This type of topic has already been answered thousands of times. One of the best studies about this occours in this topic: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=507458.0

But it is still uncertain. He may have thousands more who mined after he stopped communicating on the forums. The big question is that he never moved and never gave any hint that will move. He should be proud to help his Bitcoin be worth more by not moving him.

Scam is the use that many were making of this new modality of financing. A world with a smaller number of regulators has many advantages. The main one is freedom of choice.
But also many disadvantages. People who do little research, little study, little preparation, and use an investment in the same way that chips at a casino are likely to be fucked.

VentureBeat

The IRS has its eye on cryptocurrency investments. If you traded or sold any kind of cryptocurrency last year, here’s what you need to know before tax day.

In 2014, the IRS issued one notice — IRS Notice 2014-21, 2014-16 IRB 938 — about cryptocurrency (let’s call it “the 2014 Notice”). This is considered tax authority, although it does not have the same weight or effect as a law or regulation. But it’s all we have so far, and given no other official IRS guidance, it’s pretty informative of how the IRS thinks about cryptocurrency.

The 2014 Notice gives some very high-level background on how existing tax code applies to cryptocurrency and how the IRS views it as property. This classification as “property” requires a lot of effort on your part. Most importantly, you need to know the adjusted cost basis of your property (cryptocurrency) so you can determine your gain or loss when you go to trade in or sell that property. Typically, basis is first determined by cost – in other words, the amount in U.S. dollars you paid for the property –  and adjusted by certain events (this might include stock splits if you held stock). Each Bitcoin you have will have its own cost basis, and it is possible this cost basis needs to be adjusted as you hold the Bitcoin – although adjustments to basis are as yet unclear in the cryptocurrency context.

There doesn’t yet exist a global reporting mechanism to confirm adjusted basis for people who bought or sold cryptocurrency in the past year and are now in the process of figuring out gains or losses. So if you aren’t getting any kinds of reports from your investments (which isn’t unusual), you’ll have to determine the adjusted basis and any associated gain or loss on your own. Moreover, you will need to track the character of your gain or loss from your cryptocurrency sales or trades. The character depends on whether the virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer.

To make these determinations, you will likely have to go back through your bank or wallet receipts and emails to find out what you paid for a cryptocurrency in U.S. dollars (or the U.S. dollar equivalent of another cryptocurrency) to determine the cost basis of the property in question. Then you will need to consider whether you engaged in any events since the date of acquisition that require an adjustment to the basis. Ultimately, that should get you to the adjusted basis at the time you sold or exchanged the property. And if you only sold or traded a portion of your cryptocurrency, you will need to determine which portion of your adjusted basis was sold or exchanged. Most often, FIFO, or a “first in, first out” method, is applied for this determination. It’s a challenging endeavor for those who just got started investing in this area and could be nearly impossible for early adopters, who may not have kept detailed records. Nevertheless, the IRS has said it expects taxpayers to comply with general tax law for all virtual currency transactions, even those enacted before the 2014 Notice. If you don’t, there is potential for penalties or audits.

Adding another layer of complication is when cryptocurrencies are mined instead of purchased with cash. You’ll need to determine if you were an employee or independent contractor mining for someone else, if you were getting wages for mining cryptocurrency, if those wages were in U.S. dollars or virtual currency, and how much each of those transactions was worth in U.S. dollars on the day they were recognized as transactions.

If you were mining for someone else, your earnings are considered wages, subject to regular wage withholding by your employer. If you were doing it as an independent contractor, those earnings have to be considered self-employment earnings. In other words, those earnings will not be reported as capital. So you have both the initial difficulty of determining fair market value of the virtual currency and the added complication of properly categorizing your mining activity. Note, this is assuming employees or contractors are getting paid in cryptocurrency; regular salary paid in cash and similar payments are treated under standard income tax principles.

If it sounds complicated, it is. Here are a few ways to prepare yourself for a tax filing.

1. Don’t neglect to report any amount of cryptocurrency gains or losses from your investments. Be mindful of the limitations on losses that could apply. For example, generally capital losses of individual taxpayers (as opposed to ordinary losses, which are subject to special rules) are limited to $3,000 per year. If you sold a portion of even one Bitcoin for any amount of money (even a small amount), the IRS has made it pretty clear they expect you to make best efforts to report any gain or loss triggered by the sale. The IRS, in fact, reinforced this position on March 23, 2018, by releasing a reminder to taxpayers to report virtual currency transactions, and stated in the reminder that taxpayers who do not properly report the income tax consequences of virtual currency transactions can be audited for those transactions and, when appropriate, can be liable for penalties and interest.

