In Japan this week was a tip about Japanese exchange Monex moving to take over the exchange known as Coincheck. Said takeover would be a muilti-billion-Yen bid, and a big bump to public confidence in bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. Monex is a regulated public company. As such, Monex tossing billions at a cryptocurrency exchange is nothing to scoff at.
Security at the Chrome Web Store took a hardline stance on cryptocurrency miners this week. In the past, the Chrome Web Store allowed crypto mining apps ONLY if they had mining as their SINGLE purpose, and the user was "adequately informed" about how the app worked. Due in part to the absurd number of apps submitted to the Chrome Web Store that attempted to bend or break these rules, the store announced they'd no longer accept any crypto mining apps at all, whatsoever.
This week bitcoin prices bounced at the trendline forged approximately one half year ago at the same time as NVIDIA signaled support for crypto. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spoke to Jim Cramer on Mad Money TV, suggesting that cryptocurrency was "here to stay" regardless of the fact that it's not one of the company's main drivers - yet.
A Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator was revealed in a patent this week, showing Intel's hand ahead of any product unveil. Over the past year, several major gaming-focused hardware manufacturers went both in and out of love with the fact that their gear was flying off shelves. Graphics processor makers especially found themselves between a rock and a hard place when gamers were unable to buy gaming GPUs because cryptocurrency mining operations bought out entire stores at a time - leaving gamers with no option but eBay. Intel seems to have no qualms with expanding on Bitcoin.
Today the average price of bitcoins to dollars dipped below the McAfee bet curve. McAfee predicted back on July 17th of 2017 that one Bitcoin would be worth $500,000 "in three years." Bitcoin went from around $2.2k to $19k by the end of the year. According to the mathematics behind McAfee's prediction, bitcoin pricing just went below the curve. Either it's time to bounce up, or the world is ending... maybe.
As bitcoin popularity grew, so did the number of companies accepting it as a payment method. Dell was one of the early big companies to accept it; Microsoft, too, let customers pay for subscriptions using the digital currency. Reddit adopted bitcoin as a payment option for Gold way back in 2013, but quietly changed that in recent days, blaming Coinbase and bugs for its decision.
This week two potential flaws in Monero's code suggested the blockchain-based cryptocurrency might've been traceable. Monero is a cryptocurrency built on the premise that cryptocurrency should be anonymous - completely anonymous - and as such, it depends on that anonymity to survive, and to retain value in the open marketplace VS Bitcoin and USDT. It would appear that these flaws might not matter as much as initially feared.
Earlier this month, Twitter announced its plans to begin cracking down on cryptocurrency spam accounts. If you're a regular Twitter user, you've likely encountered them before: accounts that exist for no other reason than to part gullible people from their cryptocurrency. As it turns out, that isn't the only thing Twitter is going to do to cut back on the amount of cryptocurrency spam on its platform, as it will soon be restricting certain ads as well.
The White House has officially banned the use of Venezuela's state cryptocurrency "Petro." An executive order on the matter was signed by Trump today, and in it the White House dictates that all US persons, including permanent residents and entities, are prohibited from buying or otherwise dealing in the cryptocurrency. The move follows Venezuela's recent launch of the digital currency, an action that violates recent US sanctions.
Mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrency requires a huge amount of electricity, and that's a problem for modern day prospectors in search of a fortune. Mining operations have popped up in New York's Plattsburgh, a small city with incredibly cheap electricity rates due to its proximity to a hydroelectric dam. Mining operations have gravitated to the city to take advantage of its cheap rates, but that has proven to be a big problem for the small city.
For tax collectors at the IRS, bitcoin season is upon us. Today we're taking a peek at the most basic elements - the need-to-know parts - of taxes in the United States when it comes to bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. As one Redditor found out recently, taxes on crypto could be simple - or they could be absolutely terrifyingly bad to behold. OF NOTE: None of what we present here should be taken as financial advice, as we are not accountants - all users should seek professional help (especially if they're frequent readers of articles here on SlashGear.)
This week Google announced they'd be banning all cryptocurrency and Initial Coin Offering (ICO) advertisements. This is Google Ads, a system within Google much like Facebook's similar advertisement sales system. Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertisement buys in January of 2018. This block came as part of Google's annual "Bad Ads" report and included several other sorts of advertisements that'll be banned in the near future.