The second half of 2016, along with the entire year of 2017, brought along great developments in the blockchain industry, a major increase in the value of bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies, and will likely be remembered as the year when this technology started to become mainstream.

Following long years of development and research, alongside with an increase in social acceptance, blockchain-based projects are rapidly growing in popularity, and this is also showing in the increasing value of digital currencies, and other tokens of this type. According to recent reports, it seems like the Blockchain Consortium R3 has managed to raise a total of $107 million in investments, which is a new record.

If you’ve been following recent digital currency news, then chances are that you have heard about Bitcoin’s truly massive value increase, during the last couple of days. In fact, the digital currency has managed to hit a new record high, on Wednesday, with trading prices situated over $2,400.

The reasons behind this massive growth are numerous indeed, yet there are some which can be directly linked to bitcoin’s new staggering value. With this in mind, not long ago, the Digital Currency Group announced that they have reached consensus with 50 other companies, and have support from 83% of the miners on the network, to lower the barrier meant for the activation of the Segregated Witness project, but also that a hard fork will finally take place, meant to increase the bitcoin block size to a total of 2MB, from the current 1MB. In the long run, this will likely lead to numerous benefits.

Bitcoin extortionists have been around for a while, and have managed to become a constant threat to the market during the last couple of months. So far, hundreds of extortion attempts have been reported, where hackers infected the computers of individuals and companies, blocked access to their data, and then asked for a certain amount of money to be paid in bitcoin, to regain access to the PCs in question.

However, most of the attacks that took place until now, weren’t handled by the same author, and did not infect too many computers. Until a few days ago, when a new ransomware attack known by the name of WannaCry managed to infect hundreds of thousands of computers from all around the world.

The last couple of days have managed to bring about large changes to blockchain-based digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether, as both have managed to once again break their all-time high. More exactly, Bitcoin has managed to surpass the $1,600 mark thus reaching a new all-time high, whereas Ether, the crypto-fuel behind Ethereum has increased with 25%, thus reaching $100.

With these aspects in mind, now is about time that we go ahead and help debunk a few myths associated with the blockchain network, so readers can get a better understanding of what the blockchain can, and cannot do, regardless of how it’s being used.

If you’ve been following recent digital currency news, then chances are that you’ve heard that bitcoin is going on a bull rampage, breaking its all-time highs almost every day. In fact, the digital currency is currently trading above $1,800, and chances are that it will soon hit the $1,900 benchmark, if the trend continues this way, in a couple of days.

Economic analysts throughout the world are both excited for this tremendous growth in value, but also quite worried, considering the fact that it may be the direct sign of a bubble about to break on the industry. In this article, we will analyse the facts behind this massive increase in value, and try to predict what’s next for bitcoin.

apan’s relationship with Bitcoin has been going on for longer than we can remember, yet it was only one month ago, when the Japanese Government stated that they would begin recognizing Bitcoin as a legal payment method, on the 1st of April, 2017.

This has led to an increase in the value of the bitcoin price, alongside with more interest in the Japanese bitcoin market, by companies operating throughout the Nippon country. With this in mind, recent reports indicate that over 10 Japanese companies are currently planning, or launching their very own bitcoin and digital currency exchanges. This would help cover the continuously growing demand for the digital currency, while also making trading a bit cheaper in the country, which is great news for the Japanese Bitcoin community.

Since the Ethereum platform first appeared on the market, interest in it has both peaked and decreased overtime. However, it seems like the popularity of Ethereum is quickly growing, considering the fact that it has just managed to surpass the $7 billion market cap, which is the same level of the Bitcoin market cap, present last year, thus showing just how much it has grown.

During the last couple of days, Ethereum managed to soar from $50 for one Ether, to around $80, thus once again surpassing its all-time high, which is simply amazing for the smart contracts platform.

Every new trend that appears on the internet is bound to give scammers numerous opportunities to come up with various ideas meant to take people’s money away. Bitcoin is no exception to this case, as there are thousands of bitcoin-based scams that unknowing users can get involved in.

With this in mind, in this article, we will discuss the main types of scams and factors that you should keep in mind to avoid a bitcoin scam, whenever you see one. Considering the fact that few people truly understand the way bitcoin and the blockchain works, educating yourself should be the first step.

During the last couple of months, we’ve seen numerous governments open up to the idea of digital currency, which is absolutely great news for adoption throughout the world. Not long ago, reports stating that the Indian government plans to legally recognize Bitcoin came in.

With this in mind, it seems like a committee was constituted by the Reserve Bank, and put in charge to study digital currency, and decide whether bitcoin is fit to be recognized as an official, legal currency in the country. The recommendations from the committee will be given anywhere between the 15th to the 20th of May. Afterwards, the Government will get to decide whether the plans will proceed.

If you’ve been following the recent digital currency news, then chances are that you’ve heard about Ethereum and all the buzz that it has been creating since its launch. As Ethereum is still quite new, many who are just hearing of it tend to ask themselves the following question: Why use Ethereum, when we already have Bitcoin, a much more popular digital currency?

This exact question represents the source to a lot of confusion surrounding the two projects. While they seem similar at first, their core purpose is extremely different. To put things better into perspective, Bitcoin is only meant as a digital currency, used to buy/sell products and services, whereas Ethereum is slightly more different. In fact, it represents a platform based on blockchain technology, used by people to develop decentralized applications, which work thanks to smart contracts, and are fuelled by Ether, the currency of Ethereum.