https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-bitcoin-stability/ecbs-constancio-compares-bitcoin-to-dutch-tulip-mania-idUSKCN1BX26C

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bitcoin is not a currency but a mere instrument of speculation, the vice president of the European Central Bank said on Friday, comparing the digital currency to tulip bulbs during the 17th century trading bubble in the Netherlands.

The dollar value of the Bitcoin has nearly trebled this year and, while its adoption has yet to pick up in a significant way, the rise of this cryptocurrency is worrying central bankers across the world.

But ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio denied it posed a threat to monetary policy and compared its rise to the ‘Tulip mania’ seen three-hundred years ago.

“Bitcoin is a sort of tulip,” Constancio said at an ECB conference. “It’s an instrument of speculation ... but certainly not a currency and we don’t see it as a threat to central bank policy.”

The ECB said year last year digital currencies, which are generally issued by private companies and only exist in electronic form, could in principle erode its power over the supply of money, inviting European Union lawmakers to tighten proposed rules on the matter.

I'm so glad the UK has left the EU!

http://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2112339/viabtc-launch-bitcoin-exchange-overseas-after-beijing-bans-trading

“A third of our customers come from outside China, and I believe these overseas users will continue to use the ViaBTC platform, so we can still provide value,” said Yang Haipo, chief executive of the exchange during a global blockchain event in Hong Kong on Thursday.

He said there was no time frame yet to relaunch the platform abroad, and urged current users to withdraw their assets before the company stops its domestic services on September 25.

“We have enough liquidity to support all of our customers’ withdrawals,” he said.

The Shenzhen-based firm announced a week ago that it would shut down its Chinese exchange business by the end of the month. Other mainland platforms such as BTCChina, OkCoin and Huobi have also said they will cease trading following Beijing’s orders.

ViaBTC is a miner and I presume they NEED to have an exchange in order to dispose of the coins they mine.

http://www.advisor.ca/news/industry-news/canada-to-get-its-first-cryptocurrency-etf-241629

Evolve Funds Group Inc. wants to offer Canada’s first cryptocurrency ETF. The company says in a release that’s it has filed a preliminary prospectus with Canadian securities regulators for a fund called Evolve Bitcoin ETF (BITS).

BITS will seek to replicate the performance of exposure to Bitcoin obtained through investments in CFE Bitcoin (USD) Futures. The fund will invest directly or indirectly in exchange-traded futures contracts as well as other financial instruments and derivatives that provide similar return characteristics.

“Accessing Bitcoin is not easy for many […] Investors are currently unable to trade them in a regular brokerage account,” says Raj Lala, president and CEO of Evolve ETFs, in the release. “As more and more of the world goes digital, usage of cryptocurrencies could increase significantly in the coming years,” he adds.

BITS will offer investors with both hedged and unhedged units, and Evolve Funds will act as portfolio manager.

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitso-exchange-raises-cryptocurrencies-for-mexican-earthquake-victims/

The Mexican bitcoin exchange Bitso has announced they are soliciting donations for victims of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that took place on September 19. The trading platform was previously raising funds for the devastating quake that took place on September 7.

Mexico is having an unfortunate time with catastrophic earthquakes that took place over the past two weeks killing hundreds of people. According to the trading platform Bitso’s recent blog post, the startup is asking for donations in BTC, XRP, and ETH in it’s “Bitcoin Aids Mexico” fundraiser. Bitso says the donations will be sent to the Mexico-based Red Cross center and the local earthquake rescue crew Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlaltelolco A.C.   

“Unfortunately Mexico has been hit with another devastating earthquake. Please support Mexico by making donations via BTC, ETH, or XRP,” explains the Bitso exchange.

 "Bitso will provide verifiable receipts signed by Mexico’s Central Bank that donations were made. Please help raise awareness by using the hashtag #BitcoinAidMexico.

Bitpay acts as an interface to merchants who want to accept bitcoin, and so far they have only accepted bitcoin and not other alts.

Theyve now decided to enable bitcoincash as well:

https://blog.bitpay.com/bitcoin-cash-wallet-beta/

This is big for bitcoincash - it means it now piggybacks on the merchant networks established by bitcoin.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-google-search-2017-9

The current price of Bitcoin has a 91% correlation with the volume of Google search requests for Bitcoin-related terms, according to a study by SEMrush, a search engine marketing agency.

