French high school children will soon learn about Bitcoin , after the cryptocurrency was added to the syllabus for Economics and Social Sciences .

Le Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale, the French education ministry, has outlined Bitcoin ‘s inclusion in the curriculum, noting how it will use the cryptocurrency to help students think about the characteristics of money.

Given the pupils’ youth, Bitcoin will not be explored in great depth , rather it’s more of an introductory overview to help students understand the notion of decentralization in the context of mainstream financial systems.

As part of the course , the ministry has also created four explainer videos, which include “Can Bitcoin replace the Euro?” and “Is Bitcoin the currency of the future ?,” to help students get a better understanding of how the cryptocurrency works and how it compares to fiat .

The news comes after a France ‘s Financia Business School began accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment in October last year.

It’s also worth noting that several other universities across the world accept the cryptocurrency as payment and offer courses about Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology to their students .

French President Emmanuel Macron has long pushed for advancements in technology and innovation, hoping to make France into an international superpower in both arenas — and his efforts have seemingly paid off as Paris recently overtook Berlin in terms of capital raised by technology startups.

Earlier this year, he commented on blockchain’s potential to make the agricultural industry more transparent, during a speech at the International Agricultural Fair, held in Paris .

French high schoolers may not become fully-fledged Bitcoin experts, but teaching young people about cryptocurrencies , decentralization , and the monetary system is never a bad thing.

This cryptocurrency botnet was designed to seek and destroy mining malware

Cryptocurrency botnets are normally the weapons of evil, used to covertly and illicitly steal other people’s computing power to earn coins. But now there’s a new kid on the block, and it seems to be cleaning up online avenues of crypto-malware.

The botnet, known as Fbot, appears to be hunting down illegitimate cryptocurrency mining malware and erasing it from where ever it is being hosted.

According to the researchers who discovered the botnet, Qihoo 360Netlab , the bot scans the web for a specific piece of cryptocurrency mining malware called com.ufoiner. When found, the botnet installs itself over the top of the malware and then destroys itself.

Interestingly, the botnet is linked to a domain name. However, that domain is not accessible through conventional domain name systems (DNS). Rather it is accessed through EmerDNS – a decentralized alternative, which makes it much more difficult to track and possibly shut down the botnet’s source address.

Who exactly made and released this botnet into the wild at the time of writing remains a mystery.

There is the possibility that some rival cryptocurrency miner malware creators are using Fbot to wipe out the competition. Or maybe, there are some good folk still out there looking to make a positive impact and solve a real and growing problem.

Cryptocurrency malware – especially crypto-jacking campaigns – is on the rise. Just this week numerous government websites in India had fallen foul of cryptocurrency mining scripts.

We’ll have to wait and see if Fbot turns out to be one of the good guys, or just a baddie in a mask.

Facebook relaxes its ban on some cryptocurrency advertisements

Facebook today softened its stance on cryptocurrency ads by allowing a select few pre-approved advertisers to run advertisements on the network.

Facebook, in January, banned all ads that promoted financial products and services. Included in the ban were products frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as initial coin offerings (ICOs) and various incentive schemes by more established digital currencies.

At the time, Facebook’s product management director, Rob Leathern had this to say:

It appears, at least in this case, the company is holding true to its word.

Advertisers approved through an application process on Facebook can now promote cryptocurrency products, although ICOs and binary options are still banned. Those interested in advertising on the platform may be required to show Facebook “licenses they have obtained, whether they are traded on a public stock exchange, and other relevant public background on their business,” in order to get the okay from those approving their ads.

It’s not the news cryptocurrency enthusiasts may have hoped for, but it’s hard to argue that any softening of Facebook’s initial stance on digital currencies is a bad one.