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.

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. 

BitStamp: Unverified Accounts to be Closed, Balances to Regulators

BitStamp announced on their blog that accounts remaining unverified will be closed and have their balances turned over to regulators. BitStamp initially implemented their verification policy in September of 2013 and insists they can not allow accounts that do not comply with their anti-money laundering and know your customer policies to trade or receive other services from BitStamp including withdrawals in either Bitcoin or any other method. Their announcement: Continue reading