http://www.coindesk.com/uk-exchange-coinfloor-embraces-no-fee-bitcoin-trading/London-based digital currency exchange Coinfloor has announced it will adopt a 'no-fee' bitcoin trading policy beginning later this week.
With the move, Coinfloor, one of the larger players in bitcoin's still nascent GBP market, embraces a pricing strategy that is comparable to the industry's largest, though primarily China-based exchanges, which have long withheld fees on bitcoin-denominated trades.
Speaking to CoinDesk, exchange representatives indicated that the move is designed to boost liquidity at the exchange, the largest GBP bitcoin trading platform by volume, according to data from Bitcoinity.
...Coinfloor said it will continue to charge for bitcoin withdrawals, as well as GBP deposits and withdrawals. My feeling is that this is just an introductory offer and when they have enough liquidity they will start charging fees for trading.
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https://blockunchained.com/how-chinese-is-bitcoin-part-1-trade-volume-795ac3ed221b#.90a2ky9mjIn bitcoin, not all is as it first appears
Recently, one of my close friends asked me how Chinese bitcoin was, suggesting that over 90% of bitcoin is Chinese.
China’s role in the bitcoin industry is at the same time both widely discussed and deeply misunderstood. Reporting on the topic is mostly to blame.
This article is the first part of a series of posts that attempt to correct this misunderstanding. In the series I will be explaining why:
China’s trade volume is misleading
China’s dominance in bitcoin mining does not translate to control
Thinking in terms of nation states doesn’t work when it comes to bitcoin. This is legacy thinking. I thoroughly recommend reading the whole article to get an insight into what exactly is going on in China.
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Here is Brian Armstrong's blogpost: https://blog.coinbase.com/completing-our-transition-to-becoming-a-digital-currency-company-not-just-a-bitcoin-company-6bcc44ca40ee#.weif1pwrmCompleting our transition to becoming a digital currency company (not just a Bitcoin company)
As we kick off 2017, I think it’s important for Coinbase and GDAX to continue supporting more crypto currencies. We are no longer just a Bitcoin company. We are a digital currency company.
This past year, we started the process by adding support for Ethereum. This was a major step. In 2017, you’ll see us continue that trend.
...It’s incredibly difficult to predict the future and the digital currency industry is no exception (take the above for what it is, pure speculation). Rapid change seems to be the only certainty. For this reason, you’ll see Coinbase and GDAX continue to support more crypto-currencies in 2017. As the most popular retail exchange (Coinbase) and institutional exchange in the U.S. (GDAX), we want to make it easy for people to use all types of digital currencies. Our goal going forward is to not play favorites, or support one digital currency more than any other, but simply to make it easy for customers to buy and sell whatever digital currencies they want. In this way, we can help support growth of the entire digital currency industry. |
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37810438Switzerland's national rail service (SBB) plans to start selling the digital currency Bitcoin at stations next month.
From 11 November, customers will be able to trade Swiss francs for Bitcoins using ticket machines.
They will not be able to buy tickets with the web-based currency, though.
The SBB said it had been testing customer demand for Bitcoin across the country, and had decided to launch a two-year pilot project.
To buy Bitcoins, would-be purchasers will have to give a mobile phone number for identification.
Transactions will be capped at 500 Swiss Francs (£415 / $500) each. One Bitcoin currently equals around 708.64 Swiss Francs, but it is possible to buy fractions of the currency.
Swiss financial services company SweePay is providing the conversion service.
"There have been few possibilities to obtain Bitcoins in Switzerland until now," SBB said. "With its 1,000-plus ticket machines, SBB operates a dense, around-the-clock distribution network that's suited for more than just ticket sales."
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/22/city-banks-plan-to-hoard-bitcoins-to-help-them-pay-cyber-ransomsSeveral of London’s largest banks are looking to stockpile bitcoins in order to pay off cyber criminals who threaten to bring down their critical IT systems.
The virtual currency, which is highly prized by criminal networks because it cannot be traced, is being acquired by blue chip companies in order to pay ransoms, according to a leading IT expert.
On Friday, hackers attacked the websites of a number of leading online companies including Twitter, Spotify and Reddit. They used a special code to harness the power of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected home devices, such as CCTV cameras and printers, to launch “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks through a US company called Dyn, which provides directory services to online companies. DDoS attacks involve inundating computer servers with so much data traffic that they cannot cope.
There is no evidence that Dyn was the subject of extortion demands but it has become apparent that hackers have been using the code to threaten other businesses into paying them with bitcoins or risk becoming the target of similar attacks.
Dr Simon Moores, a former technology ambassador for the UK government and chair of the annual international e-Crime Congress, the global body that brings together IT professionals, said the scale and ferocity of the attacks meant some banks were coming round to the view that it was cheaper to pay off the criminals than risk an attack.
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http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/07/18/report-enterprise-bitcoin-payments-processor-bitnet-in-talks-to-sell-ip-to-rakuten/Enterprise bitcoin payments processor Bitnet Technologies Ltd. looks set to be possibly leaving the bitcoin payment industry with a report that it is in the process of selling its intellectual property assets to Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, Inc.
