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Without any regulatory or government oversight, the government forbids commercial banks to provide customers with the cryptocurrency.

The popular virtual currency Bitcoin isn't actually a currency, according to the Japanese government.

The country's cabinet approved an official document on Thursday that stated, "Bitcoin isn't a currency" and therefore won't be regulated as such, according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, commercial banks are forbidden from providing the digital currency to customers.

The main rub for the Japanese government is that Bitcoin isn't regulated by any official body. And, it's unclear which ministry would provide oversight of the cryptocurrency and how that ministry would go about putting regulations in place.

The government didn't rule out the idea of creating regulatory framework for virtual currencies but did say if this were to be done it'd have to be in conjunction with other countries.

The prominent Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox went offline last month and then filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that hackers stole nearly $500 million in bitcoins through a weakness in the company's system. Bitcoin bank Flexcoin also announced this week that it was shutting down after being hacked.

Despite these hurdles, Bitcoin is still trading on several other exchanges and coin prices currently range from $400 to more than $4,000.

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Japan: 'Bitcoin isn't a currency'

Summary: Following Mt. Gox and Flexcoin, Poloniex has admitted to losing over 10 percent of customer funds due to cyberattacks.

Yet another cryptocurrency has come forward and admitted that security and system problems have led to customer funds being pinched by hackers.

Poloniex, a Bitcoin trading post similar to Mt. Gox, has lost 12.3 percent of the Bitcoin stored in hot wallets on the website. However, in stark contrast to how Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles handled his company's Bitcoin losses, the owner of Poloniex, Tristan D'Agosta -- a.k.a. Busoni -- admitted to the loss and asked users how they would like to be compensated.

In a forum post, Busoni said that a hacker took advantage of a processing flaw in the Bitcoin exchange post. When users submit a withdrawal request, the input is checked against your balance, deducted, and the new amount recorded within a database. However, it was discovered that placing several withdrawals all in practically the same instant meant each request was processed at more-or-less the same time, resulting in a negative balance but "valid insertions into the database, which then get picked up by the withdrawal daemon."

According to the Poloniex chief, auditing and security features were not explicitly looking for negative balances, and so the transactions were allowed to proceed. Busoni admitted that another "design flaw" contributed to the theft, as "this could not have happened if withdrawals requests were processed sequentially instead of simultaneously."

Trading was frozen following the discovery of unusual activity, and Busoni says he takes "full responsibility" for the missing 12.3 percent of Bitcoin -- believed to be worth roughly $50,000.

"If I had the money to cover the entire debt right now, I would cover it in a heartbeat." Busoni admitted. "I simply don't, and I can't just pull it out of thin air."

So, to keep everyone from withdrawing their BTC in order to not be left with picking up the debt, everyone's wallet on the trading post has been "temporarily be deducted by 12.3 percent."

"Please understand that this is an absolute necessity -- if I did not make this adjustment, people would most likely withdraw all their BTC as soon as possible in order to make sure they weren't left in that remaining 12.3 percent," Busoni said. "Aside from the obvious drawback of most of the BTC being taken out of the exchange, this would not be fair -- some people would get all of their money right away, and a few would get none right away."

The amounts deducted have been recorded, and the Poloniex chief says that funds will be raised from exchange fees -- and his own pocket -- to try and cover the debt and redistribute funds to users who have had Bitcoin deducted.

Original post:
Third cryptocurrency exchange becomes hacking victim, loses Bitcoin

Aurich Lawson

Recently, I became the first person in the history of Ars Technica to have a goldrather than blackuser name.

How did I get this blinged-out honor? I bought it for the low, low price of 500 Arscoinsthe latest digital cryptocurrency to hit the Internet. Arscoin is one of around 100 or so "altcoins," or alternative bitcoins, derived from the same source code as the original cryptocurrency.

Everything you need to know to mine Arscoins with your CPU or GPU.

