Attention to Bitcoin and blockchain technology has seen a rally this week with a great deal of new news and information appearing in a crush now that it’s the end of June. It’s also seen that Bitcoin markets have been rallying since the Brexit decision where England and Wales voted to leave the European Union and China still appears to be affecting Bitcoin market value–importantly, China is prepping draft legislation which would give bitcoin legal protections for sale and trade, which will no doubt only make things better for the market.

IBM continues its remarkable and increasing interest in blockchain technology by opening a Bluemix Garage for blockchain technology development in SoHo New York. Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton published a factsheet this week that mentions blockchain technology (although it only got one mention in a huge document).

Following in the footsteps of the U.S. Marshals, Australian authorities have sold a large number of bitcoins, totaling approximately $15 million, as the proceeds of a crime.

OpenBazaar, distributed marketplace and interesting project, released version 1.1.7 with some bug fixes and better merchant tools. Blockchain.com got a makeover producing a much better looking website for the venerable Bitcoin web wallet.

Finally, someone decided to make Satoshi Nakamoto, the mythological inventor of Bitcoin, into a bobblehead that is available on Amazon.com (see below for details).

As for the current bitcoin market, value is currently at $639.40 global average (BitcoinAverage.com). This is a bit of a rally over the past week when the market value had fallen to around $575 during the run up to June 22, 2016; then after that date the price began to rise again reaching $685 around June 24, where it then drifted down again to stay between $625 and $660.

China looking into legal protections for bitcoin would reduce regulatory fears for the cryptocurrency in that country–and with China’s apparent influence on the Bitcoin market, this will have many good implications. Image credit Pixabay.

China may extend consumer protection to Bitcoin, virtual goods

A lot of news is coming together right now that the Chinese government is looking over a draft law that would extend consumer protections to Bitcoin and other virtual goods as a proposal to the Civil Code General Provision.

The draft law would treat Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, online gaming tokens and general data-based information with almost the same level of protections as physical and financial assets, thus bringing them under the authority governing property in general.

According to SiliconANGLE’s Duncan Riley, this would be amazing news for Bitcoin as China has generally been problematic in general when it comes to the legality of Bitcoin in the nation—not to mention that China has also had speculative impact on Bitcoin’s community and economy (perhaps even now).

Coverage in NewsBTC cites the draft directly:

Bitcoin and other virtual properties are conferred legal status by the amendments made to Article 111 and Article 108. Article 111 deals with rights associated with movable and immovable properties while the Article 108 is meant for intellectual property rights.

It is expected that this new draft law would interact with an amendment to the Chinese constitution in 2004 that introduced civil laws governing individual’s rights to personal property that extended the law to cover the means of livelihood and lawfully generating income. If bitcoin and virtual property were to fall under this umbrella, it would mean that bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency trading) would be legal and protected in China.

IBM opens New York Bluemix Garage to promote cloud blockchain application development

Blockchain developers in New York City can now look to IBM Corp. for a hackerspace designed to help promote the development of cloud applications, and now also cloud blockchain applications. IBM announced earlier this week a new Bluemix Garage located at Galvanize’s newly launched New York campus in SoHo.

This is part of IBM increasing interest and participation in blockchain-related projects such as the company’s deployment of a Blockchain-as-a-Service product for developers in February 2016 with the IBM Blockchain project, a cloud blockchain environment for regulated industries and IBM joined the Hyperledger Project in December 2015.

Already IBM’s new cloud services (mentioned above) are based on the company’s Hyperledger code and IBM’s cloud platform Bluemix.

According to IBM, Bluemix already launches over 120,000 apps every month and is claimed to be one of the largest open, public cloud deployments in the world. The service features over 140 tools and services including elements fitting into big data, mobile, Watson, analytics, DevOps, security and the Internet of Things (IoT).

IBM has also focused on delivering what developers need to hook into Hyperledger and the Bluemix cloud with what it has called the “Bluemix Garage for blockchain” designed to help business developers design and launch blockchain applications for the cloud.

photo credit: Hillary Clinton via photopin (license)

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mentions “public service blockchain applications” in document

Hillary Clinton, presumptive Democratic Party nominee for U.S. President, published a briefing on technology and innovation, “Hillary Clinton’s Initiative on Technology & Innovation”, earlier this week that mentions blockchain-technology in passing. The mention, just once in the seven thousand word document, appears alongside mentions of “machine learning” and “autonomous vehicles.”

Hillary’s plan pairs our economic interests with our democratic values. We must position American innovators to lead the world in the next generation of technology revolutions –from autonomous vehicles to machine learning to public service blockchain applications –and we must defend universal access to the global, digital marketplace of ideas.

