The sale of cryptographic tokens, a market that has boomed this year, has been deemed an “illegal fundraising practice” by China’s central bank. In a notice published today (in Chinese), the regulator ordered all such offerings to be halted, for exchanges to stop trading in the tokens, and for funds already raised to be returned to investors. The Chinese regulator’s stance is the toughest yet (paywall) on a funding mechanism that has raised $1.5 billion for issuers so far this year, according...

Hedge funds have been trounced by the stock market in recent years. Now they are eyeing a new asset class that might provide the big returns their clients pay them to produce: bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has risen nine-fold in the last 12 months and is trading at an all-time high. Ether has surged 30-fold this year. Most hedge funds aren’t even beating the S&P 500. Yet they profit handsomely for their underperformance, charging clients the standard 2% in fees and 20% in investment...

Bitcoin is living up to its growing reputation as a disaster hedge, setting a new record high of $4,703, even as global geopolitical tensions rose thanks to North Korea launch of a missile over Japan earlier today. Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency on the market, is trading close to its all-time high. Bitcoin sets another new record MaySep.’16MaySep.’17May01,0002,0003,0004,000$5,00001,0002,0003,0004,000 Data: CoinDesk Bitcoin has had a very good year. It has gained 260% so far...

Two years ago, a Chinese chip-design expert named Micree Zhan was reading China’s seminal science-fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, while wrestling with how to create a new processor. He had already designed custom chips for the company he co-founded, Bitmain, that had made it into the world’s leading bitcoin miner, allowing it to dominate the new, hyper-competitive industry of unearthing bitcoins. Now he needed a chip that could launch Bitmain onto a new trajectory, one...

One of the world’s largest bitcoin mines is located in the SanShangLiang industrial park on the outskirts of the city of Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region that’s part of China. It’s 400 miles from China’s capital, Beijing, and 35 miles from the the city of Baotou. The mine is just off the highway, near the intersection of Latitutde 3rd Road and Longitude 3rd Road. It sits amidst abandoned, half-built factories—victims of an earlier coal mining boom that fizzled out, leaving Ordos...