The Oxford English Dictionary, published by the Oxford University Press, has added ‘satoshi’ to its compendium of the English language. First used less than seven years ago, satoshi is the newest word added to the dictionary. The addition was made as part of a quarterly update to the respected source’s database that also includes the words

Digital asset manager CoinShares is putting gold on the bitcoin blockchain. Working with wallet provider Blockchain and precious medal trader MKS (Switzerland) SA, the U.K.-based firm announced Tuesday a gold-backed network for trading tokens representing digitized physical gold, a project two years in the making. According to CoinShares, the network launches today with more than

If you’re a fan of bitcoin and the nascent Lightning network, this graph looks disheartening at first glance. Graph of lightning capacity from bitcoinvisuals.com. The orange line is the BTC capacity; the blue line is its dollar value. The lightning network is supposed to be bitcoin’s superhero, taking the cryptocurrency to new heights by tackling

The lightning-friendly Fold App, which allows users to spend bitcoin on goods like clothes and pizza and then earn bitcoin-back rewards, just added fiat capability after raising its first round as an independent startup. Fold product lead Will Reeves told CoinDesk the startup spun out of Thesis with a $2.5 million raise led by Craft

A pair of researchers have released the results of a formal verification of bitcoin’s lightning network. Lightning is new(ish), experimental, and bugs that could lead to loss of user funds are still being discovered. But even so, the paper – released last month by researchers Aggelos Kiayias and Orfeas Litos from The University of Edinburgh. Kiayias

When hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors and technologists descended on Tel Aviv Blockchain Week (TLVBW), few could have expected a better backdrop for exploring the lofty ideals and greedy impulses that drive today’s cryptocurrency industry. Duality is something Israelis know well. More than 430 people attended the D&DD Summit on Sept. 10, several dozen came to

Square Crypto, the division of the publicly traded payments company that focuses exclusively on bitcoin, just announced three new hires to work on open source projects. Among them is Facebook and BitGo alum Arik Sosman, most recently a member of the social media giant’s Calibra subsidiary. He told CoinDesk: “My personal areas of interest are

Wallet developer Jack Mallers, the founder of Zap Solutions, wants to improve the Lightning Network’s user experience. To achieve that goal, Zap is launching a dollar-denominated bitcoin buying feature inside its lightning-friendly mobile and desktop wallet. Zap is kicking off the feature with an invitation-only beta release in late September. “We’ve architected the [wallet] codebase

Out of 1,650 Iranian bitcoiners surveyed in Persian Telegram groups, 25 percent earned $500 to $3,000 a month from working with cryptocurrency, according to a survey conducted by the analytics firm Gate Trade. This data offers an exclusive peek inside the evolution of the Iranian bitcoin community, and so far it looks like the classic

Payments startup Breez has unveiled a new feature allowing lightning-based bitcoin purchases directly from its mobile app. The feature, made possible thanks to a partnership with fiat-to-crypto broker MoonPay, is available to users in 35 countries. According to the company, it simplifies the currently long-winded procedure for lightning payments. A “Layer 2” payment protocol that

One of bitcoin’s most experimental startups has grown dramatically over the past year, highlighting both the opportunities and pitfalls of open source development. Now Adam Ficsor, co-founder of zkSNACKs – the firm behind the privacy-centric Wasabi Wallet – is stepping down from his role as CTO to focus on research as the company matures. “I was

The buzzy scavenger hunt for $1 million worth of bitcoin, Satoshi’s Treasure, is coming this fall to nearly two-dozen college campuses worldwide. The game is operated by a small, mysterious company based on a tropical island (figuring out more about the game itself is part of the appeal) and is sponsored by Primitive Ventures and

Craig Wright, the Australian entrepreneur who controversially says he’s bitcoin’s anonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, has made another attempt to cement that claim in the public domain. On Friday, Wright posted the bitcoin white paper on the scientific journal hosting site, SSRN, citing himself as the author on Aug. 21, 2008. The SSRN (formerly the Social

Square Crypto, the division of the Cash App company focused exclusively on bitcoin, just hired one of the world’s most prolific bitcoin developers. Chaincode Labs alum and Blockstream co-founder Matt Corallo previously authored notable efficiency improvements such as the rust-lightning implementation, which makes it easier for users to build and interact with layers of the

Smart contracts could soon get a boost in bitcoin as prominent programmer Pieter Wuille has unveiled a new coding language designed specifically for their use. Posted to the bitcoin developer mailing list Monday, the ‘Miniscript’ language aims to make it easier for programmers to write up “smart contracts” or conditions for spending bitcoins. Programmers Wuille, Andrew

