As cryptocurrencies plummet thanks to news that China has banned initial coin offerings, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. heiress Paris Hilton has jumped on the bandwagon. The Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. heiress this weekend endorsed an ICO by LydianCoin Pte. Ltd., a company that describes itself as the “first A.I. big data marketing cloud for blockchain.” The ...

In an unusual move for the venture firm, famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, along with IDG Capital, have invested $50 million in Chinese bitcoin hardware maker and miner Bitmain Technologies Inc. Founded in 2013, Bitmain manufactures its own bitcoin mining equipment, and it’s also the world’s largest bitcoin miner. Bitcoin mining involves ...

Regulators in China have banned all initial public coin offerings pending a review and the possible introduction of regulations to control the booming market. News that China was considering banning ICOs emerged last week when it was reported that China’s Securities and Futures Commission, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and other regulators had met and were considering ...

The personal details of some 6 million Instagram users are being offered for sale online as employees of the app maker have been accused of selling account verification. Revelations that user details from Instagram had been hacked emerged last week, as the Facebook Inc.-owned app maker confirmed that hackers had gained access to user accounts through Instagram’s application program interface. That ...

Qualcomm Technologies Inc. has revealed a new chipset and reference design that moves the mobile chip giant into self-driving cars. The chipset, called the 9150 C-V2X (short for Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything), facilitates vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Along with Qualcomm‘s C-V2X Reference Design, it uses two different methods to exchange messages between vehicles and infrastructure The direct mode allows a vehicle to communicate with other ...

Facial recognition may be the future of digital payments. A trial being run by Ant Financial Services Group, the financial payments arm of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., and Yum China will allow customers to use their face to pay for their meal. The system, dubbed “Smile to Pay,” has gone into testing at KPRO, a KFC concept outlet in ...

In a supreme bit of irony, Wikileaks has been hacked on the same day it dumped data on a number of Central Intelligence Agency hacking tools. The data dump, part of Wikileaks’ Vault7 release series of secret government hacking tools, unveiled a CIA program called Angelfire. It consists of a five-part framework that can be used ...

A new wave of Locky ransomware attacks has been discovered in what security researchers are describing as one of the largest ransomware-spreading spoofed email address campaigns this year. Initially detected by Comodo Threat Intelligence Lab Aug. 9, the attack ramped up this week. Security firm AppRiver claimed to have seen 23 million emails sent as part of the ...

Chinese regulators are considering a massive crackdown on initial coin offerings and may implement a complete ban until regulations are in place, according to reports from the country earlier this week. The state-controlled National Internet Finance Association of China issued a warning to investors on Wednesday, stating that some ICOs are using “misleading propaganda” to promote ...

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. will be the latest company to test self-driving vehicles on California roads as the South Korean-giant received permission to do so from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The company was keen to differentiate itself from some others in the space, saying in a statement that “while we have no plans ...