An announcement was posted to the website of the BTC Guild website stating their intention to shut down. Key dates include November 30th, the day they will shut down their mining servers and January 15th the deadline to withdraw coins from their service. In an update to their announcement they float the possibility of being sold and continuing operations. Note that if sold they do not plan to transfer mining history or balances to the new owners. Continue reading
Author Archives: Aaron 'BingoBoingo' Rogier
Matonis to Resign from Vessenes Bitcoin Foundation
Jon Matonis is resigning as the Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation effective December 31st. According to CoinDesk he will be replaced as executive director by the Foundations Council and his vacant board seat will be up for election with those of incumbents Peter Vessenes and Gavin Andresen.
GNU wget Vulnerability
A vulnerability in GNU wget which allowed a potential attack by maliciously crafted urls has been found and patched. Not every implementation of wget had this flaw at the time GNU wget was patched, OpenBSD's version was patched five years ago.
CurrentC Breeched
Fiat mobile payments system and Apple Pay competitor CurrentC has been hacked according to a number of reports. CurrentC says a number of customer email addresses were taken, and the damage is allegedly confined to that.
USG Bezzel Rocket Explodes
WKMG in Orlando reports that an unmanned resupply ship commissioned by NASA for the International Space Station has exploded seconds after launch. The craft was an Antares Rocket and Cygnus Resupply craft combination supplied to NASA by contractor Orbital Sciences Corporation.
Update: Video of the explosion Continue reading
Justcoin Exchange Closing
Justcoin is shutting their doors. The announcement on their blog simply reads:
Justcoin is shutting down. Affected users, check your email
But the email reportedly sent to users goes into a bit more detail. Continue reading
FinCEN: Payment Processors, Others may be Regulated Money Transmitters
FinCEN issued two administrative rulings in regards to "Virtual Currency." The first concerns "exchanges" and supposes they may be regulated as Money Transmitters under the Banking Secrecy Act. The second though supposes that payment processors like BitPay may similarly fall under their purview. This shift comes contrary to the expectations BitPay had disclosed anticipating from FinCEN.
PDFs of the rulings are available here: ruling 1, ruling 2. Extracted plaintext is available below. Continue reading
DailyDot: What Happened to the Ulbricht Murder Charges?
The DailyDot has a story about the disappearance of the murder charges which notably were used to deny Ulbricht bail in the Silk Road case. Of the original six murder charges five indictments have quietly disappeared uncharged, while the sixth indictment remains on file in Maryland as opposed to New York, where the drug trafficking trial is occurring. The five uncharged allegations have been reduced to overt acts under the trafficking charge allowing prosecutors to use them against Ulbricht at trial without proving them to the jury. The sixth indictment in Maryland sets Ulbricht up for a potential second trial in that jurisdiction later.
Taiwan: Regulators Approve Listing of Mining Chip Maker
In Taiwan, regulators have approved the listing of semiconductor design house Alchip Technologies on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Alchip reportedly produces ASIC mining chips for KNC miner and Avalon as well as chips unrelated to Bitcoin mining.
New Paper: Bitcoin over Tor a Bad Idea, Especially bad for SPV
In a new paper by Alex Biryukov and Ivan Pustogarov outline deterministic man in the middle attacks that can subject Bitcoin users over Tor to a number of adverse circumstances. From the paper: Continue reading