Patreon has been making the case for censorship-resistant money increasingly apparent. The platform allows members to contribute to artists or creators that they support. These contributions are made via standard payment methods like credit cards. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in public outcry over multiple separate instances where Patreon has removed creators from its platform. BitPatron, a Bitcoin-friendly version of the website, has recently come to the surface as a possible alternative.

Wyoming is introducing a bill that will put cryptocurrency like Bitcoin on the same legal footing as money. The bill will also provide a precise Wyoming is introducing a bill that will put cryptocurrency like Bitcoin on the same legal footing as the US dollar, which would make it a tax-free cryptocurrency.

Venezuela’s currency, the Bolivar, is worthless due to hyperinflation that shows no sign of stopping. Venezuelan citizens are starving, forcing them to resort to rationing the little bit of food they have and stealing food that they can find. The crisis is constantly evolving due to the failed policies of the Maduro regime, but with the help of the blockchain, the situation could become stabilized, saving the families of the nation.

It wasn’t 10 years ago, but more like 15, when I first saw the potential for a digital currency. I’ve been through some big up and downs in bitcoin. But today, I’m more certain than ever that the bitcoin revolution is coming. In 2004, I learned from a wealthy Korean industrialist that people were paying real-world money for digital items like weapons to use in massively multiplayer video games. The game was “Lineage,” which was taking Seoul by storm.

It goes without saying that bears weren’t kind to the crypto industry in 2018. The aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies fell like a “falling knife,” as retail investors pulled out of this market en-masse and hype dissipated. Yet, even amid this devastating downturn, which beat this market to hell and back, Bitcoin (BTC) quickly became shelter from the storm.

Google (Alphabet Inc.) has reportedly blacklisted keywords mentioning Ethereum (ETH) on its advertising platform Google Ads, smart contract auditing startup Decenter tweeted on Jan. 10. The official Google Ads account replied to the tweet stating that cryptocurrency exchanges targeting the United States

Paris is still burning. While the American public (by way of the American media) has largely been kept in the dark about the intense protests that have engulfed France and other parts of continental Europe, the severity of the situation continues to escalate. This week, the Yellow Vests called for French citizens to withdraw money from their banks.

BITCOIN TURNED 10 this month, and what a ride it’s been—initial obscurity; the kind of exponential price spike last seen by Dutch tulip peddlers; the rise of imitators based on its underlying blockchain technology; and, in the past year, a steep, steady decline in price. The old joke about the lifecycle of a Hollywood star applied to Silicon Valley: What is Bitcoin? Get me Bitcoin! Get me a Bitcoin type! What is Bitcoin?

The wife of one of Norway’s richest men has been abducted from her home outside Oslo, with the kidnappers demanding a ransom of €9 million in cryptocurrency.

In a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the price of Bitcoin BTC is “not likely to fall to zero”. Considering both bullish and bearish scenarios, the future price of Bitcoin will most likely remain somewhere between the two. David Andolfatto and Andrew Spewak consider that the bullish case is too optimistic considering Bitcoin’s ever-growing demand with limited supply. They also conclude that the bearish case of Bitcoin falling to zero is also unlikely to happen.

Back in December 2017, when its price reached close to US$20,000, Bitcoin looked like it had finally disrupted financial markets with the potential to enter the mainstream. A year later and things looked quite different. Bitcoin is now steadily trading below US$4,000 and has been constantly on a downward ride over the last year, losing more than half of its market capitalisation.

The product of payment gateway Living Room of Satoshi (LRS) and TravelbyBit, billed as “Australia’s first cryptocurrency travel agency,” the wallet aims to bring Lightning payments to entry-level Bitcoin users. As Bitcoinist often reported, LN has made significant progress over the past year, breaking records for both capacity and adoption.

“Bitcoin became an investment black hole,” in 2018, says Beijing Times reporter Pan Yichun, and according to several Chinese analysts, the prospect of significant Bitcoin price gains in 2019 are small, though there may still be opportunities brought by “small bulls” in the market, Beijing News reports.

On social media, entrepreneur and Proof of Keys organizer Trace Mayer joined Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss in contemplating a bullish future for Bitcoin. Since launching regulated US cryptocurrency exchange and trading platform Gemini, the Winklevoss twins have staked huge amounts on Bitcoin’s success, despite opening up trading of larger market cap altcoins.

Even though Satoshi Nakamoto's identity is still unclear today, it is undeniable what he created: he is the inventor of the Bitcoin protocol, which he published in a whitepaper in November 2008 via an encrypted e-mail address.

