8 May
0
Twitter, Bitstamp, European Parliament: Monthly Recap about Bitcoin
Welcome to HolyTransaction’s fifth monthly recap for the 2016! Thanks for this month together.
April has been marked by continued interest in bitcoin technology from all around the world; during that time, the bitcoin price rose from a high of $469.31 on April 21st to a low of $435.08 on April 28th, according to Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp.
6 amazing pictures about Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the money of Internet and what is the best way to communicate through the web?
Pictures, of course.
Thanks to pictures, in fact, we can communicate things that are very difficult to explain in words.
So, let’s see the top 6 of the best pictures about Bitcoin.
15 oddest places where Bitcoin is accepted
Nowadays you can buy almost everything with bitcoin.
As well as lots of e-commerce and famous worldwide brand that accept Bitcoin all around the world.
Also, you will find out there are several other shops where you can buy your favorite items with Bitcoin.
Click on the title to read the full list of the oddest places where bitcoin is accepted (for several of them you can buy a gift card for bitcoins on gyft.com).
That’s why $400 Bitcoin price is low
Today Daniel Masters, ex trader at JP Morgan, published an interesting article about the bitcoin price on Linkedin.
In this article, Masters comments the upcoming halving of rewards for the miners and its impact on the current bitcoin price.
Blockchain is the perfect technology according to the European Parliament
During the last week, a European parliament member gave a speech about consumer protection for the latest campaign that aims at realizing new rules related to the blockchain.
How Twitter can teach you everything you need to know about Bitcoin
Twitter is one of the most popular social networks in the world and there are over 307 million people that actively use Twitter.
Also, the greatest part of Bitcoin experts has a Twitter account; and this is a fact.
So, this is why you will find lots of info about Bitcoin on Twitter; you just need to follow the right people and bloggers.
Click on the title to read the full list of influencers you may need to follow on Twitter to deeply understand bitcoin and the blockchain.
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10 Feb
0
HolyTransaction’s Bitcoin Monthly Roundup of January 2016
Welcome to HolyTransaction’s first monthly recap for the new year of 2016. This past month of January has been marked by all time highs for the year thus far; during that time, the bitcoin price rose from a high of $430.89 on January 1st to a low of $368.49 on January 31st, according to Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp.
Since the news broke about Cryptsy’s disappearence, the exchange has officially put forward their side of the story. Paul Vernon claims that the exchange was hacked years ago, and admits to running a fractional reserve since that date. He even offered a 100 BTC reward for whoever could find the hacker. Community speculation and the piling legal documents against Cryptsy’s founder spell more bad news for the American exchange.
Months ago, Hearn was promoting Bitcoin XT, a hardfork that would have increased the Bitcoin blockchain block size in a brute force manner. The plan wasn’t able to garner community support, and Hearn eventually signed a deal to work with R3. Hearn also cited concerns about “Chinese miners” and the Great Firewall of China and what their involvement in Bitcoin meant for the longevity of the project. He left the Bitcoin community with a strong blog post on Medium, saying: “But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly.” Unfortunately, many in the mainstream media took this as an opportunity to hail the death of Bitcoin; but alas, the death of Bitcoin was (again) greatly exaggerated.
Shaun Bridges, one of the government agents arrested and charged in the aftermath of the Silk Road case, which the agents were instrumental in, has been re-arrested. Bridges was found with packs of packed clothes, money, passports, and other evidence that he was planning to leave the country instead of reporting for his time in jail. There is evidence that Bridges still has Bitcoin stashed elsewhere, and the plot continues to thicken.
In a response to community outcry for better communication from those entrusted with the “original” version of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin Core team launched their social media presence this past month. They are also using popular communications platform Slack to better interface with the community. Interested users can signup at slack.bitcoincore.org to chat about the future of Bitcoin.
Former JP Morgan Chase banker Blythe Masters’ blockchain company, Digital Asset Holdings, has successfully raised $52 million for their project. The company previously bought out such bitcoin startups as Hyperledger and had been raising money through 2015 to bring the blockchain to the mainstream. The company also landed a deal with ASX Ltd., which is Australia’s main exchange operator. The blockchain is going down under, in a good way.
Thank you for reading our newsletter with the previous month’s best Bitcoin articles!
