Bitcoin's Nightmare Scenario Has Come to Pass

The network's capacity to process transactions has maxed out.

by Ben Popper Mar 2, 2016, 1:41p

Over the last year and a half a number of prominent voices in the bitcoin community have been warning that the system needed to make fundamental changes to its core software code to avoid being overwhelmed by the continued growth of bitcoin transactions. There was strong disagreement within the community, however, about how to solve this problem, or if the problem would ever materialize.

This week the dire predictions came to pass, as the network reached its capacity, causing transactions around the world to be massively delayed, and in some cases to fail completely. The average time to confirm a transaction has ballooned from 10 minutes to 43 minutes. Users are left confused and shops that once accepted bitcoin are dropping out.

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After three weeks in China, it's clear Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor

by Cyriac Roeding May 13, 2016, 9:15a

After selling my startup, Shopkick, to SK Planet in 2014, and handing over my CEO role a year later, I packed up my 1- and 3-year-old sons and my wife Angel, and flew to Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong for three weeks, hoping to better understand...