The bitcoin virtual currency has had a volatile 24 hours that saw values plummet, hack attacks, trading shutdowns and bitcoin-stealing malware.
The main bitcoin exchange shut down for 12 hours to install hardware to help it cope with trading volumes.From the high of $260 (£169) for each bitcoin on 10 April, bitcoins are now worth less than $100 (£65) each.
Actually, what I had was 0.53 in Bitcoin, the virtual currency whose wild gyrations over the last 24 hours have raised questions about its long-term viability.
I got my Bitcoin a couple of weeks ago, because I was making a radio piece about the currency. My mission then was to work out how easy it was to get and then spend Bitcoins – and I eventually ended up with a rather expensive pizza, ordered via an American site and delivered by a London chain. Read More
Bitcoin: Dawn of a new currency or destined to fail?
Who would have thought one of the tech wizards behind a global currency would live in a squat?
Amir Taaki is a developer who works with a virtual currency called Bitcoin. His home and office is an abandoned Buddhist temple. The dwelling is covered in brightly painted but slowly decaying murals of Buddha, with the odd makeshift bunk bed and flotsam furniture like a couch with no pillows. Read More
You might have heard of Bitcoins, the digital P2P currency unbound from the constraints of governments and stock markets. It sounds like a cool scifi idea, but what are you supposed to do with Bitcoins? Until now the answer was “not a whole lot,” Read More
Since Bitcoin is now a $400 million market, with its pricehitting new all-time highs, now might be good time to ask, is bitcoin money?
According to Aristotle, for something to be considered money, is has to fulfill four characteristics:
1) It must be durable. It can’t fade, corrode.
2) It must be portable. It has to be ‘dense’ so that you can take it with you when you travel to the market. Read More
Bitcoin is the perfect currency in many ways. The distributed network that governs the creation and distribution of this digital money means there’s no need for central banks, no centralised control, nothing to come between you and your cash. Read More
About a year ago I wrote an article, published on this site, titled “Understanding Bitcoin”. It was an attempt at introducing Bitcoin technology and analysing its social implications. Now Bitcoin markets are trading at record prices of over $40. This increase, along with a series of recent developments, marks a new overall state of affairs for this project. Read More
It’s hard out there for a virtual currency. Bitcoin prices collapsed 23 percent Monday night after a technical glitch forced developers to call for a temporary halt to Bitcoin-related transactions, but prices have since gone back up. Read More
Bitcoin went into crisis mode early this morning. This time, the threat wasn’t from hackers tampering with poorly secured virtual wallets. It was Bitcoin’s own code that was causing the trouble. Read More
On Wednesday, BitPay, the world’s leading Bitcoin payment processor, introduced a new WordPress tool integrating its services with Fulfillment by Amazon which stores, packs, ships and provides customer service to those using the Amazon marketplace, is available to merchants who do not sell their products through Amazon but who still want to provide the same quality services. Read More