The study used a database of 120 million US keyword searches linked to the cryptocurrency. It showed that the price of Bitcoin in US dollars rose and fell largely in tandem with the number of search requests for terms like "Bitcoin," "Bitcoin price" and "Bitcoin value."

At one level, the study merely confirms the obvious: As Bitcoin becomes more expensive, and thus more exciting, more people search online to find out how it is doing. On the other hand, it is nice to see statistics confirm your hunches. While the study looked at the correlation between searches and prices, it did not — sadly — say whether searches predicted or trailed the Bitcoin/dollar exchange rate.

Bitcoin searches have gone up 450% since April 2017, SEMrush says. The data in the sample is about a week old.

Since June 2017, online searches for the price of Ethereum, another digital cryptocurrency, have almost equaled Bitcoin searches, SEMrush says. Here is the Bitcoin chart:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/18/cryptocurrencies-major-bitcoin-conference-flees-as-china-cracks-down.html

A major bitcoin conference has suddenly jumped from China's capital to Hong Kong — which has greater freedoms than Beijing — in the face of a Chinese government crackdown on cryptocurrencies.

The Blockchain Global Summit hosted by BitKan, a company specializing in bitcoin trading and services, was set for Sept. 10 in Beijing, but it was postponed just a few days before it was set to kick off. The conference was then quickly rescheduled to begin Sept. 20 in Hong Kong.

Chinese authorities, including its central bank, early this month banned the new issuance of digital tokens to raise money for a project or company. China has displayed much greater mistrust of cryptocurrencies — computer-generated assets that aren't tied to government authority — than other countries.

BitKan responded to that ruling on "initial coin offerings" (ICOs) in explaining its decision to move the conference.

"As the summit host, the event team in BitKan carefully balanced the pros and cons of the risks of Beijing's city security updates and the ICO supervision from the central bank. Though we have reported to the local enforcement and there will be no ICO related contents on the summit, we decided to change the time and location of the summit to lower the risks of being cancelled," a notice on BitKan's website said.

The company added that "most" of the people scheduled to give lectures and speeches at the event would be able to attend the new Hong Kong version.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-bitcoin-could-free-catalonia-from-spains-dictate

On October 1st, Catalan nationalists plan to hold a referendum on leaving Spain, and to declare independence if they win. However, a recent article from BBC indicates that the “Gobierno de España” will seize Catalan finances in the next 48 hours if the ‘illegal’ referendum vote is not brought to a halt immediately. This situation has brought Bitcoin into the spotlight as a potential solution to the conflict. In this brief article, CoinTelegraph will attempt to analyze how Bitcoin could free Catalonia from Spain’s mandate.

Cristóbal Montoro, Spain’s finance minister, said that a mechanism had been approved for the state to take control of Catalonia’s finances. The Spanish intend to take this step to prevent any public money being spent on the independence referendum. 

The ministers also delivered an ultimatum for Mr Puigdemont - sign an agreement within 48 hours that public funds will not be redirected for the referendum. If the deadline is not met, then the Spanish government will seize control of the part of the Catalonian budget destined for public services and salaries.

Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin right after central banks tanked the world economy and induced a year-long economic depression. The purpose of cryptocurrency is to serve as a tool for freedom, which is exactly what Catalonia is looking for right now. 

In a decentralized financial system where every State/Autonomous community has full control over its finances through the use of cryptography and Blockchain, the central government wouldn’t be able to seize any funds. Catalonia‘s current situation is an interesting case study for how countries could adopt decentralized cryptocurrencies on a large scale.

According to Blockchain.info, there are currently 16.8 mln Bitcoin wallets in use. However, this number should be taken with a pinch of salt since a user can have as many wallets as he wants. Therefore, the actual number of people using Bitcoin is probably significantly lower than the total number of active wallets.

The autonomous region of Catalonia currently has around 7.5 mln inhabitants. In the unlikely event that Bitcoin was implemented as an immediate method of payment, the Bitcoin Blockchain would probably suffer from significant congestion and elevated transaction fees. This could complicate the transition for Catalonia to a decentralized financial system. Potential solutions to Bitcoin’s scalability issues, like Lightning Network, would help Bitcoin to take on such a large influx of users.

The alternative of course is for the Catalans to create their own cryptocurrency that doesn't have blockchain congestion.

