Andrew Yang

Today marks the Bitcoin white paper's 12th birthday: on October 31st of 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published to the Cryptography Mailing List the nine pages that made history. Since then, the world’s first peer-to-peer electronic cash system has come a long way.  Since Satoshi sent the first 50 Bitcoin transaction to Hal Finney in 2009, the network has grown exponentially, counting approximately 800,000 daily active addresses today. Bitcoin has demonstrated incredible resilience in regards to its n

Coinbase is finally looking to sponsor two Bitcoin developers through their Crypto Community Fund for the first time, the company announced Thursday.  "Unlike most cryptocurrency projects, Bitcoin launched without a fundraise, while bootstrapping an entire industry. The open source community has provided critical support for Bitcoin development, with some support from donations from industry organizations and academic institutions. Our goal is to similarly support developers who are committed t

The implementation of the Schnorr/Taproot consensus rules has been merged into Bitcoin Core. However, the upgrade's activation method has yet to be determined. The pull request was originally created by Bitcoin Core contributor Pieter Wuille on September 13th and has gone through extensive review and testing over the past month. Over 150 developers also participated in a 7-week review club for the proposal which was led by Anthony Towns back in November of 2019. This upgrade has been highly an

Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock (RSK) has integrated MakerDAO's DAI through the RSK-Ethereum Token Bridge, as per an announcement on October 6th. The dollar-pegged stablecoin is now accessible to all Bitcoin-backed applications on RSK. RSK is a federated sidechain aimed at enabling Ethereum-like smart contract capabilities for Bitcoin. RBTC, the sidechain's native token, is pegged 1:1 to main chain bitcoin.  rDAI Brings Cheaper Fees RSK notes cheaper fees as one fo the main benefits of rDAI on R

On June 30th, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released the outcomes of the June FATF Plenary, a report that concluded a 12-month review of cryptocurrency businesses as they prepare for the Travel Rule and its extended information sharing requirements. The result back then: the FATF would extend the preparation period by another 12 months, allowing the industry more time to become compliant with the Travel Rule and avoid penalties. The year-long extension did not come as a surprise: “I e

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has charged five entities and three individuals that own BitMEX with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating anti-money laundering procedures. Among those charged are the founders of the company, Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed. According to Bloomberg, Samuel Reed was arrested in Massachusetts this morning. The cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform was founded in 2014. BitMEX is registered in the Seychelles but has o

Cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer now supports cross-border trading on its platform, as per a release shared with the BTC Times. The new feature will give the exchange's European users direct access to one of the largest Bitcoin markets in the world: Japan. Bringing Euros to the Japanese Bitcoin Market The Japanese cryptocurrency market is one of the largest in the world, with over two million active addresses in September, according to statistics shared by bitbank. According to bitFlyer, appr

Today, a patent involving the acceleration of cryptographic operations on elliptic curves has expired. Invented by Gallant, Lambert, and Vanstone, this technique is commonly referred to as GLV Endomorphism and can now be activated in Bitcoin Core in order to improve the speed and efficiency of Bitcoin’s signature verification. Hal Finney, GLV Endomorphism, and Patents The use of GLV Endomorphism was first explored by Hal Finney, one of Bitcoin’s earliest contributors and the first person to r