2. Start an ongoing spreadsheet that captures when you bought a cryptocurrency and how much it was worth in U.S. dollars on that day, when you sell or trade it and how much it is worth in equivalent U.S. dollars on that day, what you sell or trade for it and the value of what you get in return for that sale or trade. Make efforts also to track any possible adjustments to the cost basis in your cryptocurrency such as splits or forks, even if it is unclear yet whether those adjustments should be taken into account. In the long run, it will serve you better to get everything in order now, as more regulations are expected, and they may increase your reporting requirements.

3. Think more broadly about what you do with your cryptocurrency beyond strictly selling it. As I said above, tax law considers convertible virtual currencies like Bitcoin to be property. So you potentially have gains or losses if you trade Bitcoin for tangible things like a cup of coffee or goods on a third-party website. Technically, that’s a reportable transaction for tax purposes, and Uncle Sam wants a cut of any gain you earned on the transaction. It’s not intuitive that you would have to report this, so pay special attention to tracking the value of the good you bought and if that value resulted in a gain or loss compared to the adjusted basis of the cryptocurrency on that specific day. If you track those things and report accordingly for tax purposes, you’ll be in a much better position to defend your actions in an audit.

4. This trading concept applies to inter-cryptocurrency trades too. If you trade one type of cryptocurrency for another, it could also trigger these same issues. Under prior law, a trade of one cryptocurrency for another could in some cases be considered a tax-free like-kind exchange. Some cryptocurrency investors relied on that principle to treat cryptocurrency swaps as tax-free like-kind exchanges. The most recent tax reform has made that an impossibility, as all like-kind exchanges are now required to be exchanges of real property, such as exchanges of rental houses or commercial buildings. So for those who are exchanging cryptocurrency, you’d still need to determine the adjusted basis of the virtual currency on the day you traded it and see if that was worth more or less than the currency you were exchanging it for on the day you swapped it and report gain or loss accordingly.

To recap: Cryptocurrency has to be looked at as property, not cash, when doing a tax return. So if you bought Bitcoin or a similar convertible virtual currency as a sole investor during the year and have held onto it (with no dividend or fork, either of which could lead to other tax complications), you probably don’t have any reporting obligation. But if you sold or traded it last year, you may have to report your gain or loss to the IRS. So grab a spreadsheet. As cryptocurrency becomes more legitimate, the rules become more significant.

Bitpay and invoice-based is an interesting solution for stores. But it is not so useful for exporadic funding issues or for those who want to better understand how it works.

The idea of checking balances, in unique addresses, is very interesting. Recently I needed to collect money from a group of people for a simple project in a forum similar to this one. Not everyone was comfortable with Bitcoin, so I thought it would be an opportunity to demonstrate in practice how it would work. But it turned out to be a lot more complicated and expensive than I'd imagined.

So lately whenever someone asks about a Payment Gateways I suggest Bitpay.

Anyway, even for educational purposes, demonstrate how to use specific addresses, even if it is difficult to create one for each task and take advantage of public ledger make this solution using bitcoind become quite interesting.

Thanks for the step by step explanation. It will be of great help.

https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/commit/2d29f0a75d5db0981528b2d7358f18c41087489e

Apparently adopting to LN will be much faster than it was to segwit. When everything is safe, I imagine it will be instant support on multiple portfolios and platforms.

South Korea’s largest commercial banks including Shinhan and Woori have continued to support cryptocurrency exchanges after Kookmin, the biggest bank in the country, denied to provide financial services to trading platforms.

Shinhan and Omise
Since then, both Shinhan and Woori have supported a series of pro-blockchain and pro-cryptocurrency initiatives. In January, Shinhan, the second largest bank in South Korea, announced that it has begun the development of a bitcoin wallet and vault system with which bank users can safely store bitcoin in a cold wallet. In February, Shinhan completed trials with Ripple Labs, utilizing the Ripple network and its liquidity system xRapid to send cross-border payments in a blockchain network.

This month, Shinhan entered a strategic partnership with OmiseGo, an Ethereum-based banking and payments platform, to accelerate the adoption and implementation of blockchain technology in Asia, and more specifically, South Korea.

In South Korea, upon the completion of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Shinhan and the Ethereum startup, Omise CEO Jun Hasegawa stated:

“Omise and OmiseGO are working to revolutionize the way digital value moves globally, with an end goal of creating a platform that facilitates a decentralized economy. The OMG platform, using the Plasma architecture, is being built as a public network that is powered by Ethereum. The first phase of the wallet SDK was recently released and is available for anyone to use. We want to make it easy for those who need online asset exchange as part of their business to connect seamlessly to the OMG Network.”

