A Tel Aviv district court ruled last week that Israeli banks can deny services to bitcoin firms after it ruled in favor of the country’s second largest bank.

According to court documents, Bank Leumi had stopped servicing Israeli bitcoin exchange Bits of Gold claiming that the exchange couldn’t follow its anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

While Bits of Gold followed the bank’s know-your-customer (KYC) procedures, reporting transactions to authorities over a certain amount, the bank said it couldn’t be sure as to who the end receiver of the digital currency was.

The bank added that hackers had also managed to break into its accounts to send funds from the bank to purchase bitcoins. Yet, while the digital currency exchange assisted with the bank and its investigations there was no indication that Bits of Gold was involved.

In an attempt to resume their services Bits of Gold sought the court to intervene; however, the court ruled in favor of Bank Leumi stating that it can deny service to it. The court stated that this was due to a lack of clear guidance from national financial supervision authorities, reports Finance Magnates.

Given the fact that bitcoin has been growing in Israel it will be interesting to see how this decision will impact other financial establishments in the country.

The main use behind the account was for Bits of Gold to deposit U.S. dollars and Israeli Shekels from those who wanted to buy the digital currency and for the exchange to the transfer the respective national currencies to the accounts of sellers selling bitcoin.

In January, the Israeli Tax Authority issued a circular draft stating that bitcoin was a taxable asset. Citing the Bank of Israel, the country’s central bank, which doesn’t see digital currencies as foreign currencies, digital currencies will be taxed according to existing fixed tax rates.

It remains to be seen how things will now progress in Israel, but it seems that it will be harder for digital currency exchanges to take off if banks now have the power to deny services to them in order for them to provide a service to their customers.

Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/israeli-banks-can-deny-service-bitcoin-firms-court-finds/

I think no. Signature bounty was finished month ago.

As i understand correctly jr. Member and Member have equal status and get 15 stakes per week? Has it any sense to change my signature in the current campaign then? I understand that came to this bounty very late, but really want to help monaco revolutionize visa payments by spreading information about it. 50 posts for a week - its a real challenge, but i fulfill my obligations.

Situation with Ethereum price looks became more crazy with Bancor crowdsale. Within one day price had rised from 0.11 to 0.14 BTC. People wanted to buy Etherium and sell BTC, as a result bitcoin lost 300$ of its value. If current ETH price is a bubble, i hope it will deflate back slowly not to shock people.

Interesting, Woyniak bought bitcoin almost at the same price (650) i bought my first 0.4 bitcoin. That was my first mature investment.

One sign that bitcoin is maturing as an industry is that it now has its own comedian.

Margaux Avedisian, a bitcoin investor and entrepreneur, is also a comedian who does comic routines about bitcoin, according to The Wall Street Journal. She performed her unique bitcoin comedy at the Consensus 2017 and other conferences.


She recently joked during a bitcoin conference that the current U.S. President makes Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate in 2016, look like “not a bad idea,” but like Bitcoin Unlimited, it “isn’t going to happen.”

Margaux Avedisian

Not everyone in the bitcoin savvy audience was receptive to the joke about Bitcoin Unlimited, given that many of them view Bitcoin Unlimited as a way to address the slow transaction times that is plaguing bitcoin.

But Avedisian has found that bitcoiners, besides often a bit nerdy, are open to self mockery. Hence, her comedy continues.

Avedisian’s affinity for comedy and bitcoin both came naturally to her and by accident. Hence, she seems to excel at both.

For the 33-year-old Avedisian, comedy and bitcoin are intertwined. She became active with bitcoin and comedy alike in 2012. She signed up for an open mic night at a club and found she had a talent for comedy. She came across bitcoin when she met the founder of Tradehill, a now defunct bitcoin exchange, at a party. Tradehill was looking for a business development manager.

Trained as an emergency medical technician and having studied chemistry and psychology at Mount Holyoke College, Avedisian had already worked at startups in San Francisco when she got the chance to work for Tradehill. She had also co-founded a video-based information service called Answer in 30.

