https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-payments-enabled-indonesian-e-marketplace/Users of KinjeraPay Corp., an Indonesian e-commerce platform will now be able to settle transactions on the marketplace with bitcoin.
In an announcement today, the Indonesian marketplace revealed a partnership with Bitcoin Indonesia, a digital currency exchange that enables buying and selling bitcoin with the local fiat currency – the Indonesian Rupiah.
With the newly enabled feature, users will be able to pay for utility bills, make money transfers and buy products sold on the platform, with bitcoin.
The move to enable bitcoin payments underlines the potential of bringing in the user-base of a growing community to transact and pay for normal bills with the cryptocurrency, for the first time in the country.
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http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/05/30/kaspersky-labs-bitcoin-online-scams/Contrary to what most people believe, Bitcoin is not a big part of these financial scams, though. Albeit 3% of survey respondents indicated they had lost Bitcoin funds in the process, the primary culprit were online scams or fraud, followed by data leakage. Additionally, losing funds through a financial organization ranks higher than Bitcoin losses as well.
The most worrying scams are fake emails allegedly coming from established financial institutions, such as banks. But there are also fake emails and messages from retail sites, and the number of phishing pages asking for financial information seems to be increasing as well.
Looking at the figures a bit more, it turns out the average loss was US$283 per person, which is quite high. But over one in five people lost over US$1,000, which goes to show how enticing and convincing some of these scams can be. Luckily, over half of the affected users managed to get their stolen funds back, albeit nearly one in four never saw a dime returned to them.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36412487A collection of bitcoins worth about £8m, which had been confiscated by police in Australia, will be auctioned off in June.
The 24,518 bitcoins will be sold mostly in blocks of 2,000 - each with a value of about £680,000.
Ernst & Young, the firm organising the auction, said the bitcoins had been "confiscated as proceeds of crime" but did not elaborate on the case.
One expert said the authorities had chosen a "safe" time to sell.
Australian newspapers have previously reported that 24,500 bitcoins were seized by police in the state of Victoria in 2013, after a man was arrested for dealing illegal drugs online. It looks like they waited for the price to rise before setting up the auction...
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http://swedishstartupspace.com/2016/05/27/knc-miner-declares-bankruptcy-chinese-competition-too-tough/Breakit has previously reported on the company’s difficulties with increasing competition from China. In February, the company laid off somewhere around ten full time employees, which constitutes a fifth of it’s total workforce, to cut costs. The parent company, KNC Group, along with its seven subsidiaries has now decided to file for bankruptcy as a result of the changing marke
...The company raised $3 million (28 million SEK) i december last year but has apparently still been forced to shut down. The money was used to build a new server center. With the new center the company was able to make 80 quadrillion calculations per second. However, because of the declining price, the increased capacity would not result in any substantial increase in revenue.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-23/here-s-one-way-of-saving-the-winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-etf-dreamWhen the Winklevii filed for a physically backed bitcoin exchange-traded fund nearly three years ago, it created a stir. Their zeitgeist-capturing ETF filing garnered more press attention than all 139 new ETF launches that year combined but soon ran into a wall in the form of U.S. securities regulators.
Since then, the twins have made several adjustments to their filing as seen in the list below—presumably in an attempt to address the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's concerns. They even picked an exchange (Nasdaq) and a ticker (COIN) and hired prominent ETF lawyer Kathleen Moriarty of Kaye Scholer LLP. Still, no approval has been forthcoming from the SEC in the intervening years.
If the ETF dream is dead, or at least in regulatory limbo, there is an alternative path for the Winklevosses to explore in the form of a bitcoin exchange-traded note, or ETN. An ETN is legitimate enough for most investors, and it would likely have better tax treatment than an ETF. It would still need SEC approval via a rule change, but that's been done before, namely with VelocityShares, whose founders have received rule changes over the years for currency ETNs, volatility ETNs, and leveraged commodity ETNs.
ETNs are not held to the same standards as typical ETFs since they are unsecured debt obligations, or a promise to pay the holder of the ETN the total return of an index (in this case the "Winkdex," as seen in the chart below) on a set maturity date, which is typically 30 years in the future.
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http://www.zdnet.com/article/mt-gox-trustee-wraps-up-claim-reviews-millions-in-refunds-available/Mt. Gox's trustee has finished reviewing the thousands of claims made against the bankrupt company and will award $91 million in compensation, far below the amount claimed by angry former investors.
mt-gox-file-claim.jpg
The status of every claim made against the now defunct Bitcoin trading post has been determined, and the status of each claim -- whether valid or void -- has been issued.