The official statement of Omise revealed that in the upcoming months, Shinhan will closely work with Omise to integrate its blockchain technology in various areas of the bank’s operations. Shinhancard, the credit card department of Shinhan Bank, is expected to develop new business models and key application opportunities based on the OmiseGo technology, becoming the first major credit card company in Asia to apply blockchain technology.

Omise will also process Shinhan FAN card and overseas merchant base, potentially settling transactions for Shinhan merchants using the OmiseGo blockchain, and ultimately, the Ethereum blockchain.

“The MoU establishes a framework for closer collaboration between each party; leveraging Omise’s broad portfolio of payment technology and solutions, and OmiseGO’s server and mobile SDKs that have been made publicly available for the purpose of onboarding e-wallet providers,” the Omise team said.

Bitcoin Wallet
In November 2017, CCN reported that Shinhan began the development of its bitcoin wallet and vault system. Its representative stated:

“Shinhan is testing a virtual bitcoin vault platform wherein the private keys of bitcoin addresses and wallets are managed and issued by the bank. The bank intends to provide the vault service for free and charge a fee for withdrawals.”

The MoU between Omise and Shinhan could lead to the Omise development team cooperating with Shinhan in completing the development of its cryptocurrency wallet, given that the Omise team revealed the MoU was signed to allow Omise to cooperate with the major South Korean bank in developing a variety of blockchain solutions.
CCN

Mike Hearn has always been a fan of bigger blocks. The article is written in a way that makes it appear that he only now changed the concept that would have on the BTC. In fact, he has come a long time disagreeing with the directions of the BTC. He even sold all the BTCs he would have. He supported other unsuccessful forks.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-mike-hearn-sold-all-his-bitcoins-in-2016-and-market-proved-him-wrong

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_XT

It is amazing at how far Tron has gone by ctrl+c ctrl+v a whitepaper and without anything that is really innovating. Just announcing fake partnership and paying for people to shill.

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/982194680258486273

Could someone explain how it works or where I can read more about the code? It seems rather simple, safe, and fast.
Many people always ask about gateways or means of payments for simple tasks using Bitcoin and this method would be a fine example to present.

The big question is that when the value starts to rise, it will go through marks at a near-jet speed. We have already seen this when it was from 1200 to 4k. And then from 5k to 19K. Now we will see triple in values in weeks and several people desperate because FOMO.

coinbase

Here at Coinbase, we’re committed to creating an open financial system for the world. We’re hard at work building our own set of products. And we’re also eagerly rooting for the best and brightest minds in the crypto space, both in and outside of Coinbase, to develop products and services that create meaningful user and customer value.

As Vitalik said so well in December last year, the digital currency ecosystem has the opportunity to transform the lives of billions of people, but we have only just scratched the surface of what’s possible.

That’s why today, we’re announcing the formation of Coinbase Ventures. We’ll be providing financing to promising early stage companies that have the teams and ideas that can move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way.

At least in the beginning, our goal is simply to help the most compelling companies in the space to flourish. This means that we don’t have the strategic requirement of formalizing partner relationships with such companies, as some corporate venture programs do. Our focus is on building strong relationships and helping to spur on the development of the ecosystem.

We also have a strong Coinbase alumni network, which we’re very proud of. People who have worked at Coinbase are encouraged to think entrepreneurially, and you can expect that we’ll enthusiastically invest in ideas from our own alumni network.

You may also see us invest in companies that ostensibly look competitive with Coinbase. There may be nuance to the way these startups are building out their products. Or, in some cases, we may be comfortable investing in companies that are potentially competitive, because it’s in everyone’s interest to see the ecosystem innovate. We’re taking a long term view of the space, and we believe that multiple approaches are healthy and good.

In short, it’s in all of our interest to see this space evolve, expand and mature. We’ll learn a lot along the way, and we’re excited to get started.

Charles Hoskinson
‏
 
@IOHK_Charles

We've started early registration for people who are Interested in operating a stake pool https://staking.cardano.org . This is for those who want to beta test on the testnet once available.

Registration will run until April 31. This is amazing. Great day for Cardano and for everyone who believes in the potential of this project.

We are seeing a project die in real time. Unfortunately many will lose money on this, but it was not for lack of warnings. Since the big boom with mcaffee twitter we see a great marketing plan from VERGE. But little was done to make the project work. Attacks are serious. Read the main concerns of Satoshi when it started. He wanted to build something that resisted the attacks, that would work forever.

coindesk
The government of Mexico has been quietly working on a project to track bids for public contracts using blockchain, a government official revealed Tuesday.