Bitcoin struck her as something that could disrupt finance and have a big impact on the world. She also liked bitcoin’s Wild West quality.


After Tradehill folded that same year, Avedisian co-founded and became CEO of AlphaPoint Exchange, a company specializing in digital currency networks. She left after three months and co-founded MonetaGo Inc., which assists financial companies with blockchain issues.

She began appearing weekly in a comedy show at the Bitcoin Center in New York City that lasted for two years.

Jesse Chenard, CEO of MonetaGo, said the best comedy is that which you live, and Avedisian lives bitcoin.

Michael Terpin, CEO of Transform Group, a public relations firm focusing on new technologies where Avedisian currently serves as vice president, described Avedisian as Zelig, a Woody Allen character who appeared at every pivotal moment of the Jazz Age.

She doesn’t only joke about bitcoin. She does routines about San Francisco and Florida, about being a woman in the tech industry and about her dating app experiences.


Performing before bitcoin audiences has its challenges, Chenard said. The audience is largely composed of nerds and they are often highly cliquish. But the audiences are also open to being made fun of. Chenard suspects this is because they’re used to it.

Both comedy and tragedy can be derived from the fact that bitcoin is created out of nothing. People need to have a thick skin if they’ve spent $10,000 for something that is now worth $2 million.

During Avedisian’s Consensus performance, she got a laugh about being in a car with Andreas Antonopoulos, asking why they weren’t in a nicer car, given the number of digital currency conferences he holds.

She recently quipped that she was honored to be on stage among bitcoiners since it could be the last show some of them see before being jailed.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/margaux-avedisian-bitcoins-home-grown-comedian/

After numerous client requests, Goldman Sachs has reportedly started covering bitcoin. The firm released a report on Monday with a bearish outlook for the digital currency.


Popular Demand Spurs Goldman Sachs to Start Covering BitcoinBitcoin.com recently reported on hedge funds quietly investing in bitcoin. An article by Zero Hedge on Monday confirms that hedge funds are actively trading the digital currency. In addition, fund managers that are clients of Goldman Sachs have also petitioned the firm’s chief technician Sheba Jafari to start covering it.

Goldman Sachs subsequently released a client report called “GS Techs: Quick BTC” on Monday, according to the publication. “Due to popular demand, it’s worth taking a quick look at bitcoin here,” Jafari wrote, adding that the firm’s overall outlook is:


Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/goldman-sachs-covering-bitcoin/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Если бы не супер интересная идея с созданием новых токенов в системе банкор, я бы подумал что все это действительно напоминает МММ. Тем более непонятно, зачем было скрывать на сайте текущий уровень сборов в процессе сбора. Это похоже как якобы бедный просит милостыню с пустой кружкой, ты ложишь туда рубль, он его прячет в карман, и опять пустая кружка.)

I hope Anna`s tiredness not related with humanique сurrent situation. HMQ exhange course holds quite stable. Development process is in progress.

On May 23, 2016, two members of the US Army National Guard were convicted of running an intricate credit card scheme through the means of Bitcoins. Other three Guardsmen – Derrick Shelton, Quentin Stewart, and Jamal Moody – pleaded guilty for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

On June 2, the two indicted persons, James Stewart and Vincent Grant, were caught red-handed using Bitcoins in purchasing stolen credit and debit card numbers. They bought the credit cards from a number of foreign websites. The Justice Department records reveal that Stewart and Grant were also prosecuted last year.

Credit card skimming

The perpetrators successfully skimmed credit card information by using advanced magnetic strip tools. The numbers were then transferred to dummy cards which were used to purchase merchandise from Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores stationed at various US military bases. Apparently, the duo also bought items from other locations all over Maryland.

Stewart was found guilty on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Grant, on the other hand, was convicted for conspiracy to commit access device fraud and also aggravated identity theft. Overall, five members of the US Army National Guard were arrested and charged.