Varying amounts of compensation are now destined to land in the bank accounts of former investors on the Bitcoin exchange, but there are not enough Bitcoin assets to fully refund past users.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-catches-on-with-gold-bugs-1463959897In April, volatility in bitcoin’s price fell below that of gold for 28 consecutive days, the longest period in its history. Bitcoin volatility also briefly dropped below that of another flight-to-safety trade, the Japanese yen, according to data from FactSet and CoinDesk.
...Bitcoin has become “a store of value for those concerned about other asset classes,” said Gil Luria, head of technology research at Wedbush Securities. “Gold used to be the only refuge for those who have grave concerns over the global economy and monetary system.”
The gold market dwarfs bitcoin. The amount of money in bitcoin is estimated at $6.8 billion by bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain. The over-the-counter gold market trades between $150 billion and $240 billion a day, according to the World Gold Council. Holdings in gold-backed ETFs are close to $80 billion.
...“I’m not ready to give up entirely on gold,” Mr. Stahl said. But “in the next 10 years, there will be a cryptocurrency alternative.”
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http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-miners-ethereum/The rush to capitalize on ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is in full swing.
Among those interested are the world's miners, who operate vast networks of machines that process bitcoin transactions. Recent increases in the price of ether have sparked some bitcoin mine operators to expand their operations to cover it.
...t's the opportunity to generate profits on the back of Ethereum's recent successes that has arguably attracted some bitcoin miners. For example, the CEO of China-based BitBank, Chandler Guo took to Facebook to declare his plans to enter the ether mining ring. He wrote:
"I am a miner of #ethereum."
Guo, who was the subject of a recent profile by the BBC, made the announcement as part of what appears to be the beginning of a new crowdfunding campaign in which he’s offering 2 percent interest for every 100,000 ETH mined by the operation. On 12th May, Guo finished a successful crowdfunding campaign to collect 3,500 bitcoins at an offered interest rate of 14 percent.
Since then, Guo has begun sharing pictures from the Chinese operation, including the racks of graphics cards needed to mine ether.
Yet recent moves in the global mining space suggests that Guo is not alone among that community to at least test the waters of processing transactions on Ethereum as well as bitcoin.
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http://www.coindesk.com/russias-bitcoin-ban-draft-bill-withdrawn/A bill prepared by Russia's Ministry of Finance targeting the creation and circulation of so-called money surrogates, a classification that would include digital currencies like bitcoin, has been at least temporarily withdrawn from consideration following comments from the country’s Justice Ministry.
As reported by regional news source RNS last week, the bill – popularly known as the "Russian bitcoin ban" – received some negative feedback after the Justice Ministry is said to have objected to the bill on the grounds that its comments were not incorporated. The national legislature, the Duma, has been deliberating the bill since earlier this year.
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https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-exchange-cex-io-sees-40-million-visa-mastercard-deposits/London-based CEX.IO has announced that it has seen over $40 million in fiat currency deposits made toward its exchange for buying bitcoins from credit cards.
In an emailed release to CCN, the European bitcoin exchange was among the earliest ones to add payment cards as a means to deposit funds. VISA and Mastercard payment cards are the most commonly used payment means by users to buy the cryptocurrency.
More recently, virtual cards such as Payoneer, Neteller and Netspend are also among the payment methods accepted by the exchange. Altogether, the bitcoin exchange has processed deposits in excess of $40 million so far.
In a statement, Oleksandr Lutskevych, CEO and Co-Founder of CEX.IO said:
We operate as a broad and reliable bridge between people who are willing to buy Bitcoin and the blockchain industry. As credit cards are still the most common thing in users’ pockets, no matter what country they come from, we decided to direct our efforts on user-friendly, fast and cheap Bitcoin purchases using payment cards.
The exchange expects the aggressive growth to carry on, with its claim of 600,000 registered users – all of whom will also be enabled with instant withdrawals to payment cards in USD, EUR and RUB.
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https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-core-threatens-hard-fork-asicboost-mining-optimization/Peter Todd, backed by Matt Corallo, has proposed hard-fork changes to the bitcoin network to make “useless” patent pending algorithmic improvements which give mining an Asicboost of 20%, leading to increased profits of some $30 million if used by one of the biggest mining pools.
...Sergio Demian Lerner, a renown bitcoin security expert who collaborated with Timo Hanke in creating Asicboost, argued that changing the protocol would send a strong message to the ecosystem that any ASIC optimization should be kept secret and further stated that if the patent license is non-exclusive then all can use the optimization.
Timo Hanke stated that there was no way to know who was currently using the optimization as manufacturers do not reveal such information. Therefore, the proposed hardfork guarantees “two co-existing bitcoin blockchains” as current asicboost hardware would have no choice, but to continue mining on the current chain as they cannot switch over to the majority chain.
