More In about 2014, most bitcoin companies quickly pivoted to the "next big thing:" blockchain. Among them were the financial and fintech houses that were eager to avoid SEC scrutiny of their cryptocurrency holdings but were happy to use blockchain technology to speed up transaction times. Many of those early efforts are now apparently bearing fruit. MasterCard, for example, has just filed a patent for a "Method and System For Instantaneous Payment Using Recorded Guarantees." This is, in...

An engineer for BitGo, Jameson Lopp, faced down a horde of police officers with rifles at his home in Durham, North Carolina after someone sent an anonymous tip regarding a hostage situation at his home. The engineer has been vocal on Twitter about upcoming changes in the protocol. “They shut down most of my neighborhood,” he said. “There were dozens of patrol units, a SWAT team, mobile command post, a fire truck, and paramedics,” he said. “It was a huge waste of public resources.” Lopp has...

The mind behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is matter-of-fact about the crypto. In short, he believes what interviewer Raval Navikant called “brain virus” is the true future of security and economics and, with the right incentives, Ethereum can replace things like credit card networks and even gaming servers. Buterin separates the world into two kinds of people. “There’s the average person who’s already heard of bitcoin and the average person who hasn’t,” he said. His project itself builds...