The U.S. government is selling 2,700 bitcoin, valued at nearly $1.6 million based on current exchange rates, later this month.
The U.S. Marshals Service, the enforcement arm of federal courts, is holding an auction for the seized bitcoins on August 22; bidders must register by August 17 in order to participate. The electronic currency was seized during a bunch of different cases, but a lot of it comes from investigations of the Silk Road.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency, backed by a peer-to-peer network and advanced mathematics. Its decentralized nature makes it appealing to privacy advocates and others, but also to criminals.
Most infamously, bitcoin was the currency of choice for the Silk Road, which for a long time served as an eBay equivalent for drug dealers. The agency says 2.8 bitcoins in this latest auction were seized from Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Silk Road. Most of the coins for sale come from a few prominent cases.
This is not the first Bitcoin auction conducted by the Marshals Service. The enforcement agency has sold off bitcoins four times since June 2014.
The Silk Road was an online marketplace thought to be beyond the reach of government agencies. Distributed exclusively through Tor, a tool for anonymously browsing the web, it quickly became infamous as a marketplace for illegal guns and drugs. More than 1.5 transactions took place on the site, all conducted using bitcoin.
Crime obviously isn’t the only use for this currency, just the one that garners headlines. In theory, an online currency like bitcoin could serve as cash for the web, allowing online transactions without merchant processing fees.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.