Thirteen coders and academics gathered this week at Chaincode Labs in New York City for the bitcoin protocol residency program, in what organizers say is the most intensive and diverse cohort to date. It would be hard to overstate how impactful this quiet program is, as one of the few resources for independent developers in

According to venture capitalist Dovey Wan of Primitive Ventures, finding sustainable funding for bitcoin developers is the biggest challenge facing the ecosystem in 2019. To bridge that gap, she’s helped gather 50 BTC — an amount worth just north of $450,000 at press time prices — that are now up for grabs. Wan partnered with

Binance will issue a number of tokens pegged to leading cryptocurrencies on Binance Chain to boost the number of trading options on its platform. The tokens are also likely to be extended to Binance DEX, the firm’s recently launched decentralized exchange, as they create the potential to in effect move cryptos from different blockchains onto its

After revealing that his payments firm Square is building a small team to help with bitcoin and cryptocurrency development back in March, CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed more details about the project – even though it’s still early days. In an interview with The Next Web, Dorsey, who is also CEO of Twitter, confirmed that

Many bitcoiners thought it would be a cold day in hell when BHB Network co-founder Giacomo Zucco admitted that all tokens aren’t inherently scams. But, as it turns out, all he needed were the right partners. What started as a client’s request for a more secure alternative to ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens will soon emerge as

New research from mobile mesh networking company goTenna explores how mobile communications can be decentralized with the help of bitcoin’s lightning network. Technologists have long explored how to use cryptocurrencies and blockchains to build programs where users are more in control of their data. GoTenna, the company behind mesh network devices for internet-less connections, is

A swift breeze swept across the canal and into a small Amsterdam pub, where about 30 bitcoiners sat drinking beers and registering for Breaking Bitcoin 2019. It smelled like rain. From a British mom who works from home as a “bitcoin hobbyist,” to a ripped Kiwi technologist with a thick beard, people who work with

So-called lightning network “watchtowers” — a much-anticipated next step for securing the network — are coming soon. Watchtowers have long been considered a missing piece of bitcoin’s lightning layer, as they’re crucial for squashing fraud on the experimental, off-chain network that could make bitcoin payments faster and more scalable. With version 0.7 of the LND software

The community behind the privacy-centric bitcoin app Wasabi Wallet recently brought together 100 people to collectively execute a “CoinJoin” transaction on bitcoin in what might be the biggest event of its kind. Some context: bitcoin itself is far from private, as users can, via the blockchain, see where coins are being transferred to and from.

Tadge Dryja, who co-authored the original paper underpinning bitcoin’s experimental lightning payments network, has released a new research paper outlining a proposed scaling solution that he’s been working on for the past year. Released Monday, Utreexo would make the part of bitcoin full nodes called the “state” (also known as the “UTXO set”) smaller and

A newly-proposed relay protocol could reduce the “transaction bandwidth” used up by bitcoin nodes by up to 75%. Called Erlay, the proposed protocol alters the way transactions are relayed so that they use significantly less bandwidth, an important resource for the nodes that make up the network. The authors include The University of British Columbia

Craig Wright, the Australian entrepreneur who recently and controversially filed copyright registrations for the bitcoin white paper and original code, now has a legal rival. A second copyright registration (number TX0008726120) for the white paper has appeared on the public catalog of the United States Copyright Office, indicating that a certain Wei Liu is also

An ardent critic of the hype surrounding crypto token sales is set to do the unlikely: launching a token. Samson Mow, the CSO of bitcoin startup Blockstream, has also been serving as founder and CEO of the gaming company Pixelmatic since 2011. The new plan will see Pixelmatic use Blockstream’s new token platform for launching

Titan, a new product from Bloq Labs, aims to make it easier to set up and run new blockchain miners in global farms. The software is essentially a web-based mining manager for owners of large setups. You install it onto your machines and then launch a server that will collect and analyse all of the

Bitcoin startup Blockstream is launching a platform that lets users launch their own tokens by utilizing its bitcoin sidechain, Liquid. Launched at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference 2019, the Liquid Securities platform is the first product Blockstream has launched on top of its Liquid Network sidechain, a network tied to the bitcoin blockchain with faster coin transfers