The opinion polls are showing that the independence movement is leading 54% - 46%, so watch this space.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-browser-google-apple-move-adopt-crypto-compatible-api/

Developers at some of the top tech companies have created a browser API that could soon make it easier to buy goods and services online with cryptocurrency.

The work, started by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with the help of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and Mozilla, is a tangible step forward for a currency-agnostic web payment standard first conceived in 2013. Equally, as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies gain more momentum, the launch signifies the growing recognition of cryptocurrency as a payments technology.

Indeed, the W3C has gotten more interested in blockchain technologies over the years, hosting its first ever blockchain workshop in June last year. But while participants were left with interest in standardizing and democratizing the technology's use, no formal work was decided upon then. That, however, has changed.

Announced on Thursday, the API is currently being implemented in browsers including Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Edge, Apple’s Webkit, Mozilla’s Firefox, the Samsung Internet Browser and Facebook's in-app browser. When activated, the Payment Request API will allow new payment types, including bitcoin, ether any any other available cryptocurrency (as well as more traditional online payment methods) to be stored directly in the browser.

Consumers will then be able to choose from a drop-down menu of available payment methods supported, a kind of expansion on the auto-fill feature already widely enabled at checkout.

And with that, Ian Jacobs, head of the W3C's payments activity, said now's a good time for developers to start writing code for payment methods they'd like to see available.

Looks like they have rebranded.

https://btc-e.nz/ now redirects to https://wex.nz/

Interesting also that they have chosen New Zealand domains for their new trading engine. It remains to be seen whether they manage to make a go of their new exchange.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-15/jpmorgans-bitcoin-alternative-patent-rejected-175-times

On August 5, 2013 JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPMorgan) filed an application for an electronic mobile payment system which has eerie similarities to the popular online currency Bitcoin. Unfortunately for JPMorgan, all of the claims, totaling 175 claims, as of October 18, 2013, for published US patent application 20130317984 (the ‘984 application) have been either cancelled or rejected.

After the initial 154 claims were abruptly cancelled, JPMorgan’s attorney submitted 20 additional claims which the examiner, Jagdish Patel, issued non-final rejections for all 20 of the new claims in October 2013. This makes JPMorgan 0-175 in terms of approved claims. The last 20 claims were rejected for non-patentability and indefiniteness under Title 35 United States Code (U.S.C.) Sections 101 and 112.

However, Mr. Patel might well have rejected the claims because of the ‘On Sale Bar’ rule under 35 U.S.C. Section 102(b), meaning that if the invention has been on sale for over a year then the invention is no longer patentable. Under the ‘On Sale Bar’ rule, the application could be invalid because it closely mirrors Bitcoin with features such as making free and anonymous electronic payments and Bitcoin has been in circulation since 2009.

[Last month, Chainalysis confirmed that WannaCry hackers were able to convert a portion of their ransom payouts from Bitcoin to Monero before the service they were using blacklisted their addresses]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608763/criminals-thought-bitcoin-was-the-perfect-hiding-place-they-thought-wrong/

A notice to people using Bitcoin for illicit purposes: you can run, but it’s getting a lot harder to hide. Law enforcement officials are using Bitcoin’s public ledger, called the blockchain, to follow the digital money and track down suspected criminals using it.

As the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has helped fuel the rise of ransomware attacks—extortion schemes, like the recent WannaCry cyberattack, in which hackers hold the contents of a victim’s computer hostage until they get paid. Criminals can use Bitcoin to collect ransoms easily and without having to reveal their identities. The currency has also been associated with online drug sales, money laundering, and sex trafficking.

But while Bitcoin users can withhold their identities, they can’t avoid revealing other information that can be useful to investigators. Every Bitcoin transaction is recorded on its blockchain, a publicly accessible record of all transactions made using the currency. Blockchains “provide a really useful source of truth,” says Jonathan Levin, cofounder of Chainalysis, which develops software tools for analyzing blockchain data. Its products can help investigators draw inferences about how people are using the currency.

Chainalysis combines its analysis with other publicly available information to identify users through the unique strings of numbers they use on the blockchain, called addresses, and then map how they move funds around. This technique can be used to do things like identify the Bitcoin exchanges where the users of a gambling site are converting their bitcoins into dollars (see “Mapping the Bitcoin Economy Could Reveal Users’ Identities”).

Chainalysis’s tools are clearly valuable to criminal investigators. Since 2015, the company has supported investigations by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Europol. In most cases, says Levin, investigators turn to Chainalysis when they already have some kind of lead, like a Bitcoin address they found among a suspect’s possessions. If they can determine that a suspect is using a particular exchange, they can use a court order get more information from that exchange.

