More than three-quarters of the digital coins in the Bitcoin digital currency scheme aren't circulating because they remain dormant in user accounts that have never participated in outgoing transactions, a recently published study has found.

Local alternative currency in Summit County, CO, "Mountain Hours" is becoming more popular.

WordPress said Thursday it will accept bitcoins, opening up the blogging platform to payments from users in countries not supported by PayPal or credit card companies.

I maintain that a government ban on bitcoin would be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s. Government prohibition doesn’t even do a good job of keeping drugs out of prisons. The demand for an item, in this case digital cash with user-defined levels of privacy, does not simply evaporate in the face of a jurisdictional ban. One could even make the case that it becomes stronger because an official recognition that Bitcoin is not only a “renegade” currency but a “so-effective-it-had-to-be-banned” currency would imbue the cryptographic money with larger than life qualities.

A graphical visualization of approximately the first 1000 transactions starting at block 0 on the bitcoin network.

Each dot is a bitcoin address ("Hello!" when it appears). There is a line between dots when there is a transaction between them ("Transfer"). The size of the dots represent the amount of "influence" that address has (PageRank). It is sized relative to the probability that a bitcoin will end up in that address given the transactions that have been seen.

Austin Hay is still in high school, but he’s building his own house. It’s only 130 square feet, but it makes him a homeowner without a mortgage at just 16 years old.

Limiting supply has clearly been a huge plus for the BTC. Becoming known as a currency for illegal drugs and gambling is more problematic, of course. But let’s not forget that the U.S. Treasury printed 3 billion $100 bills in the 2012 Fiscal Year. Most of those (the Federal Reserve estimates 80%) go overseas and many of them simply facilitate the global drug and arms trade, not to mention tax evasion and human trafficking. So the BTC’s growing role in the same types of business might qualify it for “Reserve currency” status sooner than anyone thinks.

Fake gold bars turn up in Manhattan. 10 tungsten filled gold bars have turned up. Another reason to buy bit coins.

Virtual cash exchange a currency exchange that specialises in virtual cash has won the right to operate as a bank.

An under-reported development of this campaign season is the Republican Party's decision this week to send Gov. Mitt Romney into the presidential race on a platform effectively calling for a new gold commission. The realization that America's system of fiat money is part of its economic problem is moving from the fringes of political discussion to the center.