SYDNEY — A new Australian political party is using the virtual currency Bitcoin as a model to replace what it says is an outdated political system — representative democracy — with a streamlined new polity for the information age.

The Flux Party says its goal is to elect six Senators. They will propose no policies and will not follow their consciences, but will support or block legislation at the direction of their members, who can swap or trade their votes on every Bill online. “If they didn’t have to be Senators, if they could just be software or robots, they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do,” Flux Party co-founder Max Kaye told Reuters.

http://www.todayonline.com/world/australia/australian-party-wants-be-bitcoin-politics

ES, February 16, 2016 at 18:37 GMT


The newly founded Spanish company BTC facil has launched a bitcoin ATM to the market designed to optimize safety, and ease of use, with benefits that are not available in any other ATM on the market. It has a price of 10.000 euros (VAT not included), but it will go on sale in February 2016 with a promotional offer of 8.000 euros (VAT not included), besides being available for renting.

BTC facil is an engineering and financial services Spanish company, with vocation of supplying the bitcoin ecosystem with all kinds of products of maximum quality. Even though it was recently created, its founders have experience with bitcoin since 2013. It has a payment gateway for businesses and offers an over-the-counter bitcoin buying and selling, this is, with fixed price, for quantities over 100 000 euros or more.

http://www.coindesk.com/press-releases/btc-facil-launches-highly-beneficial-bitcoin-atm-market/

Cryptography, mobile, machine-to-machine, payments – while those in the blockchain community may associate such terminology with use cases for the emerging technology, they are all already components of Gemalto’s business strategy.

The digital security giant earned €2.4bn in annual revenue in 2014 on the strength of its two main offerings – embedded software and products, and platforms and services – both of which serve its broader mandate of facilitating trusted exchange in a digital environment.

Given this background, it may be no surprise that Gemalto is looking to leverage its success with government, telecommunications and retail clients to explore applications for its services in the burgeoning blockchain space, recently partnering with Symbiont, a blockchain startup that seeks to advance capital markets applications of the technology.

http://www.coindesk.com/security-giant-gemalto-sees-two-waves-of-blockchain-adoption-forming/

Five of the UK’s largest asset managers have reportedly joined forces to see if blockchain technology can reduce trading costs. The Financial Times claims that the “secret project” is in its early stages, but already involves fintech companies, start-up technology businesses, and one of the big four audit firms, KPMG.

The main companies involved have a combined total of more than £1 trillion under management. The largest participant is Schroders, with 37 offices in 27 different countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.

http://bravenewcoin.com/news/multi-billion-dollar-asset-management-companies-to-explore-blockchain-use/

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

Bitcoin price has been slowly trending lower on the short-term time frames, with a descending channel connecting the latest highs and lows of price action since last week.
Price is currently testing the top of the channel which lines up with the 100 SMA dynamic resistance.
Technical indicators are showing mixed signals, reflecting indecision between buyers and sellers.
http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/02/10/bitcoin-price-technical-analysis-for-10022016-new-channel-forming/

Don't pretend you can invent a strong enough, memorable password to protect your Bitcoins: crypto-boffins can crack the so-called "brain wallet."

In research published at the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), University College London's Nicolas Courtois and Guangyan Song and White Ops' Ryan Castellucci benchmarked the Bitcoin secp256k1 elliptic curve, with depressing results.

The group managed to retrieve more than 18,000 Bitcoin passwords, they claim, using an Amazon EC2 m4.4xlarge instance. That yielded a rather stunning 17.9 billion passwords tested per US$1 spent, or less than $60 to check a trillion passwords.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/10/bitcoiners_also_use_rubbish_passwords/

A rumor has popped up on the Steam subreddit claiming that the video game purchasing platform will soon allow for purchases using Bitcoin. Currently, Steam only accepts credit cards, Steam pre-paid gift cards, and PayPal.

The news comes from a leak of the Steam Translation Server. According to the code mentioned on the server, Steam will utilize BitPay to complete transactions. BitPay is a service similar to PayPal, allowing users to purchase items online using Bitcoin.

One interesting thing to note is that Valve will not allow users to try and game the price of Bitcoin through transactions. If a refund is requested on a purchase made with Bitcoin, the user will get credit in his or her Steam wallet.

http://www.idigitaltimes.com/steam-could-include-bitcoin-payment-option-rumor-510500

Bitcoin Group Limited, a digital currency mining firm based in Melbourne, has announced the completion of its IPO phase. In an investor updated posted on the official BG blog, Sam Lee, CEO of Bitcoin Group, confirmed that the IPO netted a total of AUD $5.9 million.

While the amount sounds impressive, it falls short of the original $20 million target. The IPO officially ended on the 25th of January and according to the ASX announcement on the 25th, Bitcoin Group was tentatively scheduled to start trading on the ASX today:

“Bitcoin Group is now currently working with the ASX Compliance Team to satisfy ASX Listing Rules and as such the Company’s new proposed ASX listing date will be scheduled for the 8th of February 2016.”

http://themerkle.com/news/bitcoin-group-raises-5-9-million-aud-in-ipo-phase/

Many people I have talked to, mention "securities settlement" as an area suitable for lots of cost savings through the adoption of blockchain. But as we know, settlement is an area that does have a lot of intermediaries such as brokers/ custodians/ etc.

Question is - given the peer to peer nature of blockchain, will all the intermediaries in today's financial world get disintermediated? After all, banks are also intermediaries in some sense - if you look at them as custodians of your cash who give you access to a suite of financial services for parking your cash with them.

http://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=12193

The reports of the death of Bitcoin may be exaggerations but they're out there.
In a widely read post, one of the most prominent Bitcoin developers, Mike Hearn, announced he had pulled out of the project because Bitcoin had failed. Others will disagree but Hearn made some points that are pertinent whether he's right or wrong.

