Tag Archives: bitcoin

If Bitcoin is to succeed it needs to be willing to adapt to regulation

bitcoin financial regulation

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 ...

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Architectcoin (ARCH) integrates wallet, IRC and Bittrex monitoring.

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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 ...

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DarkWallet alpha 5 released as development pace accelerates

dark wallet

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 ...

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Greedy Mining: Are you renting too much hashpower?

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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 ...

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Pock.io Review: Gift cards in UK for Bitcoin

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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 ...

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Learning crypto: The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm

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  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, ...

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DarkWallet: Lobby enables secure group chat

dark wallet

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, ...

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