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Cryptocurrency  Bithumb and Korbit, two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the South Korean market, have announced that Kookmin Bank deposits and withdrawals will be disabled by the end of January. Shinhan Bank Will Support Cryptocurrency Exchanges Kookmin Bank, the biggest financial institution in South Korea, has decided not to support cryptocurrency exchanges and provide virtual bank accounts to cryptocurrency investors. On South Korean trading platforms, each investor is provided with a virtual bank account with which they can withdraw and deposit Korean won, without having to directly move funds from and to actual bank accounts. Over the past few weeks, local investors were concerned with the abrupt decision of Kookmin Bank to close down virtual bank accounts launched on South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges. Many traders feared that other banks would follow the decision of Kookmin Bank and simply cut financial links to cryptocurrency exchanges. Earlier this wee

Bitpay  On December 14, 2017, BitPay  announced  a first step toward enforcing the payment protocol: All orders of the  BitPay Card  will require payments from Payment Protocol-compatible wallets, such as BitPay’s own wallet and a few others. This announcement came after an initial notice in November 2017, when BitPay first  announced  that BitPay invoices would soon require payments from wallets compatible with the  Bitcoin Payment Protocol . BitPay’s move has since been met with resistance by some wallet developers that don’t support the Bitcoin Payment Protocol; some are suggesting that BitPay is abusing its leading position in the payment processing space and putting user security at risk. “We absolutely do not support BitPay in aggressively using their dominant position of market share to bully wallet providers into supporting their business plans or bully users into a system that degrades their privacy and the fungibility of bitcoin as a whole,” stated bitcoin wallet  Sam

Ripple What is Ripple? Technically speaking, is Ripple a cryptocurrency in the mold of Bitcoin? The short answer is probably “no,” but that doesn’t stop it from often being lumped into that same category. What is Ripple? Originally released in 2012 as a  subsequent  iteration of Ripplepay, Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network. Using a common ledger that is managed by a network of independently validating servers that constantly compare transaction records, Ripple doesn't rely on the energy and computing intensive proof-of-work used by Bitcoin. Ripple is based on a shared public database that makes use of a consensus process between those validating servers to ensure integrity. Those validating servers can belong to anyone, from individuals to banks. The Ripple protocol (token represented as XRP) is meant to enable the near instant and direct transfer of money between two parties. Any type of currency c

Bitcoin  Well, somebody bought the dip. Just as critics were rushing to proclaim that the bitcoin bubble had burst, the markets staged a $159 billion recovery. The rally was headlined by the bitcoin price, which rebounded from its sub-$10,000 fling and is currently flirting with $12,000. Several other top-tier coins, meanwhile, returned single day increases in excess of 40 percent. Source: CoinMarketCap Altogether, the  cryptocurrency market cap  clawed its way back to $574 billion, representing a 38 percent recovery from Wednesday’s intraday low of $415 billion. Bitcoin Price Eyes $12,000 Wednesday served as a trial-by-fire for recent bitcoin investors, some of whom had purchased the flagship cryptocurrency for $19,000 at the height of the rally in mid-December. Bitcoin Price Chart The correction forced the  bitcoin price  below $10,000 for the first time since early December, but Thursday’s rally enabled bitcoin to regain a bit of the ground it had lo

Bitcoin  Bitcoin has done what regulators haven’t been able to accomplish — getting cybercriminals to lay off of cryptocurrencies as the ransom payment du jour in malware attacks. Bitcoin’s price swings over the past few days — from below $10,000 24 hours ago to more than $11,500 today — have stoked emotions ranging from fear of a bubble bursting to euphoria for a buying opportunity. But recent volatility has also unearthed an unlikely trend, causing cybercriminals to forego the sci-fi effect in ransomware demands and name their price in local currency rather than bitcoin. It’s not that bad actors have stopped developing malware, but due to an inability to properly value the cryptocurrency amid the wild ride between Q4 2017 and this week, they’re increasingly turning to more stable fiat money instead to protect their bottom line,  according to a Proofpoint report . The below chart reflects activity for the 90-day period leading up to mid-December. While i

script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"> Bitcoin  A Credit Suisse report downplayed fears that the growth of the bitcoin mining industry would initiate an “environmental armageddon.” Bitcoin Mining Not an ‘Environmental Armageddon’ script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"> The emergence of bitcoin as an economic force has had a correlative effect on the  bitcoin mining industry , as increased profitability has attracted more miners to the ecosystem. This increased hashpower has come at the price of increased electricity consumption, provoking consternation among environmental activists and leading some critics to warn that bitcoin could cause a global energy crisis. However, a new report from Credit Suisse Group throws shade on those apocalyptic predictions. Last Week, Morgan Stanley  predicted  that cryptocurrency miners could consume as much as 140 terawatt-hou

A recent study ( PDF ) from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance and blockchain analytics company Elliptic explored the “bitcoin laundering” ecosystem. In the study, Elliptic’s forensic analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain and other publicly available data were used to track the flows of illicit funds from 2013 to 2016. “This study aimed to identify where individuals turn in order to cash out or transmit bitcoins (BTC) acquired from illicit entities and to discover typologies for criminals ‘laundering’ bitcoins,” the report says. The study describes bitcoin laundering as a special type of money laundering that exists within the Bitcoin network where a user moves some bitcoins to a new address in a manner that obscures the original source of funds. The conversion of bitcoins into fiat currency on exchanges that lack adequate anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) policies can also fall under the category