A lot of the recent big news surrounding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is related to regulation. Recently the state of New York proposed a new set of regulations which have been met with an overall negative reaction by the Bitcoin community. Ecuador has also effectively banned Bitcoin and the rules and regulations required by the Chinese government have caused massive ...

Faithful readers know how I have been tracking technology convergence in the cryptocurrency space.  Previous observations and comments regarding Darkwallet and Cannacoin and their successes in this area have been published.  Now, the recently announced ArchitectCoin has extended the vision by additionally integrating Bittrex exchange monitoring directly into their wallet. The communications integration is promised to go beyond simple, IRC chat. For those who ...

Yesterday evening, Twitter user @ScottAllyn ordered a pizza for 68 VeriCoins (video below) at a restaurant using Bitcoin as payment. To do so, he used a service called VeriBit which allows users to seamlessly spend their VRC (VeriCoin) as Bitcoin to make purchases at any merchant accepting Bitcoin.   No longer do holders of VeriCoin need to send their coin over ...

The DarkWallet developers have released alpha 5 for testing. It’s clear the pace is quickening as progress is made toward the anticipated beta release.  The use of real bitcoin is still inadvisable. One tester likened this wallet to a Tesla in that it delivers far more than is generally expected. There is a real sense of the acceleration and importance ...

I first discovered Bitcoin when Wired.com announced it way back in 2009. Being a futurist, I saw the value of it and kept my eye on it. When Laszlo Hanyecz bought 2 pizzas for 10,000 btc back in 2010 I knew what an important event that was: bitcoin had just been assigned a dollar value. And when the Silk Road ...

My original intent was to write a simple piece about mining cryptocurrency with leased rigs.  Along the way, I uncovered some things that I felt were more important to communicate than how to find the best deal on a rig. The same, seemingly endless, arms-race that the Bitcoin community has been living with is inevitable for altcoins too.  It is ...

Yesterday I found myself with some Bitcoin in my wallet, and a need to purchase something from Amazon. LocalBitcoins would be the usual place I went, but this time I decided I’d try bypass that route by way of purchasing an Amazon gift card from Pock.io. Pock.io are a UK-based company, offering various gift cards for UK retailers in return ...

  In today’s installment, we’ll be studying the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) used by bitcoin.  It is the method that cryptocurrency uses to mathematically prove that one has the right to spend coin. Hopefully, you took the opportunity to understand the Diffie-Hellman-Merkle secret key exchange, which I wrote about previously. As in the DHM algorithm, the elliptic curve algorithm utilizes asymmetric cryptography, ...

It has been announced today that many of the vendors at the Hester Street Fair on New York City are now accepting Bitcoin using BitPay’s payment system. Based in the Lower East Side of New York City, the outdoor marketplace now allows you to buy a range of items with BTC; from ice cream and sandwiches, to notebooks and jewellery. ...

In a previous article, I commented on the striking utility and unexpectedness of the Dark Wallet lobby.  As I have gained some experience through using it, the Lobby has become even more interesting. In this brief update, let’s learn how to enjoy a private and secure chat-room of our own making. In the first installment, I covered Cloaks, Peers, Contacts, PM and Beacons.   In that vein, ...