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Feds Rush to Cash in on Seized Bitcoin Cache Before the Bubble Bursts

Feds are eager to exchange a bitcoin haul seized from the leader of an opioid drug operation because they are worried the digital booty could devalue at any moment. The US government seized more than 513 bitcoins and 512 Bitcoin Cash from Aaron Shamo last year after arresting him for selling synthetic pharmaceuticals containing fentanyl … Continued

Tech NewsGoogle

The Most Googled ‘How-Tos’ of 2017 Prove Our Insatiable Lust for Slime and Bitcoin

Every December, Google releases “The Year in Search,” which sheds light on what the world was most interested in during the last spin around the sun. This year, the company added the most popular “how-to” searches to its global list—and in 2017 they are strange and kind of bleak. In a blog post about “the … Continued

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SEC Chairman Urges Cryptocurrency Investors to Exercise Caution, Says Most ICOs Are Securities

After months of tension over what, if anything, the Securities and Exchange Commission was planning to do about cryptocurrencies and the billions of dollars people have sunk into initial coin offerings—a form of barely regulated investment vehicle in which investors trade real cash for tokens in crypto-backed startups—the agency’s chairman Jay Clayton has finally weighed … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Imposter Cryptocurrency Wallet App Races Up Apple’s Store Charts [Updated]

A new wave of Bitcoin-mania surged through the internet this weekend—and with it, a new crop of sketchy opportunists. Bitcoin apps were very popular in the Apple app store, and one using the name of a completely unrelated cryptocurrency wallet service now holds the number three position in the finance category. TechCrunch noticed the imposter … Continued

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You Can Now Click ‘Cryptocurrency OK’ on Craigslist, Because That’s Not Sketchy at All

Bitcoin has continued to explode in value, briefly reaching a high of over $17,000 a coin before settling back down to under $16,000 just weeks after it passed into the five-figure range. But the surge is being driven by speculation, not the ease of actually using bitcoins for transactions, as shown earlier this week by … Continued

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By the Time You Read This, Bitcoin Will Have a Wildly Different Price

We’re hitting a sort of news singularity with Bitcoin at this point. The rush to report price changes can’t keep pace with the reality. In 24 short hours, its trading price has gone from around $12,000 to $16,000. Now the biggest question is: How long is it going to be before these investors are putting … Continued

io9Games

Valve: Your Bitcoin Isn’t Any Good on Steam Anymore

Valve’s Steam, the digital distribution platform which enjoys near-monopolistic control of the entire PC gaming industry, has stopped accepting bitcoins as a form of payment due to the currency’s volatility and increasingly unacceptable processing fees. In a blog post on Wednesday, Steam wrote that “In the past few months we’ve seen an increase in the … Continued

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The SEC’s Cyber Unit Launches Its First Fraud Case, Targeting PlexCoin’s ICO

The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a new cyber fraud unit earlier this year amid the internet’s ongoing Bitcoin boom, seemingly telegraphing its intent to crack down on a cryptocurrency market rife with hacking, fraud, and scams. The first thing on its agenda was likely always going to be initial coin offerings—a form of almost … Continued

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Man Who Threw Away a Fortune in Bitcoin Now Looking to Dig Up a Landfill 

James Howells is a British IT worker and an early investor in Bitcoin. He also has every right to be the most furious man on Earth. You see, Howells got in on the ground floor of the cryptocoin economy back in February of 2009. Through his computational labors, he amassed around 7,500 bitcoin before his … Continued

Tech News

The UK and EU Plan to Make Bitcoin Investors Use Their Real Names

Bitcoin managed to set a new price record on Sunday, briefly hitting $11,826 per coin. And governments around the world are taking note of the boom in divergent ways. In the European Union, a new plan is expected to regulate cryptocurrencies under the same anti-money laundering laws as fiat money. It’s expected to take effect … Continued

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White House Says Homeland Security Advisor Is ‘Keeping an Eye’ on Bitcoin

After months of explosive price jumps, Bitcoin finally had a moment at the White House press briefing on Thursday. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders may, or may not, have said something important about it. As is often the case with Sanders, it was a little hard to tell. Sanders kept the press briefing short and … Continued

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The IRS Has Come Knocking at Bitcoin’s Door

At a time when regulations, glitches, price swings, forks, hacks, and fraud can’t seem to keep the cryptocurrency-mania down, there’s a new hurdle for it to overcome: the taxman. Coinbase is one the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world and its backing by high profile investors like Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz has given … Continued

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Bitcoin Hits $10,000 Because Ceilings Are Just a Construct, Man

At this point, anyone pretending to know what the ceiling is on Bitcoin should be considered no more reliable than a palm reader. On Tuesday, the trading price of the most prominent cryptocurrency hit $10,000 for the first time. And that nice round number will almost certainly have the kind of psychological effect that brings … Continued

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Bitcoin Blows Past $9,000

The Bitcoin bubble continues to stretch to even more grotesque proportions, clearing a value of at least $9,143 per bitcoin and attaining a market cap of $152 billion on Sunday, TechCrunch reported. The strong gains more or less put Bitcoin on a path to clear a value of $10,000 by the end of calendar year … Continued

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Initial Coin Offering-Backed Startup Confido Goes Dark After Getting $374,000 From Investors

A few weeks ago, Jordan Belfort—the notorious “Wolf of Wall Street” and convicted financial scam artist—warned the entire internet not to get into sketchy cryptocurrency-backed startups. Specifically, he warned that initial coin offerings, a form of almost completely unregulated investment vehicle where crypto-backed startups offer blockchain-based “tokens” in exchange for things of real value like … Continued

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The Guy Who Oversaw Mt. Gox’s Catastrophic Meltdown Could Still Get Very Rich

Mark Karpelès, the former chief of spectacularly failed Japanese Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, is on trial in Japan on charges he embezzled millions from the company before its collapse. He, Mt. Gox, and his current company Tibanne (which owns 88 percent of Mt. Gox) are all bankrupt. Yet Karpelès could still walk away with hundreds … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Secret Service Agent Who Stole Silk Road Bitcoins Sentenced to Two More Years for Stealing Even More

Shaun Bridges, the 35-year-old Secret Service agent from Baltimore who was sentenced to 71 months in prison in 2016 for stealing over $800,000 in Bitcoin during a government investigation into notorious deep-web market Silk Road, has been sentenced to an additional two years in jail for money-laundering charges, Reuters reported. Per Ars Technica, the second … Continued

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Survey: Most Americans Remain Blissfully Unaware of the Blockchain Revolution

With the cryptocurrency market cap now estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars and a sort of familiar frenzy kicking into overdrive, here’s another reminder that widespread adoption by the U.S. public has not yet materialized. A September poll conducted by student loan refinancing market LendEDU found that 78.6 percent of Americans … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Ransomware Markets Are Exploding, Study Finds

The black market economy fueling ransomware distribution is booming, according to new research. In an October report, researchers at anti-malware service Carbon Black identified a 2,502 percent increase in ransomware software sales from 2016 to 2017. The study involved monitoring 21 of the top dark web marketplaces. The data gathered was then extrapolated to produce … Continued

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Guy Who Ran Really, Really Huge Scam Warns ICOs Are the “Biggest Scam Ever”

A hustler knows a hustle. So if you have ever considered sinking money into an initial coin offering—a complicated, barely regulated, and booming new form of financial vehicle where startups offer investors stakes in “new” cryptocurrencies rather than traditional stock—it might be a good idea to listen to what one of finance’s most notorious criminals-turned-authors … Continued