During the last year, the U.S. Marshals Service, also known by the name of the USMS has managed to auction off a large part of the funds which had been seized following the completion of the Silk Road investigation.

If you are not yet aware of this, during the investigation, the USMS has managed to confiscate over 144,000 BTC from Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the Silk Road marketplace, an online shop where people from all around the world traded drugs. When the funds were first seized, they were worth around 122 million. Other than these funds, the USMS also confiscated around 29,000 BTC from private Silk Road-related bitcoin addresses.

It’s widely known that the Bitcoin technology is quite dangerous when used by criminals, as it offers them a way of offering and accepting payments, while making it difficult to be tracked by the police.

Well, according to the latest reports, it seems like two popular ransomware strains known by the names of CoinVault and BitCryptor have been eliminated thanks to a joint effort carried out by law enforcement in the Netherlands alongside with an independent firm that deals with cybersecurity.

So far, various banks have shown direct or indirect support for bitcoin and its underlying technology, but there hasn’t been a global bank providing actual bitcoin services while accepting different payment methods — until now.

NextBank is looking forward to becoming the first bank of its kind. Instead of going into defensive mode when it comes to discussing bitcoin, this bank has chosen to embrace the currency and its alternatives. It aims to offer services globally, in over 50 languages. Over 135 different payment methods including bitcoin, other altcoins and commodities will also be accepted.

During the last couple of months, governments from all around the world have begun tinkering with the idea of accepting Bitcoin as a currency, and finding uses for its underlying technology, which is the Blockchain.

However, there are still nations which are truly hostile towards the idea of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, and one such example is Russia. In fact, recent reports mention that the Russian Finance Ministry has proposed a bill, which serves the purpose of punishing those found guilty of trading or mining bitcoin with 4 years of prison time.

Following regulation issues throughout Europe, in regards to whether bitcoin transactions should include state-tax as well, the highest court in the European Union finally ruled that virtual currencies can now be exchanged tax free throughout the Union.

Since Bitcoin was created a couple of years ago, it has been associated with criminal activity by thousands of people from all around the world, which is also perhaps, one of the main reasons why it hasn’t grown faster.

Well, as an effort to combat digital currency criminality, the Blockchain Alliance was formed, which is practically a public-private forum, between bitcoin executives and law enforcement, which are bound to work together to find digital currency criminals, using bitcoin-related platforms, and put them into justice’s arms.

Today, we’re going to discuss about the aspects which are most likely to take Bitcoin mainstream, and transform it into the financial system that it has the potential of becoming.

To kick things off, reports have shown that the amount of active bitcoin wallets, but also the number of daily transactions have increased considerably over the past year. However, regardless of this, it seems like most people haven’t even heard about bitcoin, or have a vague idea about the currency. This isn’t okay, considering the fact that bitcoin is the currency of the internet, and billions of people have access to the network.

As time passes, we seem to be getting closer to the hypothesis of a society without physical money. How is this so? Well, leaving aside the appearance of innovative platforms which will likely make cash obsolete in the near future, research has also shown that there is only a total of 8% of physical cash represented in our world, which means that the trillions of dollars that people from all around the world use are rather digital number, or simply digits, as we like to call them.

While you can most probably pay for almost everything with the help of cash at this moment in time, you can also go days at a time, without using it, thus showing how the system is slowly changing. As cashless transactions are growing, banks and other financial institutions wish to encourage this trend, as it’ll allow them to save money, while also giving people a more efficient way of making transactions. To help make the principle of a cashless world a reality, there are services such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and more, which are gradually popping up on websites all around the world.

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen a large number of developments from the bitcoin market, with companies showcasing interest towards the digital currency’s underlying system, US institutions declaring bitcoin a commodity and more.

However, we’ve also seen some negative developments, which we ought to discuss about, as the Europol has just issued a report stating that it believes that it’s likely for bitcoin to become the go-to currency for internet criminals throughout Europe. Based on a report outlining the top cybercrime treats which the European Union faces, we can see how the cryptocurrency is used in illegal activities, alongside with how extortionists use bitcoin to seize funds from people.

We’ve briefly covered the other uses of the Blockchain in past articles, but it seems like the interest in the system showcased by banks and other monetary institutions is still growing. Today, we are going to talk about lighting networks, which are considered an important innovation in the Bitcoin space, as it would allow the platform to process transactions at a much higher rate, while also being more efficient and requiring a lower cost.