Here’s what happened this week in Bitcoin in 99 seconds.
Facebook is said to be finalising plans to launch its own cryptocurrency next year. testing of the cryptocurrency, referred to internally as GlobalCoin, will start by the end of this year. Facebook is expected to outline plans in more detail this summer, and has already spoken to Bank of England governor Mark Carney.
Europol and the Dutch Criminal Investigation Service took down the 6 servers hosting the Bestmixer.io coin tumbling service. Supposedly the first such policing action against a tumbler by law enforcement, it is alleged that the tumbler was aiding in money laundering. The tumbler was one of the 3 largest, and handled Bitcoin, Litecoin, and BCH.
The Coinstar service which is running a trial to allow customers in various grocery stores to purchase Bitcoin has now expanded to cover 21 American states. There are now over 2,200 such kiosks available to Americans in high traffic retail locations.
Crypto podcaster Guy Swann reported that the Bitcoin Cash blockchain had been reorganized by two mining pools working together to achieve hashrate dominance. While details remain sketchy at this time, it’s clear that the miners reorganized 2 blocks to reverse a theft of coins which occurred around the latest Bitcoin Cash fork.
And finally, US telecoms giant, AT&T announced that they will now accept Bitcoin for payment of mobile bills. AT&T is the first US mobile carrier to accept crypto.
That’s what happened this week in Bitcoin. See you next week.
