Saturday, March 22, 2014

KnCMiner Sells $2 Million Worth of Dogecoin and Litecoin Mining Rigs in Just Four Hours

The continued interest in alternative cryptocurrencies to bitcoin is clear to see Swedish-based KnCMiner selling $2 million worth of scrypt-based mining rigs in just four hours. The Titan is the company's first scrypt-based mining rig and costs $10,000, meaning the company sold 200 units in the first four hours it was available to pre-order on the website. The company also sells the Neptune bitcoin mining rig which also costs $10,000, and in December the company revealed it had sold $8 million worth of Neptune hardware in just 24 hours, claiming the Neptune rig would be able to mine 2.1 bitcoins a day - then worth over $2,000 but now worth around $1,300. "The scrypt mining market has grown over the last six months and we have been watching it very closely. The time is now right for the launch of our new offering," the company said on its website. Bitcoin uses the SHA256 cryptographic hash function but most of the newer cryptocurrencies use the scrypt function, meaning that you can still use your GPU and CPU to mine the coins - something which is no longer really possible in bitcoin mining. Popular scrypt-based alt-coins include litecoin (the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency) and dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocurrency. Until recently there no one was selling specially-built mining rigs for scrypt-based alt-coins as the return on investment on such coins was not at the level where people were willing to invest a lot of money in hardware like Titan.

Monday, March 3, 2014

KnC and Chicago Sun-Times Launch Pre-funded Bitcoin Wallet

Mining hardware maker KnCMiner has launched its first bitcoin wallet, with an interesting twist. As part of the launch, the first 100,000 downloads will be awarded with a few bucks to spend. The KnC Bitcoin Wallet app is available on the Google Play Store and it’s free. Needless to say, there’s no app for iOS or Windows Phone. The wallets are pre-funded and it appears that the first 1,000 downloads will be awarded with $5 each, while the next 95,000 wallets will get $1 each (at the current BTC/USD exchange rate).

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Bitcoin Wallet by Andreas Schildbach

Bitcoin Wallet is a great android app Description Have your Bitcoins always with you, in your pocket! You pay by quickly scanning a QR-code. As a merchant, you receive payments reliably and instantly. Bitcoin Wallet is the first mobile Bitcoin app, and arguably also the most secure! FEATURES: • No registration, web service or cloud needed! This wallet is de-centralized and peer to peer. • Display of Bitcoin amount in BTC and mBTC. • Conversion to and from national currencies. • Sending and receiving of Bitcoin via NFC, QR-codes or Bitcoin URLs. • Address book for regularly used Bitcoin addresses. • When you're offline, you can still pay via Bluetooth. • System notification for received coins. • App widget for Bitcoin balance. You can find more about Bitcoin at http://bitcoin.org If you want to contribute to Bitcoin Wallet, the project is located at https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet License: GPLv3 Use at your own risk! http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html --

Friday, February 28, 2014

Auroracoin Hits 3rd Place in Mineable Market Cap –

Auroracoin, hit 3rd place in terms of market capitalization today. It’s up over 300% in the last 24 hours, a phenomenal leap even for the famously volatile cryptosphere. With a price of $15 per coin, its market cap of nearly $160 million gives it a total value of just under half that of Litecoin and over twice that of its nearest rival Peercoin Auroracoin will have a total issuance of 21 million coins, half of which will be evenly distributed to every Icelandic citizen on the 25th of March. As Iceland’s population is around 320k people, each Icelander will get 31.8 AUR. At the current rate of exchange, that would be around $477 freely given to each citizen! Needless to say, such a generous giveaway would make headlines, not just in Iceland but around the world. Although price has fallen back to just under $13 since I began this article, that would still make for a pleasant $413 gift. It remains to be seen what the final value will be at the time of the “airdrop” when the coins are distributed. But if the Auroracoin price remains high, the giveaway should certainly create a lot of excitement and positive publicity. As Bitcoin tends to have high penetration in Scandinavian countries, probably due to near-ubiquitous internet access and relatively familiarity with information technology, I expect the Auroracoin adoption rate to be significant. Needless to say, such a generous giveaway would make headlines, not just in Iceland but around the world. Although price has fallen back to just under $13 since I began this article, that would still make for a pleasant $413 gift. It remains to be seen what the final value will be at the time of the “airdrop” when the coins are distributed. But if the Auroracoin price remains high, the giveaway should certainly create a lot of excitement and positive publicity. What makes this possible is that, for better or worse (in this case certainly the former), Iceland has an extensive identity database, of which certain information is public. This allows the Auroracoin team to allocate the 31.8 AUR to each citizen. Although some may ignore the gift, many are likely being curious enough to embark on a journey of cryptocurrency discovery – they’ll need to if they intend to convert their prize into fiat for “everyday” spending. If all goes well, the coin’s creator, “Baldur Friggjar Odinsson,” will deserve congratulations for promoting cryptocurrency via his innovative distribution plan. Auroracoin with the ticker AUR can be bought at the crypto exchange "crypto rush"

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Full Bitcoin ATMs will arrive in U.S. cities this month, says Robocoin

The maker of a Bitcoin ATM machine says the devices will arrive in Seattle and Austin in February. But earlier such predictions have yet to materialize, possibly due to regulatory or business constraints. Las Vegas-based Robocoin, which installed the first permanent bitcoin ATM in Canada last year, claims that residents of Seattle and Austin will have access to machines of their own by the end of February. According to Reuters, Robocoin says that the machines, which allow users to swap dollars for bitcoins and vice versa, will come equipped with scanners that can identify users by their driver’s licenses or passports.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Adult Industry Giant Brazzers Turns On Bitcoin

adult industry behemoth Brazzers has started integrating bitcoin into its massive network of adult websites. The first of the company’s network sites to begin testing bitcoin integration is I Know That Girl. bitcoin is now an available payment option at checkout. Brazzers is owned by MindGeek an international information technology firm, specializing in highly trafficked websites. NewsBTC had reported in January that the company was considering accepting Bitcoin on its lucrative network of sites.