The ICO boom looks a lot like a bubble, but at its heart is a genuine innovation.

The Bank of Canada raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a point to one per cent on Wednesday. It's the second time this year that the central bank has upped the rate, after hiking it for the first time in seven years in July. The central bank's rate has an impact on lending rates that consumers and savers get from banks on mortgages, lines of credits, savings accounts and other financial vehicles.

Bitcoin appears to be moving into a new period of price discovery. Following a new ruling that finds China's regulators moving to outlaw initial coin offerings (sales of new cryptographic tokens often exchanged for bitcoin), the bitcoin price fell to its lowest total since August 22 today. At press time, bitcoin had declined to just above $4,000 – halting at $4,037.50 across global exchanges – a 20% decline from its all-time high of $5,013 observed on September 1.

Dutch security researcher Victor Gevers has discovered 2,893 Bitcoin miners left exposed on the Internet with no passwords on their Telnet port.

Moscow Stock Exchange is creating an infrastructure to trade cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The exchange plans to trade cryptocurrencies as well as derivatives and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on them. This announcement closely follows the plan by Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev to regulate bitcoin as a financial asset.

The euro has hit $1.20 for the first time since January 2015 as the prospect of a US interest rate rise recedes. Hurricane Harvey's impact has led analysts to assume the US central bank will not want to risk curbing economic growth and fears over North Korea's activities have unnerved investors. A rise in interest rates tends to draw investors to a currency, taking advantage of the higher returns.

According to the site, the founder, Pavel Durov, said: “For the first time in 70 years, the global financial system has a chance to escape from the hegemony of the United States, which imposed its national currency as a reserve on the whole world and since then, in fact, has been collecting tribute from all the countries paying its debts with endlessly printed dollars and buying assets worldwide with them.”

Burger King has waded into the cryptocurrency market with the launch of its own virtual coin called "WhopperCoin" in Russia. With each purchase of the burger chain's signature Whopper sandwich, customers can receive WhopperCoin tokens via a digital wallet. Bitcoin traders have previously gotten a lot of flak in Russia, with reports last year suggesting users could even face jail time under proposed legislation.

The future of trading is in the blockchain.

Bitcoin is either an enormous bubble or has a lot further to run. Financial forecasters are weighing in on the cryptocurrency, trying to divine where bitcoin’s price is headed, now that it sits at around $3,400, up from around $600 a year ago. Here are the arguments for bitcoin hitting $5,000—or higher.

Since its inception it has doubled every eight months.

The dollar fell on Wednesday, touching its lowest level in more than a year against a basket of currencies after the release of the Federal Reserve's policy statement following its July meeting. The Federal Open Market Committee announced no changes to monetary policy, as expected. Policymakers said, however, that the U.S. central bank would begin implementing balance sheet normalization "relatively soon." That marked a change from the committee's previous statement that it would begin to reduce its $4.5 trillion bond holdings "this year."

Bitcoin was never meant for the wide world; the wide world was meant to be refashioned in its image.

Speeches and research papers from officials at the People's Bank of China show that the bank’s strategy is to introduce the digital currency alongside China’s renminbi. But there is currently no timetable for this, and the bank seems to be proceeding cautiously. Nonetheless the test is a significant step. It shows that China is seriously exploring the technical, logistical, and economic challenges involved in deploying digital money, something that could ultimately have broad implications for its economy and for the global financial system.

Earlier this week, GDAX, the digital currency exchange run by Coinbase, experienced a flash crash in its USD - Ethereum market. Within seconds the price of..

Ethereum is up 3,601% so far in 2017.

It may not be made of gold, but Canada's new glow-in-the-dark, two-dollar coin sure does glitter.

It’s said that savvy entrepreneurs see opportunity where no one else does. Then, why do so few of them pay attention to a new form of investment that is taking the world by storm? A better question would be: why do so few of them know that startups have raised more than $220 million in the past three years through a new financial instrument that has nothing to do with the traditional venture capital method.

Japanese investors rush in after cryptocurrency was made legal

Wages-to-bitcoin provider Get Paid in Bitcoin has launched in Australia, finally giving locals the option to receive their pay directly in bitcoin. It aims to “make bitcoin a regular currency that can be used in day-to-day situations.” It’s the first time Australian workers could access such a service. BitWage, a similar service that has offered individual payroll services since 2014, is only available in the US, UK and EU.