Coinapult, which first introduced its BTC to SMS service in May 2012 to users in the US and Canada, has relaunched the service, making it available to users across the globe excluding the United States. Coinapult cited the regulatory minefield in the US as one of the reasons why the service is unavailable for use there. Continue reading
Citigroup's Buiter: Gold a Shiny Bitcoin
According to Marketwatch Citigroup's "Global Chief Economist" William Buiter has some thoughts on Gold, Bitcoin, and other currencies in response to a Swiss referendum on how much gold the Swiss central bank should be keeping in reserves and where. Among those thoughts: Continue reading
The Bitcoin.com.au Story Continues
On the 25th and 26th of November, Qntra ran a story in which we claimed the bitcoin.com.au domain name had been deleted due to a complaint lodged with auDA which outlined incorrect registrant information. In response to that article, Qntra received a statement from Shane Murphy on behalf of digitalBTC and Zhenya Tsvetnenko which can be read here. Shane Murphy clarified that the domain name had been dropped by Zhenya in his capacity as sole director of Magna Fortis Pty Ltd and not Executive Chairman of digitalBTC, an important distinction. Continue reading
GAW Lawyers Attempt To Bully CoinFire
CoinFire have published a copy of a cease and desist letter they received from Baker Marquart on behalf of GAW Miners. The C&D comes on the back of yesterday's threat by Josh Garza to pursue CoinFire for making what he claims are libellous and false statements about GAW Miners. Continue reading
Bitcoin.com.au Update
Qntra has received a statement from Shane Murphy on behalf of digitalBTC regarding the bitcoin.com.au domain name. Continue reading
Ken Hess: Bitcoin Illegal, Tom Coburn: Maybe for Congress?
In a piece appearing on ZDnet today Ken Hess wrote a about his letter campaign to inform United States Senators of "Bitcoin's illegality" and of how Tom Coburn's office responded. Mr. Hess's case for Bitcoin illegality consist of his reading of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the United States constitution which enumerates as a power of Congress: Continue reading
MtGox Trustee Moves to Repay Creditors, Work With Kraken
According to the New York Times, the liquidator in the MtGox bankruptcy case is moving in the direction of repaying creditors and will partner with the Fiat/Bitcoin exchange Kraken to do so. Among assistance Kraken might offer to the trustee is an evaluation of Mt Gox's assets and help investigating the collapse of MtGox. Any decision to repay the customers with Bitcoin though would happen at the discretion of the Trustee. Jesse Powell of Kraken offered a few informative quotes: Continue reading
Sony Pictures Suffers Targeted Cyber Attack
The Los Angeles Times reports that a group calling itself #GOP or "Guardians of Peace" has compromised the ability of movie studio Sony Pictures to derive any utility from their information technology infrastructure. Allegedly the group behind the event has not made any concrete demands, but is threatening to leak internal information from the studio to the web if certain demands are not met. This event deviates from typical, far less selective, ransomware attacks which happen to affect single computers opportunistically and then demand a set monetary ransom to facilitate the recovery of files. Self Proclaimed "hack victim" Mark Karpeles have offered that the Sony hackers might be Chinese or Korean based on a text encoding error.
Bitcoin.com.au Lost By Mistake
Update – Qntra has received a statement from Shane Murphy on behalf of digitalBTC regarding the bitcoin.com.au domain name.
Bitcoin.com.au has been inadvertently sold at auction via the Australian domain name drop catcher Netfleet at a price of AUD $36,300 or the equivalent of around USD $31,200. This marks the second time bitcoin.com.au has been sold in 2014, having been previously purchased at a price of USD $23,000 by Zhenya Tsvetnenko of Digital CC, the Australian company which trades as Digital BTC. Continue reading
FTC Argues That BFL Should Not Resume Operations
Attorneys representing the FTC have argued that Butterfly Labs should not be allowed to resume operations on the basis that doing so would jeopardise assets which should be preserved for possible consumer redress. As part of their argument, the FTC presented an expert witness who testified that the machines BFL shipped to customers were already obsolete. Continue reading