Bitcoin (BTC) has hit a four-month low this week — as a search term on Google, with market fatigue and boredom spreading beyond traders. “Bitcoin” least Googled since May Data from Google Trends confirms that the term “Bitcoin” is less popular now than at any time since the end of April. Despite the largest cryptocurrency actually trading higher this week than then — at $10,200 versus $4,100 — it appears Bitcoin currently attracts little mainstream interest. On a normalized scale of 1 to 100, “Bitcoin” currently charts at 38 worldwide, after briefly hitting 100 in late June. That performance coincided …

The popularity of the decentralized blockchain-enabled web browser Brave continues to grow as it has outranked other browsers in Google Play rankings in Japan. Brave beats rival browsers According to a Reddit post on Sept. 8, this is the first time that the privacy-focused Brave browser has overtaken its rival browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Chrome in Japan. The most recent ranking data from Google Play shows that Brave sits comfortably at number 10 on the list, while its closest competitor Firefox lags behind, occupying 14th place. A Google Play ranking is determined by how well apps perform against …

TSMC, the world’s largest independent semiconductor foundry and chip supplier for Bitmain, is facing multiple lawsuits from its competitor GlobalFoundries (GF). Alleged patent infringement GF, the second biggest semiconductor foundry by sales after TSMC, filed several lawsuits in the United States and Germany, accusing Taiwanese TSMC of infringing on 16 GF patents, according to an official GF statement on Aug. 26. In the lawsuits, the California-based company seeks orders to ban TSMC from importing semiconductors produced with its technology to the United States and Germany, with GF claiming that importation of infringing Taiwanese semiconductors is unlawful. Additionally, GF is seeking …

Major file sharing company BitTorrent, a subsidiary of blockchain company Tron, is going to internally test its blockchain-based live streaming platform in Q3 2019. Platform overview BitTorrent announced the news in an official blog post on Aug. 27. According to the announcement, the streaming platform — called BitTorrent Live (BLive) — supports live video content and an instant messaging service. Additionally, its underlying system reportedly contains a top user chart and a user relationship feature. BitTorrent intends to roll out BLive in alpha, beta and full versions from Q3 2019 to Q1 2020. The current alpha version features a small …

The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently resolved a complaint regarding advertising of Bitcoin (BTC) from the BitMEX crypto derivatives exchange. According to the ASA, the website showed Bitcoin graphs with misleading price dynamics since January 2019. The ASA received four complaints, each accusing the platform of being misleading about Bitcoin investment profitability. The court satisfied the complaints. However, this was not the first time that a state took a tough attitude toward advertisement of cryptocurrencies. Here is an overview of how cryptocurrencies are advertised — or not — in the world right now. Ban, no freedom The first …

Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused branch of mobile payment company Square, has hired Blockstream co-founder and Bitcoin (BTC) developer Matt Corallo. Square Crypto announced the news in an official Twitter post on Aug. 20. Matt Corallo also commented on the announcement, saying: “So excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team over the coming weeks. Experimenting with different models to accelerate Bitcoin OSS is awesome!” As indicated in his Twitter post, Corallo is a Bitcoin Open Source Developer who previously worked at Bitcoin development company Chaincode Labs. Per his LinkedIn profile, Corallo has worked there for the past two years and 8 …

Ubiquitous tech behemoth Google cloud wing is entering into another partnership with a blockchain platform, Cypherium. Cypherium announced the new partnership in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Aug. 13. Cypherium describes its product, Cypherium Enterprise, as an enterprise-focused blockchain platform with a focus on scalability and decentralization. As a result of this partnership, Google Cloud customers will have access to Cypherium’s blockchain solutions, the announcement explains. As per the press release, Cypherium purports to offer an enterprise blockchain that supports thousands of transactions per second, in addition to confidentiality and blockchain interoperability. Cypherium CEO Sky Guo remarked: “We’re …

The growing popularity of cryptocurrency has led to a revolution in the digital currency industry. Enterprises that were of noncrypto origin now have or plan to have their own crypto product. The 10 years of cryptocurrency’s existence has led to an unprecedented ease of transactions. It has also brought transparency into the e-commerce world. This article discusses 10 of the biggest enterprises in the world, without a cryptocurrency background, that have already created or are in the process of investing resources to develop a digital currency they can call their own. 1. Facebook Facebook is reportedly completing efforts to release …

China is the global leader when it comes to searching for “Facebook Libra” on Google one month after the release of Libra’s white paper. China keeping a close eye on Facebook’s Libra As of July 18, China is the first in the list of countries googling of Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project, according to data from Google Trends. Based on the data, China has the highest proportion of search queries for Libra, with a maximum value of the query popularity of 100. The top five countries include St. Helena, ranked second with a value of 37, as well as Singapore, Hong …

The United States’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is allegedly considering requiring tech giants to report on crypto activity by users, according to a presentation reportedly from an IRS presentation and provided by a Twitter user on July 9. According to the documents shared, the IRS hopes to use Grand Jury subpoenas on firms such as Apple, Google and Microsoft to check taxpayers’ download history for crypto-related applications. Known as Crypto Tax Girl, Laura Walter, certified public accountant and crypto tax specialist, tweeted the presentation, which was allegedly for agents in the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division. Citing the document, Walter concluded …

Recent research by Chainanalysis suggests that the amount of bitcoin (BTC) spent on illegal transactions this year could hit a record high of $1 billion, even as the ratio of illegal to legal transactions is shrinking, according to a report by Bloomberg on July 1. As per the report, the total flat value of BTC spent on illegal activity so far this year is thought to be $515 million. The research suggests that by the end of the year, this figure will double to reach $1 billion. However, the amount of BTC spent on illegal services as opposed to legal …

The major selling point of blockchain and its applications is that cryptographically secured distributed ledgers are virtually “unbreakable” under normal circumstances, given the current state of computational technology. Its validity, however, is heavily dependent on the “state of technology” assumption. Should a paradigmatic shift in computing occur, contemporary blockchain-based systems may become vulnerable to threats not accounted for in their design. But how urgent is the threat of this happening any time soon? The strides that physicists have been making for the last three decades toward building an operational quantum computer could soon contribute to such a shift. As the …