We tweet more cryptocurrency news and insights daily @HolyTransaction
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29 Oct
0
Microsoft to Sponsor the Ethereum DΞVCON1 Conference
The Ethereum DevCon1 conference is set to take place on November 9th in London. In a recently published blog post by George Hallam, the Ethereum team announced that Microsoft would be one of the sponsors of the first-of-its-kind event. MIcrosoft and Bitcoin have had a somewhat strong relationship since the American company started accepting it last year. Now, it seems that “Bitcoin 2.0” technology like Ethereum is taking some of the institutional attention away from Bitcoin. Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, commented on the sponsorship:
“DΞVCON1 is very excited to work with Microsoft and we look forward to having them in London.”Microsoft’s head of US Technology Financial Services, Marley Gray, explained more specifically why Microsoft had taken an interest in this international and decentralized technology event:“Microsoft is excited to sponsor and attend Ethereum’s DevCon1. We find the Ethereum blockchain incredibly powerful and look forward to collaborating within the Ethereum Community. We see a future where the combination of Microsoft Azure and Ethereum can enable new innovative platforms like Blockchain-as-a-Service. This will serve as an inflection point to bring blockchain technology to enterprise clientele”.
“Blockchain-as-a-Service” is a new term that we will undoubtedly hear more of in the coming years. Most everyone involved in the technology side of their business is familiar wit Software-as-a-service (SAAS) which has given rise to incredibly large corporations. In contrast, the service that the blockchain provides is removing the need for people and points of failure in the middle and back office. Smart contracts and blockchain-as-a-service obviously go hand in hand. What will be most interesting is if Microsoft’s potential use of Ethereum in their Azure platform is what finally prompts Amazon to get into the decentralized digital currency game. One can only hope.
Ethereum DevCon1 Is Bringing Interesting Companies and People Together… For a Better FutureAlready, it has been confirmed that not only will Microsoft be in attendance, but so will Nick Szabo. That is actually no surprise given that Szabo coined the term “smart contract” many many years ago and has become increasingly vocal on the internet as his pet idea has started to come to fruition. Smart contracts are a large part of Ethereum’s mainstream appeal, though the concept is still in the process of gaining momentum. The future prospects of robots and computers replacing humans for certain types of jobs has always been on the fringe of human imagination. The more you think about smart contracts, the more you realize that such a futuristic world couldn’t exist in a stable state without something like smart contracts. As panelists at the Money20/20 conference stated:
“Cryptocurrency is the most natural way for machines to pay machines.”
Bitcoin-inspired blockchain technology, of which Ethereum definitely is, has seen a lot of validation lately. Other Bitcoin-inspired blockchain technology like BitShares is also gaining traction, though not in the form of Microsoft sponsorships. Besides the fundraising and actual release of Ethereum’s Frontier alpha and a shaky first few days, the formation of a conference is a milestone that most “altchains” never achieve – not that there was any doubt that Ethereum would make it this far, anyways. After all, even Imogen Heap has even started using Ethereum, why wouldn’t Microsoft be next?
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22 Oct
15
BitShares 2.0 – Will Users and Banks Be Using Graphene in the Future?
Graphene, the super material that our computer chips might be made of soon, still isn’t very well known. However, with BitShares 2.0 being called Graphene, the word might become a stable part of your lexicon soon. The BitShares 2.0 has been long anticipated by both the BitShares and cryptocurrency communities. Since its announcement earlier this summer, BitShares has started to restructure themselves in preparation for BitShares 2.0. Though they are adding a lot of functionality, the core stake distribution is not changing at all. In testing, they have been able to sustain 3000+ tx per 3sec block, compared to the 7 transactions per second that the Bitcoin network is theoretically limited to. To reach even larger network sizes, Graphene is tapping into the same future expectations that Bitcoin users expect to keep their network viable: Moore’s Law. The pace of technology is such that eventually just one rented VPS will be able to handle all of the world’s financial transactions.“We can trade peer to peer anywhere in the world in a few seconds. We’ve got capacity for every existing exchange to become a member of our network, treating their own customers to the combined market depth of all exchanges on a shared transparent ledger.”
Graphene works as an open source toolkit, and the original BitShares team needed this change because they were having to sell BitShares just to keep going. The list of new features include:
Votable Network Parameters, Flexible and Dynamic Access Control, Transferable Account Names, On-Chain Proposed Transactions, a New Full Node/Client Concept, a Referral Program, Recurring and Scheduled Payments, and the addition of new Privatized BitAssets. More information about Graphene and the newest features can be found here.
BitShares Style Decentralization Is What Banks Need
Decentralization provides the BitShare network, and all altcoin networks, with a new type of security that banks do not have – maybe even for functions we traditionally use a bank for. A network that functions by consensus and push transactions instead of pull transactions, is almost a holy grail in the banking industry. It’s no wonder that we’ve seen banks rush to “blockchain” technology. BitShares is confident in their security, they commented:
“It’s impervious to the hacker attacks that even the biggest exchanges have suffered.”
