Day: December 24, 2019

Insurance Industry Eyes Blockchain as Top Firms Begin Tests

boss

On Dec. 12, the second-largest health insurance company in the United States announced plans to leverage blockchain technology to secure the medical data of all its 40 million members over the next three years. The most unique quality of a blockchain is that once a piece of information is added to the distributed ledger, it cannot be altered. The information stored on a blockchain is absolutely secure and trustworthy in its entirety. In order for a change to be made in one block, changes must be made to all the…

Torus Encourages Users To Test Their Wallet By Sending Ethereum Via Reddit

boss

Just in time for the holidays, private key management firm Torus announced on Reddit today they will send Ethereum (ETH) to any Reddit username or google email account. According to a post on the r/ethereum community reddit thread, a TorusLabs member said: “We hope to be an alternative for Web2.0 mainstream audiences.” Bringing Users onto Decentralized Systems Via Email Torus, which raised $2 million this July in a funding round spearheaded by Multicoin Capital, Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures and other notable firms, aims to create an easier way for bringing users onto…

American Cancer Society Now Accepting Bitcoin Donations Through BitPay

boss

The American Cancer Society (ACS), a non-profit organization committed to funding cancer research, is now accepting bitcoin donations through BitPay. “Cancer affects people from all walks of life, so it’s not surprising that we draw support from a broad cross-section of donors,” ACS exec Brant Woodward told CoinDesk. “Our mission is urgent and in order to accomplish it, we need to engage donors where they are.” Founded in 2011 as a bitcoin payment solution, BitPay says it has handled more than $50 million in donations since 2017 with partners such…

2019 Google and Yahoo Searches for Bitcoin Decline Significantly

boss

2019 was an interesting year for cryptocurrencies. Some would say it wasn’t as bad as the crypto winter in 2018 and others would note it wasn’t as great as bull run 2017. One thing’s for sure, ever since the all-time price highs, interest in cryptocurrencies has been waning. According to data from Google Trends and Yahoo Finance, searches for the terms “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” are much less than they were in the summer. Also Read: Only 375 Days Left for McAfee’s $1M Bitcoin Price Wager Queries for ‘Bitcoin’ and ‘Cryptocurrency’…

Meltem Demirors on Government Digital Currencies and Why ‘The Halvening’ Gets Weird

boss

One of CoinDesk’s ten most influential people of 2019, Meltem Demirors is a crypto renaissance woman, known best for investing, operating as CSO of CoinShares, and for explaining ‘shitcoins’ to Congress. In this end of year Breakdown, Meltem argues explains why the entrance of governments to the digital asset game is the most significant story of 2019, as well as suggesting that the presence of an entirely new financial infrastructure around bitcoin means the halvening is likely to be unlike what anyone thinks. Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain…

Paraguay Audits Local Crypto Industry to Prepare for FATF-Style Regulations

boss

Paraguay is preparing to take its nascent cryptocurrency industry mainstream. Last week, the Latin American country’s anti-money-laundering (AML) chief, the Secretary for Preventing Money and Property Laundering (SEPRELAD), announced a nationwide crypto survey. Every one of Paraguay’s virtual asset service providers (VASPs) was directed to open their books to the government for the first time. The self-reported information was due Dec. 20. Impelled by the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) June guidance on VASPs, the mass audit will help Paraguay’s government understand its domestic crypto industry, SEPRELAD officials told CoinDesk. And…

Redditor Creates BTC-Themed Game as Holiday Gift for Crypto Community

boss

A Redditor has introduced a new Bitcoin (BTC) video game as a holiday gift to the crypto community. Shared on Dec. 24 on Reddit, the new “Satoshi vs. the Shills” Bitcoin game is a survival shooter game featuring Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto as the main character. The arcade game is available on the Google Play store for Android. Big Hands, the developer of the game, has not yet specified to Cointelegraph whether its team is planning to roll out the game on iOS or other platforms as of press…

Bomb Threats Demanding Bitcoin Force Evacuations Across Russia

boss

Someone has been sending bomb threats across Russia, demanding $870,000 worth of bitcoin supposedly stolen from the defunct cryptocurrency exchange WEX. For almost a month, anonymous blackmailers have been threatening to blow up courts, schools, shopping malls, transportation hubs and a television station unless someone sends “120 bitcoin stolen from the WEX exchange” to their address.  No one was hurt, nor were any bombs detonated, but 750,000 people have had to evacuate buildings since the threats started on Nov. 28, Russian news agency Interfax reports. Court buildings in Moscow and…

Amir Taaki’s Ongoing Crypto Revolution

boss

This post is part of CoinDesk’s 2019 Year in Review, a collection of 100 op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the world. Amir Taaki created libbitcoin, the first alternative bitcoin implementation, and has worked on the wallets Electrum and Darkwallet as well as privacy markets and decentralized technologies. He founded the Autonomous Polytechnics. Amir Taaki thinks crypto has lost its way. But this isn’t exactly new.  One of the first programmers to work on the bitcoin source code, Taaki split from the group of core developers…