The Wall Street Journal claims to have seen a memo related to the deal and that Rakuten is considering using Bitnet’s assets to continue testing and developing blockchain technologies.
Of note, Rakuten currently uses Bitnet to accept bitcoin payments across its e-commerce platforms and holds a minority stake in the company through a previous investment.
Founded in 2013, Bitnet provides a digital commerce platform that allows enterprise-scale merchants to accept bitcoin payments.
In addition to offering payment solutions, the company also offers a variety of other services, including blockchain digital asset management, blockchain consulting, and B2B cross-border remittances.
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The following was written by a chap called Benjamin Timothy Blaine and sums everything up nicely: The leader of the opposition campaigned to stay but secretly wanted to leave, so his party held a non-binding vote to shame him into resigning so someone else could lead the campaign to ignore the result of the non-binding referendum which many people now think was just angry people trying to shame politicians into seeing they’d all done nothing to help them.
Meanwhile, the man who campaigned to leave because he hoped losing would help him win the leadership of his party, accidentally won and ruined any chance of leading because the man who thought he couldn’t lose, did – but resigned before actually doing the thing the vote had been about. The man who’d always thought he’d lead next, campaigned so badly that everyone thought he was lying when he said the economy would crash – and he was, but it did, but he’s not resigned, but, like the man who lost and the man who won, also now can’t become leader. Which means the woman who quietly campaigned to stay but always said she wanted to leave is likely to become leader instead.
Which means she holds the same view as the leader of the opposition but for opposite reasons, but her party’s view of this view is the opposite of the opposition’s. And the opposition aren’t yet opposing anything because the leader isn’t listening to his party, who aren’t listening to the country, who aren’t listening to experts or possibly paying that much attention at all. However, none of their opponents actually want to be the one to do the thing that the vote was about, so there’s not yet anything actually on the table to oppose anyway. And if no one ever does do the thing that most people asked them to do, it will be undemocratic and if any one ever does do it, it will be awful.
Clear? |
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/27/bitcoin-good-gold-brexit/With the Brexit being the worst one-day global financial crash since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008, Bitcoin gained a tremendous amount of credibility as a safe haven asset that is “good as gold.”
...The British pound nose-dived by 11 percent and UK stocks plummeted 8 percent. A worldwide financial terror caused European stocks to tank by 6 to 8 percent, Asian stocks to tumble by 5 to 10 percent, and U.S. stocks to take a 5 percent hit.
But according to Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner, “In the six hours or so from when the [Brexit] results started to trickle in (about 7 p.m. EDT) until it was obvious that the Brexit had become a reality, the Bitcoin price spiked up by about 8.8 percent…”. The move up essentially “mirrored” the 8 percent jump in the price of gold.
Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group and the creator of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, tweeted just moments after the vote: “This is Bitcoin’s coming out party as a global safe-haven investment. Amazing.”
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/27/bitcoin-good-gold-brexit/With the Brexit being the worst one-day global financial crash since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008, Bitcoin gained a tremendous amount of credibility as a safe haven asset that is “good as gold.”
...The British pound nose-dived by 11 percent and UK stocks plummeted 8 percent. A worldwide financial terror caused European stocks to tank by 6 to 8 percent, Asian stocks to tumble by 5 to 10 percent, and U.S. stocks to take a 5 percent hit.
But according to Lee Adler of the Wall Street Examiner, “In the six hours or so from when the [Brexit] results started to trickle in (about 7 p.m. EDT) until it was obvious that the Brexit had become a reality, the Bitcoin price spiked up by about 8.8 percent…”. The move up essentially “mirrored” the 8 percent jump in the price of gold.
Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of the Digital Currency Group and the creator of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, tweeted just moments after the vote: “This is Bitcoin’s coming out party as a global safe-haven investment. Amazing.”
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http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/21/winkelvoss-twins-are-expanding-their-gemini-bitcoin-exchange-outside-of-the-us.htmlGemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, is expanding into the U.K, the company said on Tuesday.
...Gemini has been on an aggressive expansion path since its October launch. It has begun operations in Canada and announced its U.K. launch on Tuesday. Customers in Britain can now buy ether with bitcoin and sell ether for bitcoin. Soon, Gemini will add support for trading bitcoin and ether with U.S. dollars for U.K. and Canadian users, a feature already available to all of its U.S. customers.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-canada-explores-blockchain-technology-1466107171The Bank of Canada said it is studying the technology underlying the digital currency bitcoin, conducting one of the first known tests by a major central bank about how it could use the nascent system known as blockchain.
The central bank confirmed the experiment dealing in interbank payments in a statement from Senior Deputy Gov. Carolyn Wilkins. It stressed, however, that it has no plans to issue a digitized Canadian dollar or conduct tests dealing with public money.
The Bank of Canada, in conjunction with New York-based startup R3 CEV, said it has taken part in a “proof of concept” experiment using blockchain technology, which is a so-called distributed-ledger system that is billed as being more open, transparent and flexible than existing databases widely used in banking.
Others involved in the project included Payments Canada, which owns and operates the country’s payment-clearing and settlement infrastructure, and Canadian commercial banks.