BitShares was one of the first cryptocurrencies to to engage in fiat and asset pegging, which is an angel that banks will certainly be interested in exploring. As we see more and more banks enter the Bitcoin and blockchain space, though, how many of them will realize that BitShares already has what they might need?
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23 Sep
3
Gridcoin Wallet joins HolyTransaction Today!
All HolyTransaction customers can create new address for Gridcoin wallet and use the easy HolyTransaction Web Wallet to send and receive transactions or to instantly convert them to any 9 supported cryptocurrency.
Just like Bitcoin, you can now:
– Send Gridcoin to your GRC wallet address.
– Receive transactions
– Make instant transactions between HT users
– Set OTP for additional protection
We are really excited to be part of a new community!
About Gridcoin:
Gridcoin is a cryptocurrency that rewards individuals for contributing to computational research in math, science and several other areas of study with their home computer, laptop and android devices.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
8 Aug
6
HolyTransaction partners with RibbitRewards to further Blockchain-based rewards programs
HolyTransaction is thrilled to announce its integration with the Blockchain-based coalition rewards platform, RibbitRewards. This partnership represents a year of interaction between our two companies, beginning in 2014, and underscores our desire to continue working together for many years to come.
RibbitRewards is the first coalition rewards program built using Blockchain technology. Their platform allow companies to recognize the loyalty of their customers by awarding points that can be spent, saved, or shared with others. Additionally, RibbitRewards stands prominently out from the crowd as a result of their dedication to philanthropy; a percentage of all RibbitRewards created are donated to charity.
Ribbit.me uses extensive HolyTransaction API to make invoicing and payment processing. It will make life much easier for users with HolyTransaction account and will give ability to get new HolyTransaction account instantly for those who do not have it yet. All of this gives the users seamless experience on both platforms.
HolyTransaction multi-currency wallet users have access to storage for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Blackcoin, and Mastercoin (Omni Layer). Today, we add RibbitRewards to this list.
Users will be able to receive, store, and spend their rewards via their HolyTransaction wallet, as well as exchange them instantly with one of our accepted digital currencies, as listed above. Our integration improves the experience of all users across both platforms, and we are dedicated to providing new and exciting experiences for our community and to continuing the proliferation of Blockchain technology.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
22 May
0
Bitcoin listed on NYSE – Reminiscing
Look at how far we’ve come.
Four years ago, the world of Bitcoin found me. By most peoples account, this was still very early days. The USD price, seen on a pre-Karpeles Mt.GOX, had recently surpassed it’s All-Time High of One-Dollar. I watched it climb up and kiss $31 over the next two months, before crashing back down to $2. Then $7. Then leveling off at $5. “Well, that’s it.” Said the forums and chat rooms ”Bitcoin is dead. We’ll never see $30 again.” I was not convinced. Alternative currencies were already a fascination of mine, long before the idea became digital, and something about Bitcoin struck a chord.
I’d spend hours running numbers in my head and on paper, speculating about the possibilities. I made charts predicting price against difficulty, and theorizing just how high we might go after the first Block halving in the far distant future of 2012. You think people look at you like you’re crazy now…imagine what this looked like before anyone outside of a message board had heard the name Bitcoin. Friends politely listened to me exalt the virtues of cryptocurrency, sometimes for hours at a time, before hesitantly urging that I might be involved in a Ponzi scheme. “You don’t understand.” I’d say, “You’re looking at the future. This isn’t going away. It could go as high as $50, or even $100 per coin. It’s only a matter of time. Someday, Bitcoin could even have its own listing on the New York stock exchange.”
Fast forward to May 19th, 2015: The New York Stock Exchange has just launched an index for tracking Bitcoin. The feeling is surreal for me, and I’m sure for many of you too. We’ve gone from Alpaca Socks and Servers to an open world of goods and services. We’ve grown from a hand full of passionate nerds into a community of millions. We’ve seen phenomenal highs and crashing lows, but never a slowing of adoption. The resilience of our community is taking hold. It’s not about the price, or volatility. Bitcoin’s success has always been tied to the passion of its community, and it’s only getting bigger. So don’t be afraid to be a little frivolous with your coins sometimes. Go out and buy a street taco or a latte somewhere. Give some coins to your friends. Speculate. Tell everyone. And most importantly, enjoy the moment we’re in right now. The future is bright, and it’s a lot closer than you think.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
1 Mar
0
Bitcoin’s Monthly Recap of February 2015
Welcome to HolyTransaction’s February monthly recap for the year 2015. During this past month of February, the bitcoin price fell from a low of $226.93 to a high of $258.34, according to Bitstamp.
