Aaron Van Wirdum

The European Commission published a draft directive last week proposing to amend existing anti-money laundering rules to include virtual currencies such as bitcoin. If adopted, exchanges as well as custodial wallet...

The European Commission published a new directive draft last week proposing to extend strict anti-money laundering (AML) regulation to both virtual currency exchange services and custodial wallet providers. Intended...

Urbit, the computing platform described as a “city in the cloud” by its inventors, raised more than $200,000 in four hours through a crowdsale last week. While the crypto-space...

A new chapter in Bitcoin history has begun with the successful 2016 Bitcoin halving.

The second so-called Bitcoin “block halving” is fast approaching. This week, as three-quarters of all bitcoins have been mined, the block subsidy will decrease from 25 bitcoins per block...

Bitcoin, right now, is not really anonymous. While Bitcoin addresses aren't necessarily linked to real-world identities, they can be. Monitoring the unencrypted peer-to-peer network, analysis of the public blockchain and...

Ethereum is in a state of crisis. “The DAO” (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), a code-based and leaderless investment vehicle that crowd-funded a record-breaking 150 million USD worth of ether, was...

Exchanges, brokerages, money transmitters and other service providers that serve as the “on-ramps” and “off-ramps” between bitcoin and fiat currency, form an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. But from a privacy and fungibility perspective, a heavy reliance on these companies is not ideal: Practically all fiat-facing bitcoin-companies are required to apply AML/KYC-checks on their customers.

The Lightning Network is probably the most highly anticipated technological innovation that will be deployed on top of Bitcoin. The payment layer, first proposed by Joseph Poon and Tadge...

Bitcoin right now is  not really anonymous. While Bitcoin addresses aren't necessarily linked to real-world identities, they can be. And it’s possible to learn a lot about who’s using...