Bitcoin Plaza: July 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

Obama Orders to Create World’s Fastest Supercomputer

President Obama has released an executive order entitled “Creating a national strategic computing initiative” issuing demands to build the world’s first exascale computing syst...

HackCoin: Bitcoin Hackathon in India Sponsored by Microsoft, IBM and Citruspay

Zone Startups India, BitStreet and Block Chain University are hosting India’s first bitcoin hackathon at the Bombay Stock Exchange in India named “HackCoin Mumbai.” The hackathon will be joined by over a hundred developers looking to build blockchain-based applications for payments, big data and digital experience. “There are three problem...

Bitcoin to Ripple Gateway to Shut Down for US Users

Ripple Inc., payment gateway for hundreds of assets and digital currencies has announced the closure of btc2ripple gateway for all US residents starting September 1, 2015. Btc2ripple gateway is one of the hundreds of gateways on the Ripple Trade platform which is used to purchase or trade BTC to XRP (Ripple’s IOU). On September 1, Ripple...

Accenture Executives Propose Replacing Bitcoin with a Closed Blockchain

Writing on CIO Journal, a Wall Street Journal blog for corporate technology executives, Owen Jelf and Sigrid Seibold , respectively global managing director of Accenture’s capital markets practice and managing director of Accenture’s digital capital markets efforts, weigh in on the fashionable debate about the blockchain as a system vs....

New Ethereum Foundation Executive Director and Board Members Signal a Reboot for Ethereum

One of the strengths of Ethereum is its decentralized nature, giving it a wider, more stable base. There are Ethereum project teams in different parts of the world, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Switzerland and Brazil. (For example, Geth was deployed by the Amsterdam team while Eth was produced by the Berlin team.) If there is a center to...

Visa Europe’s Initiative: The ‘Apple App Store’ for Bitcoin Startups

Visa Europe's Collab has begun searching for bitcoin startups within the digital payments scene with the hopes of creating “an Apple App Store” of Bitcoin startup...

Mark Karpeles Soon To Face Mt. Gox Criminal Fraud Charges

Mark Karpeles has been under investigation by Japanese authorities since Febru-ary of 2014 and is soon expected to face charges of fraud at Mt. Go...

Trees: Bitcoin-Powered Drone Delivers Cannabis to Your Doorstep

Cointelegraph chatted with Marshall Hayner, the co-founder of Trees, a unique “cannabis delivery startup app” that accepts bitcoin and also hopes to employ drones in the futur...

JUL 31 DIGEST: Former Mt Gox CEO Faces Fraud Charges; Ethereum Finally Launches

The Tokyo police is reportedly charging former Mark Karpelès on suspicions of fraud; the long-awaited app network Ethereum has finally launched, and more new...

BTC-to-Ripple Gateway to Shut Down for all US Customers

Bitcoin to Ripple gateway service btc2ripple.com has announced it is cutting service for its US customers from Septembe...

How Innovation in Crypto-Crowdfunding is Empowering Micro Investors

In a crowded marketplace, businesses are developing innovative features to differentiate their offers from the rest, and attract the investmen...

Thursday, July 30, 2015

‘People Are Just Too Stupid to Use Bitcoin Right Now’ (Op-Ed)

The following article was chosen for publication as part of CoinTelegraph’s Super Writer contes...

National Science Foundation Awards Research Grants on the Science and Applications of Cryptocurrency

The National Science Foundation has awarded research grants on the science and applications of crypto-currency, with approximately $1 million awarded to date. The NSF initiative is part of the “Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace” program for cybersecurity research and development to minimize the dangers of cyber technology, promote education...

Five Recommendations for Bitcoin Companies to Ensure Compliance with the Department of Justice

This is a guest post by Eugene Illovsky, a partner at Morrison & Foerster in Palo Alto. He advises on corporate compliance and represents companies in their interactions with government investigatory, enforcement, and prosecutorial authorities. What compliance expectations does the Department of Justice have for businesses...