Payment Processor Stripe Lets Its Businesses Accept Bitcoin Simply
Starting a few weeks ago, the popular online payment processor Stripe ended its Bitcoin beta and rolled out the ability to accept bitcoin to any of its business customers. International businesses that use Stripe include Facebook, Lyft, and Kickstarter. Any of these companies could now start accepting Bitcoin with just a few lines of code. Stripe processes Bitcoin payments for a cost of .5% and uses Coinbase to facilitate the fiat settlement. Bitcoin’s reach expands by thousands of merchants and Stripe, which has also backed other cryptocurrencies in the budding industry, shows just how serious it is about Bitcoin and the power of the blockchain.
Dread Pirate Roberts Unmasked: Ross Ulbricht Convicted On All Charges
After hearing days of testimony from both sides, the jury in the historic Silk Road trial found Ross Ulbricht guilty on all charges. The jury found the government’s evidence that Ross Ulbricht was operating Silk Road under the pseudonym ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ since day one. Ulbricht’s defense, led by lawyer Joshua Dratel, rested his entire defense on suggesting that Ross Ulbricht may have founded Silk Road but he had long ago left it to a successor, who then came back around to frame Ulbricht. The chat logs from the laptop that was taken from Ulbricht’s hands at a public library where he was using it may have been forged, the defense alleged. The jury was not convinced, and Ulbricht is now behind bars pending sentencing later this year.
CNN’s Morgan Spurlock Of Super Size Me Finds The Inside Scoop On Bitcoin
Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size me fame, has done it again with an episode in his CNN show Inside Man. He spearheads an entire episode dedicated to the new e-currency known as Bitcoin. The episode follows Spurlock as he survived on only Bitcoin for a week. That means that he only lived on things that he could spend bitcoins on, and learned a lot about it in the process. He lived his week in New York where he was able to talk bitcoin with Bitcoiners from the New York Bitcoin Center. The episode went a long way in introducing Bitcoin to a largely uneducated populace and a different demographic.
Dell Starts Accepting Bitcoin In United Kingdom and Canada
Ousting Newegg and TigerDirect, Dell is now the largest electronic retailer that accepts bitcoin internationally. Earlier in February, Dell announced that it was happy with its US bitcoin pilot and was not extending bitcoin acceptance to Canada and the United Kingdom. The international company emphasized that businesses and customers are using bitcoin to purchase just about everything that Dell has to offer. Dell has even processed as much as $50,000 worth of bitcoin for a single item purchase, a large server system. Dell uses Coinbase as a third party payment processor to accept bitcoin. In Dell’s words: “This form of payment is clearly resonating with consumer, small and medium businesses.”
Ledger Hardware Bitcoin Wallet Startup Raises 1.3 Million Euro Seed Round
French hardware Bitcoin wallet maker Ledger recently announced the closing of a 1.3 million euro seed round led by French VC fund XAnge Private Equity. Other investors such as Hi-Pay and Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Bitcoin stealth startup Challenger Deep. Ledger’s first hardware wallet offering, the Nano Wallet, was released at the end of 2014 and was quite popular. Ledger was created by a fortuitous meeting of minds at the French la Maison du Bitcoin, the first “Bitcoin embassy” in Europe. To date, Ledger has already sold thousands of Nano wallets in several dozen countries. Future plans for the bitcoin wallet include NFC and Bluetooth LE capabilities. The startup has also announced plans to move to America with the new funding and participate in some accelerators.
Privacy Centric Cryptocurrency Dash Unveils InstantX Transactions
The new version of the Dash Core wallet, v.0.11.1, will include InstantX. InstantX adds on top of existing Dashsend and MasterNode anonymity features that will have the industry standard 6 confirmations in an average of 1.25 minutes. Dash is different from Bitcoin because it uses the X11 hashing algorithm instead of the SHA-256 algorithm, which makes it much more ASIC resistant. Upon the successful implementation of the InstantX feature, the Dash price experienced a notable rise in value at the exchanges. The Dash development team has promised future updates and new features, some that have been seen on Bitcoin’s wish list and some that have not.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
1 Feb
0
Bitcoin’s Monthly Recap of January 2015
Welcome to HolyTransaction’s first monthly recap for the year 2015. This past month of January has been a great opener for the Bitcoin community; during that time, the bitcoin price fell from a high of $321 to a low of $226.93, according to Bitstamp.
