Britain has taken a significant step towards becoming a global bitcoin hub as the government announced it would regulate digital currencies for the first time by applying anti-money laundering rules to exchanges. Already the centre of the US$5-trillion-a-day market for traditional currencies, the UK is fast emerging as a centre for digital currencies, cementing its […]

Major UK banks, including Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, have warned that Chancellor George Osborne’s plan to turn Britain into a hub for the virtual currency trade could help terrorists and criminals. The warning came in a letter to the Treasury from the British Banker’s Association (BBA), which represents the leading British banks. Anthony […]

Bitcoin’s main problem is that every transaction is public. Such a feature makes it difficult to launder stolen bitcoins. Take this $5m thief as the example. The person controlling 19,000 of Bitstamp’s coins has a problem. Anyone can follow the coins as they move between addresses. Lucky for them (or not as we’ll see), there […]

One of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges suspended services on Tuesday, prompting unease in a virtual currency industry already scarred by the collapse last year of Mt. Gox, once its most prominent exchange. On Tuesday morning, Bitstamp, based in London, posted a message on its website saying it had “temporarily suspended Bitstamp services” and urged its […]

Bitcoins are generated by miners who are rewarded in bitcoin for processing transactions by making complex calculations. Illustration by Tom Hall If you think oil had a rough 2014, consider bitcoin. The digital currency has plunged 54 percent since the beginning of the year. By contrast, Brent crude has fallen 44 percent; the ruble is […]

Despite all the news headlines around data breaches, hackers and identity theft, it is a little known fact that since 2013 over 1 billion consumer records have been stolen by hackers. The estimated cost of this data theft is a staggering $5 billion dollars a year, which inevitably gets passed down to consumers and merchants […]

 HSBC has severed ties with the firm behind the world’s first regulated Bitcoin investment fund. Jersey-based hedge fund Global Advisors (GA) claims the bank was worried about “money laundering risk”. GA’s Daniel Masters told the BBC that the development threatens well publicised plans to make Jersey a global centre for digital currencies. HSBC would not […]

The price of bitcoin has seen a resurgence over the weekend following 10 days of steadily tumbling prices. Most other major cryptocurrencies have seen a similar upturn in fortunes, with litecoin, dogecoin, peercoin and darkcoin all rising in price by between 3% and 6%. The biggest mover across all markets was fedoracoin. The cryptocurrency, based […]