CoinWallet.eu has indirectly flooded Bitcoin’s mempool and UBS is developing its own settlement coin. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 37:
- The first of two Scaling Bitcoin workshops is being held this weekend, on September 12 and 13 in Montreal. The goal of the first workshop is to increase awareness of the research that has already been done, and prepares the community for the second round in Hong Kong later this year. The second workshop is planned for 6 and 7 December. The presentations given at the Montreal workshop can be found at this link.
- CoinWallet.eu’s stress testing days are officially over, or at least this is what the company announced on Reddit following accusations that such an attack would be illegal. A legal professional even confirmed that these “tests” could be violating UK law. Instead, CoinWallet.eu is now incentivizing others to do the dirty work for them by giving away 200 BTC (worth about $48,000) in tiny amounts. The indirect attack has succeeded in filling up Bitcoin’s mempool, which now contains more than 180,000 unconfirmed transactions (over 150MB in size).
- The former CEO of defunct exchange Mt.Gox, Mark Karpelès, has been indicted for embezzlement. Karpelès was initially arrested on August 1, and again on August 21, without any formal charges. Without formal charges a person can only be held for three weeks under Japanese law. Karpelès has now been charged with embezzling over $50 million from Mt. Gox company accounts.
- UBS, a large financial institution located in Switzerland, is developing a blockchain based “settlement coin”. The coin will be linked to fiat money, and is intended to be a collaborative effort between other market participants, regulators and central banks making it an industry-wide product. More details on the project will follow by the end of 2015.
- The price of Bitcoin is pretty much back to going sideways. The digital currency ended the week not even half a percent higher than the week before, at a current exchange rate of roughly $235 per coin. It is also the week in which the price of Ethereum dropped to (and even below) the level it started trading at one month ago. The current exchange rate for one ETH is now nearly at parity with the USD.