The government is also interested tracking the flow of funds on the blockchain to determine whether merchants that accept Bitcoin are reporting it and paying proper taxes, says Danny Yang, founder of BlockSeer, which also develops Blockchain analytics tools and supports law enforcement

Cryptocurrency exchanges are becoming customers of analytics firms too. In many places it’s unclear the degree to which exchanges are required by law to know their customers and make sure they aren’t laundering money, as is required of traditional banks. But it’s difficult for exchanges to open bank accounts if they don’t understand who their customers are. And if the government is able to see that criminals are using certain exchanges, the exchanges want to be able to see that too, says Yang.

The news isn’t all good for law enforcement, though. There are ways to confuse investigators, such as using so-called mixing services, which take bitcoins from many users and mix them up before sending them back out to different addresses at different times. More important, some newer cryptocurrencies, prominently Zcash and Monero, are designed to conceal the information that Chainalysis, BlockSeer, and others use to follow the money.

Savvy criminals are already migrating to these untraceable systems. Last month, Chainalysis confirmed that WannaCry hackers were able to convert a portion of their ransom payouts from Bitcoin to Monero before the service they were using blacklisted their addresses.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/only-802-people-paid-taxes-on-bitcoin-profits-irs-says

Talk about investing in Bitcoin and the news of people becoming ‘bitcoinnaires’ are almost everywhere these days – newspapers, TV’s, radio, and the Internet. However, one thing is missing from these stories: the tax man.
Yes, Virginia, Bitcoin is taxable

The IRS began issuing guidance on taxation of Bitcoin in March 2014. At that time, the agency announced that Bitcoin would be treated as property, with loss or gains being treated as capital loss or capital gains for tax purposes.

Readers are probably familiar with the many “rags-to-riches” stories about Bitcoin investors becoming millionaires almost overnight. Such stories abound, from the Idaho teenager who turned $1,000 into $1.1 mln and the Norwegian engineer who made $800,000 in profit off a $24 investment.

None of these stories mention the taxes these individuals paid...or didn’t pay.

Given Bitcoin’s crypto-anarchist roots, it’s perhaps not surprising that some seem to take the idea of taxation lightly. Many believe that since Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous, there’s no way the IRS will find out about their taxable gains. Yet they may be wrong.

Bitcoin isn’t as anonymous as many think, as evidenced by the number of people in federal prison who paid in Bitcoin for child pornography or illegal drugs. There are a number of companies that scour the Blockchain, seeking to link Bitcoin accounts to their actual owners.

Earlier this month, the IRS was found to have been partnering with a company called Chainalysis to double down on its efforts to monitor Bitcoin traders who engage in high frequency and volume trading.

The IRS has recently been focusing on Coinbase, demanding that the exchange reveal the identity of anybody who traded more than $20,000 in Bitcoin per year between 2013 and 2015. The IRS is probably correct in their belief that many Bitcoin owners are evading taxes. In the year 2015, only 802 Americans told the IRS about their Bitcoin-related capital gains or losses, according to Fortune.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/north-korea-chases-bitcoin-to-bust-sanctions-11031662

As new UN sanctions hit the increasingly isolated state, Pyongyang's premiere hacking group doubles-down on stealing Bitcoin.

North Korean hackers have been accused of the largest cyber heists the world has ever seen - and, as sanctions on the secretive state start to bite, Pyonyang's premiere hacking group has started stealing Bitcoin, too.

The cryptocurrency is perfectly suited for dodging sanctions, despite the ferocious volatility in its value, as payments are processed in a distributed manner rather than through a central authority.

New sanctions following North Korea's most recent nuclear test will hamper its ability to legitimately import gas and oil from China, but the nation retains an ability - and an increasing interest - in generating enormous revenues through cybercrime.

Evidence suggests that a North Korean government bureau has been conducting illicit economic activity for quite some time.

From 2015 through to 2016, a series of sophisticated cyber heists targeting the SWIFT global financial messaging service allowed a state-sponsored cybercrime collective, which researchers called the Lazarus Group, to steal millions of dollars.

Cybersecurity researchers linked the Lazarus Group to North Korea, although it is not known whether it is part of the secretive government bureau Office 39, or a group hired by Pyonyang's elite to fill their own coffers.