James, Shelton, and Quentin will face a maximum of 20 years imprisonment, while Grant and Moody are heading on to a maximum of seven-and-half year sentence. All of the five suspects involved will also face a mandatory imprisonment of two years minimum for aggravated identity theft.

Remain vigilant

Even though Bitcoin is known as a dynamic cryptocurrency, key lapses in its blockchain data enabled the frauds committed by the indicted Guardsmen. With the prevalence of such crime, many experts are certain that blockchain platforms will have stricter, anti-fraud systems. Since many ‘Bitcoin frauds’ are still operational, heightened vigilance is needed by Bitcoin owners whenever doing transactions online.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/two-us-army-guardsmen-charged-and-convicted-for-bitcoin-fraud

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he bought Bitcoin at $700
- Bitcoin surged past $3,000 over the weekend
- Wozniak said he bought Bitcoin mostly to see what you could do with it

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak revealed he bought bitcoin when it was at at $700 during an interview with CNBC at eMerge Miami on Monday.

Wozniak didn't disclose how much he acquired, but the cryptocurrency surged above $3,000 over the weekend, meaning he gained $2,300 even if he just bought a single bitcoin.

"I remember getting interested in bitcoin some time ago," Wozniak said. "It was $70 for a bitcoin, man and I went online and you had to have a special bank account at a special bank and I couldn't buy any bitcoin so I gave up. Eventually I got some of them at the $700 stage and it went down to $350. I didn't invest, I did it so I could play with bitcoin."

Wozniak said he wanted to see what it was like to try to shop with bitcoin, at places like restaurants and hotels. "It's not that easy to do yet, but it's getting there. I was just playing around trying out how to buy and sell stuff and I didn't care I lost a ton of money, but now I'm way up," Wozniak added

Woz also touched on blockchain technology and why he thinks it's important. "I like the blockchain technology," he said. "Every single transaction is noted and saved, and that probably has a lot of good security and traceability and looking-back aspects to it ... That's probably why a lot of banks are interested in it."

Bitcoin was priced at about $700 in June of last year before losing value, and again in late October and early November before it began skyrocketing in value this year.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/12/apples-steve-wozniak-bought-bitcoin-at-700.html

The web is full of articles and personal opinions labeling Bitcoin’s current high valuation as being in a bubble. Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner Marc Cuban has been tweeting to his 7 million followers about bitcoin on a regular basis, but says that he believes Bitcoin is currently in a bubble, “I just don't know when or how much it corrects.”

“If there is such a thing as a healthy bubble, this is it,” the Economist stated recently. Forbes predicted that all the recent cryptocurrency gains are one large bubble. From looking at the cryptocurrency trading price patterns this year, it is hard to disagree that it matches the shape of a standard bubble pattern.

In an effort to determine which bubble phase Bitcoin’s price is currently in, BraveNewCoin turned to the original chart’s source, Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, who became famous for creating the “Phases of a Bubble” chart, a specific, investor-oriented variation of Gartner’s hype cycle.

Dr. Rodrigue, a professor at the Department of Global Studies and Geography at Hofstra University in New York, became well known for his bubble model in 2008. His model and chart are often cited and used to predict bubbles in many investment types, including stock markets, bond markets, housing markets, and now, cryptocurrencies.

Defining market terms like the “Bull trap,” the chart explores the lifestyle of all types of investment bubbles, concluding that technology moving through it is all in one of four distinct stages; Stealth, Awareness, Mania, and Blow-off. Strong arguments could be made for bitcoin being in at least three of these phases today.

In the first phase, Stealth, only investors “who understand the new fundamentals realize an emerging opportunity for substantial future appreciation get involved in the asset,” Dr. Rodrigue explained. “Prices gradually increase, but often completely unnoticed by the general population.”

