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The New York Department of Financial Services is shortly to begin its hearing about bitcoin and other digital currencies. Taking place in the 4th Floor Boardroom of 90 Church Street, New York, the hearing is set to begin at 11:30 (EST) today (28th January) and the second session will begin tomorrow at 10:00. A live webcast of the hearings can be found here.

Day Two of the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami was packed full of speakers and panels. The two halls at the Miami Beach Convention Center kept attendees on the move. In the promenade areas, a number of bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related businesses were showing off their product and services. In turn, the Miami Beach area served as a vacation-like backdrop for the event, with parties held on the rooftop of the Clevelander Hotel on both Friday and Saturday night. Even so, the conference schedule of the second day seemed to move at a frenetic pace, with few breaks in between....

The temperate winter climate of Miami, Florida is serving as a pleasing backdrop for the numerous attendees of the North American Bitcoin Conference. The symposium, being held at the Miami Beach Convention Center this weekend, brought a huge crowd. Many of the talks were held with all seats full. In the afternoon, the second hall, used in the morning for merchant vendor workshops, was used as an additional seating area with the speakers being broadcasted on a large video screen.

Currency Massacre In Emerging Markets Jan. 24, 2014 12:40 PM ET Seeking Alpha Both Venezuela (socialist worker's paradise) and Argentina (nationalist socialist paradise) have a problem with their foreign exchange reserves. In both cases it stems from trying to keep up the pretense that their currencies are worth more than they really are. The central banks of both countries are (and have been for some time) printing money like crazy, and inflation is galloping with gay abandon. Their governments publish misleading economic statistics, that inter alia attempt to hide the true extent of the monetary debasement – in short,...

In a recent New York Times Dealbook post, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen argued that Bitcoin is here to stay because it provides a payment system better than the one we have now, particularly for online merchants and international transfers. He likened Bitcoin to other disruptive technologies such as the personal computer and the Internet. These are great analogies. The personal computer has revolutionized the world, but Altair was not one of the winners. (Remember Altair? It was one of the many pioneers.) The Internet was not the first or even the only network for connecting computers. There were several other...

In the next year, Bitcoin will start its transformation from a mere currency into an entire open-source, decentralized exchange for everything from futures contracts to car rentals. FORTUNE -- In 2013, bitcoin's valuation didn't just skyrocket, but its infrastructure, services, and adoption exploded as well, culminating in recent announcements that major online retailer Overstock.com and NBA team the Sacramento Kings would accept the digital currency as payment. Some still doubt bitcoin's usefulness and durability, but 2014 may leave skeptics even further behind -- developers and entrepreneurs are already hard at work building features on top of the Bitcoin protocol that...

Just how big a financial opportunity is bitcoin? Recently, Wall Street has been starting to ask that very question, paying more and more attention to the upstart alternative currency. The first analysis by a registered broker dealer which attempted to value bitcoin’s worth was published on 1st December by Wedbush Securities. While Los Angeles-based Wedbush is a respected securities firm, it doesn’t count itself among the first-tier of investment banks, or the ‘bulge bracket’ as its known on Wall Street. The Wedbush research report contained some novel analysis and perspective, but it was also ‘light’ in that it weighed in...

WASHINGTON -- The baffling Bitcoin boom is either an exercise in self-delusion -- a high-tech Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down -- or an imaginative new Internet technology that will ultimately change how millions of people around the world conduct everyday business. There is little middle ground. Called a "digital currency," Bitcoin originated in early 2009 with a software program written by Satoshi Nakamoto. Who is Nakamoto? Good question. It's a pseudonym, and we don't know who's behind it -- whether man or woman; individual or group; American, Japanese, Russian or some other nationality. But what seems clear is...

When it comes to figuring out the main reason why every brick and mortar store in your local town is not accepting bitcoin as payment, you don’t need to look much further than price volatility. There are plenty of people who like the idea of a decentralized currency not controlled by any government, but the reality is that these same people only want to accept currencies that are relatively stable. After all, a store cannot plan for the future or pay for supplies, employees, and other costs when they don’t know what the value of each sale will be after...

China National Gold Group Corporation General Manager Sun Zhaoxue has come out and told the world media that the US is suppressing the gold price. The reason for America’s manipulation of gold is to ensure US Dollar dominance on the world stage. America has by default ended up with the world’s reserve currency and therefore gets the world to work for them in exchange for an ever increasing supply of printed greenbacks. He also went on with an excellent analysis of America’s war against Europe and the Euro using their investment banks. Another good insight from Sun Zhaoxue is that...