“Why has Bitcoin failed? It has failed because the community has failed,” Hearn lamented.

“What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked 'systemically important institutions' and 'too big to fail' has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people. Worse still, the network is on the brink of technical collapse. The mechanisms that should have prevented this outcome have broken down.”

https://bluenotes.anz.com/posts/2016/02/bitcoin-to-live-on-like-the-pterodactyl/

On January 9th, 2007 the world as we know it was forever changed. Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and introduced the world to the iPhone.
Nine years later, many have trouble remembering what life was like before the rise of mobile. The average smartphone today is more than one million times smaller, one million times more affordable and one thousand times more powerful than a $60 million supercomputer was 40 years ago. As a result of successive radical innovation, we have truly changed the world, but more important, the world has forever changed us.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-rise-of-user-monetized-actions-bitcoin-s-killer-application-1454974133

Align Commerce, a blockchain payment solutions provider based in San Francisco, has announced the launch of their new payment rail that will allow its clients to send near-instant payments to and from China.

The new payment bridge will give import-export businesses an alternative to traditional wire transfers payments, which are extremely slow and costly when compared to payments on the blockchain. AC’s blockchain-based service also gives clients the ability to track the progress of their cross-border payments in real-time.

With this move, Align Commerce has positioned itself to capitalize on the mammoth $555 billion bilateral trade that takes place every year between the US and China.

http://themerkle.com/news/align-commerce-launches-blockchain-payment-rail-to-china/

Several companies in the FinTech sector are looking to bring financial services to mobile users, and some of them even take a page out of Bitcoin’s book to achieve that goal. Pocopay is a mobile financial services provider targeting the European market, although the company is not like how your typical bank would be. By using QR codes and debit cards, Pocopay is not that different from the Bitcoin ecosystem on paper. However, the startup still relies on the legacy system, which could be its downfall in the long run. 

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/02/07/fintech-startup-pocopay-mixes-bitcoin-elements-with-legacy-system/

While some in the institutional blockchain community are focusing on the fact that Chinese miners control the majority of the bitcoin network, for traders it’s more important to remember that the absolute majority of the trading volumes also comes from China.

As the people of China go on a week long holiday for Chinese New Year (Spring Festival), a time of celebration and family gathering, trading will not be at the top of their priorities. Therefore, we should expect to see a drop in trading volumes, leading to less liquidity, something traders should keep in mind.

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/trading/bitcoin-traders-take-note-happy-chinese-new-year/

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The asset management industry and a technology that has found favour with drug dealers do not seem like natural bedfellows. Yet blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin, the controversial digital currency, is being heralded as “revolutionary” for fund houses.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/42dce148-ca87-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0.html#axzz3zTdgtvPp

After the wedding cake has gone stale and you’ve stored away all the gifts into the cupboard to never be used again, what are you to do?
Congratulations! You and your spouse are set to embark on the wonderful journey called married life.
They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. You’re often faced with many defining moments in those audacious 365 days. However, for Beccy and Austin Craig, they decided to up the stakes by vowing to only use bitcoin, a digital currency, for the first 90 days of their marriage.
http://www.dentonrc.com/entertainment/entertainment-headlines/20160206-couple-tests-relationship-with-bitcoin.ece

A creator’s perspective

Jae Kwon is the Founder and CEO of Tendermint. Jae speaks to Cointelegraph on this new creation at Tendermint. He says;

"At Tendermint we believe that in order to build a robust blockchain platform we cannot work with a single cloud hosting provider. We must work with a set of globally distributed hosting providers. This is the only way to provide 100% uptime and security guarantees.

We have taken the first step towards achieving that worldview with an open source tool for deploying blockchains to any major cloud provider: Mintnet.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/tendermints-mintnet-for-launching-blockchains-to-any-cloud-provider

Sensing this dissatisfaction, entrepreneurs have introduced hundreds of digital currencies in the past few years, of which bitcoin is only the most famous. Now governments want in: The People's Bank of China says it intends to issue a digital currency of its own. Central banks in Ecuador, the Philippines, Britain and Canada are mulling similar ideas. At least one company has sprung up to help them along.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2016/02/06/1-time-to-do-away-with-hard-cash.html

A new year, the same old storylines. It now appears that bitcoin and altcoin exchange Cryptsy has ceased operations after admitting to a major hack. The assailants managed to take over 13,000 bitcoins and 300,000 litecoins. To make matters worse, Cryptsy admitted to running a fractional reserve after they discovered the hack, essentially operating a business that could be rendered insolvent on any given day. To add a final insult to the injury Cryptsy dealt to users, the blog post by “Big Vern” chose to blame a report published by CoinFire as the root of their current troubles, attempting to divert blame from Cryptsy’s unethical and incompetent business practices.

https://coinreport.net/tales-from-the-cryptsy/

Blockchain Weekly Recap 2-6-2016

 
UNICEF Innovation Fund to Invest in Blockchain Startups
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently opened its Innovation Fund to blockchain companies willing to pursue distributed ledger solutions for at-risk children around the globe. The Fund was launched last year with the intent of discovering and investing in open source solutions that can improve children’s lives.
With $9 million in funding raised since its launch, the Innovation Fund is pursuing three separate areas of investment. These include infrastructure needs such as financing, utilities, and transportation, educational products, and information technology that can help decision-makers. Startups that are interested in pursuing blockchain applications in these areas are being encouraged to apply for this UNICEF funding.

http://dcebrief.com/blockchain-weekly-recap-2-6-2016/