Bitcoin continues to receive the college treatment with the opening of The Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering at Imperial College London. This adds to the ever increasing number of colleges and universities opening programs to examine and develop Bitcoin-related technologies from MIT to Stanford University.

The distributed ledger (aka blockchain) technology startup R3 announced last week that it added 13 new banks to its initiative.

It seems that virtual reality is producing an interesting effect for bitcoin payments, at least when it comes to pornography…  International pornographic powerhouse Naughty America recently re-enabled bitcoin payments for naked flesh because, according to the company, the addition of VR porn produced an increased interest in paying for porn with bitcoin.

The 21 Bitcoin Computer caught much of the Bitcoin community by surprise when it was first announced because 21 Inc. itself launched with an air of mystery. The 21 Bitcoin Computer, however, is not mysterious: it’s a Linux-based barebones computer kit similar to the Raspberry Pi with a bitcoin mining apparatus attached. Due to the swell of interest and mystery, the 21 Bitcoin Computer has remained number one on Amazon.com’s server category.

Finally, the world’s first-listed Bitcoin mining company DigitalBTC is getting out of the game, following a trend of bitcoin mining companies finding it harder to keep making money with the lower market price of BTC.

Today Bitcoin maintains an average of $238 per BTC up from $230 a week ago; the price has stayed on average within that band for that period of time as well.

Imperial College London opens The Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering

The number of BItcoin-related college departments expanded this week with the Faculty of Engineering of the Imperial College London announcement about the college’s new Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering. The Center’s launch follows what the faculty calls the success of a recent Bitcoin Forum.

“With an overwhelming response from staff and students,” the college wrote in the announcement, “the Centre will now coordinate research grants directed at designing and engineering improvements to the protocols that underpin blockchain technology. It will also coordinate application-based funding directed at prototyping blockchain-based solutions across multiple domains.”

Professor William Knottenbelt, from the university’s Department of Computing, has been named director of the Centre. Speaking to CoinDesk, he said that the two main focuses of the Centre would be “conducting research directed at designing and engineering improvements to the protocols underpinning blockchain technology” and “exploring novel blockchain-based applications across multiple domains.”

With the addition of this department, Imperial College London joins MIT, which recently launched the Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. Interested students can also look to numerous colleges expanding Bitcoin- and cryptocurrency-related courses including New York University, Duke University and Stanford University–Princeton University also offers a Bitcoin course on Coursera.

R3 represents the first initiative by multiple large financial systems to envision fintech solutions using blockchain-powered technology. Source: r3cev.com screenshot

R3’s distributed ledger initiative adds 13 additional bank members

R3CEV LLC (R3), a fintech startup that deals in distributed ledger technology (otherwise known as private blockchains), announced 13 additional bank members added to its council of thought. This move brings the total number of member banks involved in R3’s private blockchain initiative to 22 total.

The banks that have joined R3 include Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Citi, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, SEB, Societe Generale and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

R3’s initial launch announcement, two weeks ago, cited the startup’s goal as a collaborative joint partnership between financial institutions to innovate private blockchain technology for financial markets.

“The addition of this new group of banks demonstrates widespread support for innovative distributed ledger solutions across the global financial services community, and we’re delighted to have them on board,” says David Rutter, CEO of R3. “We have placed an emphasis on working with the market from day one, and our partners recognise that a collaborative model is the best way to quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively deliver these new technologies to global financial markets.”

Blockchain technology has already proven extremely effective as it is the global, peer-to-peer, distributed ledger system that underpins Bitcoin and has kept the network secure and functional since 2009. As a result, financial technology companies have been looking at how to use distributed ledgers to their own ends. R3’s mission statement is to use this partnership of banks to deliver regulatory expertise, engineering and experimentation to private blockchain technology to leverage it for enterprise-scale solutions designed with financial institutions in mind.

Naughty America bringing the bitcoin back… Showing an unexpected link between VR pornography and cryptocurrency. Source: Naughty America website screenshot

Porn and bitcoin: Naughty America accepting BTC again

Internet pornography video production company Naughty America (La Touraine, Inc.) recently reintroduced bitcoin payments after a long hiatus apparently due to the release of virtual reality porn leading to an increased interest in cryptocurrency. Naughty America originally ditched bitcoins as a payment option in 2014 due to a lack of interest.

The return of bitcoin payments emerged as a surprise when discovered by Reddit user Logical007 early morning September 24 this year.

To explain, Naughty America’s CEO Andreas Hronopoulos spoke to CoinDesk to reveal that the reappearance of bitcoin payments happened as a result of the company’s launch of “virtual porn.”

“We found VR is geared towards a Millennial audience,” he said, ”they seem to have an interest in bitcoin – it aligns more with how they think, how they spend their money.”

Naughty America’s bitcoin pricing schedule also became an issue when users discovered that although the company processes BTC through BitPay the prices for bitcoin payments were much higher than other methods. A check of the prices showed that one month ($29.95) was 20 percent higher than the credit card option and annual subscriptions cost an extra $48.

This was explained by Hronopoulos as A/B testing, but e-mails to the company’s customer service arm suggested that it was to cover processing costs.

21 Bitcoin Computer still #1 in Amazon.com server category

Announced last week for pre-order, the 21 Bitcoin Computer from 21 Inc. rapidly hit the number one position in Amazon.com’s server category–although the $399.99 Linux-based minimal computer does not ship until November 16, 2015.

The 21 Bitcoin Computer maintains its #1 spot in Amazon.com’s server category. Source: Amazon.com

When 21 first appeared on the scene, this mysterious mining company began with suggesting bitcoin mining hardware installed in every device from mobile phones to household appliances, such as toasters.

While all that suggested a low-power and Internet of Things bitcoin mining market coming out of 21, the release of the 21 Bitcoin Computer reveals a totally new angle for IoT: a developer play that proceeds bringing bitcoin payments and Bitcoin blockchain technology onto the scene using smart contracts.

DigitalBTC closes up mining operation, opens up fintech remittance

DigitalBTC (Digital CC Ltd.) has the distinction of being the world’s first-listed Bitcoin mining company, but now it’s ending that role to enter the fintech remittance space. SiliconANGLE writer Duncan Riley reports that DigitalBTC is getting out because, like many bitcoin mining operations, the company is unable to make money in the industry due to the dropping market value of BTC.

“As much as we believe that Bitcoin as a financial instrument can be a valuable tool, we basically have the opinion that it is going to take longer than we thought,” said DigitalBTC Executive chairman Zhenya Tsvetnenko.

“When we saw the big drop in the value of Bitcoin, just like a traditional miner, we had to look for something else to do. We have been slowly winding down our bitcoin mining operations and we will be progressively moving away from using it as a currency.”

The company has moved to start testing an app called AirPocket, which focuses on blockchain-powered remittance focusing on providing services to the people of Latin America.

Featured image credit: via Associated Press