Which were the best and worst investments of 2014? December 22, 2014 This year low interest rates have seen investors who bet on traditional investments receive returns tantamount to chickenfeed. Perhaps we should have given up before we'd all even started? Perhaps not. Investors who plumped for chocolate, property, the US dollar and Aim-listed company Fitbug would have watched as their money practically grew on trees. Conversely, [...]
Black Friday 2014: From Uranium ore to free guns – five of the weirdest US Black Friday deals November 26, 2014 The US takes its Christmas shopping seriously. Black Friday, the day US shoppers traditionally pull themselves out of their Thanksgiving-induced food comas and hit the high street, was worth $12.3bn (£7.8bn) last year. And while some of the discounts retailers make to entice shoppers are pretty extreme (Walmart, for instance, is selling iPads for $199, [...]
Bitcoin in China and an episode of The Good Wife. What’s the connection? May 21, 2014 CEOs of some of the world's largest Bitcoin exchanges are meeting in Beijing at the Global Bitcoin Summit to discuss the future of the cryptocurrency. At an off-conference event, digital currency news website Coindesk, interviewed the founders of OKCoin and Huobi. Amid the discussion of China's regulatory clampdown and plans for the future, OKCoin's founder Star [...]
The digital currency boom: Britain can claim first-mover advantage by acting now December 11, 2014 The UK has always been at the forefront of financial innovation, and we continue to lead the way today. This year, we became the first Western country to issue sukuk sovereign bonds. But we risk being caught on the hop in the emerging digital world. Within a few years, digital currencies, like Bitcoin, have gone [...]
Ashton Kutcher’s new Bitcoin investment in security platform BitGo| City A.M. June 17, 2014 Bitcoin security platform BitGo has landed $12m in new funding thanks to a host of venture capitalists, as well as Hollywood A-lister Ashton Kutcher. The series A funding round makes BitGo “one of the most well-funded companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem”. Kutcher has sung the praises of the company, saying BitGo is “the best solution [...]
Bitcoin set to take on Argentina’s peso as new exchange launches in Latin America June 2, 2014 Bitcoin and Litecoin exchange Bitex.la has made its official launch, with the intention of being Latin America's "first regional exchange". Bitex.la boasts users in Colombia, Mexico, Spain and the US, but hopes to expand to more countries in the near future. The Buenos Aires-based exchange will also be providing services in Argentina, widely touted as [...]
Richard Branson bets on Bitcoin with new stake in payment firm May 13, 2014 BITPAY, the Atlanta-based Bitcoin payments processor, has reportedly raised $30m (£17.8m), and Richard Branson is one of the investors. In an email cited by the Wall Street Journal, the business magnate took the opportunity to make a statement about virtual currency more widely, saying: “Banking as we know it is in the midst of enormous [...]
Farewell corporate power: How the rise of the blockchain could change everything December 15, 2014 OUR WORLD is full of third parties – the people and organisations that regulate and manage our interactions. The financial world is particularly replete: conduct authorities, prudential bodies, central banks. Even commercial financial institutions themselves often operate as little more than giant third parties, co-ordinating the connections between millions of lenders and borrowers. However, a [...]
Bitcoin platform Mt Gox to close April 16, 2014 THE STRICKEN Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox is to be dismantled after Japanese authorities rejected its plan to revive the business. Two months after Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy, a Tokyo court turned down its request to start civil rehabilitation, and instead ordered the cryptocurrency company into administration. Mark Karpeles, the head of the exchange, said [...]
MIT undergrads land $500,000 of free Bitcoin April 29, 2014 Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have raised $500,000 for a bold new project to create a Bitcoin "ecosystem" at the heart of one of America's most prestigious university's. All 4,528 of MIT's undergraduates will receive $100 worth of Bitcoin this Autumn. Founder of MIT's Bitcoin club Dan Elitzer and computer science [...]