Noelle Acheson is a veteran of company analysis and CoinDesk’s Director of Research. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. The following article originally appeared in Institutional Crypto by CoinDesk, a free weekly newsletter focused on crypto assets. Sign up here. Everything flourishes with a bit of attention – even attention itself. You may have

Samsung has integrated bitcoin (BTC) functionality on its blockchain-enabled smartphones. The move comes months after the flagship Galaxy S10 range was launched in March with a “Blockchain Keystore” offering cryptocurrency storage and transactions for ether (ETH) and related ERC-20 tokens, but which notably excluded the number one cryptocurrency by market cap. The South Korean tech giant has

Iranian bitcoiners are showing the world what censorship resistance really looks like. Starting last weekend, Microsoft’s GitHub started identifying and banning Iranian accounts based on U.S. trade restrictions. As such, blockchain developers are hindered from participating in software projects that include private repositories or paid services for commercial ventures.  “The majority of serious crypto/blockchain projects that

Bitcoin privacy wallet Samourai announced last Thursday that its primary competitor, Wasabi Wallet, is the target of an ongoing network attack. The blog post is the latest in a string of allegations Samourai has leveled against Wasabi since mid-July. The attack, according to Samourai Wallet, resembles a Sybil attack, where a small number of users

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to publish a public dataset of bitcoin transactions associated with illicit activity. The group’s study detailed how researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab used machine learning software to categorize 203,769 bitcoin node transactions worth roughly $6 billion in total. The research explored whether

While bitcoin and ethereum enthusiasts might not always get along, one enterprising gaming startup is attempting to bring the two cryptocurrencies closer together. Blockade Games announced on July 31 that it has successfully bridged the two networks by sending a bitcoin lightning transaction in such a way that it can cause an ethereum smart contract to

Lightning-centric bitcoin wallets are gaining traction in 2019 and making small transactions affordable by reducing network fees. The bootstrapped Spanish startup Bluewallet garnered 35,000 downloads so far this year, according to co-founder Nuno Coelho, a significant jump from the 5,000 users it had in 2018. Coelho told CoinDesk the wallet’s built-in lightning marketplace, offering connections

Like it or not, there’s a bit of trust involved in the process of setting up, or “compiling,” the software at the heart of bitcoin – but a recent code change could help. Featuring container software Guix, code was recently merged into the most popular bitcoin implementation, Bitcoin Core, meaning it’s now ready for real

On June 19, Chaincode developer John Newbery gathered a group of developers to examine a proposed change to bitcoin’s code. Taking place via Internet Relay Chat (IRC), the topic was whether the change, which would help prevent a group of rogue miners from inflating bitcoin’s money supply, is a positive one with limited security risks or adverse impacts.

Introduced Wednesday, a new proposal called Signet offers a fresh alternative to bitcoin’s test network. The software plays a crucial role for developers, serving as a place where they can test their apps, to make sure they work reasonably well on the network by putting only test money on the line. Further, protocol developers can

The Takeaway: Former Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd filed a defamation suit in April demanding the deletion of a tweet that accused him of sexual misconduct. In response, three people submitted statements to the court this week accusing Todd of such misconduct. One alleged victim, “Jane Doe,” stated she stopped contributing to bitcoin projects in

Cubans are quietly exploring cryptocurrency use-cases on the politically isolated island, even watching Facebook’s Libra project with cautious optimism. Cuban expat Claudia Rodriguez of the Brazilian startup Fusyona, the sole bitcoin exchange proactively serving Cubans, told CoinDesk the exchange has nearly 700 accounts since launching in 2018. She said up to 60 users purchase a

A loose group of developers are testing out the idea that the combination of bitcoin and orbital communication might provide a means for stopping governments or other powerful entities from suppressing news they don’t like. Censorship is a worldwide problem, with one of the more recent examples include a new law strengthening the Russian government’s

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of the New York-based crypto exchange Gemini, may soon join the Libra Association, the consortium governing Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency. “We’re definitely looking at it in earnest and we’re excited about the project,” Cameron told CoinDesk Tuesday. Tyler added that in their view, Libra is a harbinger of cryptos to come:

The popular wallet service Electrum is soon to add support for bitcoin’s lightning network. Electrum’s founder Thomas Voegtlin told CoinDesk from the BIP001 blockchain event in Odessa, Ukraine, that work on the solution for sending lightning transactions with the Electrum wallet is now close to its official release. While he declined to reveal a specific release