70,000 Caribbean Island Residents to Receive Bitcoin in 2015

All 70,000 residents living on the Caribbean nation of Dominica will be eligible to receive bitcoin as part of The Bit Drop project, an upcoming collaboration between bitcoin businesses, interest groups and local government officials.

Scheduled to take place on 14th March, 2015, The Bit Drop will feature an island-wide party boasting ‘celebrities, musicians and supporters of bitcoin’, as well as education booths and free giveaways. The event will also coincide with Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi).

Bitcoin Startup Piiko Brings Prepaid Mobile Service to 100 Countries

Reaching the millions of unbanked consumers worldwide has long been a goal of the wider bitcoin industry, but to date, it has struggled to gain users outside of more developed countries.

Crossing this awareness gap is the driving force behind Piiko, a prepaid mobile phone top-up service that currently serves consumers with select phone plans in more than 100 countries worldwide, including major markets such as the US, China, Brazil and India.

Launched in April as the first product from Dubai-based bitcoin startup Umbrellab, Piiko is part of the company’s larger plans to court consumers by allowing them to harness the power of bitcoin for everyday utility purchases.

Crypto 2.0 Roundup: Counterparty Debuts Multisig, Ethereum’s Crowdsale and Comedians Go Crypto

Amidst bitcoin’s disruption of the online payments industry, heated debates over pending regulations and the slow and steady expansion of bitcoin ATM locations, it can be easy to lose sight of the widespread impact bitcoin, and more importantly, the technology behind it, is making beyond digital money.

In yesterday’s roundup, we gave a broad-scale overview of Crypto 2.0 with insight from the emerging sector’s major players. Today, we’ll look at the recent news in the space to illustrate how this sector of industry is seeking to move bitcoin forward.

Counterparty launches multisig functionality

Crypto 2.0 Roundup: Bitcoin’s Revolution Moves Beyond Currency

Just when people were getting used to the idea that bitcoin might not be a boom-and-bust fad destined for failure, entirely new applications of the technology have joined digital currency on stage.

Crypto 2.0 – also know as cryptography 2.0, decentralized applications, or, popularly, as bitcoin 2.0 – is the application of block chain or distributed ledger technology to things other than digital currency. The block chain offers the ability to facilitate decentralized ownership and store, transfer and process information in a decentralized, programmable way. Many consider that innovation to be the true value of this technology.

6 Things Bitcoin Has Made Possible for the First Time

It may be cliché, but perhaps no single word sums up bitcoin quite as well as “disruptive”.

Computer scientists have been trying to create secure and sustainable digital cash since the earliest days of the Internet, and until Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper introducing bitcoin was published in 2008, their efforts were in vain.

Mining Roundup: Rigs for Home Heating and a Bitcoin Backbone

What’s happening in the world of mining? As recent coverage suggests, the network is beginning to see a steadily rising hashrate as mines around the world get started and begin generating bitcoins.

It’s not just the big companies – small operations using state-of-the-art chips in super-efficient data centers are also moving to mine their share of bitcoins. And between all that activity, the bitcoin mining community continues to develop, grow and discuss the issues of the day.

Gavin Andresen talks bitcoin “backbone” project

From Gold Rush to Arms Race: Why Bitcoin Mining is Heading North

The face of industrial-scale bitcoin mining is changing with every passing month, having already pushed far beyond the bounds once envisioned, perhaps, by the hobby miners of four years ago.

The landscape is much different now. Many large-scale mines are shifting from warehouse set-ups to data centers better equipped to deliver the massive power and cooling resources necessary to compete in a steadily accelerating industry.

Bitcoin News spoke with executives from some of the biggest hardware companies in the mining space. During those discussions a picture emerged of an industry undergoing a rapid level of investment, development, and most importantly, competition.

Bitcoin’s Popularity Boosts Phishing Scam Success

Bitcoin has fired the public imagination so intensely that even non-bitcoin users are falling for phishing scams that dangle the prospect of cryptocurrency riches in front of them, according to new research from digital security firm Proofpoint.

Proofpoint found that thousands of phishing messages disguised to look like emails from a Blockchain.info wallet were sent to addresses with no direct link to bitcoin. This is a departure from typical bitcoin phishing attacks that target known and active cryptocurrency users, according to the security firm.

The new attacks yielded a “staggeringly high” response rate of 2.7% from victims, suggesting that members of the general public were sufficiently attracted by a bitcoin lure to click on the malicious links.

New York Extends Comment Period for BitLicense Proposal

New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) superintendent Benjamin M Lawsky has extended the comment period for the BitLicense proposal by an additional 45 days.

The agency cited the large volume of input from various sources, including prominent members of the bitcoin community, as the primary reason to double the comment period. The NYDFS announced the move on its official website, moving the final deadline to 21st October.

The notice cited requests from the bitcoin community, which included grassroots supporters and the Bitcoin Foundation, as a driver of the deadline change. The agency also noted the potentially significant impact of the BitLicense proposal on the broader bitcoin market as another reason for the extension, saying:

ASIC Maker Seeks to Bring German Efficiency to Bitcoin Mining

A Dresden-based startup is looking to move aggressively into the bitcoin mining hardware market with a new, super-efficient ASIC chip.

CoinBau’s chip, dubbed Wolfblood Extreme Efficiency, pulls roughly half the electricity necessary per gigahash – approximately 0.19 joules – compared to most options on the market, which range between 0.35 to 0.45 joules per gigahash.

BitX to Expand Further in Emerging Markets with New Funding Deal

Emerging market-focused bitcoin services firm BitX has completed a SGD$1m ($824,000) seed funding round.

Investors include London-based Ariadne Capital, Barry Silbert’s New York-based Bitcoin Opportunity Corp. (BOC) and Palo Alto-based financial innovation investor, Carol Realini.

Academics Call for Revisions to New York’s BitLicense Proposal

The 45-day window for public comments on the New York Department of Financial Services’ (NYDFS) recent BitLicense framework continues to shrink, but the barrage of reactions from industry professionals has yet to lose its momentum.

Most recently, two research fellows from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center co-authored a 14-page response to the BitLicense proposal, highlighting some of its most critical shortcomings.

Jerry Brito and Eli Dourado made a point to laud NYDFS Superintendent Ben Lawsky for his department’s “forward thinking” in outlining rules and regulations specific to virtual currencies, but criticized many of the stipulations found in the BitLicense proposal.