Accenture: Blockchain Has Great Potential, Currency Needs to Go

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, technology consulting firm Accenture directors Owen Jelf and Sigrid Seibold argued that blockchain technology will reshape the financial secto...

Boozy Brit Buys £300 worth of Pizza in Bitcoin Blunder

A British Reddit user wishing to thank a fellow-user in the US got drunk and mistakenly bought £300 worth of pizza for strangers in the States using bitcoi...

JUL 30 DIGEST: Rick Perry Wants to Give Bitcoin ‘Regulatory Breathing Room’; Bitcoin Shop Rebrands

Rick Perry says Bitcoin needs “regulatory breathing room”; George Gilder calls Bitcoin “the Gold of the Internet” and more new...

UK Prime Minister David Cameron Backs ‘Ambitious’ FinTech Manifesto

UK Prime Minister David Cameron supported the new FinTech manifest...

Former White House Advisor: Elimination of ‘Double-Spend’ is Bitcoin’s True Innovation

A former senior White House advisor has become the latest authority to speak out in favor of Bitcoin and blockchain technolog...

Former NYDFS Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky Denies BitLicense Cronyism Allegations

Benjamin Lawsky denied allegations from the Bitcoin community suggesting he created the BitLicense as a setup for his newly established legal firm, The Lawsky Grou...

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Leading Global Bitcoin Adoption, HashingSpace Corporation Uplifts to the OTCQB

Bitcoin Press Release: US Based HashingSpace Corporation Announced it has been uplifted to a higher reporting status on the OTC Market. HashingSpace will now be listed as OTCQB: HSHS. HashingSpace provides scalable datacenter and technology infrastructure for the global adoption of Bitcoin including Bitcoin ATMs and hosted ASIC mining. WENATCHEE,...

Over 2 Years Old Valuable Bitcoin Alternative CryptoBullion (CBX) Announces Unprecedented PoSP Algorithm and Expansion Into Chinese Markets

Bitcoin Press Release: Over 2 years old, CryptoBullion is pleased to announce an unprecedented Proof-of-Stake-Participation algorithm and expansion into emerging Chinese markets. Designed to be rare and valuable, less than 1 million CBX are in circulation, with a variable annual interest rate of over 2% for stakers. FLORIDA, USA / July 29,...

Skype Co-founder Funds Blockchain Based Startup Marketplace

Funderbeam, an Estonian company that offers data-intelligence on startups for angel investors, has announced it will launch a blockchain based trading platform for startup-investmen...

Purse.io Sees Record New Users and $24,000 in Purchases on Amazon Prime Day

It wasn’t just regular consumers who were able to benefit from the much-anticipated Amazon Prime Day. Purse.io, the escrow service that connects users with bitcoin to users with Amazon gift cards, saw a significant amount of growth leading up to the big day. “We had the highest number of new users in a single week,” Andrew Lee, CEO of Purse,...

Bitcoin’s Largest Publicly Traded Company Bridges Gaps to the Banking Industry

As Bitcoin usage grows worldwide and attracts the attention of more governments and regulators, the complexities of ensuring compliance across different jurisdictions become greater and greater. Many quickly growing Bitcoin startups struggle with this issue and lack the knowledge base to ensure that compliance is sufficient. Taking it a...

London Mayoral Candidate Wants to Track £17 Billion City Budget in Real Time on the Blockchain

Felix Online, the student magazine of Imperial College London, has published an interview with the Respect Party candidate for mayor of London, George Galloway. The Respect Party is a left-wing U.K. political party founded in 2004 as an offspring of the Stop the War Coalition, opposing the Iraq War. The Party has been compared to “anti-establishment”...

Microsoft and MIT Explore Unique Applications of the Bitcoin Blockchain

Microsoft New York and MIT Media Lab presented a 70-minute report called #Blockchain4good this week. Speakers included Brian Forde, MIT Media Lab director of digital currency and former senior technology adviser at the White House, and John Paul Farmer, director of technology and civic innovation at Microsoft. They led discussions on using...

