Happy birthday Bitcoin! Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 1, plus one item from the previous week as last week featured a year-end roundup:
- Bitcoin is celebrating its birthday today on January 3. It has been six years since Bitcoin’s genesis block was mined, which was a little more than two months after the mysterious inventor Satoshi Nakamoto announced his paper regarding the digital currency titled: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
- New York City is seemingly becoming more Bitcoin-friendly. The city New York City Department of Finance already made several revisions to its original (overly aggressive) BitLicense proposal, and now the city appears to be considering payment methods such as Bitcoin and Apple Pay for parking tickets.
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Who stole MtGox’ Bitcoins? A police investigation into the disappearance of 650,000 Bitcoins that led to the collapse of MtGox reveals that the theft was most likely an “inside job”. Former MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles already stated that he suspected the coins to be taken by an insider, but that he had no knowledge of who might have been the thief. To be continued…
- As 2014 ended, Bitcoin officially became the worst performing currency of the year with an annual performance worse than the Russian Ruble. The Ruble lost 41 percent of its value against the US Dollar over the full year, compared to a 58 percent decline in the value of Bitcoin. The first few days of 2015 have not been great for Bitcoin either, as the digital currency lost yet another 6 percent of its value and is currently traded at a little below $300.
- More than 3 million viewers witnessed the North Carolina State Wolfpack beat the University of Central Florida Knights, 34-27 in the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl (held on Friday December 26, 2014), an American football game sponsored by BitPay. The payment processor chose to become a sponsor for the St. Petersburg Bowl in June 2014. Event owner ESPN Events reportedly quickly sold off the received Bitcoin payment.