Since the unique invention of Bitcoin in 2009 the blockchain—the foundation technology that provides the cryptogrphically secured globally distributed ledger infrastructure for Bitcoin—has increasingly been seen as a go-to technology for fintech solutions and governments. The potential of blockchain-technology for providing provenance for documents has been floated for Honduras’s land registry (although that project is stalled) and it has been suggested as a potential method for securing e-voting, as seen used by the Danish Liberal Alliance party.

The Bitcoin blockchain especially—if not blockchain-technology in general—has considerably more practical functions than just those above for public service and governance applications. As blockchains can be used to provide proof-of-publication, -existence, -modification and so on, a properly secured blockchain could be used to provide a source of authenticity, veracity and source of authority for any number of documents including identity.

As for the participants seeking major party nomination in the race for U.S. President, this also makes Clinton the first to mention blockchain technology in any sense (although none have shown much or any interest in Bitcoin except for Republican candidate Rand Paul).

$15 million worth in bitcoins sold successfully Australian-first auction

Tuesday of this week, financial services firm Ernst and Young announced the successful auction of 24,518 BTC (approx. $15 million USD) as the proceeds confiscated from a crime committed by an unidentified Australian man convicted in 2014. This is the second largest auction of bitcoins by a government agency in the world after the U.S. Marshals auctioned off 144,000 bitcoins (approx. $91.9 million USD) seized in 2014 from the Silk Road dark web marketplace.

“We are pleased to report that the auctions were highly successful and all bidders have been notified of the auction outcomes,” Ernst and Young transactions partner Adam Nikitins said in a statement cited at Mashable.

“The process was very competitive and demonstrates the growing appetite for digital assets such as Bitcoin. The value of Bitcoin increased significantly over the past month, however bidding remained strong.”

This is the same sort of outcome seen during the U.S. Marshal auction of bitcoins in 2014 where 45 bidders aimed to get portions of the bitcoin haul but only one bidder won—who was later revealed to be Tim Draper, who also won the second auction of coins.

OpenBazaar version 1.1.7 released with improvements, bug fixes

The experimental distributed marketplace that uses bitcoin as its exchange currency, OpenBazaar just released version 1.1.7 with the release notes are available on the website as well its installers.

The major change in this update is an indicator that allow users to quickly see transactions that need attention by moving those transactions to the top of the list. A bug with user image scaling has been fixed.

Also, the client now has improved internationalization (otherwise known as localization). This means that more segments of the client can be translated so that users who read different languages can now better understand more. This will also aid when products have international shipping so that merchant and buyer will have a better idea of the entire process.

Along with these improvements, multiple bug fixes have been indicated including not blocking your own page when it is set to NSFW when your own preferences are set to block NSFW (there’s an amusing problem). The minimum Bitcoin price has been reduced to 0.0002 BTC (approx. $0.13 USD) from 0.002 BTC (approx. $1.28 USD) allowing for much smaller cost purchases.

Check out the OpenBazaar project on its website, download the client and take a look at what can be bought from merchants across the world.

Blockchain Ltd. has a new Blockchain.com website designed to give flash and pizzazz to its Bitcoin web wallet. Image credit: Blockchain.com screenshot.

Blockchain.com just got a website makeover and it’s quite good

One of the oldest Bitcoin web wallet services Blockchain Ltd. (Blockchain Luxembourg S.A.) has given its Blockchain.com website a massive makeover changing the way that consumers see its service. Originally launched in 2011 as Blockchain.info, which is still in operation and Blockchain.com redirects there, that website has always been somewhat minimalistic and designed for function over style.

Since that launch, Blockchain Ltd. has boasted over 7 million wallets created and in excess of 60 million bitcoin transactions. The company claims that it is believed over 65 million individuals and merchants use bitcoin at this moment. Of course, Blockchain.info and wallets like it are intrinsic to allowing those individuals and merchants exchange in bitcoin.

The Blockchain.info web wallet is free to use and singing up for it quite easy. It even has a mobile app.

This is an artists rendition of Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin, available as a bobblehead on Amazon.com.

Introducing: Satoshi Nakamoto the Bobblehead

For that Bitcoiner in your life who already has everything, here’s the gift that will keep on giving—or at lead bobbing. It’s an actual, real-to-life Satoshi Nakamoto bobblehead sold on Amazon.com for $14.95 USD from CoinedBits.

The bobblehead renders the inventor of Bitcoin into a handsome Japanese man with a moustache and a carefully trimmed chin-goatee, shoulder length hair and golden sunglasses modelled into the Bitcoin currency symbol. The bobblehead Satoshi also wears a smart business man’s suit and red tie, standing atop a golden bitcoin with the word “SATOSHI” written in red on the base.

It may not be Christmas yet, but perhaps someone wants to make an exception?

Featured image credit: Dawson/Bloomberg News