The above proposal has caused some controversy for indicating a central planner mind-set as well as a seemingly openness to hardforking after a year of vigorously arguing against it
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https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-mining-developer-spondoolies-shuts/Israeli bitcoin mining equipment developer Spondoolies-Tech, a prominent bitcoin hardware manufacturer in recent years has, in a surprising announcement, revealed that it has shut down operations this month.
...According to a report from Finance Magnates , seven employees from Spondoolies requested an Israeli court to dissolve the company after being notified that the company could no longer afford to retain them, whilst denying their last salary settlement. Spondoolies suffered from a lack of creditors, despite the recent investment by BTCS which wasn’t enough.
The employees also sought the court to appoint a temporary liquidator in the hopes of finding a new investor or, alternatively, an acquisition of the firm or parts of it.
The reason cited in the report for the change of fortunes for the bitcoin mining hardware firm is competition with China-based bitcoin hardware developers, ultimately proving to be a curtain call for Spondoolies-Tech.
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http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/exchange/gatecoin-lost-2m-worth-bitcoin-ethereum-hot-wallet-cyber-hack/The latest victim to suffer from cyber crime is the Hong Kong regulated financial institution for blockchain assets, Gatecoin. On Saturday, the founder and CEO of the firm Aurelien Menant published a statement to investors confirming a breach of Gatecoin’s system resulting in a loss of client deposits.
Menant writes: “On Friday night HKT, May 13, we detected some suspicious transactions and immediately suspended our services to investigate, and to prevent any more unauthorized access to the ETH and BTC hot wallets.
We have previously communicated the fact that most clients’ crypto-asset funds are stored in multi-signature cold wallets. However, the malicious external party involved in this breach, managed to alter our system so that ETH and BTC deposit transfers by-passed the multi-sig cold storage and went directly to the hot wallet during the breach period. This means that losses of ETH funds exceed the 5% limit that we imposed on our hot wallets.
In total, the hot wallet breach resulted in the loss of ETH 185,000 and BTC 250, which is equivalent to USD 2 million. This represents 15% of total crypto-asset deposits held by Gatecoin.”
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http://bitcoinist.net/bitcoin-deep-web-marketplace-silk-road-3-0-is-back/In a very surprising turn of events, it turns out Silk Road 3.0 is back online after a lengthy absence. Several new security upgrades have been implemented, and the overall design has been changed as well. However, the people running the platform are still the same, by the look of things.
...As the name suggests, Silk Road 3.0 is the third iteration of this marketplace concept, albeit every new platform has been run by a different team. In January of 2016, Silk Road 3.0 went dark after security upgrades were announced, and things have been quiet ever since. However, as of last weekend, the platform resurfaced with a new design and the promised security changes.
It is also worth noting the owner of Silk Road 3.0 is – allegedly – the same person running Crypto Market, another deep web platform which went through a similar transition period earlier this year. Crypto market was shut down for several months as well and came back a few months ago with an updated security and login system.
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http://coinjournal.net/bittrex-froze-cryptsy-funds/Bittrex has frozen over $100,000 worth of cryptocurrencies suspected to be linked to Cryptsy, according to documents filed by the court-appointed Receiver of Cryptsy’s assets, James D. Sallah Esq.
According to the documents, Sallah was contacted by “[k]nowledgeable experts in the industry” who warned him that the exchange’s funds were being moved to Bittrex, presumably with the intention to liquidate them.
At that time, Sallah served Bittrex with a subpoena and demand letter, ordering Bittrex to freeze all “accounts and wallets in Cryptsy’s name.” Two days later, Bittrex confirmed that it had frozen at least $100,000 worth of cryptocurrencies associated with Cryptsy.
Bittrex has promised to provide Sallah with the documentation about what exactly has been frozen, but had not done so at the time of the filing. Likewise, Sallah has indicated that he will be providing Bittrex with blockchain analysis to prove Cryptsy’s connection to the funds.
On April 10th, Bitcointalk forum members noticed that coins linked to Cryptsy were moving to coin mixers and exchanges. Those coins had not moved since owner Paul Vernon claimed the site was hacked. Those same forum users indicated that they would be contacting the Silver Law group, whom Sallah practices for.
Sallah took quick action, and the funds were locked by April 13th.
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http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2016/05/12/most-countries-in-the-10-most-likely-to-adopt-bitcoin-are-in-the-developing-world/Which markets have the greatest potential for bitcoin adoption?
With over $250m of venture capital invested in bitcoin startups to date, much is at stake in understanding which markets will prove most fertile for bitcoin. In addition, many governments and regulatory agencies are seeking to better understand the economic opportunities presented by bitcoin along with the perceived risks.
The new Bitcoin Market Potential Index (BMPI) is the first attempt at providing a rigorous answer to the above question, assembling a new data set to rank the potential utility of bitcoin across 177 countries.
.....
