Alyssa Hertig

Prediction markets sound crazy. People “bet” on what the future will be, and the reported results end up accurate predicting the future.

Bitcoin is supposed to change how money works, but it may change social systems too. Or so claims ID3 Executive Director and MIT research scientist John H. Clippinger in the latest episode of Epicenter Bitcoin.

Venomous Reddit comments and division may come to mind when you hear the words “blocksize debate”. Yet in the latest episode of Epicenter Bitcoin proof-of-work inventor Adam Back argued technical consensus is still on the table.

Bitcoin never had a clear future, but it looks even cloudier in the midst of the unpleasant, yet weirdly magnetic, blocksize debate.

Ripple has never been a favorite in Bitcoin circles, although it has grabbed the attention of banks and remittance powerhouse Western Union.

Chip Chap, the “e-money converter” app, released a new version that supports worldwide bitcoin purchases via credit card.

Two weeks ago Ethereum launched Frontier, the first live release of the network. And Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin joined the latest Epicenter Bitcoin podcast episode to discuss where the platform is headed next.

Lightning Network is a proposal for an off-blockchain network that would support super-fast transactions and boost Bitcoin scalability.

“The system needs more analysis” might be Dave Hudson's motto as far as Bitcoin mining is concerned. It's not a surprising opinion for an engineer.

What will the Internet look like in 10 years? Or 50? If the Internet's rapid evolution so far is any indication, it won't be the Internet we know today.

Thanks to some proposed tweaks, we could be seeing the Lightning Network a lot sooner than expected.

Senior columnist Michael Casey is leaving his 18-year old seat at the Wall Street Journal to advise the MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative.

Blockchains without bitcoin? The idea has been swirling around in bitcoin conversations as of late

Code to Inspire just launched an Indiegogo campaign for the first coding center in Afghanistan of women, for women, by women, with the goal of prepping Afghan girls for careers in programming.

Augur, the decentralized prediction market, launched its alpha version on Tuesday

OpenBazaar has raised US$1 million in seed funding with the help of Andreesen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and angel investor William Mougayar.

Augur, the decentralized prediction market, made it to the finals of the Exponential Finance 2015 competition, taking place at the Conrad Hotel in Battery Park City in NYC on June 2 and 3.

A landmark report from the United Nation's Office of the High Commissioner warns that restrictions on encryption could dull freedom of expression.

If you add microfinancing, you are reaching anyone with a [friggin’] cell phone who wants a [friggin’] loan.”

Bitcoin users can now buy bitcoin at any of 5,000 vendors in Mexico using Chip Chap the “e-money converter.”

Watch as maybe-cutting-edge technology and retro-80s-machine collide.

Airbitz impressed judges last week in the Inside Bitcoins startup competition, and the wallet walked away as the winner.

Bitcoin exchanges are a risky business to dive into. But they're growing easier to build. Companies AlphaPoint and IdentityMind just partnered up to help Bitcoin exchanges to get off the ground in days.

Augur wants to build a decentralized prediction market, where users make money by betting on the future. It's a form of gambling.

Chip Chap, the app that allows users to convert their money, wants to spread bitcoin throughout Europe. The app is known for tying bitcoin to a network of thousands of ATMs in Spain.

Kaspersky and Dutch police released a program that can help remove ransomware CoinVault.

Cyber•Fund says that Bitcoin will lead to a new cybernetic economy. In a quirky new report, the fund explores how far along this new economy has come and makes some interesting predictions.

The rise of online drug markets have led to a new form of drug dealing. Rather than gravitating to dark alleyways, dealing can now be done sitting in bed in one’s underwear. That doesn't mean drug dealing is any less of a risky businesses though. People get cheated all the time. Case in point: on Tuesday, leaders of Evolution, one of the largest online drug markets, shuttered the drug market and ran off with all user funds.

As a lead developer that has worked on Bitcoin for many years, Gavin Andresen has seen his share of mishaps and debates. In the early days of 2011, one faulty transaction created some billion bitcoins out of thin air—“which was bad,” he said at DevCore Boston. The developer-minded talk dove into the early days of Bitcoin, including the thornier coding problems that they encountered. Andresen also shared some opinions about Bitcoin's mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

When sending payments, popular services PayPal and SWIFT allow users to attach private messages that add an explanation about the payment. Before now, bitcoin services haven't supported this feature. However, CoinSpark just launched a tool that works that accomplishes this for bitcoin transactions. They open sourced this tool so that developers can implement the feature in their own applications.