Industry Report: The Bitcoin Bill That Became Law

A Bitcoin bill becomes law, a new form of Mac malware emerges, and Steemit uses digital currency to steer traffic. Want to catch up on the latest cryptocurrency news? Take a look at the stories below:

Also read: Industry Report: Is Litecoin Making a Comeback?

THE NEWEST BITCOIN BILL

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has signed a new Bitcoin bill into law, expanding the state’s Money Transmitters Act to include cryptocurrencies.

The bill defines virtual money as:

“A digital representation of value that can be digitally traded and functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, or a store of value.”

The words almost seem to suggest the status of both a currency and a commodity, which would potentially bring the taxation and regulation fights to a conclusive end. Perianne Boring of the Chamber of Digital Commerce spoke enthusiastically about the bill, saying:

“The fact that this went through the legislative process is a big step forward. The bill also adds more clarity than any other state by a long shot.”

STEEMIT

Social media platform Steemit has given over $1 million in “Steem dollars,” the site’s virtual currency, to users and early adopters in an attempt to raise awareness and garner further traffic. The money was part of a special giveaway where Steemit, now in its third month of operation, could acknowledge those who have made it “a thriving, collaborative community.”

CEO Ned Scott explained:

“This was an opportunity for us to thank our growing community, to reward them for building a sustainable ecosystem that’s much more than the sum of its parts. Yesterday, more than $1.3 million worth of the Steem supply was distributed into the wallets of thousands of users across the world. From every corner, users have been drawn to Steemit because the system rewards thoughtful comments, unlike Reddit or Twitter. The community and the blockchain together power a system that gets better and better every day.”

MAC MALWARE

Pirrit, malware designed to infect Mac computers, has been tracked to a marketing agency in Israel. Pirrit can garner “root access of the infected computer” and hijack Internet traffic. While a script to remove the adware has been designed, that script is no longer functioning.

Explaining the discovery, security researcher Amit Serper says:

“The variant’s creators made a crucial mistake that caused their entire operation to topple like a house of cards. The tar.gz archive format is a POSIX format, which means that it also saves all of the file attributes… inside of the archive as they were on the computer that the archive was created on. So when I listed the files inside the archive, I could see the username of the person who created the archive.”

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Images courtesy of anh-usa.org, steemit.com.