Bitcoin has continued its uncharacteristic streak of stability over the weekend, with its price never straying far from $478 (£294, €370).
Most other major cryptocurrencies have followed in the example set by bitcoin, as litecoin, peercoin, darkcoin and namecoin all shifted by less than 2% in value since Friday.
The only big player to see any significant movement was dogecoin, which saw its market capitalisation surge to £40m.
Last November CheapAir became the first airline to accept Bitcoin and then later, the first to let travelers book hotel rooms and Amtrak train seats with the digital currency.
Since then its Bitcoin sales have topped $1.5 million, an amount that exceeded the company’s initial expectations, Jeff Klee, CEO of CheapAir, tells Forbes.com.
CheapAir is hardly alone. In the last twelve months or so, Bitcoin has inched and then pushed its way into mainstream commerce, prompting such companies as Dell , Overstock, Expedia EXPE -0.54% and Dish Network to start accepting the currency. Dish, in fact, processed its first Bitcoin payment last month when Austin and Beccy Craig, the stars of a new documentary film “Life on Bitcoin,” used it to pay their monthly cable bill. Ebay may soon join that list, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal last month: it has been quietly to integrate the virtual currency into its Braintree payments subsidiary, sources told the WSJ.
CheapAir, though, is leaving all these companies in the dust and moving into new territory – at least for a mainstream brand – by accepting payments in Litecoin and Dogecoin. It will process the payments via GoCoin.
The Australian Tax Office has finally released their tax guidance ruling on the how they will treat Bitcoins and all cryptocurrency, which include Litecoin and Dogecoin. The verdict? Bitcoin, and the rest, will be considered property.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has unparalleled powers over nearly every consumer financial product and service. Given that virtual currencies can serve as a form of electronic money, the CFPB has, predictably, decided to weigh in on this topic.
A CFPB statement this week warned people about the dangers of private digital currencies such as Bitcoin, XRP, and Dogecoin. It started perfectly reasonably, noting that:
In a nutshell, while virtual currencies offer the potential for innovation, a lot of big issues have yet to be resolved – some of which are critical. If you are interested in using or buying virtual currencies, you should be aware of the associated risks.
It went on to list several risks associated with digital currencies, such as hackers, limited investor protection, cost, and outright fraud.
Fair enough. There are certainly legitimate risks associated with using digital currencies, and potential users of these services should understand those risks.
But then the CFPB statement goes on to perpetuate one of the great myths of history:
But virtual currencies aren’t regular money. To begin with, virtual currencies are not issued or backed by the United States or any other government or central bank.
Makes you wonder how the US survived until 1913 without just one government-backed currency.
Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s Director, then piled on by adding: “Virtual currencies are not backed by any government or central bank, and at this point consumers are stepping into the Wild West when they engage in the market.”
Sadly, this resembles what people are taught in school: the US economy was a mess until the federal government finally delivered a single (official) US currency, thus ending the “Wild West” days when US citizens used multiple currencies.
But there’s a hitch. These taught “facts” are dead wrong.
Bitcoin and other virtual currencies can expose users to a number of risks, including hackers and scammers trying to take advantage of hype surrounding the technology, a U.S. consumer protection agency warned Monday.
Bitcoin and other popular virtual currencies such as XPR and Dogecoin offer fewer consumer protections than traditional banks or credit card providers, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in a consumer advisory. The six-page document appears to be aimed largely at new users of virtual currencies, and it includes an explanation of virtual currencies and an advisory on how to buy them.
“Virtual currencies may have potential benefits, but consumers need to be cautious and they need to be asking the right questions,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. “Virtual currencies are not backed by any government or central bank, and at this point consumers are stepping into the Wild West when they engage in the market.”
The gloves are off for Bitcoin legality – Canada has implemented what is the first official national law on Bitcoin use.
