Unfortunately for Canadian Coinbase users, this means the Bitcoin exchange will no longer support EFT and Interac transfers. Both of these tools are the wire transfer counterpart in Canada, one of which allows for nearly instant transfers. Moreover, Coinbase will no longer support CAD balances either.

http://themerkle.com/coinbase-shuts-down-support-for-canadian-customers-come-august-1/

Among one of the first Bitcoin orders they processed was a Tesla Model S P90D. The vehicle has been purchased by a couple in Prague, for nearly 200,000 Euro. Interestingly enough, they decided to pay the entire amount in Bitcoin. This is one of the benefits cryptocurrency brings to the table: it is easy to move large sums of money within minutes.

http://themerkle.com/auto-outlet-sells-its-second-tesla-car-for-bitcoin/

The majority of traders will be primarily interested in the Bitcoin futures market; Crix offers the common spot order as a first choice. Moreover, there is also an option to go long or short on the Bitcoin three-hour and 24-hour charts. Advanced traders can use a plethora of charting tools from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen to predict where the Bitcoin price will go next.


http://themerkle.com/learn-and-trade-bitcoin-futures-with-crix/

Albeit Steemit has only been around since May of 2016; the social media platform has seen its fair share of success. The number of post votes and posts per day have nearly doubled in the past month. Moreover, the number of new members joining the platform has tripled. Now that the team has paid out 10% of Steem’s market cap to contributors and curators, those numbers will continue to increase.

http://fintechist.com/steemit-social-media-platform-pays-us1-3m-users/

Willem Vermeend strongly feels it is unlikely all of the blockchain campus participants will use the same technology in the end. That would be a shame as an open blockchain connects banked and unbanked people from all over the world in a frictionless manner. That said, one of the objectives is to gain additional knowledge and expertise about this technology, and exchange it with other participants.

http://themerkle.com/dutch-government-announces-blockchain-development-campus/

This second theft came at an interesting time, considering he had already received a prison sentence of 71 months for stealing the initial funds. Moreover, he was arrested in February of 2016 when trying to flee the US. Among his possessions were offshore bank account records and a bulletproof vest. This all happened after Shaun Bridges pleaded guilty to the first theft.

http://fintechist.com/shaun-bridges-stole-funds-twice-silk-road-investigation/

As a result of this new partnership, Worldcore users can top up their prepaid debit card with Bitcoin. Keeping in mind how most of the company’s clients are international business people and migrants, adding a global payment solution is a smart move.  Plus, with the sender paying the fees of every Bitcoin transaction, there is no cost for Worldcore to integrate this solution.

http://fintechist.com/worldcore-prepaid-debit-card-bitcoin/

Some people speculate that Theymos and Cobra-Bitcoin are one and the same individual. While this has not been verified by any means, it is not hard to see why people would assume this to be the case.  The allegations of Maxwell indicating Cobra is not an actual developer – or may not even exist – only contributes to those claims.

http://themerkle.com/the-cobra-bitcoin-mystery-needs-to-be-solved/

One Blockstream member is in favor of making changes to the Bitcoin whitepaper, as he feels “it will do more harm than good”. The obvious term that comes to mind is “censorship”, which should be avoided at all costs. Bitcoin was designed to be censorship-resistant, so why would any community member try to change that, all of a sudden?

http://themerkle.com/blockstream-wants-to-rewrite-the-bitcoin-whitepaper/

Specific aspects of this ransomware make it appear very similar to Locky. Both types use the same type of RSA encryption keys, they leave similar file types behind, and the ransom text is nearly identical. Despite these similarities, the new kind of ransomware is far from ineffective, though.

http://bitcoinist.net/worrisome-locky-ransomware-variant-zepto-making-rounds/

Granted, Bitcoin still has a very small market cap compared to the traditional financial world. Just shy over 10.5 billion, to be more precise. But this cryptocurrency is very scarce, and the upcoming block reward halving will further reduce the influx of additional coins. Whether or not this will affect the Bitcoin price, is hard to say, though.

http://fintechist.com/bitcoin-price-increased-first-half-2016/

Interestingly enough, any GDAX account not completing the required profile information will be suspended from trading activity come August 1, 2016. This seems like a rather harsh decision, with very little warning in advance regarding these changes. Albeit users may argue one month is plenty of time to update an account, not everyone checks these email messages every day.

http://themerkle.com/incomplete-gdax-user-profiles-to-be-suspended-from-trading-come-august-1st/

As it turns out, various Chinese mining pools are in agreement they will hard fork and switch to 2MB shortly. In doing so, they will also switch from Bitcoin Core to Bitcoin Classic, and solve any lingering network congestion problems. In the mining pool operators’ opinion, Bitcoin Core defaulted on a block size consensus, and they do not honor the desire to increase blocks to 2MB. BTCC is the only mining pool which has not agreed or disagreed with this plan so far.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/01/chinese-miners-allegedly-planning-hard-fork-bitcoin/

If all things go to plan, and the business is indeed profitable, the company will continue to expand its capacity to 10 petahash in the future. MGT has a clear plan to become one of the major Bitcoin mining enterprises in the world. This news comes at an interesting time as well, since the Bitcoin halving is almost upon us.

http://themerkle.com/john-mcafees-mgt-will-launch-2-phs-bitcoin-mining-operation/

As is the case with every Bitcoin Wednesday event, there will be different presentations and workshops to attend. Among the presentations is Oraclize.it, Wings.am, Blockchain Education Network, and NXT Foundation. All of these talks will touch upon different subjects, ranging from DAOs to Blockchain scalability and Dapps.

http://themerkle.com/celebrating-three-years-of-bitcoin-wednesday-on-july-6/

The court case regarding this incident is in the hands of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The outcome of this case will set precedents for the technology industry in general. Considering how the email account belongs to a resident of Ireland, the FBI has no legal jurisdiction in that country. Nor does the US DOJ, for that matter.

http://bitcoinist.net/fbi-overstepped-boundaries-again-in-silk-road-investigation/

As if it were not horrible enough so many people lost funds when HashOcean disappeared, criminals are launching copycat websites. So far, three different clones of this cloud mining service have been discovered. Customers should never trust the sites as they aim to steal login details. Moreover, depositing funds in these new sites will only result in losses.

http://fintechist.com/copycat-defraud-hashocean-investors/

It’s hard to believe HashOcean was hacked, in fairness. The cloud mining platform has never shown any proof of their mining capacities, yet somehow paid out users for over ten months. Blaming their disappearance on a hacking attempt is rather strange, but not entirely impossible either. Their Facebook page mentions how they have a database backup from June 25th, which is the day on which their site started slowing down.

http://themerkle.com/hashocean-is-not-dead-yet-by-the-look-of-things/

According to the report, the Advcash customer support told the user how he could file a chargeback procedure. However, every transaction would be subject to a US$35 fee, and may take p to 90 days to complete. With 29 fraudulent withdrawals, this would result in paying US$1,015 in fees on a sum of US$4,685.

http://themerkle.com/advcash-user-loses-nearly-5k-in-bitcoin-due-to-card-cloning/

Ransomware was the obvious culprit, albeit we have not received official word on which type has been used. As is the case with any Bitcoin ransomware infection, there is an option just to pay the fee and restore file access. The NASCAR team decided to do so and paid US$500 in Bitcoin to restore their files. It is important to note paying this fee is no guarantee files will be recovered. However, it appears the team got lucky.

http://fintechist.com/nascar-team-bitcoin-ransomware/