New research by cybersecurity firm FireEye's Luke McNamara describes North Korea's increasing interest in cryptocurrencies as an asset class, with the value of Bitcoin increasing by 400% since January of this year.

Mr McNamara notes how the secretive North Korean agency known informally as Office 39 has been a critical asset of the state by generating black market revenues since at least the 1970s.

It is estimated to bring $1bn a year through illicit activities, including counterfeiting US dollar currency, producing narcotics, and even smuggling gold.

FireEye's research noted how escalating economic sanctions against North Korea were accompanied by an upsurge in spearphishing campaigns targeting South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges.

Targeting the exchanges rather than simply the Bitcoin itself offers the attackers an opportunity to anonymise the thefts or withdraw the digital cash for fiat currencies such as the South Korean won, US dollar or Chinese renminbi.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/altcoins-use-bitcoin-ecosystem-to-leapfrog-forward-grow-faster

Bitcoin’s very success has paved the way for challenges from would-be contenders.

These so-called “altcoins” find that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. It took years for Bitcoin to gain the kind of traction needed for people to build Coinbase, Bitpay, Blockcypher and others. Yet a promising altcoin can usually be integrated into any of these services within weeks or months.

There is no need for altcoin investors to wait years and hope that savvy businesspeople will come along and build a quality exchange, or payment processor, or API service. Altcoins are able to very quickly capitalize on the work Bitcoin has done.

Bitcoin businesses, for their part, would be foolish to ignore the money that holders of the top altcoins can bring to their platform. Since these digital currencies don’t have to wait years for new companies to be built to service them, they are able to grow and mature much more quickly than Bitcoin did.

Lawyers and accountants who specialize in Bitcoin don’t have to relearn everything in order to assist customers with other forms of digital currency. Their expertise applies to altcoins just as well as it applies to Bitcoin.

Dash doesn’t have to lobby Congress for friendlier regulation. Neither does Ethereum, or Litecoin, or Zcash, or any of the other hundreds of coins in existence. Bitcoin has already cleared the way, and continues to do so.

Many developing countries never bothered to build a wireline telephone network. There was no need. By the time they were able to fund such a project, mobile phone technology had already been invented. In this way, the developing world skipped decades of waiting for technological progress, instead advancing quickly to the present state-of-the-art.

The cryptocurrency world is advancing in much the same way. When Bitcoin developers create promising new code, it is quickly copied by eager altcoin developers.In the meantime, innovative altcoins continue to develop new features that Bitcoin can’t - or won’t - adopt for its own. Bitcoin is too big to take the risks that many altcoins can take. After all, it’s much easier to risk breaking a $100 million network than a $70 billion one.

Bitcoin’s biggest advantage is branding and network effects. There is no easy way to duplicate that. In every other way, expect altcoins to continue surging ahead as they take advantage of the smooth road Bitcoin has cleared.

https://news.bitcoin.com/chiasso-switzerland-to-allow-citizens-to-pay-taxes-in-bitcoin/

The Swiss municipality of Chiasso has announced that it will accept tax payments in bitcoin from January 2018 onwards. The announcement signifies a further gathering of momentum for Switzerland’s bid to become a global leader in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industries, with Chiasso seeking to rival Zug’s Crypto Valley as a major global hub for bitcoin adoption and innovation.

Chiasso will begin accepting bitcoin as a form of taxation payment beginning in January 2018, with the city planning to trial the method by initially restricting payments to values up to 250 Swiss francs (CHF). Zug currently accepts taxation payments in bitcoin of up to 200 CHF, and since July has received more than 40 payments in bitcoin.

For those wondering, Zug is another municipality in Switzerland.

What we have here is rival municipalities competing to be the most bitcoin-friendly.

When you can pay your taxes in bitcoin, get your salary in bitcoin and buy food and pay rent in bitcoin - that's when it will have gone truly mainstream.

https://news.bitcoin.com/network-launches-bitcoin-cash-beta/

Last month, Yours Network CEO, Ryan X. Charles, announced their platform would be switching from litecoin to bitcoin cash for payments. Now they have a fully functional beta implementation for bitcoin cash. As a result, their platform is more reliable, streamlined, and cleaner.

With full bitcoin cash functionality, transactions on the network run smoother and contain less bugs. According to Charles, “payments are far more reliable now because we don’t have dozens of unfinished payment channel edge cases.” He continued, “the big difference between last month and now is that the app is actually good enough to use.”

