Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

Bitcoin Going Up or Down, Nobody Knows for Sure

14, Jan 2015

bitcoin-going-up-or-down

Today the Bitcoin exchange rate briefly dropped down to about $150 USD on Bitstamp, though shortly after that it rose back to over $200 USD. This was enough to scare some people to panic sell as usual and has sprouted new theories about the cryto currency failing or dropping down to sub $100 USD and so on. The fact is that lately the Bitcoin exchange rate was actively swinging with big jumps up or down and nobody knows for sure what is going to happen. This could be a result of the recently hacked Bitstamp exchange and almost 19000 BTC stolen that are being dumped on exchanges, or ponzi schemes that have stolen Bitcoins from users dumping them, or a result of big mining ASIC manufacturers (Cointerra) and cloud mining services such as CEX.IO stopping their mining operations. It could as well be none of the above or all of the above, but the majority of people that believe in Bitcoin and crypto currencies are not ready to give up on the idea. A lot of businesses however that are focused on mining for crypto currencies may suffer from the not so good exchange rate lately and we already are seeing very big companies in that area starting to get affected…

The Bitstamp Crypto Exchange is Now Back Online

9, Jan 2015

bitstamp-back-online

After a few days being offline the hacked Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp is back online and the service operators claim to have significantly improved the security. The hack of the exchange that has apparently happened on January 4th some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19000 BTC. The exchange has promised that there will be no actual coins missing from the user accounts, so they are apparently going to cover the stolen coins. Below you can find the list of the improvements to the system now that it is back online and operational.

MULTI-SIG
With the integration of BitGo multi-sig technology, Bitstamp is now the first and only major bitcoin exchange to incorporate the industry’s best security practices available today.

COMPLETELY NEW HARDWARE INFRASTRUCTURE
The Bitstamp systems are running on 100% new hardware deployed from a completely secure backup of our code and data.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES
Bitstamp is now running on Amazon’s world-class AWS cloud infrastructure, architected to be one of the most secure and reliable cloud computing environments available.

COMMISSION-FREE TRADING
As a note of thanks to our loyal customers, all transactions conducted on Bitstamp through the end of the North American Bitcoin Conference – January 17th (at 11:59pm UTC) – will be commission-free.

The big question that remains now is if Bitstamp will be able to quickly return the positions it had prior to being hacked and being offline for a few days. So far the exchange apparently hasn’t lost the trust of many of the users, but still some of the people that used Bitstamp as a primary exchange could decide to move their coins and continue trading in another alternative exchange due to the downtime and may not resume using the service now that it is back online.

Butterfly Labs Resuming Operations, Should You Care

8, Jan 2015

butterfly-labs-resuming-operations

It seems that the ASIC mining harwdare manufacturer BFL has resumed operations butt should you care at all about that? Butterfly Labs has outdated Bitcoin mining hardware, so no reason to order the 700 GHS Monarch Bitcoin mining cards or the cloud mining plans at $2.75 per GHS. If you however have ordered any of their mining hardware and/or service before BFL was closed a few months ago you might want to submit a request for a refund. After all there is still some chance that you may at least get your money back, below is a quote of the official information regarding refunds from BFL:

Refund and rebate payments will be processed in the order received (including those on hold during the FTC action). We will resume paying refunds and rebates as soon as we’re operationally ready. We anticipate being able to start paying refunds in bitcoin in January. Because the cost of the Temporary Receivership and our legal defense against the FTC have consumed a substantial portion of our cash reserves, we anticipate being able to resume cash refund and rebate payments in late January or February.


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