By Jessica Roy 5/15 1:17pm

It's All About the Bitcoins

Mr. Karpeles (Photo: Twitter)

Warrant Reveals Homeland Security Seized Mt. Gox’s Dwolla Account for ‘Unlicensed Money Transmitting’

Yesterday the Department of Homeland Security shut down Bitcoin trading platform Mt. Gox’s ability to accept or send transfers using Dwolla, a mobile payment service. A representative from Dwolla told Betabeat that the DHS had sent them a “seizure warrant” for the account, but declined to provide further detail. Now, in the warrant, obtained by Ars Technica, the reason for the seizure has been revealed: DHS believes Mt. Gox is operating an “unlicensed money transmitting business.” Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/14 4:07pm

It's All About the Bitcoins

(Photo: Silicon Angle)

Department of Homeland Security Shuts Down Dwolla Payments to and From Mt. Gox

Update: Warrant Reveals Homeland Security Seized Mt. Gox’s Dwolla Account for ‘Unlicensed Money Transmitting’

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have shut down the ability to use Dwolla, a mobile payment service, to withdraw and deposit money into Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform. A Dwolla representative confirmed the move to Betabeat. Chris Coyne, cofounder of OKCupid, posted a screenshot of an email he received from Dwolla, stating that due to recent orders from the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla cannot complete the bank transfer to Mt. Gox. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 5/03 8:24am

Linkages

Why won't it work?! (Photo: Rob Bateman, www.nukomp.com, via Flickr)

Booting Up: Does Your Smart TV Work? Have You Tried Connecting It to the Internet?

Twice as many households have “smart tvs” as streaming devices–but only 69 percent of them are actually connected to the Internet. Grandparents! [GigaOm]

“When I got here, I was very emotionally touched by all the great companies in this area….These were all the companies I had heard of since I was a kid. I felt like I should be here. Like I belong.” [New York Times]

Here is how you remove tagged Instagram posts from your profile. [Wired]

Earlier this year, Mt. Gox and CoinLab teamed up in a partnership to reach the American market more efficiently. Now CoinLab is suing for $75 million in damages. [Gawker]

Do you trust your friends enough to give them the extra set of keys to your Facebook account? [L.A. Times]

By Adrianne Jeffries 2/13/12 3:10pm

Bitcoin Drama

(falkvinge.net)

Banking Partners Force Paxum to Drop Bitcoin Due to ‘Potential Risk’

Established banks and payments processors are skittish about the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, it would seem, prompting Canadian e-payments service Paxum to drop its Bitcoin clients last week.

Paxum, an e-commerce payments solution popular with adult web sites, started working with Bitcoin exchanges more than a year ago. Paxum hooked up with leading Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in December 2010, major Bitcoin exchange Tradehill in July 2011, and more recently with BitInstant, a service that speeds up Bitcoin transactions by fronting customers the credit, and others.

But on Friday afternoon, the operators of Paxum’s Bitcoin-related accounts received an email with the subject line “Bitcoin termination.” Paxum’s banking partners, which include MasterCard, had called off the Bitcoin party.

Paxum declined to name the partners that were responsible for the change. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 12/13/11 9:09am

Bitcoin Mania

bitinstant map

Brooklyn-Based Bitcoin Startup BitInstant Raises Seed Round

Brooklyn-based BitInstant, a startup that provides temporary credit in order to make Bitcoin transactions faster, has raised an undisclosed sum of seed funding from an angel investor. “We sold 15 percent of our company to Roger Ver, CEO of MemoryDealers, which is probably the largest used computer parts site on the West Coast,” co-founder Charlie Shrem told Betabeat by Gchat.* “He bought in for an undisclosed sum and is now our director of marketing and Asian operations, as he’s based in Tokyo.”

The original plan was to have three or four investors, but Mr. Ver offered in full and wanted to be on the team, Mr. Shrem said. “An offer I could not refuse!” Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 10/31/11 7:00am

Early Holidays

(bitcoinsforchristmas.com)

Introducing the ‘Bitcoins for Christmas’ Campaign

Josh Strike of Bitcoin gambling house StrikeSapphire Casino and Mark Miele of thebitcointrader.com just launched a merry marketing push that the entrepreneurs hope will be considered “a Christmas present to the whole Bitcoin community.” Aw, you guys! Bitcoins for Christmas encourages Bitcoin users to put some digital currency in the digital stockings of their families and friends, sending lucky recipients an electronic candygram with instructions on how to pick up their BTC. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 9/15/11 9:23am

It's All About the Bitcoins

bitcoin banner

Despite Cyberattacks and Overspeculation, Bitcoin Economy Continues to Evolve

Bitcoin has been trading at the depressed price of between $6 and $7 USD for the past few weeks, which seems bad for the once high-flying digital currency that had climbed to $33 USD at one point. Hardly a week has gone by without some extreme crisis. In addition, New Yorker finance columnist James Surowiecki, wrote a long treatment of Bitcoin for the MIT Technology Review in which he notes pessimistically that “the number of actual transactions conducted in bitcoins, and the value of those transactions, has been shrinking.” Read More