Earlier we pointed out that mortgage origination at Wells Fargo - the bank's bread and butter - is crashing at an unprecedented pace, and as per the conference call, Q1 isn't looking any better. Naturally, it stood to reason that the bank would seek alternative business and product lines to supplant the declining revenue it used to generate when it would originate some $100 billion in mortgages every quarter, now half that number. However, not even in our wildest dreams did we predict just what this "alternative" product would be. Because, as the FT reports, Wells Fargo, the largest US...

Bitcoin ATMs are coming to the city. Josh Harvey, co-founder of Lamassu, showed off the first bitcoin dispenser at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show and has found quite a bit of interest for the $5,000 machines. The machine, designed and manufactured in Portugal, looks like a typical deli ATM — but functions more like a vending machine. You put in US dollars and receive bitcoins back on your phone.

The price of bitcoin has, once again, reached $1,000 on popular bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. The first time the price of bitcoin reached this level was on 27th November after interest in the cryptocurrency spiked across the world, but primarily in China. A few weeks later, the price started to tumble after China’s central bank imposed restrictions on the involvement of the country’s banks and third-party payment processors in bitcoin. On 5th December, the central bank said Chinese financial institutions were no longer permitted to work with bitcoin exchanges or other bitcoin companies. That same day, the price fell from...

The Day the Dollar Dies America’s financial Pearl Harbor is coming December 6, 2015, 3 p.m. HKT, Hong Kong Twenty-one men representing China’s most powerful institutions file into a conference room atop the ICC Tower looming over Victoria Harbor. The Politburo Standing Committee has mustered the CEOs of China’s four largest banks, Sinopec, and several other state-owned multinationals, plus officers from the Central Military Commission and a pair of academics from China’s top technology universities. The general secretary formally opens the meeting.“As you know, the United States of America continues to manipulate its currency,” he begins. “It is devaluing...

Whether you’re in Las Vegas, Nevada for the annual Inside Bitcoins Convention or just traveling for a legal way to party Silk Road-style, this desert boomtown is sure to tap your wallet with its world-class destinations that indulge any and all passions. Now, you likely know the big attractions – Caesars Palace’s opulent Roman architecture, the Bellagio’s serene fountains, but Vegas is also home to a burgeoning underground bitcoin community that is just as happy to empty your digital currency reserves. Even better with gift card providers like Gyft offering access to merchants, retailers and daily deal providers on their...

You’ve all heard about Bitcoin. No one knows who created it, although some writers have made very educated guesses about the identity of the pseudonymous creator. I have sometimes wondered whether Bitcoin is the product of some transnational criminal organization or rogue state that wants to undermine developed economies by casting their payment systems into doubt. I am less concerned with Bitcoin’s origin than with its flaws. I shall enumerate those flaws forthwith. Bitcoin enables fraud and other criminal activities. This is absolutely the single most salient feature of Bitcoin’s anonymity. Conventional currencies are indeed subject to laundering and counterfeit....

Recently, a friend came up to me and asked "Raghu, how do I obtain bitcoins?" I stared at him with an empty, blank look. Despite all the recent talks about bitcoins and their growing popularity, even with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) getting involved, I realised that I knew absolutely nothing about the bitcoin except the fact that it was associated with the Silk Road - an illegal online black market that used bitcoins as its defacto virtual currency to enable regular folks to obtain all sorts of illegal items easily and anonymously. I had no idea what bitcoins...

Cody Wilson rattled lawmakers and law-enforcement agencies with a plastic gun created from a 3-D printer, home computer and blueprints he posted online for anyone to download. Now, the 25-year-old law-school dropout is about to launch software aimed at covering the tracks of financial transactions made with bitcoin, the virtual currency that has exploded in popularity among spenders and speculators—and raised concerns among regulators that it might be used for illegal activity. "We need an anonymous cash online," says Mr. Wilson, who oversees from his apartment near the University of Texas at Austin about a dozen self-described antiestablishment techies working...

Bitcoin is the name of a group of peer-to-peer payment networks that serve as an open-source form of digital currency that was originally introduced in 2009 by a software developer with the alias of 'Satoshi Nakamoto." Bitcoin currency is created as rewards to "miners" for providing the computing power to solve difficult math problems to maintain the "blockchain" of internet transactions in the currency. Unlike online credit cards and PayPal systems that allow buyers to claim their money back, bitcoin permanently transfers value. The bitcoin cyber-economy compassed of merchants, users, service providers, and startup enterprises has flourished for the past...

It’s the festive season, and if there is a bitcoin fan among your friends and family, then they may have given you some of the virtual currency in your Christmas stocking. If so, what should you do with it? There are several options for you as a new bitcoin owner. We’ll tell you about them here, but before you start, please don’t do what Bloomberg TV anchor Adam Johnson did. Fellow anchor Matt Miller gave bitcoins to Johnson as a Christmas gift on air. They came in the form of a paper wallet (see below), which Johnson showed to the...