UPDATED 15:05 EDT / APRIL 16 2014

Bitcoin Weekly 2014 April 16: Upgrade to fix Heartbleed bug, Bitcoin value exceeds $500, Amazon not interested in BTC, Reddit’s /r/technology rejecting ‘Bitcoin’ headlines

bitcoin-weeklyWith last week’s Heartbleed bug still bright in the minds of Internet users, if you run a Bitcoin client it is a good time for you to immediately upgrade to 0.9.1 if you have not already.

As fears of a crackdown from the People’s Bank of China begin to subside, bitcoin market value has risen above $500 once again. Amazon.com representatives mention indifference towards adopting bitcoin for payments with no plans to adopt the virtual currency. Mods of Reddit’s /r/technology are silently deleting posts that mention Bitcoin in the headline.

All this and more in today’s Bitcoin Weekly.

Upgrade now to Bitcoin Core 0.9.1 to fix Heartbleed

Last week the Heartbleed SSL bug hit the news rounds and the Bitcoin Core development team churned up a patch that fixes it in short order. Bitcoin.org, and other websites, urge users to upgrade immediately to version 0.9.1.

Download Bitcoin Core 0.9.1 from Bitcoin.org.

Bitcoin market value exceeds $500 once again

For the past few weeks, Bitcoin market value has been depressed following rumors and speculation involving Chinese regulation. From mid- to late-March the market value fell from $600 down below $500 and only recently has the market value begun to rise again. Bitcoin value exceeded $500 yesterday, April 15.

China has been a powerful driver of the market value of bitcoins and is thought to be the reason for the value reaching and exceeding $1,000 in 2013.

Since then, The People’s Bank of China has defined the legal use of bitcoins, several money processors have stopped working with Chinese exchanges, and some exchanges have changed how they do business. The result has been a great deal of volatility in bitcoin market value and trends that lead to speculation based on Chinese interests.

Rumors still circulate that the PBOC may crack down on bitcoin transactions, but recently the governor of the PBOC, Zhou Xiaochuan made remarks regarding Bitcoin and China that appear to ease some concerns.

“It is out of the question of banning Bitcoin as it is not started by central bank,” Xiaochuan said, quoted by MoneyMorning.com at a regional economic conference. “Bitcoin is more a kind of tradable and collectible asset, such as stamps rather than a payment currency.”

Amazon rejects Bitcoin adoption plans

Amazon’s representatives recently stated that the e-commerce company has no current plans to accept bitcoin in the future. This follows a trend with big brands showing little interest in adopting Bitcoin, even with other segments joining the bandwagon.

The company’s payments head Tom Taylor told Re/code that Amazon executives had considered bitcoin, but saw little support from the customer base.

The best known online retail adopters of Bitcoin so far have been Overstock.com and Tigerdirect.com. So far, though, larger outlets such as Ebay, Walmart.com, Target.com, and other big names have shown little or no interest in accepting the virtual currency.

Re/code’s Jason Del Rey also cited unnamed industry execs who expect Amazon is instead seeking to eventually build its own credit full-blown credit payment network to compete with the likes of Visa and MasterCard. While bitcoin provides an excellent payment network of its own, niche as it is, the market cap for Bitcoin is just barely in excess of $6 billion whereas Visa tops out at $131 billion and MasterCard at $118 billion. As a result, Bitcoin could still be too niche to woo big companies like Amazon.

Reddit mods in /r/technology are censoring posts related to Bitcoin

The popular /r/technology subforum of social media site Reddit censors a number of words that if present in a headline will cause the post to be silently deleted. The Daily Dot reports that “Bitcoin” is among 50 words that could get your post quietly swept into the dustbin, a list that includes “NSA,” “net neutrality,” “Comcast,” and “Snowden.”

The offending party erasing said posts is a bot whose job it is to detect these words and phrases and automatically remove the post. The full list of delete-worthy words was compiled by Reddit user creq and posted in /r/undelete, a subforum dedicated to tracking submissions deleted by mods.

As Bitcoin is itself a technology, it commonly becomes a subject-of-note in talks of technology. However, its intersection with politics and economics often make discussions of the virtual currency wind away from discussions of Bitcoin itself and more towards its adoption or cultural and economic impact. In the past, this fact has caused strain with subforums such as /r/technology on Reddit.

“Dogecoin,” Bitcoin’s spiritual-descendant named after an Internet meme dog, is also delete-worthy on /r/technology.

Malwarebytes resumes accepting Bitcoin

Malwarebytes, developer of anti-malware scanning and protection software, has resumed accepting bitcoins after a brief hiatus. The ability to pay for the software in bitcoins disappeared for a while after a website change recently, but it has been reinstated.

Malwarebytes teamed up with Coinbase to process payments, customers need only click on the “Bitcoin Accepted Here” symbol found on the premium sale page of the company’s website. Currently only the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Pro suite (priced at $24.95) is available for BTC, but other products are planned to become available in the future.

The company announced its initial acceptance of bitcoins on February 6, 2014.


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