Articles about Bitcoin

Speculation about the possibility of Amazon starting to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment started to circulate after the company posted a job listing for a Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead.

This led to a surge in the cryptocurrency, with the trading heading toward $40,000 in an impressive 20 percent jump over the weekend. In addition to the job posting, an insider has been quoted as saying that not only is Amazon working toward accepting Bitcoin by the end of 2021, but it is also considering launching its own token.

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In today’s hectic news cycle, there always seems to be a new story angle that is focused on cryptocurrency. The increasingly popular digital currency’s market value recently reached $2 trillion for the first time and the Coinbase IPO was referred to as "crypto’s coming-out party." But, just as cryptocurrencies are gaining traction with consumers as legitimate transactions, they are also massively used by criminal actors and terrorists, with a global total of $10 billion in illicit activities in 2020.

Though technology has helped to advance industries and markets tremendously, it is clear that advanced technology has also played a part in illegal activities around the world. We are witnessing a drastic shift from the traditional financing of criminal and terror actors to a new world of digital financing, creating a seriously daunting task for security and law enforcement organizations to anticipate, track and identify illegal activities.

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Policy decisions may or may not be productive. In worst cases, they can be counter-productive.

Banking system is the backbone of any economy, and there is a reason behind it. Money supply in the market is managed by banks that engage in safekeeping of depositors’ money and lending a portion of it to others. The central bank oversees the functioning of banks, prints currency notes, drafts monetary policy, and all these actions infuse stability in the country’s financial system. Central banks manage interest rates and tweak them to either infuse liquidity in a slowing economy or suck liquidity to control higher levels of inflation. Policy decisions like these are productive exercises.

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A favorite tactic of scammers is to invoke the name of a celebrity to get people to fall for their schemes. It's no surprise then that, given his known enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies, Tesla supremo Elon Musk's name often comes up.

Researchers at Bitdefender Antispam Lab have spotted two spam campaigns this month both seeking to cash in on Musk and Tesla's high profile in the cryptocurrency world.

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The term FinTech has been coined quite recently. However, this does not change the fact that Finance and technology have always been intertwined. Way back in 1866 the first transatlantic cable was laid, which then became the backbone for the globalization of finance. Next in 1918, the first electronic transfer of money was conducted using Morse code technology. In the 1950s, credit cards, another digital payment medium, was launched by American Express and Diners Club. This event can officially be called FinTech 1.0.

The actual beginning of modern FinTech effectively dates back to 1967 when the first ATM machine was used by Barclays in 1967 and the period was called FinTech 2.0. Owing to the development of technologies in communication and transaction, the world saw its first digital stock market, which marked the beginning of online financial markets. The advances didn’t stop there.

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Increases in the value of cryptocurrencies last year coupled with a rise in mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin has led to 400,000 crypto scams being created in 2020, a 40 percent increase compared to 2019,

A new report from Bolster, a deep learning-powered, next generation fraud prevention company, forecasts a further increase of 75 percent this year based on current levels of suspicious activity.

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Back in 2010 I was a freelance journalist. I took work where I could find it. One of my jobs was to write news stories for PC World’s Bizfeed and Newsdesk blogs.

The goal with the blogging was simple and primitive: Break news stories before anybody else.

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As cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum become more and more mainstream, there is growing interest in not only investing in crypto, but also mining for it. It is increasingly popular for the "spare" processor power of GPUs to be put to this very use, but NVIDIA is clamping down.

The graphics card maker is deliberating limiting the mining capabilities of its latest GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs, saying "GeForce is made for gaming". But it is not all bad news for fans of crypto-mining; the company is also launching a new NVIDIA CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) line.

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Researchers from Avira Protection Labs have recorded a 53 percent increase in coinminer malware attacks in Q4 2020 compared to the previous quarter.

With the Bitcoin price reaching a new all-time high earlier this month, this points to a connection between the rapid price rise and increased coinminer malware activity as criminals seek to cash in.

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In recent years we've seen some significant shifts in the financial sector, with newer businesses using technology to challenge more established players.

Much of this has centered around the use of blockchain, although cryptocurrency still hasn't entered the mainstream. What do experts think we'll see in the fintech space next year?

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The technology that underpins cryptocurrencies is not understood by a lot of people, but you don't really need to fully grasp the idea of mining or know what a blockchain is in order to use them.

Whether you are a seasoned user of Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you may be aware of an impending hard fork for Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The date for your diary is November 15, but just what is a hard fork, and what are the implications?

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Businesses must constantly adjust to innovation. This year, American companies have incorporated new digital currency trends like never before. From cryptocurrency to AI, these offerings have revolutionized how employee payments operate.

Here are the top five trends in employee payments.

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Overnight, Twitter suffered a massive attack by hackers who tried to use the verified accounts of celebrities and high-profile users to execute a Bitcoin scam. The likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Kanye West had their accounts hijacked and message were posted promising that if people sent money to a Bitcoin wallet, they would get double the amount back.

Needless to say, it was a crypto scam, and Twitter took the extraordinary steps of preventing all users with a blue tick from tweeting. Twitter now has control of the situation and says that the attack came after staff fell victim to social engineering, enabling hackers to gain access to internal tools which were then used to take over key accounts.

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British fintech firm Revolut has partnered with New York-based Paxos to bring Bitcoin and Ethereum trading to customers in the US.

Having only launched in the United States in March this year, Revolut is gradually bringing the services it already offers in Europe to its American user base. Thanks to the new partnership, residents of 49 states can now indulge in some crypto trading.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been made a Visa principal member, making it "the first pure-play cryptocurrency company" to receive such accreditation. The membership was awarded back in December, but the news has only just been made public.

This is not the first time Coinbase has had dealings with Visa. The two companies worked together last year to launch the Coinbase Card ("a Visa debit card, funded by your Coinbase balance") in the UK, but now it will be possible to bring the debit card and additional services to more markets around the world.

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