This implies users should be able to manage their activity on the platform more seamlessly. The micro-payments provided by bitcoin cash also allowed for lower fees.

They also added 5 features in the last two days. These features include:

    A voting model where anyone can up-vote something and earn rewards. However, earlier voters earn more rewards. This incentivizes people to vote — they can earn money from voting on something if they vote on something popular early.
    A tipping feature. Anyone can visit someone’s profile and send them a tip.
    The front-page is now sorted by # of votes, so it is better curated. Good content tends to rise to the top.
    Yours Network now charges 10¢ to post content. This has eliminated most of the spam on the platform.
    Yours Network displays reading time before and after the pay wall. This lets people have more critical information about whether they want to pay for what’s behind the pay wall.

https://qz.com/1072740/mario-draghi-of-the-ecb-dashes-estonias-plan-for-an-estcoin-cryptocurrency-backed-by-the-government/

Bitcoin, the original stateless cryptocurrency, has often been tolerated and sometimes embraced by governments, central banks, and other key institutions around the world. But there is a limit to some officials’ acceptance of cryptoassets.

The president of the European Central Bank yesterday rejected the idea that Estonia, which is part of the euro zone, could issue and manage its own state-backed cryptocurrency. The idea is still theoretical, but ECB president Mario Draghi shot it down anyway when asked about it at a press conference: “No member state can introduce its own currency; the currency of the euro zone is the euro.”

An Estonian cryptocurrency has been mooted as part on the country’s e-Residency program that provides a digital identity to foreign entrepreneurs. Kaspar Korjus, managing director at e-Residency, floated the idea of issuing “estcoins” that allow people to invest in the country. The cryptocurrency would be available through its its e-residency program via an initial coin offering, which takes some of the principles of bitcoin and blends them with crowdfunding. Proceeds could go into a type of public-private partnership.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/japans-internet-giant-could-control-six-percent-of-bitcoin-mining-plans-next-generation-center

Japanese Internet giant GMO has announced it will launch a Bitcoin mining business to corner around six percent of the market by 2018.

A disclosure which surfaced Thursday revealed plans to mine with 50,000 seven nm chips generating around 500 petahashes per second.

The initial cost to set up the project is “will be more than 10 percent of the consolidated noncurrent assets as of Dec. 31, 2016” of ¥3.489 bln ($32 mln).

“We will operate a next-generation mining center utilizing renewable energy and cutting-edge semiconductor chips in Northern Europe,” a translated copy of the disclosure reads.

“We will use cutting-edge seven nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process, and jointly work on its research and development and manufacturing with our alliance partner having semiconductor design technology.”

GMO has operated since 1995 but only this year became involved in cryptocurrency, opening an exchange under Japan’s new licensing scheme.

As part of the plans, GMO will use coins it mines to add liquidity to its exchange arm, as well as run a cloud mining business and sell “next-generation mining boards.”

According to data from Blockchain.info, GMO could control around five to six percent of Bitcoin mining when it launches in the first half of 2018.

This is the first real big challenge to the Chinese miners.

https://www.coindesk.com/us-lawmakers-seek-tax-exemption-bitcoin-transactions-600/

Two members of the US House of Representatives have filed a bill seeking to create a tax exemption for purchases made with cryptocurrencies.

Back in 2014, the Internal Revenue Service declared that it would consider bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) as a kind of property for tax purposes. Any profits made when selling or exchanging a cryptocurrency triggers a capital gains requirement. Yet due to the wording of the IRS decision, that covers any transaction involving bitcoin, including an oft-mentioned purchase of a cup of coffee – essentially meaning that if you bought some bitcoin at $1, and spent it on a $2 cup of coffee, you would owe tax on the difference.

Reps. Jared Polis and David Schweikert, who co-lead the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, are hoping to alleviate some of the issues resulting from that ruling with the Cryptocurrency Tax Fairness Act.

Unveiled today, the measure, if passed, would create a de minimis exemption for cryptocurrency payments below $600 after December 31 of this year. Put more simply, transactions involving a cryptocurrency below that threshold wouldn't trigger a capital gains liability.

As the text of the bill states:

    "Gross income shall not include gain from the sale or exchange of virtual currency for 5 other than cash or cash equivalents….[if the amount of gain excluded from gross income under subsection (a) with respect to a sale or exchange shall not exceed $600."