Few would suggest that Bitcoin has not even seen the first stage of a bubble yet. Early adopters began investing in the digital currency via mining equipment the year it was created, and then directly into bitcoins themselves the following year, 2010. For the first four years of its existence, the vast majority of the world had not even heard of bitcoin, and to this day, less than one in ten thousand people has even one bitcoin address.

Read more: https://bravenewcoin.com/news/the-bitcoin-bubble-pinpointing-where-bitcoin-is-among-the-four-phases/

No stranger to strange milestones, the cryptocurrency sector may soon see a historic first, one that could upend long-held perceptions of its market.

Branded 'The Flippening' by market observers, this new hypothetical is defined loosely as the point at which a competing blockchain network could replace bitcoin as the largest and best capitalized blockchain. Sparked by increasing inflows in cryptographic assets, the concept has already seen a dedicated hashtag and website.

Given that bitcoin invented and popularized blockchain systems, the development could herald a time of new diversity and experimentation for the nascent sector that, until recently, was largely defined in context of bitcoin.

At earlier points in 2017, bitcoin accounted for more than 80% of the total cryptocurrency market share, though this figure has been higher than 90% at times.

However, so-called alternative cryptocurrencies have drawn robust inflows this year, causing their total market cap to reach a record high of roughly $117m today, a more than 500% year-to-date increase, according to CoinMarketCap.

Read more: http://www.coindesk.com/flippening-will-ether-pass-bitcoin-will-mean/

The price of bitcoin has been surging over the weekend almost touching $3000 per BTC on Sunday, June 11 across most global exchanges. The following day roughly around 6:30 am bitcoin’s price took a steep decline dropping to a low of $2700 but has since bounced back a touch after the dip.


During the weekend throughout June 10-11 bitcoin’s price seemed to be forming a strong consolidation in the $2970-2980 range. It tried to cross the $3000 mark multiple times (it did on a couple of exchanges) with little success as the price per BTC topped a high of $2980 on the trading platform Bitstamp. After that, the June 12th morning dip seemed rather unexpected and looked to be merely some profit-taking for the time being. At press time the price has rebounded and is sitting roughly around the $2775 mark.

Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-price-flips-downward-almost-reaching-3000/

Bitcoin changed the landscape of digital money when it was introduced to the world in 2009, and was followed by many other types of cryptocurrencies. Now bitcoin and the over 800 copycats (so called altcoins) have reached a very large market valuation of $110 billion. Let’s take a look at how this emerging digital assets landscape began and where we are today.


Since the beginning of the Internet’s early days, the concept of digital money has always intrigued the human race. When the world wide web really started to become popularized during the late eighties, and throughout the nineties, online privacy activists called cypherpunks began creating and envisioning digital currencies. David Chaum and many other well-known cryptographers helped pave the way for a technology like bitcoin.

One of the first digital currencies was Digicash, created by Chaum, and was later sold and used for bank-to-bank settlements only. There were many other efforts during those years that tried to create the perfect Internet currency such as Hashcash, e-gold, and Bitgold. However these ideas never really caught on until an anonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto revealed his white paper called ‘Bitcoin’ in 2008. The following year in January the Bitcoin network was born while the central banking system was once again quantitatively easing the world away from economic failure.

https://news.bitcoin.com/digital-money-exploded-bitcoin/

Команда Humaniq выпустила новый еженедельный отчет о проделанной работе. Думаю многим держателям токена не без интереса. Работа идет, код пишеться и коммитится, проводят тест основных систем. Надеюсь что цена HMQ будет только расти.

https://youtu.be/RpYL8GjN9bU

Excellent job, community wanted to see real conformation of performed job and it was shown in the video. A lot of source code lines had been written and committed, new systems features was successfully tested. I believe such weekly reports has very favorable affect on hmq price.

We should keeping calm till 13th of june, it was told that devs are engaged in fixing some stakes number errors.

Is it make sense continue participating in twitter bounty campaign or after today`s crowdsale all bounty campaign were ended?