Lifeboat Foundation

Rob Wile — Business Insider


The Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman reports Andreessen Horowitz plans to invest “hundreds of millions” more dollars in Bitcoin-related businesses, on top of the $50 million they have already dropped, mostly on Coinbase.

Bitcoin prices have lost nearly 50% of their value over the past four months or so, and now trade at around $570. Analysts from Goldman Sachs recently cast doubt on the viability of the digital currency itself, though added its underlying technology may yet prove useful.

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By Dan Primack — CNN Money

FORTUNE — Tim Chang has a very busy full-time job as a partner with venture capital firm Mayfield, where he has led investments in such companies as Lyft, Lumosity and Playdom. But he also has a business venture on the side, helping friends and family invest in bitcoin via something called Binary Fund.

Binary Fund was formed by a Canadian investment firm called Binary Financial, and also includes participation from venture capitalist Jon Teo (ex-General Catalyst who is forming a new fund of his own). The idea is basically to participate in bitcoin arbitrage, as opposed to investing in bitcoin-focused startups.

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Dylan Love — Business Insider

Reddit user “Leeburg” has written a post on his nine months and counting of experience in running a Bitcoin-only storefront online. The site is called CoinsForTech, and it deals in smartphones, computers, and all order of electronic gadgets wanted by people all over the world.

Leeburg is able to serve these people because Bitcoin is a geographically agnostic digital currency. Rather than get a bank involved in converting obscure currencies, CoinsForTech simply waits for confirmation that a customer’s payment has arrived at the appropriate Bitcoin wallet. At that point, it can convert to U.S. dollars or do whatever else it would like with the Bitcoins — the payment’s arrived and the irreversible nature of Bitcoin transactions means it’s here to stay.

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By Jeff John Roberts - GigaOM

One of the reason bitcoins get so much attention is because people keep stealing them. Every week it seems that another “secure” wallet service gets plundered by tech-savvy thieves.

That’s one of the appeals of Xapo, a startup that just received a $20 million investment to build out its secure, insured “vault” for bitcoins.

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Declan McCullagh — CNET

A US senator is asking the federal government to take this remarkable step: completely ban Bitcoin.

Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator representing West Virginia, sent a letter Wednesday to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and other regulators characterizing the virtual currency as encouraging “illicit activity” as well as being “highly unstable and disruptive to our economy.”

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By Katie Lobosco — CNN Money


The brothers, known for their legal battle over the creation of Facebook (FB, Fortune 500), are going to space and paying for it with Bitcoins. Take that, Mark Zuckerberg.

The twins bought tickets, valued at $250,000 each, for a ride to space with Virgin Galactic. That’s about 375 Bitcoins, at Wednesday’s price.

They think of their purchase “as seed capital” supporting new technologies they have high hopes for.

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Matthew Herper — Forbes

A linguistic analysis done at Forbes’ request indicates that Newsweek fingered the wrong man when it tried to unmask the creator of the digital currency, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin allows users to conduct transactions with no or low fees and a relative degree of privacy. There is close to $8 billion of the currency on the Internet. But the identity of its creator (or creators), who went by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, has remained shrouded in mystery.

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Michael Terpin — CNN Money

The concept of special economic zones to assist the development of a new industry is common worldwide. So why isn’t there one yet for Bitcoin?

Despite the collapse of Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, digital currencies are one of the fastest growing, disruptive technologies of the past several decades.

But the only places in the United States that are speaking up about Bitcoin are those who want to add additional layers of regulations and red tape.
Remarkably, it’s the two states that would benefit most from this innovation and from greater adoption of Bitcoin: the nation’s financial center (New York) and the hub of innovation (California).

New York’s top financial cop, Benjamin Lawsky, has railed against Bitcoin because of concerns about usage by criminals. He said that it is better to stop all possible money laundering before one knows it really exists than to let “1,000 flowers bloom on the innovation side.”

Continue reading “Viva Bitcoin Vegas?” »

Brian Armstrong — TechCrunch

Mt.Gox is gone. The one-time biggest Bitcoin exchange closed its doors this week and filed for bankruptcy this morning. Questions about the future of Bitcoin have once again been up-leveled to the headlines of nearly every major media outlet.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a string of issues in the Bitcoin space, from the transaction malleability bug that ultimately closed Mt.Gox’s doors to a corresponding distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that delayed transfers on multiple exchanges and services. These attacks, along with recent phishing scams and money-laundering arrests, have cast doubt on the Bitcoin space and caused consumer panic — which is fair.

But what hasn’t been communicated well is how those who are truly invested in the future of Bitcoin remain totally confident, because with every attack, breach, and arrest, Bitcoin is getting stronger and proving to consumers and businesses it is not going away.

Here is what is not being said about Bitcoin that should be.

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