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Bitcoin

People sit along Bitcoin Beach in El Zonte, El Salvador.

El Salvador’s bitcoin experiment rides on choppy seas as currency fluctuates

Economics

The bitcoin cryptocurrency has seen its ups and downs lately, gaining and losing 10% of its value in just the past week. Nowhere is this volatility felt more intensely than in El Salvador, which became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender in 2021.

An advertisement of Bitcoin, one of the cryptocurrencies, is displayed on a building in Hong Kong, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021.

‘It’s a casino operation’: As Turkish lira falls, some Turks turn to cryptocurrency

Economics
A bank machine is shown in a small building with blue lighting with two people sitting on a bench nearby.

Early stumble as El Salvador starts Bitcoin as currency

Business, Economics and Jobs
Dinora Hernandez’s three children make bracelets at home in Oakland, California. Every Tuesday, Hernandez heads to a local food bank, assistance that allows her to wire cash to family in El Salvador.

‘I want to send more money home’: Remittances are a sign of sacrifice, resilience in immigrant communities during pandemic

Economics
An array of bitcoins

El Salvador becomes the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender

Top of The World
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The value of paper money

How money became ‘the most powerful metaphor’ in the world

Economics

Faith is all that separates cash from printer paper

a young Chinese man wears yellow headphones in front of a computer

Chinese internet users turn to the blockchain to fight against government censorship

Thanks to blockchain, internet users have achieved some victories in the fight against China’s strict internet censorship.

bitcoin logo on pillow

Mining bitcoin uses more energy than mining gold

Environment

A new analysis finds bitcoin mining uses more energy, dollar for dollar, than gold mining.

A migrant worker from Myanmar looks at his cellphone at a wholesale market for shrimp and other seafood in Mahachai, in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand, July 4, 2017.

A tech startup called OMG wants to revolutionize cash for hundreds of millions of ‘unbanked’ people in Asia

Technology

Bangkok-based OmiseGO envisions a world where cash is digital and free-flowing, stored on blockchains, accessible by smartphones and effortlessly zapped across borders. It’s a human right, they say. And they’re starting with Asia’s farmers, merchants, migrants and factory hands, who are now quite likely to own smartphones but may not have bank accounts.

A group of panelists address an audience at the State of the Net Conference in January. The panel consists of (from left to right) Jason Kaplan, Hilary Swab Gawrilow, James Cross, Mercina Tillmann-Dick and Justin Herman.

Women look to make their voices heard in new space created by male-dominated blockchain boom

Culture

Blockchain has turned from a movement to an overall tech boom — or possibly a revolution. Yet the space containing blockchain pioneers is only made up of five percent women … for now.

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