Bitfury Newsroom

Executives representing the top-level leadership at a range of blockchain companies and projects have signed a letter calling for a new focus on perceived issues with blockchain governance.

Calling themselves the 'Muskoka Group', the 14 executives include leaders building a diverse set of open-source distributed ledgers, as well as the heads of notable for-profit startups.

Blockchain experts who convened for a three-day conference plan a campaign to fight misconceptions about the technology, which they say is unfairly perceived as insecure and susceptible to criminal activity. Attendees at the conference, called the Muskoka Group, also agreed last week to conduct research to advance the blockchain and develop a strategy for government leaders to adopt the technology. The group also will seek to show that the blockchain can be applied beyond financial services and offers more than just opportunities to save money.

Ex-Global Communications Officer Jamie Smith left a comfortable job to work with The BitFury Group. She tells Rudyard Griffiths how she believes Bitcoin and Blockchain will change the world for the better.

A new Bitfury white paper aims to advance the study of how bitcoins sent using certain privacy-enhancing techniques could be traced back to participants. Released today, "Shared Send Untangling in Bitcoin" explores how bitcoins in this type of transaction can be "untangled," or sorted, into their original value flows.

Ernst & Young (EY), one of the “big four” services firms in the world has entered an agreement with The Bitfury Group, best known for its stature as a major bitcoin mining firm.

A report from CNBC reveals the agreement will see The Bitfury Group provide blockchain software services to EY and its client network. The agreement comes soon after Bitfury made a splash at a recent EY Startup Challenge competition.

Not only is Necker Island a wonderful place to relax and unwind, it’s also a great setting for free thinking and innovation. It has an incredible power to prompt people to think differently and dream big. Knowing this, every year we welcome a number of groups to the Island for gatherings that encourage inspiring collaborations. One of my favourite annual get-togethers is the Blockchain Summit. The technology behind the Blockchain has great potential to change the world in an incredibly positive way. It may be a niche subject that many people haven’t heard of, but it’s something that all business leaders should become interested in and educated about. It’s an extraordinarily pervasive technology that touches a lot of mankind.

Investors mark their calendars with everything from earnings releases to monthly job reports. For followers of the virtual currency bitcoin, the big event is actually this weekend. On Saturday, shortly after noon Eastern time, something will happen that’s happened only one other time in the more-than seven years Bitcoin has existed.

It’s called the “halving,” a preprogrammed feature in bitcoin’s internal plumbing that literally cuts in half the monetary reward network operators receive for processing transactions and creating new bitcoin.

Bitfury CEO Val Vavilov, who estimates electricity makes up between 90 and 95 percent of bitcoin mining costs, says one way his firm stays competitive is by making its own hardware.

He also says the company, founded in 2011, is prepared for the mining reward cut. "We're prepared - we already went through one halving event in 2012," he said. "You can forecast this...so you have time to prepare, and if you're prepared you can live quite easily."

Vavilov, and other miners, say the prospect of new supply halving has already helped drive bitcoin up over 50 percent this year, which should help ease the pain.

Bitfury Group, in collaboration with the open-source Lightning Network community, has released a white paper that explores how the in-development micropayments protocol could more effectively route bitcoin payments between users when launched.

The second-ever Bitcoin block reward halving is estimated to take place in a little under two weeks, and the overall effects of this event are still somewhat of an unknown. There has been a runup in the Bitcoin price over the past month, and many claim this is due to the upcoming halving, where the number of new bitcoins created roughly every 10 minutes is cut in half (from 25 to 12.5). To get some informed opinions about what could happen next, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to BitFury CEO Val Vavilov and BTCC COO Samson Mow.