Table 5: BMPI Top 10 Countries
Ranking Country Name
1 Argentina
2 Venezuela
3 Zimbabwe
4 India
5 Nigeria
6 Brazil
7 United States
8 Nicaragua
9 Russian Federation
10 Iceland
...A country which often features in discussion of bitcoin adoption but which is just outside of the top-10 is China, which is ranked number 13. China’s ranking is brought down by its relatively small black market; according to Elgin and Oztunali (2012) and other shadow economy researchers – ie Buehn and Schenider (2012), Schneider, Buehn and Montenegro (2010) – it is estimated that roughly 10 per cent of the economic activity is conducted informally in China.
In contrast, near the bottom of the overall BMPI rankings at number 167 is Ireland, which recently hosted a high-profile bitcoin conference. While Ireland scores well in some categories, such as technology and bitcoin penetration, the country has wrestled with deflationary pressures in recent years and also has a relatively limited set of restrictions on the flow of capital. Dublin is a global tech hub, however, and the fact that the BMPI does not include a separate tech hub variable brings down Ireland’s ranking. The LSE in the url stands for London School of Economics. I recommend reading the article in full because they go into detail about how the index was compiled. To see the full index, click the following link: http://www.garrickhileman.com/p/research.html
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http://cointelegraph.com/news/auroracoin-foundation-debuts-icelands-first-cryptocurrency-exchangeResurgent regional cryptocurrency Auroracoin debuted Iceland’s first-ever cryptocurrency exchange, ISX, allowing the people of Iceland to trade Auroracoin and krona.
This week, the Auroracoin Foundation debuted ISX.is, Iceland’s first cryptocurrency exchange. ISX allows the citizens of Iceland to trade króna for cryptocurrency, in this case Auroracoin.
Part of a renewed push by the Auroracoin Foundation
Amid a renewed set of financial scandals in Iceland exposed by the Panama Papers, Auroracoin has made a comeback.
For the last year, the Auroracoin Foundation has made significant adoption pushes including a brand awareness advertising campaign at bus stops around the country.
According to Hermann Finnbjörnsson, board member of the Auroracoin Foundation, the opening of the ISX exchange represents a great success in this greater adoption effort.
Finnbjörnsson says to CoinTelegraph:
“Opening of the exchange will be a turning point for crypto in iceland. Now people will have a real chance to embrace cryptocurrency for the first time and use their local currency to acquire it. After being restricted for 8 years under currency controls this will be a breath of fresh air into our community.”
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http://www.zdnet.com/article/former-bitcoin-miner-digital-x-reports-1-2m-q3-loss/Fintech firm Digital X has reported a third quarter operating loss of $1.27 million.
For the three months ended March 31, 2016, Digital X's bitcoin trading activity produced approximately $5.7 million in revenue, which the company said helped to offset the cash burn its AirPocket remittance product caused, as well as the "winding down" of bitcoin mining.
Latest Australian news.
Previously, Digital X was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) as DigitalBTC, undergoing not only a name change in October, but a shift in business model as well.
DigitalBTC, trading as Digital CC, was formerly solely involved in bitcoin mining, a procedure whereby a company is rewarded with the cryptocurrency for performing calculations that secure the blockchain and confirm the validity of a transaction.
...In May, Digital X raised AU$3.5 million to fund the development and rollout of AirPocket, an app-based peer-to-peer, cross-currency cash remittance platform. After rebranding, Digital X announced its focus would be on the AirPocket platform, saying that the rebranding represented a strategic change from a focus on bitcoin as a mechanism to store value to a focus on software development.
The company said it is currently involved in discussions with partners in the US and Latin America around AirPocket; however the product is not available in Australia.
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http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/05/01/isle-of-man-may-soon-be-the-online-crypto-gambling-destination/True to its intention of becoming the Bitcoin capital, Isle of Man has recently decided to relax its gambling laws to include bitcoin and digital currencies.
The Gambling Supervision Commission has called for a limited consultation for a period of one month, starting April 20, 2016, till May 20, 2016, with an intention of revisiting the existing gambling regulations and updating it to meet today’s standards.
According to the document, the Gambling Supervision Commission has shortlisted 6 changes that can be incorporated to Isle of Man’s existing gambling regulations. These proposed changes, according to the document includes –
* making changes to the regulations to allow the digital currency to be accepted just like cash
...by making bitcoin and other digital currencies legally acceptable by all online gambling services operating out of the country, the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission is not only attracting domestic customers, but virtually anyone from across the globe with a working internet connection and digital currency to spare for gambling.
Until now, a full gambling license holder could only sub-license games to other providers minus the back office operations. If the proposed changes are adopted, then the licensee will be able to sub-license the back office operations concerned with the sub-licensed games along with a range of live betting and lotteries as well.
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