Japan’s Financial Services Agency has officially licensed 11 bitcoin exchanges as part of the government’s move to bring cryptocurrency trading under supervision following its decision to legalize bitcoin as a legal payment method in April. According to reports, the licensed bitcoin exchanges will have to comply with a range of requirements, including building a strong computer system, segregating ...

Drone operators can no longer fly their unmanned aerial vehicles near certain national landmarks under a new ban implemented by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The new restrictions, which take effect Oct. 5, ban drone flights within 400 feet of national monuments, including the Statue of Liberty; Boston National Historical Park, Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, ...

Hackers linked to the Chinese government are being blamed for the theft of data from consumer credit reporting agency Equifax Inc. but strangely not for the initial hack, according to a newly published report. Bloomberg, quoting insider sources, claimed the initial hack took place in March by a group of hackers who were taking advantage ...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has finally taken its first serious action against dubious initial coin offerings by charging an operator behind two startups promoting coins linked to diamonds and real estate. Maksim Zaslavskiy, whose location remains unclear, but according to his LinkedIn profile is running at least one of the initial coin offerings in ...

South Korea’s financial regulator announced Friday that it would ban all initial coin offerings effective immediately. Even further, all virtual currency trading will be more tightly controlled and monitored by the government. According to local reports Friday, the decision was made after a meeting of senior officials from relevant ministries, led by the Financial Services Commission. Kim Yong-beom, vice ...

Fresh from reports that nearly 1,000 websites were found using JavaScript injections to hijack the computers of visitors as a means to mine for cryptocurrency, new research has uncovered malware targeting older Windows servers for exactly the same purpose. The Monero-mining malware is believed to have been in the wild since May and is targeting servers running Windows ...

An application by Grayscale Investments LLC to take its Bitcoin Investment Trust public has been withdrawn over fears that it would be rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The trust was seeking to raise $500 million with an investment objective that the registered shares would reflect the performance of the value of bitcoin, before liabilities and expenses of ...

Just over a month since being acquired by Amazon.com Inc., Whole Foods Market disclosed Thursday that some of its point-of-sale terminals had been hacked, resulting in the theft of customer data, including credit details. How many Whole Foods outlets were affected by the hack was not made clear, but the company said the compromise of its systems only affected ...

Silicon Valley self-driving car technology startup Drive.ai has raised $15 million in a new round from GrabTaxi Holdings Pte Ltd., an Uber Technologies Inc. rival and Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing service. Founded in 2015 by former lab partners from Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, Drive.ai is building a platform that applies deep learning and AI to deliver ...

Flat-pack furniture retailer IKEA Group has acquired TaskRabbit Inc., a San Francisco-based startup that provides an on-demand hiring platform often used to hire people to put together IKEA furniture. Founded in 2008, TaskRabbit offers an app from which users can hire what they call “Taskers” to assist with everyday chores such as cleaning, delivery, moving and handyman ...