But other altcoin creators are true believers in anarcho-capitalism, or they simply find Bitcoin and its derivatives new and interesting. And not all altcoins are quite as ridiculous as they may seem; even Dogecoin, which was jokingly based on an image meme, has an on-paper market capitalization of more than $60 million.

As the new year began, I found myself writing about several new (and often ridiculous) altcoins:Coinye,Norris Coin, and yes,Koindashian. It got me thinking: if anyone can just up and create a new altcoin, how hard can it be? Arscoin is our attempt to find out. Here's how we created our own digital currency, how you can do it too, and what it all means.

The Arscoin project is for those who want to experiment with digital currenciesand buy some fun hats and colored usernames along the way. In other words, it is foreducational use only; we have centralized the system in order to prevent it from developing into a real-money economy.

Jesuscoin and Snoochyboochy

While the creator of Bitcoin remains a mystery, the currency's digital underpinnings are not; its famously open source. One of its first major competitors, Litecoin, used the Bitcoin source code in late 2011, changing a few key parameters before releasing its own source code. That, in turn, has spawned more recent clones like BBQCoin, Dogecoin, and Namecoin. According to Coinmarketcap.com, 75 mineable altcoins currently exist, with market capitalizations ranging from $38,000 (FedoraCoin) to $10.3 billion (Bitcoin). Even other journalists have started their own altcoins (see Joe Weisenthal's Stalwartbucks).

Go here to read the rest:
Behold Arscoin, our own custom cryptocurrency!

Play your cards right, and you could be swimming in Arscoins.

Disney

A few weeks ago, whenour own "Arscoin" cryptocurrencywas first minted, it looked like Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson would control the majority of the coins. He started mining early, and he has a crowd of Linux servers sitting in his closet that can outrun the all-in-one desktops and power-sipping Ultrabooks most of us have on hand.

Send coins to a friend or buy a silly hat for the Ars Technica forums.

When our little experiment began, I knew enough about Bitcoin and Litecoin mining to know that there are more efficient ways to rack up coins than using the default miner, but I had never actually mined either of those currencies myself. Coingen.io, which we used to produce the Arscoin code, provides no explicit documentation and little post-creation support for newly minted cryptocurrencies, so it was up to me to feel my way forward. I couldn't out-muscle Lee's closet full of computers, but I've worked with him for long enough to know that I could outsmart him. (See me after class, Mr. Cunningham. -Ed.)

My research led me down a rabbit hole that ran through several wikis and dozens of half-helpful forum posts, but when I finally climbed back out, I knew enough to overpower Lee's computer closet using only a 2012 iMac. To save you from having to follow my dusty path, we'll walk you through the best ways to mine out Arscoinsand other altcoinswith your existing hardware.

A couple of notes before we begin.In these directions, we'll try not to assume any knowledge about mining on your part, but the most straightforward mining utilities use the Windows, OS X, and Linux command lines. We'll cover graphical utilities where appropriate, but you Linux users in particular should make sure you know your way around a Terminal window, especially if you intend to GPU mine. We will also require you to download some files from external siteswe haven't encountered any problems with any of the tools we're about to recommend, but we assume no responsibility for anything you do to your hardware or software while mining Arscoins or any other cryptocurrency.

Second, while you'll be able to mine plenty of Arscoins with your CPU and GPU (thereby securing yourself somesweet fake hats for the comment section), folks who are serious about actual Bitcoin mining have long since moved to dedicated mining devices like the Butterfly Labs ASIC box we tested out last summer. ASIC-based mining devices are much, much faster than CPUs or GPUs, and they use less power to boot. As of this writing, ASICs that can run the scrypt algorithm used to encrypt Litecoin, Arscoin, and other altcoins aren't in widespread circulation, but it's only a matter of time.

Finally, the Arscoin project is for those who want to experiment with digital currenciesand buy some fun hats and colored usernames along the way. In other words, it is for educational use only; we have centralized the system in order to prevent it from developing into a real-money economy.

Your wallet page will track your most recent payments, including deposits from the pool.

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