John explains: “The branch manager sat down and explained that the bank had reviewed the transactions coming in and out of my account and decided that it no longer wanted to do business with “these type of people”. I immediately requested full withdrawal of my not insignificant balance to which he replied that he would need to seek approval for that to happen.”

An entire country, Somalia, began to starve because U.K. banks decided it was not worth the bother to bank remittance services. Forty percent of the country's population relied on these remittances – people sending their hard-earned savings home to feed their families. The U.K. banks' excuse: payments to Somalia were "high-risk," a euphemism for not worth the compliance cost of dealing with people with poor documentation. Invariably, those who pay the highest cost are society's weakest.

Founded in 2012, TransferGo currently has “over 600,000” registered users and is partnered with thirty banks.
A remittance is the transfer of money from a foreign worker to another individual across international borders. In 2017, global remittance flows to developing countries reached a massive $466 billion.

While most traders are unlikely to be concerned with cybersecurity ratings, the existence of such tools may incentivize exchanges to improve their service, knowing that their every action is being monitored. Dmitriy Budorin, CEO of Hacken who created the platform, said: “Cryptocurrency exchanges are the backbone of the whole emerging crypto economy. CER will contribute to its healthier development. We hope that with CER, the exchanges will start taking their cybersecurity more seriously and refuse any bad practices, while users will receive comprehensive tools for smart decision making”.

I strongly agree with this. I don't know why people think something like Bitcoin would displace banks. If anything, for a company that provides financial services and protection, something like Bitcoin is a dream come true. For your average person, using and securing Bitcoin is quite difficult. A bank could provide all kinds of products and make all kinds of money off of those types of services. It's just a question of when imo.

A deputy director for the International Monetary Fund's Monetary and Capital Markets Department believes that central banks need to offer "better" fiat currencies in order to fend off any potential competition from cryptocurrencies.

The suggestions came in an article published Thursday, penned by deputy director Dong He. In that article – which boasts the tagline "Crypto assets may one day reduce demand for central bank money" –  He argues that central banks may want to consider adopting some of the concepts in order to "forestall the competitive pressure crypto assets may exert on fiat currencies."

It's a notable statement and one that echoes past remarks from He as well as other IMF officials, including director Christine Lagarde. Indeed, Lagarde, back in March, said during an event that regulators should deploy some elements of the tech in order to "fight fire with fire."

He's argument in the latest piece is based on the possibility that, should cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets see wider adoption, there is a chance that central banks will lose their ability to influence the economy through tactics such as interest rate changes.

Bill Gates is a dinosaur like Buffet 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3644374.0

NYSE Isn’t Planning a Bitcoin Futures Market, But a Proper Crypto Exchange
In an interview with NYTimes, LedgerX founder and CEO Paul Chou, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs as an executive, said that the bitcoin industry is seeing unprecedented institutional interest for the first time in history.

Intercontinental Exchange, the firm that owns the New York Stock Exchange, is the latest Wall Street giant to be mulling a move into the cryptocurrency space, according to a report.

An article from The New York Times published Tuesday suggests that Intercontinental Exchange (or ICE) has been developing an online bitcoin trading platform for major investors who want access to bitcoin.

The newspaper cited emails and documents it obtained as well as conversations with four people with knowledge of the still-confidential project.

I've no idea what these 100-point identification checks are - if anyone knows, please chime in.

He has been positive about bitcoin, then negative, then positive again, now he is negative again. What's this guy's deal?

“I would short it if there was an easy way to do it,” Gates told CNBC May 7 during a joint interview with his billionaire pals Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

As such, DAR went on a mission to figure out Blockchain's methods for what it calls "one of the longest standing mysteries in the cryptocurrency community" - bitcoin's estimated transaction value. In the company's report on the subject, published recently, DAR said Blockchain over-estimated transaction values from October to February 2017 and has mostly underestimated them since then.

Executives from Blockchain were not available for interview before press time.

For the time being, the community will need to remember the old Russian proverb, repurposed by cypherpunks:

 "Don't trust, verify."

The announcement was well-received, but some questioned why Ripple chose to withhold five billion from the escrow amount. 20 It was a mystery at the time, even for XRP investors and followers.

It turns out there was a reason.  At that point, Ripple had not yet tried to cancel their previous years’ agreement with R3, and were forced to announce a smaller amount – 55 billion XRP – for the escrow lock-up.  This would provide enough XRP – just in case – something went wrong with cancelling the outstanding options contract with R3.

This must have bothered Brad Garlinghouse -Ripple’s CEO – enough to attempt to terminate the contract with R3 amicably for both parties without legal intervention.  The next month, he attempted to do so via email to David Rutter, the CEO of R3. 14  R3 wasn’t giving up on its opportunity to acquire XRP at the bargain price stipulated in the option, however.  R3 sued, and then Ripple was forced to counter-sue as well. 

Ripple price ‘CRASH’: Cryptocurrency value PLUNGES following DEVASTATING XRP loss

Ripple price ‘CRASH’: Cryptocurrency value PLUNGES following DEVASTATING XRP loss

There are other companies doing this similar to Ripple. They may be lesser known  because they are doing identical work WITHOUT  a coin of their own.  R3 is one example and have partnered with as many as 70 of the largest banks in the world.

On Friday, Coinbase told the around 13,000 affected customers that the company would be providing their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013-2015 to the IRS within 21 days.

Coinbase’s letter to these customers encourages them “to seek legal advice from an attorney promptly” if they have any questions. Their website also states that concerns may also be addressed on Coinbase’s Taxes FAQ.

Now, though, it seems as though Bank of America and other financial institutions are realizing that they can no longer pretend cryptocurrencies are not a threat.

The point is that by now many Governments, especially in the West, don't control their own money any more, since it is now a private business of banks.

Two people briefed on the investigation said that the accounts were set up at J.P. Morgan Chase and the Agricultural Bank of China. Neither bank returned requests for comment.