“The Bank’s goal in these projects is solely to better understand the technology firsthand,” Ms. Wilkins said. “Other frameworks need to be investigated, and there are many hurdles that need to be cleared before such a system would ever be ready for prime time.” She added that many central banks are investigating similar questions.
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http://seekingalpha.com/article/3982134-lowest-risk-way-make-killing-brexitThe Brexit vote is an extraordinary opportunity to make a huge sum of money. This also opens up the possibility of a huge loss if you bet on the wrong outcome though. At least that's what you would expect the risk/reward ratio to be in an efficient market.
There is a market, though, with significant Brexit exposure and a strongly lopsided risk/reward ratio. This market is young and so many of the inefficiencies have yet to be weeded out - making it easier to predict future price action. Specifically, the market is strongly momentum based.
This market is the Bitcoin (BTC) market. Considered to be a possible replacement for gold in the global economy, Bitcoin and gold prices are strongly correlated with both being seen as "safe haven" investments. Of course, the possibility of a Brexit has sent both higher and a "Leave" vote would lead to significantly higher re-pricing .
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http://motherboard.vice.com/read/blockchain-of-love-someone-proposed-using-bitcoinThe only thing more uncomfortable for friends and close relations than filming your marriage proposal and putting it online is being really, really into bitcoin.
On Tuesday, somebody decided to go all-in on both of these modern horrors and became the latest person to propose using the bitcoin blockchain, the publicly viewable ledger that’s stored on every bitcoin user’s computer forever and ever.
This decision could have very easily ended up being nothing more than a permanent digital reminder of one of life’s more depressing failures, but thankfully for everyone involved she said yes, god help both of these people.
The initial message was added to the block reward (a handsome 25 bitcoins, or $17,182 USD by today’s price) sent to Chinese bitcoin company HaoBTC because they’d successfully “mined” a block of bitcoin transaction data and uploaded it to the blockchain. It read: “Sun Chun Yu: Zhuang Yuan, will you marry me?” The response, which came in the next block mined by HaoBTC, was: “Zhuang Yuan: YES!”
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http://www.econotimes.com/Australian-bitcoin-exchanges-open-the-door-for-Ether-221436CoinTree and CoinLoft, two of Australia’s leading bitcoin exchanges have announced new services which will enable users to purchase ether and other varieties of altcoins.
As on 13 June, CoinTree users will now be able to swap bitcoin for a variety of popular altcoins including ether, litecoin and DAO tokens. CoinLoft users making deposits will now have the option of purchasing ether or bitcoin.
Alongside with established services that have primarily focused on making bitcoin accessible to the general public, the bitcoin exchanges have now streamlined the process of acquiring ether.
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http://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2016-06-10/bitcoins-novelty-is-spent"Bitcoin is actually unchanged since many years ago: What is different is the focus of the media," says Peter Leeds, the author of "Penny Stocks for Dummies." In it, Leeds mentions bitcoin as an example of what he calls "an investor stampede."
"Much – almost all – of bitcoin's rise in value was driven by the standard media cycle," Leeds says. "And as the story became old news, coverage levels diminished and the currency faded into the background."
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http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/06/09/bitcoin-sportsbook-operator-sportsbet-io-ready-big-euro-2016-kick-off/Bitcoin sportsbook operator Sportsbet.io is inviting lucky punters to pit their wits against one another for the chance to be at this summer’s Euro 2016 tournament.
The month-long tournament, which kicks off in France tomorrow, is the biggest betting event since the 2014 World Cup. An estimated 1.5m BTC (600m EUR / $672m USD) is expected to be wagered on the event across the industry.
It is also the first major tournament since the launch of the bitcoin-only sports betting website, which went live at the start of the month. To celebrate the launch, users placing bets will go head-to-head throughout the group stages in a bid to win semi-final tickets.
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https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/gaming-giant-steam-disables-bitcoin-in-russia/Steam, a platform that offers instant access to games globally, is no longer accepting bitcoin in Russia, according to customers in the country.
An online discussion board called Pikabu contained a message that appeared to be from Steam confirming that it was no longer supporting bitcoin in Russia. The message said it was posted by ‘Technical Support Officer Tim’ on Thu, Jun 2nd, 2016 15:49.: The message reads:
Unfortunately, payment in the Steam store using Bitcoin will no longer be maintained on the territory of your region. We apologize for the inconvenience.
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http://www.coindesk.com/cftc-bitcoin-exchange-bitfinex-trading-violations/Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Bitfinex has settled with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) following an investigation into its financed trading activities.
Bitfinex settled charges that it offered illegal off-exchange financed retail commodities trading, as well as failed to register as a futures commission merchant. Bitfinex did not admit or deny the CFTC findings, the agency said today.
According to an order published today by the CFTC, the issues arose owing to how Bitfinex held functional control over funds tied to leveraged or margin trading on the platform. The CFTC said that because no actual commodities were delivered by Bitfinex to its customers – the private keys tied to the applicable bitcoins remained under the exchange’s control – it was in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act.
Bitfinex will pay $75,000 in civil penalties, according to the order, and has moved to change its internal policies and avoid further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.
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