Its signing was quiet, notes Christine Duhaime, B.A., J.D., Financial Crime and Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist of Duhaime Law. Last Thursday, royal assent was given by Canada’s Governor General to the discretely-named Bill C-31, An Act to Implement Certain Provisions of the Budget Tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and Other Measures (“Bill C-31“).
Canada has been toying with the idea of regulation for quite some time, as CoinTelegraph reported earlier this month, with the publication of a report entitled “How Should Bitcoin Be Regulated?” by the Montreal Economic Institute in May. Now, however, it would seem theory has definitively been put into practice.
The implications? Duhaime highlights what should be taken away from the pioneering event.
Facebook has approved two new cryptocurrency tipping apps, according to the small team of dogecoin enthusiasts that developed them.
Lead developer Alejandro Caballero announced on reddit that the social networking giant has approved both his Doge Tipping App, which is restricted to dogecoin, and his Multicoin Tipping App, which got the official nod just this morning.
The latter allows 14 altcoins to be used to reward posts on Facebook in a very real sense, rather than merely giving them the standard ‘like’. The full list reads: dogecoin, digibytes, einsteinium, fedoracoin, mintcoin, reddcoin, quark, worldcoin, vertcoin, karmacoin, earthcoin, trollcoin, HTMLcoin and donationcoin.
This is not the first time digital currencies have appeared on Facebook. CoinDesk reported last month on QuickCoin’s wallet app that allows users to send bitcoin to anyone on their contacts list as simply as messaging. However, the new apps look to be the first dedicated tipping services on the platform.
Dogecoin, for those who don’t spend their time indulging in Internet meta-memes, may seem like harmless nerdery. But for one enterprising hacker, it’s created a small fortune—at the price of annoying a lot of systems administrators.
A pair of researchers at Dell’s Secureworks security division have traced a collection of malware-infected storage devices to a hacker who has amassed more than $620,000 worth of the currency, which they say he mined from those hijacked machines and others. They say that stash, largely created in just two months earlier this year, may be the largest cryptocurrency hoard ever mined from the computers of unwitting victims. (Wow.)
“To date, this incident is the single most profitable, illegitimate mining operation,” Pat Litke writes in a blog post explaining the findings. The two researchers concede, however, that they can only prove a small fraction of the coins were mined from the hacked storage boxes, and it’s not clear what other machines—compromised or not—the hacker used to mine such significant Doge riches.
At a bitcoin conference in Miami this January, Jeffrey Tucker, a laissez-faire economist and libertarian icon, made an unexpected observation. “There are people in this room who would think bitcoin is a little old-fashioned,” he quipped. Well, that was fast. After all, it was only five years ago that bitcoin appeared on the scene and provided the world with the first open-source, decentralized alternative to government controlled currencies. And it’s really only in the last year that bitcoin has begun to gain traction as a payment option.
Now bitcoin faces competition. Hundreds of bitcoin knockoffs—“altcoins,” as they are commonly called—have been built.
The software that underpins bitcoin is open-source, so anyone can copy and tweak the code to create their own digital currency. You can even pay someone to do it for you: The owner of a Web site called Coingen, for example, promises to start a new bitcoin clone for anyone who pays a fee of 0.05 bitcoin. All you have to do is give it a name.
Finally - the conference Dogecoin investors have been waiting for.
The amusingly titled "Dogecon" will be hosted in San Francisco on 25 April, with six hours of panels and keynotes.
They'll be bringing together top entrepreneurs, investors, and activists interested in the meme-based cryptocurrency.
And it's one that already boasts a range of speakers, including the creator of the coin, and other top names in crypto.
Registration is free, and aside from the formal events, attendees are set to compete in a costume contest - the most creative Dogecoin-related attire will win - and participate in "other Doge games for Dogecoin prizes".
Would-be attendees can sign up here, and can contribute to prize funds by sending Dogecoin to this address (which at the time of writing holds a balance of zero).
It looks like fun, at least for those who get excited by cryptocurrency conferences, but are the organisers taking Dogecoin's potential seriously?