Adam Back, CEO of bitcoin technology startup Blockstream, dove into the lesser-known uses for beaming bitcoin from space during a presentation at Consensus 2019 on Tuesday. The startup launched its cryptocurrency-focused satellite product nearly two years ago with the primary goal of giving people who don’t have an internet connection another way to download a bitcoin

RIF Labs, which developed the RSK Network for ethereum-like tokens and smart contracts on top of bitcoin’s blockchain, has launched a “third-layer solution” to help scale this technology. After more than a year in the works, the Lumino project is now officially live, RIF said Tuesday. The Gibraltar-based firm, parent of the startup RSK Labs, claims

HTC’s blockchain phone, the EXODUS 1, now allows users to directly swap between some cryptocurrencies within its native wallet, the Taiwanese electronics giant announced Tuesday. The new feature comes thanks to a new partnership that sees HTC add the liquidity protocol from decentralized exchange startup Kyber Network to its Zion Vault wallet app. The addition means users can swap

A new routing proposal is expected to be merged today into the official “specifications” of lightning, the technology many advocates trumpet as the fix to bitcoin’s long-standing payment problems. Christian Decker, one of the most prolific lightning developers who engineers for the tech startup Blockstream, pointed out that the proposal, which he wrote, is moving on

The privacy-minded network Tor helps users to leapfrog one of the trickier aspects of setting up a bitcoin and lightning node, according to bitcoin startup Casa. Casa CTO Jameson Lopp addressed this point during a talk at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019 conference, where he discussed what Casa has learned about its product – a plug-and-play bitcoin

Microsoft is launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation by a major tech company that is built directly on the bitcoin blockchain. The open source project, called Ion, deals with the underlying mechanics of how networks talk to each other. For example, if you log onto Airbnb using Facebook, a protocol deals with the software that

Sending bitcoin transactions without an internet connection just got a little bit easier. Announced at the Magical Crypto Conference on Saturday in New York City, Blockstream Satellite and goTenna are integrating their technologies to make it easier to send bitcoin transactions with technology used to onboard people without direct internet connections. Blockstream Satellite is a

Open Money Initiative (OMI) co-founder and Venezuelan expat Alejandro Machado wants to help his homeland while remaining realistic about bitcoin. The truth is, Venezuelans haven’t abandoned the inflation-riddled bolivar as quickly as he expected, namely because it is so difficult to use digital currencies inside Venezuela’s borders. “No one wants [the bolivar] but people need

What started with a single tweet quickly turned into an escalating debate Wednesday when the CEO of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges appeared to entertain the idea of encouraging revisions to the bitcoin blockchain. Following Wednesday’s revelation that crypto exchange Binance was robbed of 7,000 BTC (worth about $40 million), a proposal was

Japanese startup Nayuta is releasing an in-progress lightning implementation with a compelling new focus: the internet of things (IoT). As revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Nayuta is publishing the first lightning implementation geared specifically toward IoT, or networks of connected devices that feed data to one another. The idea behind Nayuta’s release is that it connects

Imagine this: Alice is one of the “reckless” users testing a new, risky technology. She’s excited about the potential for bitcoin’s lightning, a technology that advocates hope will bring bitcoin payments to the masses. So, even though developers tell her it’s risky to do so, she’s running the technology on a little computer called a

The average fees required to send a bitcoin transaction are on the rise again. After hovering steadily around the $0.50 mark over the last six months, data shows average fees hit their highest level in nearly a year in early April, according to data from Bitinfocharts. Since then, averages fees have swelled to around $1 to

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini announced Monday that it has added “full” support for segregated witness (SegWit), an important bitcoin code change that paves the way for scaling improvements. While many bitcoin companies have adopted SegWit to some degree, Gemini is unique in it’s the largest bitcoin exchange thus far to roll out support for “native SegWit

UPDATE (April 8, 13:40 UTC): The funding round was led by Initialized Capital, not Pantera Capital. The headline has been updated. A San Francisco-based decentralized exchange (DEX) called Sparkswap launched Monday, becoming the first North American exchange to fully integrate the lightning network, a bitcoin scaling solution. Sparkswap is funded by a $3.5 million seed

Bitrefill has launched a new service that seeks to simplify the process of setting up payment channels on the lightning network, the experimental, layer-two initiative being built on top of bitcoin. Demoed for the first time Friday at the Understanding Bitcoin conference in Malta, the new service – dubbed “Thor Turbo” – helps users to