Bitcoin has ended the year down nearly 80 percent and further still from its highest level, but a number of investors are predicting better days ahead. The cryptocurrency started the year on $13,609.79, surging to $16,741.48 on Jan. 7 before dropping to $3,689.11 as of 9:15 p.m. EST on Dec. 31. Although there was a small ...

Apple Inc. will be ringing in 2019 with declining sales, but there might be hope ahead as the first iPhone XI leaks appear. The company launched its latest range of iPhones in September, but though they may have wowed with their specifications, they also wowed many with their excessively high prices as well. By Nov. 12, ...

The data sharing scandals surrounding Facebook Inc. throughout the year may have just gotten worse. A new report finds that leading Android apps are sharing user data with the social media giant in breach of European Union law. That’s according to a new report released Saturday by Privacy International that found 61 percent of popular Android apps tested ...

Cryptocurrency startup Bakkt LLC., the brainchild of New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc., today said it has raised $182.5 million in its first round of funding. Investors include Boston Consulting Group, CMT Digital, Eagle Seven, Galaxy Digital, Goldfinch Partners, Alan Howard, Horizons Ventures, Microsoft’s M12, Pantera Capital, PayU, Naspers, Protocol Ventures and naturally Intercontinental ...

The European Union is an unexpected entrant into the world of bug bounties, funding 14 of them for open-source software projects on which the organization relies. Bug bounties are payments provided to security researchers and others who detect and report vulnerabilities in software. The EU’s funding will begin at the start of January. Announced late last week by Julia ...

North Korea is suspected to be behind a malware attack that delayed the printing of several major U.S. newspapers on Saturday morning. The malware attack, believed to have involved a version of the Ryuk ransomware family that crippled a North Carolina water utility in October, struck printing centers operated by Tribune Publishing and the Los Angeles ...

The price of bitcoin plunged Thursday after it was revealed that a bitcoin wallet provider had been hacked. According to a report today in ZDNet, a hacker or hacking group has stolen at least 200 bitcoin, worth around $720,000, from users of Electrum Bitcoin, an open-source bitcoin client based on a client-server protocol. Those behind the ...

Japanese IT giant GMO Internet Inc. is walking away from the cryptocurrency industry, announcing that will no longer develop, manufacture or sell bitcoin mining hardware. The decision, while directly related to the precipitous drop in the price of bitcoin this year, was specifically attributed to GMO Internet being forced to record a massive loss in its cryptocurrency ...

Facebook Inc.-owned photo sharing app Instagram has been forced to backtrack after “accidentally” releasing a new version that did away with scrolling and replaced it with a Tinder-like horizontal swipe feature. Instagram users were presented with the horizontal swipe feature for a brief time on Thursday morning before it was rolled back with instructions to users ...

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is investigating ways to use social media to find tax cheats. First spotted today by QZ.com, a “Social Media Research Request” was filed by the IRS’ National Office of Procurement on the Federal Business Opportunities website Dec. 18 for “information or tools available in the marketplace” to allow them to search ...