If hackers felt like it, they could split bitcoin in two. It wouldn’t even be that hard, according to research from 2017. Thanks to insecure technology underpinning the internet, someone with the right credentials could exploit the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) by faking their identity and confusing the network into sending floods of data somewhere

Cryptocurrency custody startup Casa has just launched a browser extension for its lightning network-enabled bitcoin node. Now, users will be able to interact with their Casa Nodes – hardware devices that connect to and help validate the bitcoin blockchain – directly on any cryptocurrency website that boasts lightning network functionality. Lightning is a layer-two payments

A new token backed one-to-one with bitcoin is now live on the ethereum blockchain. “Wrapped BTC” (WBTC) officially launched its ERC-20 token Wednesday evening. The project was first unveiled in October as a joint initiative between decentralized exchange startups Kyber Network and Republic Protocol, as well as cryptocurrency custody company BitGo. As stated on the

James Bridle is a writer working across technologies and disciplines and author of “The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.” His work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com. The following work will appear as an introduction to “The White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto” to be published by Ignota Books.  For more on bitcoin’s

Blockchain technology firm Bitfury has released a suite tools aimed to drive adoption of bitcoin’s lightning network. Although the network is still under development, Bitfury announced a comprehensive product list to support the tech on Wednesday, including an open-source lightning wallet and hardware and software tools for merchants and payment processors to accept payments. It

It’s been over a year since the scaling upgrade known as segregated witness, or SegWit, was activated on the bitcoin network. Even so, only an estimated 36 percent of all bitcoin transactions are actually using it. Why the minimal adoption rate? It’s largely because, like any backward-compatible upgrade (otherwise called a soft fork), SegWit ensures participants in the

Stockholm-based startup Bitrefill now offers a way to mitigate bitcoin’s expensive learning curve for new users. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Bitrefill’s new Thor service allows people to give lightning channels to someone else with no setup on the recipient’s side. Lightning was created to allow cheaper, off-chain bitcoin payments. Bitrefill’s John Carvalho told CoinDesk: “Thor allows

Today marks the debut of a new cryptocurrency, called Beam – one of two highly-anticipated privacy coins implemented with the so-called “mimblewimble” protocol. The mimblewimble protocol, which is touted as a way to make transactions confidential and virtually untraceable, first appeared in the summer of 2016, and has been widely anticipated ever since. While another

Exhale. The nightmare of the 2018 cryptocurrency market is finally over. Of course, more downside is always possible, if not likely, but at least the year in which bitcoin prices dropped more than 80 percent and the broarder market lost nearly $700 billion of total capitalization is over. By now, you’re probably well aware the

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers. ——- After a gloomy look at the state of cryptoland two weeks ago, it’s time for

Global tech giant Intel, known for its widely-used computer processors, has won a patent connected to its work in the area of cryptocurrency mining. On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the company a patent outlining a processor which claims to be able to conduct “energy-efficient high performance bitcoin mining,” specifically naming the

The number of Google searches for bitcoin is now at its highest level in over seven months. Google’s trend explorer reveals the weekly number of worldwide searches for the keyword “bitcoin” has reached levels not seen since the first week in April.  While the exact number of searches accrued so far this week is not

Samson Mow is chief strategy officer at Blockstream.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. It’s been 10 years since Bitcoin’s white paper was released, and the world has had 10 years to understand the profound impact of Bitcoin. We’ve also had 10 years of development

Samson Mow is chief strategy officer at Blockstream.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. It’s been 10 years since Bitcoin’s white paper was released, and the world has had 10 years to understand the profound impact of Bitcoin. We’ve also had 10 years of development

Erik Voorhees is the CEO of ShapeShift.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. There’s an old adage that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Growing up, it always bothered me. I knew it to be wrong… obviously a sword is mightier, and even on

Erik Voorhees is the CEO of ShapeShift.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. There’s an old adage that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Growing up, it always bothered me. I knew it to be wrong… obviously a sword is mightier, and even on

Dr Garrick Hileman is head of research at Blockchain and co-founder of Mosaic. This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. This month marks not only the 10-year anniversary of the publication of Satoshi Nakomoto’s now famous white paper, but it also marks a decade since the

Dr Garrick Hileman is head of research at Blockchain and co-founder of Mosaic. This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. This month marks not only the 10-year anniversary of the publication of Satoshi Nakomoto’s now famous white paper, but it also marks a decade since the

Joseph Bonneau is an assistant professor at New York University and co-author of “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies,” a popular textbook.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. The Bitcoin white paper has been, rightfully, recognized as one of the most original and influential computer science papers

Joseph Bonneau is an assistant professor at New York University and co-author of “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies,” a popular textbook.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. The Bitcoin white paper has been, rightfully, recognized as one of the most original and influential computer science papers

Touted as a way to make the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency a more effective payment method, bitcoin’s lightning network has a rather large obstacle ahead – it’s still challenging, even risky, to set up and use. It could become easier, though, should developers at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the prestigious international group that creates

Dan Held is the founder of crypto portfolio service Picks & Shovels. He previously founded data service ZeroBlock, which sold to Blockchain, and served as VP of product at ChangeTip.  This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. In my last article, “Seasons,” I covered the precise

This article originally appeared in CoinDesk Korea, a partnership with The Hankyoreh. Opting to take the view ICOs are a form of fraud, speculation or gambling, the Korean government initiated a ban on the investment vehicle last September, one that sparked a strong backlash from domestic blockchain startups. Still, some Korean lawmakers from the opposition party

David Schwartz is CTO at Ripple. This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi White Paper” series. In 1991, my patent for a multi-level distributed computer network was granted. I was working on graphics rendering problems requiring significant amounts of CPU power and wanted to distribute computing-intensive tasks to a

In January, a new token is being launched on the ethereum blockchain that will be backed one-for-one by bitcoin. The companies behind the initiative include decentralized exchange startups Kyber Network and Republic Protocol, as well as cryptocurrency custody company BitGo. What’s more, a number of ethereum-based projects are also reported to support adoption of the token once

Of all the cryptocurrency projects describing themselves as “decentralized exchanges” (DEXs), Bisq may live up to the description better than most. Operating since 2017, when it was originally called Bitsquare, the Bisq DEX runs directly on the user’s computer, rather than a hosted site, as many of the self-described DEXs currently do. And while DEXs

Over a million dollars’-worth of bitcoin was hidden in a picture – and there’s still some left to be found. Called the 310 BTC Bitcoin Challenge, a pseudonymous user going by the name “Pip” stashed a total of 310.61 BTC (worth $2,011,267 at press time) into four digital wallets earlier this month – with the

Mobile payments startup Square is making its bitcoin cold storage solution open-source. Alok Menghrajani, a security engineer for the company, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that the documentation, code and tools for the company’s “Subzero” bitcoin cold storage solution are now publicly available on Github. Menghrajani said Square uses Subzero to hold bitcoin assets

Adam Krellenstein is co-founder and CTO at Symbiont.io, Inc., a FinTech company focused on coupling traditional financial markets and blockchain technology. He is also the author of some of the earliest attempts to use the bitcoin blockchain for its more experimental uses. This exclusive opinion piece is part of CoinDesk’s “Bitcoin at 10: The Satoshi

Bitcoin mining computer manufacturer Bitmain has released a software update for its Antminer s9 devices, using controversial code to allow them to more efficiently mine bitcoin. Bitmain announced Monday that the just-released firmware will support “overt AsicBoost” functionality, bringing a speed boost to the miners. Notably, while Bitmain is only just now enabling these mining