The African nation is paying one U.S. dollar for every 35,000,000,000,000,000 of its old scrapped scrip. Zimbabwe is a byword for monetary disaster but the outcome is unusual. It shows it takes truly exceptional incompetence to create hyperinflation.

Zimbabweans will start exchanging 'quadrillions' of local dollars for a few U.S. dollars next week, as President Robert Mugabe's government discards its virtually worthless national currency, the central bank said on Thursday. The southern African country started using foreign currencies like the U.S. dollar and South African rand in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was ruined by hyper-inflation, which hit 500 billion percent in 2008.

A Virginia teenager has pleaded guilty to using Twitter to teach members of the terrorist Islamic State how to use Bitcoin. Ali Shukri Amin, 17, admitted Thursday that he was behind the the now-suspended Twitter account @Amreekiwitness, which at one point had over 4,000 followers. Through it, according to a Department of Justice statement on Amin, he provided instructions on how to use the world’s dominant online cryptocurrency...

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Bitcoin is more like Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme. Whatever it is, though, it isn't a currency. It's a tech stock. Each Bitcoin is really a share in a system that seems to make it cheaper to transfer things online—money, stocks, bonds, even the deed to your house—by cutting out the middleman. Well, kind of. Bitcoin doesn't remove the middleman so much as replace him with middlemen who don't make you pay much, but make...

Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again. After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted. But victory for France is proving elusive.

What do you mean by ‘War on Cash?’ It means the phasing-out of physical currency, making all money electronic. You would no longer have the ability to withdraw, spend or hold cash in your hand. Your money would ideally be kept at an account with your country’s central bank. Banks would still lend money, but would no longer need to hold deposits. No country is seriously pushing for an outright ban on hard cash just yet, but a number of stalking horses have appeared.

Past me was an idiot, Itch.io. Bitcoins! Those things that blew up in 2012 and made everyone incredibly rich, except for me because I was an idiot who didn’t believe...

When the banking system went into meltdown in 2008, an intriguing glimpse of an alternative future appeared. On 31 October, an unknown cryptographer who went by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto launched what he described as “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer to peer, with no trusted third party”. The name he assigned to this new currency was bitcoin.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has announced the launch of a bitcoin price index (NYXBT).

Darkwallet is a light browser wallet relying on an independent Bitcoin implementation with out-of-the-box security and privacy features.

Americans like to talk about themselves, so when we talk about Bitcoin we usually focus on ways the technology can make life better for American consumers. But an in-depth piece in the New York Times illustrates why the currency could have a brighter future overseas.

With its volatile currency and dysfunctional banks, the country is the perfect place to experiment with a new digital currency.

AMIR TAAKI AND Cody Wilson are cruising north through Texas on Interstate 35 in the 4:30 am predawn darkness. One of the headlights on the aging BMW Wilson’s driving is burned out, and he’s wearing sunglasses. “They’re prescription,” he says drily.

Fifteen years after Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as its official currency, the issue still stirs debate. Dollarization was so unpopular when it was first announced that protesters took over the capital and the government collapsed. The replacement government stuck with the plan—there wasn’t much choice. The Sucre, Ecuador’s native currency, was in the midst of a decade of hyper-inflation which was destroying the economy.

In 2013 Gregg Cavaluzzi walked out of federal prison with nothing more than the clothes he wore going in five years earlier and a Chase-branded debit card holding what remained of money sent by family members and the meager pay he’d earned working in the prison library. “They simply gave me the debit card and said ‘Your money’s on it,’” he recalled.

There was a time when people happily used chickens, pigs, or a nice pile of lumber as payment for a cow, some clothes, or anything else of value. And then some smart people got behind a breakthrough—they introduced currency.

Would this save the world economy?

Buttercoin, an American start-up that provides digital currency exchange services, has announced that it will be closing its operations on April 10, 2015. According to the company, it is shutting down due to a lack of interest in Bitcoin among venture capital firms. Buttercoin LogoInterestingly, the reason cited has surprised many Bitcoin observers, as lately there has been a lot of seed funding by venture capitalists in several Bitcoin startups.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called for a single currency with the Kremlin's closest ex-Soviet allies despite fraying ties in the region which is struggling with the fallout from Moscow's economic crisis. Putin urged closer integration for his flagship Eurasian Economic Union -- which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia -- as Moscow scrambles to limit the damage from Western sanctions over Ukraine and tumbling oil prices.

With the Superdollar near parity with the euro, airfares to Paris are down 14 percent from a year ago, according to popular travel site Orbitz. Hotel rates have sunk 10 percent from last year.