Happy New Year to everyone!
After taking a week off for the holidays I’m back in the saddle to get you all of your Bitcoin news. The last week has been pretty busy for the Bitcoin community so lets get into it!
BitStamp is the 3rd largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. BitStamp took over as the worlds most popular trading exchange after Mt Gox went down. This past Sunday 01/04/15 they announced in a statement that their website had been hacked. In this hack, they admitted to losing just less than 19,000 Bitcoins ($5.1 million dollars worth at the time). Bitstamp didn’t release how many wallets were compromised but once it was detected that there was an intrusion, they reached out to each customer who’s wallet was stolen from and notified them individually. Once all users were notified, they took their site offline entirely to make software and infrastructure changes. Bitstamp made no claim to when the site would be back online and turned back on for new transactions. In their statement they eased worries of all users by reassuring them that whatever their balance was in their wallet prior to shutting down their services. Bitstamp is also working with local authorities to attempt to track down those responsible for the hack.
In an update today, Bitstamp made an announcement that it would resume all transaction processing some time during the day today.
Bitstamp has passed proof of Bitcoin reserve audits which is an audit to validate that the total amount being traded on their books are actually in posession and they have the ability to pay out to everyone. Bitstamp also took Europa’s best virtual currency start-up of 2014 award.
Overstock.com one of the first major online retailers to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment announced today that they are in the works of offering its employees the option of being paid in Bitcoin. They at the same time also announced recently that they were working on installing a Bitcoin ATM in its corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City. Since Overstock started accepting BTC as a form of payment one year ago nearly to the date they have processed over $3 million in purchases. “Moving crypto-currencies out of the realm of geeks and into the realm of the rest of us requires making changes at all levels of the financial ecosystem”. Hopefully this is a thing of the future for a lot of companies. I believe there are a lot of users out there who would gladly take bitcoin as their form of payment for their checks from their employers!
Bitcoin’s price has taken yet again another slump in pricing struggling now to reach the $300 mark resting at $286.87. It took it’s largest dip in price when Bitstamp announced that it was shutting it’s doors while they worked on fixing the flaws. I think a lot of investors are hoping that the price jumps back up once doors are opened again.
Have a great week everyone!
