Digital Currency

Payments provider Aliant Payment Systems now offers Bitcoin acceptance for merchants through a deal with BitPay Inc., a Bitcoin processor, Aliant announced Monday. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Aliant says the relationship makes it one of the first payment-processing companies to offer merchants Bitcoin acceptance. It is doing this, in part, because …

Bitcoin has taken a beating in recent days, but investors who bought earlier this year are still enjoying handsome returns. Now, some merchants of high-end goods are signing up to accept the virtual currency, hoping to cash in on that wealth effect. Bitcoin was trading at $3,498 early Thursday morning, …

Driven by higher prices and more usage, the value of cryptocurrency transactions could exceed $1 trillion this year, more than 15 times their level in 2016, a British research firm estimates. Hampshire, England-based Juniper Research in a new report pegs the value of cryptocurrency transactions in 2017’s first half at $325 …

Less than two weeks after a hard fork in its code that some observers feared might devalue Bitcoin, the digital currency is riding high. Early Sunday, Bitcoin’s price soared past $4,000 for the first time. The coin traded at $4,106 by late afternoon, up 7% over the previous 24 hours, …

Bitcoin Cash, the Bitcoin offshoot that debuted Tuesday, already ranks as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. But by Thursday morning its value had taken a beating over the previous 24 hours. By mid-morning, Bitcoin Cash, which trades on digital-currency exchanges under the symbol BCH, was priced at just over …

Slowly but surely, a new version of the Bitcoin digital currency was emerging early Tuesday in what appeared to be the start of a hard fork in the Bitcoin code. The fork is expected to yield a parallel blockchain to support the new cryptocurrency, which is known as Bitcoin Cash. …

Some 57% of large companies are either seriously studying or in the process of deploying blockchain technology, according to a Juniper Research survey of nearly 400 company executives. Most-often-cited uses include settlement, land registry, and digital fiat currency. The study cautions, though, that some companies may be underestimating both the challenges of …

Now that the Federal Reserve-sponsored Faster Payments Task Force has issued its final report calling for speedier payments everywhere in the United States by 2020, the really hard work can now begin, say some observers. Payments cleared and settled in near real time has long been a goal of many …

The overall value of the world’s most important digital currencies nose-dived over the weekend as developers and exchanges struggled with key questions related to transaction capacity, merchant acceptance, and other market dynamics. The 11 largest currencies by market capitalization lost 18% of their total value between midnight Friday and early …

With more than half a million electric cars on the road, businesses are looking at ways to boost the network of charging stations across the country and make it easier to pay for the increasing flow of electricity. Now a partnership announced Tuesday plans to put blockchain to work on …