Bitcoin Exchange Bitstamp Loses 12% of Bitcoins in Security Breach
Early in January, the world was again shocked by another high-profile Bitcoin theft from a high-volume Bitcoin exchange. Bitstamp, the exchange in question, halted trading on 1/4/15 after telling customers “we have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015.” The Bitcoin exchange avoided their booth at the Bitcoin World at CES 2015 and worked to fix and migrate their exchange while trading, withdrawals, and deposits were halted for several days. Bitstamp has since returned and offered zero trading fees for a limited time as a form of apology. Many attribute the fallen Bitcoin price to the high-profile Bitcoin exchange theft.
Coinbase Raises $75 Million USD in Series C Funding Round
Coinbase recently announced the closing of its $75 million USD Series C funding round that Bitcoin users around the world have been expecting since late last year. The Bitcoin service has currently raised $106 million USD to date. Round participants included DFJ Growth, USAA, the NYSE, and more. In a good sign for the company’s investor confidence, previous investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Ribbit Capital also joined in the round. Besides Coinbase, other Bitcoin companies have started off the year strong with millions of dollars in funding for Bitcoin 1.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 applications and technologies thus far in the year.
Coinbase Launches Lunar: Supposedly the First Regulated American Bitcoin Exchange
Coinbase has just announced its Bitcoin exchange, called Lunar, which industry experts have been suspecting to be in the works for months now. Coinbase seems to have been drawn out to release its Bitcoin exchange by the announcement of the Gemini Bitcoin exchange by the Winklevoss twins. Lunar currently only supports roughly half of American states; additionally, Coinbase has taken some criticism for claiming to the “first” and “regulated” in this space. The California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) has told Bitcoin media sources: “The California Department of Business Oversight has not decided whether to regulate virtual currency transactions, or the businesses that arrange such transactions, under the state’s Money Transmission Act. California consumers should be aware Coinbase Exchange is not regulated or licensed by the state.”
Reddit Decides to Ditch RedditNotes and Cryptocurrency Engineer
Former BitPay employee Ryan Charles has been recently let go by Reddit amid internal company strife and change of direction. The former-CEO of Reddit, Yishan, was apparently the one that was pushing for a Reddit cryptocurrency, popularly dubbed Redditnotes. Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing anything from Reddit anytime soon, and Ryan Charles won’t be involved. Charles has already started planning his next move in the Bitcoin sphere, where he believes that Bitcoin 1.0 opportunities are still widely available and largely unexplored.
Ross Ulbricht Stands Trial for Alleged Role as Dread Pirate Roberts on Deep Web Market Silk Road
Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road trial started this past month in a monumental case for both privacy and Bitcoin. The government is presenting evidence that Ross Ulbricht is none other than the Dread Pirate Robert (DPR) that ran the Silk Road for the entirety of its existence. Ulbricht’s defense lawyer, Dratel, tried to make it clear to jurors that digital evidence could be planted, fabricated, distorted, moved, or “manipulated.” Even has Silk Road 1.0’s trial is just finishing, Silk Road 2.0’s legal consequences are also unfolding. Meanwhile, Silk Road 3.0 and over a dozen copycat Deep web marketplaces continue to thrive.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.
25 Jul
0
European Central Bank hacked, personal data stolen
(RT) Hackers have stolen personal information from the European Central Bank (ECB) in what seems to be a blackmail scheme. The stolen data includes email addresses and contact information taken from the organization’s database.
“There had been a breach of the security protecting a database serving its public website,” ECB said in a statement on Thursday. “This led to the theft of email addresses and other contact data left by people registering for events at the ECB.”
Around 20,000 email addresses were stolen, according to media reports.
The hacked database serves the public website and gathers registrations for conferences and other visits. It is “physically separate from any internal ECB systems.”
The bank was not aware of the theft, and only found out about the stolen data after the perpetrator sent an anonymous email, demanding a reward in exchange for the information.
The ECB refused to go along with the scheme and did not reveal how much money was requested.
The majority of the stolen information was encrypted, such as data on downloads from the ECB website. But personal information, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses were not protected by an encryption.
The bank will contact people whose data might have been stolen. Meanwhile, “all passwords have been changed on the system as a precaution” and “security experts have addressed the vulnerability.”
The cyber attack did not compromise internal systems or market sensitive data, according to the statement.
German police have opened an investigation into the matter.
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