Microsoft Hosts bitcoinless Bitcoin 2.0 Event for 'Social Good' (Op-Ed)

In another splash into the Bitcoin space for Microsoft, the tech giant's Civic Innovation team organized a Bitcoin event in New York earlier this wee...

Will ‘Lighting Network’ Strike Bitcoin? (Op-Ed)

The following article was chosen for publication as part of CoinTelegraph’s Super Writer conte...

JUL 29 DIGEST: Lawsky Denies Working in Bitcoin Space; CoinTape Lets Users Find Optimal Transaction Fee

Benjamin Lawsky claimed he is not working in the digital currency space; a new CoinTape service lets Bitcoin users find optimum transaction fees, and more new...

Blythe Masters: Bitcoin Tech has ‘Gigantic Potential’

Blythe Masters has spoken out in support of the “gigantic potential” of Bitcoin and blockchain technolog...

Binary Options Bring ‘Immense’ Opportunity for Bitcoin Users

CoinTelegraph spoke with Damian Cišek, the CEO of BitPlutos, the first binary options platform for Bitcoin, about what binary options can bring to Bitcoi...

Hornet: High-Speed Protocol for a Fully-Encrypted & Anonymous Internet

The problem of spying in Internet is about to be solved due to Horne...

US National Science Foundation Awards 3-Year Grant for Cryptocurrency Research

American National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a three year grant worth US$162,117 for research on the science and applications of cryptocurrenc...

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Benjamin Lawsky: ‘I’m Doing No Work in the Digital Currency Space’

The former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the creator of the much maligned BitLicense revealed today that he’s not working in the digital currency space. “I’m doing no work in the digital currency space,” said Benjamin Lawsky at the America Banker Conference in New York City. “The rules...

Settling the Block Size Debate

This is a guest post by Eric Lombrozo, the Co-CEO and CTO of Ciphrex Corp., a software company pioneering decentralized consensus network technology. Lombrozo is also a founding member of the CryptoCurrency Security Standards Steering Committee and has been a longtime contributor to the open source Bitcoin core development effort. Introduction In...

Bitcoin-Friendly Payment Processor Stripe Raises New Funding, Partners with Visa and American Express

Payment processor Stripe has raised new funding from Visa, American Express, Sequoia Capital and other investors, valuing the company at $5 billion, The New York Times reports. The new funding comes six months after a previous funding round of $70 million, at a $3.5 billion valuation. Stripe didn’t disclose the amount of new funding, and...

Bitcoin & the Ancient Hundi System in Thailand (Op-Ed)

The following article was submitted as part of CoinTelegraph’s Super Writers Conte...

Ethereum Project Opens Up New ‘Frontier’ for Developers

You could hear a pin drop at the recent Toronto DEC_TECH conference as Vitalik Buterin told a standing-room-only crowd about his remarkable journey to build Ethereum – a decentralized open source peer-to-peer web-based platform – that he calls “the foundational platform for everything.” Buterin has been called a “crypto-anarchist...

Ethereum Announces Official Launch Date

Ethereum has announced the official release date of the first ‘Frontier’ versio...

Bitcoin Focused HashingSpace Corporation Announces New Ticker Symbol “HSHS”, Files 8-K, and Completes Reverse Merger

Bitcoin Press Release: US based HashingSpace Corporation (OTCQB: HSHS) is pleased to announce it has completed a reverse merger, and a ticker change from the old ticker MLSOD to HSHS. HashingSpace provides a wide range of services to the Bitcoin and blockchain communities including hosted ASIC mining and Bitcoin ATM’s. WENATCHEE, WA / July...

Founder of European Stock Exchange Launches Blockchain Startup

Peter Randall and Anthony Culligan have announced to launch blockchain startup SET...

JUL 28 DIGEST: Bitcoin Growth 25% Faster than the Internet in 90s; Estonian Angel List Service Secures Marketplace with BTC Blockchain

Bitcoin growth is outpacing that of the early stage internet by almost 25%; an Estonian Angel List service will utilize Bitcoin's blockchain and more new...