Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, took to the first of his platforms last week to announce that his second service now allowed most of its users to buy or sell bitcoin.
US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Jay Clayton will give a wide-ranging account of the regulator’s approach to cryptocurrencies in testimony before the US Senate tomorrow (Feb. 6), according to a copy of his prepared remarks uploaded to the Senate’s website. In his testimony, Clayton singles out cryptocurrency exchanges as targets for potential future regulation.
Some people think bitcoin’s spectacular price rise last year was manipulated by a cryptotoken called Tether that’s supposed to be pegged to the US dollar. Now, an anonymous report answers the question: What would bitcoin be worth without Tether? The answer: around $4,500, based on the current bitcoin price of about $7,600.
Bitcoin is soaring, but how do you keep those digital coins safe? Reuters estimates that more than 980,000 bitcoins, worth more than $10 billion at current prices, have already been stolen from exchanges. You could stash your secret codes in a Swiss mountain vault. Or more likely—put them on a USB stick.
Cryptocurrency miners are now influencing the fortunes of the world’s biggest chipmaker. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is responsible for over half of the world’s market for chips, and it’s the world’s largest contract manufacturer. Today it reported revenues (pdf) driven by demand from cryptocurrency miners for the second consecutive quarter.
People eager to cash in on the cryptocurrency boom through mining have been targeted by Facebook ads touting bitcoin mining rigs, made by industry giant Bitmain, that contain a link to a false website. At first glance, the link leads to Bitmain.com, the firm’s website, but closer inspection reveals the character for “n” in the URL has been replaced with a Unicode character that looks very similar: ņ.
There couldn’t have been a worse day to launch a blockchain-themed exchange traded fund (ETF), with bitcoin down 50% from its highs a month earlier. As luck would have it, two such ETFs began trading on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq today.
Korea has gone from an afterthought in the cryptocurrency markets to one of its major hubs in a matter of months. Crypto trading has grown so feverish that the government raided the country’s major exchanges to check their books—and to cool down the red-hot trading activity.
The chat app Telegram hopes to raise up to $1.2 billion in an initial coin offering (ICO), according to Business Insider. This would make it the largest one-off fundraising using the cryptocurrency-based mechanism to date.
Lamborghini, the Italian maker of racy luxury automobiles, reported record sales today. It delivered 3,815 vehicles to customers last year, its seventh consecutive year of sales growth.
Kodak, the brand once synonymous with photographic film, is now in the blockchain business, sort of. It announced yesterday (Jan. 9) that it is licensing its brand to something called KodakCoin, which would use a blockchain to track rights to digital photos and other images. Its stock duly tripled today.
The Anglo-German chipmaker Dialog Semiconductor reported record quarterly revenue of $463 million, beating its most optimistic forecast by $8 million. That’s plenty of cash, but unfortunately for Dialog, much of it depended on its biggest customer, Apple.
Buried at the bottom of Mark Zuckerberg’s new year’s resolution post yesterday was a promise to study cryptocurrencies and to figure out the best way to use them in Facebook’s services. He’s only five and a half years behind his longtime antagonists, the Winklevoss twins, who have become cryptocurrency billionaires since buying their first bitcoin in the summer of 2012.
Cancún, Mexico
Today will be a crucial test of the market’s response to news of a massive security vulnerability that affects chips made by Intel, as well as a separate problem that hits all microprocessors, regardless of manufacturer.
Bitcoin prices rose on a Wall Street Journal report (paywall) that Peter Thiel’s investment fund recently made a major wager on the cryptoasset, adding to the list of bigwigs whose support for the market has inflamed the mania. But the PayPal co-founder is no bitcoin arriviste—he’s had a vision for a stateless digital currency for nearly two decades.
The price of ether, the cryptocurrency used on the ethereum blockchain, passed $900 earlier today to a record high of $914, according to CoinDesk’s ethereum price index. Ether has risen by as much as 19% in the last 24 hours.
Traveling by plane is remarkably safe. Last year, just 2 out of 35 million flights flown were involved in accidents that caused fatalities, according to aviation consultancy To70.
New year’s speeches by world leaders don’t typically contain much news, but taken together, they offer a helpful view of the global mindset as we turn the calendar. So here’s a look at the most notable ones for 2018.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had no time for platitudes in his new year’s speech. His message to the United States was clear: Don’t mess with me.
Bitcoin’s value grew by more than 1,000% in 2017, but that wasn’t enough to even place it among the 10 best-performing cryptoassets of the year.
Bitcoin cash, a bitcoin offshoot, is soaring. But it’s not changing hands for $9,500, as the price displayed on Coinbase’s exchange suggests. Its real gain for the day is more like 64%, around the $3,400 mark, according to data provider Coinmarketcap.
Estonia is pursuing its plan to become the first country to launch a crypto-token, even after Europe’s top banker slapped down the idea when it was proposed in August. The managing director of Estonia’s e-residency program announced today that work on “estcoin” is underway, and provided other details about the scheme. The program allows e-residents to set up an Estonian company in a day and administer it remotely—a scheme that gained popularity after the Brexit vote.
Bitcoin was a whisker away from hitting $20,000 over the weekend, hitting a high of $19,771 yesterday, according to the CoinDesk price index. At that price, bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, would have been worth $19.4 billion, or the 44th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes rich list.
