back in November of 2014. Excoin also featured a proof of reserve page which reassured members that their funds were securely stored and accounted for. Continue reading
Coin-Swap Exchange Users Unable To Withdraw Their Coins
An increasing number of users of the altcoin exchange Coin-Swap are complaining about the inability to withdraw their coins from the exchange and claim that their support tickets and emails are yet to be acknowledged. The Coin-Swap exchange features over 50 altcoins which trade against bitcoin, dogecoin and more recently, paycoin. Continue reading
McDonalds Creates Limited Redemption Altcoin
From February second through Valentines Day recycled food byproduct purveyor McDonald's will be minting and accepting the limited redemption of their own alternate currency. The currency will be allocated by fiat through a "Lovin' Lead" at each individual store that will select 100 customers at their location and offer them the chance to pay with the alternate currency. Those selected may commit a "Lovin' Act" as specified by the "Lovin' Lead" in order to pay for their "meal" at the cash register. Continue reading
Discus Fish Donates Namecoins to Namecoin Developers
A posting on the official Namecoin forum reveals that Bitcoin mining pool Discus Fish has donated 20,000 Namecoins to developers to bring the Namecoin client in line with the current Bitcoin client developed by Vessenes' foundation. At present there is a Github repository where code committed to this effort so far is currently available.
Namecoin was the first credible fork of the Bitcoin codebase and remains one of the few altcoins of enduring interest. The Namecoin project was born out of a desire to expand the principles that laid the foundation for Bitcoin's success in reinventing money to doing the same for Domain and other name services. Namecoin was even early enough to get suggestions and code commits from Satoshi Nakamato himself. Continue reading