The crypto true believers who stuck around through the slump also hope that 2019 brings an influx of institutional investors to the market. That effort could get a boost when Intercontinental Exchange Inc. -- the parent of the New York Stock Exchange -- launches its crypto-focused exchange, Bakkt, which will allow customers to buy, sell, store, and spend digital currencies.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) most recent mining difficulty adjustment went upwards, instead of following a downwards trend which it had been since the past few months. This, according to data from Bitcoin Wisdom and Blockchain.com. Mining “difficulty” is a term used to refer to how easy (or difficult) it may be for cryptocurrency miners to solve complex math equations, in order to validate a block of transactions on proof-of-work (PoW)-based networks such as the Bitcoin blockchain.

The cryptocurrency has survived false prophets, blaggers and fiendish technical complexity, writes novelist Tibor Fischer

If at the end of October 2017, Bitcoin cost about $ 5.5 thousand, then its price already reached $20 thousand on December 18. Most of the Altcoins rushed right after the first cryptocurrency — they began to consistently set the historical maximums of value, day after day improving indicators. For example, Stellar cryptocurrency showed growth of 1,300% from November to January, and the XRP token, which increased by 1,750% over the same period, later became notorious among investors who were not lucky enough to invest in an asset at the peak (now it cost almost ten times cheaper).

The craze for cryptocurrency can be explained by a host of factors: the allure of getting rich quick; the attraction of off-the-grid accountancy for malefactors like tax evaders and drug dealers (though Bitcoin is traceable); the glamour of the new. Despite blockchain currencies’ wild volatility thus far, I’d still posit that the more underlying attraction is to a reliable store of value. Bitcoin investors may not recognise their motivation as such, but the impulse behind computer-generated currency is revolutionary: to take the production and control of money away from government.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, in particular, are not the only bubble in town. Stocks of tech stalwarts like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, collectively knowns as FAANG, have lost over $1 trillion USD in market capitalization from their all-time highs. Comparatively, despite a nightmare year for cryptocurrencies, the total cryptocurrency market cap is down roughly $700 billion from its $830 billion historic high in January 2017.

A hot potato: It’s been 12 months since Bitcoin reached its all-time high of almost $20,000, sending the world into a crypto frenzy. But in the last 24 hours, it’s hit a new yearly low of $3,126 ­– and it could fall even lower over the coming weeks. Now, a famous early investor who made millions from Bitcoin has warned that the best-known cryptocurrency of them all is “dead.” At the start of this year, 19-year-old Erik Finman hit the headlines as one of the world's youngest Bitcoin millionaires.

A new age of bitcoin is about to begin, as users around the world will no longer need internet access to spend the cryptocurrency on everyday transactions. The startup Blockstream, which raised $101 million from Khosla Ventures and others, is now streaming the entire bitcoin blockchain from five satellites strategically positioned in orbit around Earth to reach all major landmasses.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and many more built it. But they didn’t come.

So asked fund manager, Ross Gerber, on Twitter, without giving so much as an ounce of explanation. So let’s investigate… could it be a crypto-Christmas thanks to Trump, or did Gerber just deliver early Christmas for Twitter trolls.

Bitmain, Huobi, ConsenSys and Steemit are among the cryptocurrency startups to complete layoffs in the last month.

After years of conceptualization and development, the first Lightning implementations are now in beta. As a result, more nodes are appearing online every day, a growing number of users are opening channels with one another, and some merchants even started to accept Lightning payments.

One of the reasons that mainstream adoption of Bitcoin has been slow is due to the inability of the blockchain network to scale up to handle thousands of transactions per second. As a result, the system witnessed massive congestion late last year with transaction confirmation taking days and the transaction fee going up to $30 for just a $100 transfer.

BTC price is currently sitting at yearly lows though it is still around 400 percent higher than 2017's low. In fact, a historic look at yearly lows A historic look at Bitcoin's yearly lows reveals the massive BTC price gains and how 'hodlers' with longer time preference are created. 

Between 600,000 and 800,000 bitcoin miners have shut down since mid-November amid declines in price and hashrate across the network, F2pool's founder estimates.

In order to determine the value of a crypto we must first understand the nature of the beast. "Crypto" is a generic term to describe any coin or token built upon, and recorded on, a blockchain ledger. The coins, also called cryptocurrencies, were created to be forms of money, much like the Dollar, Euro, Ruble, and Peso. The other cryptos are Tokens; mostly built upon the ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contract technology.

The biggest-ever bet on Bitcoin options is about to expire worthless.

From a peak of US$19,783, Bitcoin's value has fallen by 80%. What makes Bitcoin worth anything?

Prosecutors are gunning for a lengthy prison sentence. Mark Karpeles has denied stealing investor funds.

It could be a while before Bakkt could get its Bitcoin futures contract approved. A new report claims that the CFTC’s [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] decision-making process has been progressing slow regarding Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures contract. Looking at CFTC’s current pace, the futures contract wouldn’t be launched at the desired time, said a CoinDesk report citing sources.