Speaking at a tech conference in Jalisco, Mexico's national digital strategy coordinator Yolanda Martinez detailed Blockchain HACKMX, a project she said has been in production since last September. The system was initially developed by a team of university graduates whose design won a contest calling for blockchain solutions that can help improve public services.

"With blockchain applied to public contracts we'll be able to know whether a company that provides services to the government is trustworthy," Martinez tweeted.

According to Mexican news outlet Debate, Martinez told attendees that the technology would eliminate the "easily corruptible" human element and introduce transparency to the public tender process. Martinez also pointed out that the blockchain would store records of the bidding process, allowing for audits after the fact.

Technical details about the project are not available, but Debate's report suggests the project will eventually be rolled out to the public, with the government eyeing it as a solution for state and local governments in particular.

A presentation entitled Blockchain HACKMX, which is available on the UN's website and appears to date from July, weighs the benefits of various platforms that could potentially host the network: Hyperledger Fabric, bitcoin, ethereum, Chain and NEM. The presentation suggests that computers participating in the network would be run by a mix of government offices, universities, civil society groups and private companies.

The issue of public contract corruption is a sensitive one in Mexico, given a recent high-profile scandal that involved a major South American construction firm and allegations that bribes were funneled to the political campaign of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Transparency International, an anti-corruption non-governmental organization (NGO), rates the country 135th out of 180 in its Corruption Perceptions Index.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-04/ripple-is-said-to-struggle-to-buy-u-s-listing-for-popular-coin

Last year, a Ripple executive asked whether a $1 million cash payment could persuade Gemini to list XRP in the third quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. That followed other attempts by Ripple to get Gemini to add XRP, exploring strategies like paying out rebates and covering related costs, the people said.

During preliminary talks with Coinbase last fall, Ripple said it would be willing to lend the exchange more than $100 million worth of XRP to start letting users trade the asset, according to a person privy to that discussion. Ripple, without putting the proposal in writing, told Coinbase it could pay back the loan in XRP or dollars, the person said. If the exchange had chosen the latter, it could have profited had the tokens become more valuable upon being listed, the person said.

Gemini and Coinbase both declined to pursue the proposals, the people said.

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/mailchimp-icos.html

Last week MailChimp, an email newsletter platform, decided to shut down accounts that promote cryptocurrencies and ICOs. But not completely. In response to complaints from the cryptocurrency community, MailChimp tweeted, "Cryptocurrency-related information isn't necessarily prohibited. It can be sent as long as the sender isn't involved in the production, sale, exchange, storage, or marketing of cryptocurrencies."

Technology analyst Ben Thompson suggested that the decision was motivated by deliverability concerns: MailChimp's success depends on its emails not being kept out of people's inboxes by spam filters. It sounds like he was right. MailChimp wrote in an email to Inc. that "the promotion and exchange of cryptocurrencies is too frequently associated with scams, fraud, phishing, and potentially misleading business practices at this time."

"We made this decision to update our Acceptable Use Policy in order to protect the millions of businesses that use MailChimp for their marketing," the company said. The policy also prohibits other types of businesses that are considered spam-prone and high-risk, from pharmaceuticals to gambling to affiliate marketing.

However, when it comes to cryptocurrencies, there appear to be gaps between policy and implementation. MailChimp indicated that sharing information about cryptocurrencies, as a journalist or news outlet might do, was still allowed. In practice, several newsletters have been hit by the policy change.

Everyone who took a few minutes of their time to read the information provided by the Centra Team could have foreseen that it was something very close to a scam. It's amazing how many have treated that high of late 2017 as if they were casino chips. I hope more projects without a great planning are closed in this next year.

There is no reason to believe that mining could ever be an individual activity again. Starting with electricity costs, which are the biggest impediments to most people. But having a greater number of competitors building mining hardware would be very welcome.

He is in the conference because it is necessary to create a narrative different from the current one. It is necessary that someone can determine which way to go, and this path must be in agreement with the main sponsors of this fraud and these conferences.

For me the reason for him not being Satoshi is much simpler and less technical than any other. Everyone, absolutely everyone who exchanged direct messages with Satoshi always said they believed he was a very young and very shy person.

I believe that unilateral decisions about world trade is the worst decision a country can take these days. There is the WTO, there are possibilities for agreements, there are trade blocs. Trump has an attitude of who owns a business, not the attitude of a president.