Tag Archives: mining
Top Bitcoin News Last Week: Bubble, Winklevoss Twins, Mt. Gox Attacks
Bitcoin News
A roundup of the top Bitcoin news from April 8 to April 14:
Monday, April 8
Tuesday, April 9
Thursday, April 11
Friday, April 12
- Did the Bitcoin Bubble Burst Already?
- Winklevii Bitcoin: Twins Secretly Own 1% of the Bitcoin Economy
Sunday, April 14
Bitcoin Media: New York Times Profiles Bitcoins
Bitcoin Media Goes Mainstream
In a sign of growth in mainstream awareness of Bitcoin, the New York Times published a feature on the revolutionary alternative currency. In the article, topics including Bitcoin mining, trading, transactions, and economies are covered.
On the Bitcoin economy:
The price increase becomes a question of supply and demand. Unlike other currencies that can adjust the money supply depending on economic conditions, bitcoins have a supply that is fixed. The amount of new coins that can be minted was plotted at the outset with a finite number of coins at the end, roughly 21 million in the next century. Today, the rate is 25 new coins every 10 minutes; for the first four years, it was twice as many, 50 every 10 minutes.
On Bitcoin transactions:
So far, excluding investors and day traders, the main use of the currency appears to be illicit activity. There are the online gambling sites that use bitcoins. And the anonymous online marketplace Silk Road, which accepts only bitcoins, is “overwhelmingly used as a market for controlled substances and narcotics,” according to a paper on Silk Road written by Mr. Christin of Carnegie Mellon.
He used clues on the site, including buyer feedback reports, to calculate how much and what kind of business was being transacted. His conclusion, as of July 2012, was that $1.2 million in business was carried out each month, much of it for buying small amounts of narcotics that were delivered by mail. “We did see it was growing,” he said of the total value of the trades. “It pretty much doubled in the six months I followed it.”
Read the full article at the New York Times.
New York Times building photo by wallyg used under Creative Commons license.
Skype Malware Spreads Bitcoin Mining Virus on Your Computer
Bitcoin Mining Virus
There is new malware spreading via Skype that is designed specifically to hijack your computer resources for Bitcoin mining to make money for someone else. This trojan virus has been profiled by security firm Kaspersky and is being tracked at 2,000 clicks per hour.
Via TheNextWeb:
While malware has spread on Skype and mined Bitcoins before, putting the two together could be an effective new strategy.
Security firm Kaspersky discovered the threat, which it names Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt, on Thursday night. At the time, most of the potential victims were from Italy, Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, and Ukraine, with the average clicking rate hitting 2,000 clicks per hour.
