The Bitcoin Blog

If you’ve been following the Bitcoin scaling efforts lately, you already know that the Bitcoin blockchain forked on August 1, giving birth to a new currency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The event was surrounded by quite a bit of uncertainty over how well the new currency would perform. Would it flatline for lack of support? […]

As the adoption of blockchain grows, so does the need to understand the lexicon around it. A fork is a common blockchain technical term used specifically in the ongoing scaling debate, yet it causes a lot of confusion, particularly for those new to the technology. Knowing what it means puts you in a better position […]

Starting 1 July 2017, Bitcoin use in Australia will no longer result in double taxation. The government announced the change in its 2017-18 budget report. The change comes under the $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA), designed to make Australia attractive to financial technology enterprise. From the report: “The Government is committed to […]

The global economy has relied on permanent employment as the main source of labor since the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Silicon Valley is changing that through short-term contracting or freelancing platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Upwork and Airbnb. In October 2016, Forbes reported: Freelancers now make up 35% of U.S. workers and collectively […]

What Is a Cryptolocker? A Cryptolocker is a high-level computer virus, usually circulated in the form of an attachment, disguised to look like an Auspost email notification or invoice such as an energy bill. Opening or downloading the attachment will lead to you having all your data encrypted and leaving you 3 days to pay […]

While some media like to focus on Bitcoin’s connection with dark markets, the technology could actually make legal markets more secure. For example, it could protect the art market from the world’s third most lucrative crime—art forgery.

Eight months after ChangeTip launched, Emin Gün Sirer wished it dead. He also asked us all to celebrate its demise when it happened. Sirer is an IT security expert, commentator and professor at Cornell University. In a blog post titled “ChangeTip Must Die” published in December 2014, Sirer stated that the death of ChangeTip was […]

The choice to attach a small fee for miners every time you send bitcoins is slowly going from voluntary to mandatory. Miners are already taking longer to confirm transactions that lack sufficient fees.

Segregated Witness (SegWit) does more than condense transaction data that goes into the Bitcoin block. Marek “Slush” Palatinus, architect of the hardware wallet Trezor, pointed this out when he said: “Segregated Witness is not just about scaling. There are other issues with Bitcoin under the hood, and SegWit opens potential for applications and use-cases that […]