https://www.cnet.com/news/iceland-big-bitcoin-heist-cryptocurrency-mining-computers/600 powerful servers specifically designed to mine bitcoin. Plus 600 graphics cards, 100 processors, 100 power supplies, 100 motherboards and 100 sets of computer memory.
According to The Associated Press and Visir, those are the items a coordinated group of Icelandic thieves have stolen. And though 11 people have reportedly been arrested and at least two are still in custody, none of the stolen computers have yet been found by police.
The thefts, which occured between late December and early January, were reportedly captured on surveillance cameras by Advania, the server company hit by two of the three thefts. (The graphics cards, processors and so on were allegedly stolen from a home.) Advania had been offering its customers access to bitcoin-mining rigs, and it sounds like those were the type that were stolen. The Associated Press reports that the stolen computers are worth nearly $2 million.
"This is a grand theft on a scale unseen before," Police Commissioner Olafur Helgi Kjartansson said, according to the AP. "Everything points to this being a highly organized crime."
The AP reports that police are tracking energy consumption across Iceland in case the thieves turn on their new computers and place a strain on the grid, since that could potentially lead them back to the stolen computers' location
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http://fortune.com/2018/03/01/bitcoin-uber-cryptocurrency-eco-garrett-camp/Over the past five months, Camp has been sketching out plans for a brand new cryptocurrency that aims to fix technical and other challenges plaguing existing projects, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. His hope, he told Fortune, is to resuscitate virtual currency’s original promise: an instant, affordable, and borderless means of payment for the masses.
Almost a year ago in May, Camp bought his first Bitcoin along with 10 Ether, Ethereum’s native token, on Coinbase, a popular online exchange in the U.S. But as he looked to invest further in the ballooning field of digital tokens and alternative cryptocurrencies, he was let down.
“The more research I did, the more I was not really wanting to buy a large amount of any one of them,” Camp told Fortune. “I realized it might be better to release a new project from a different philosophical standpoint with cooperation from a lot of universities, scientists, and research institutes—like the Internet,” he said, in terms of its path to development.
Camp has christened his rival project “Eco,” a name he settled on because it is short, easy to pronounce in many languages, and evokes concepts like “ecosystem,” “economics,” and “ecommerce.”
...Another factor is distribution. Camp doesn’t want a small group of speculators to hoard Eco tokens. The more people who get their hands on it, the better, in his view.
In fact, Camp is giving away free money to prime the pump. Out of a total of 1 trillion tokens to be generated over several years, the project plans to disseminate half the supply to the first 1 billion users. Camp plans to set aside a fifth of the tokens for verified nodes (in this case, university partners and researchers), a tenth for the Eco Foundation, to pay operational expenses and fund research grants, another tenth for advisors and active contributors, and a final tenth for “strategic partners worldwide.” Of course the difference between him and other ICO guys is that he has access to magazines like Fortune to promote his coin.
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https://captainaltcoin.com/court-in-russia-unblock-bitcoin-sites-40-of-them/The City Court of Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, overturned the earlier decision of a court to ban 40 Bitcoin sites in the Russian Federation, reported local news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday, February 27.
In July 2017, the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg granted the prosecutor’s request to block 40 Bitcoin sites in St. Petersburg.
Earlier in March 2017, the Prosecutor’s Office of St. Petersburg submitted a lawsuit to ban websites such as Bestchange. ru and 24paybank. com because they “spread information on digital currency” which “is not backed by any real asset and does not provide information about its owners.”
On Tuesday, the City Court of St. Petersburg re-examined the appeal filed by the Moscow Digital Rights Center and revoked the decision. According to a representative of the press service, another body of the Court will meet to evaluate the case. It's not over, the state is going to appeal. It must be really hard to be a bitcoiner in places like Russia.
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https://www.vox.com/world/2018/2/28/17055762/north-korea-sanctions-bitcoin-nuclear-weaponsThe US keeps imposing new sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program but they’re not changing Kim Jong Un’s behavior — and for a surprising reason: Pyongyang’s skill at using cryptocurrencies.
Five days ago, America sanctioned dozens of ships, shipping companies, and other firms that allegedly help Pyongyang fund its nuclear and missiles programs. That move is part of a broader US strategy to starve the North Korean regime of money it would use to improve its weapons. The Trump administration wants to make these punishments so severe that Pyongyang would potentially be open to negotiations over the programs.
The problem is North Korea can partially skirt financial restrictions with cryptocurrencies, an online form of money, according to Priscilla Moriuchi, formerly a top National Security Agency official charged with overseeing cyber threats from East Asia.
Moriuchi, who is now at the digital intelligence firm Recorded Future, estimates that North Korea earns between $15 million and $200 million by creating and selling cryptocurrencies and then turning it into hard cash. (Their take fluctuates depending on the digital currency’s worth when North Korea cashes out.) That’s not enough money to fully fund North Korea’s weapons programs, to be sure, but it ensures they don’t completely shut down.
So even though sanctions hurt North Korea’s physical economy, there are currently few ways America can curb Pyongyang’s growing digital economy. That means North Korea has an even greater ability to keep its nuclear program running than we might think.
“I would bet that these coins are being turned into something — currency or physical goods — that are supporting North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program,” Moriuchi told me I suppose they had to come up with some excuse. The true reason for North Korea's ability to carry on is that they are still getting support and aid from China.
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https://captainaltcoin.com/first-liechtenstein-bank-directly-sell-cryptocurrencies/Bank Frick has made it possible to trade five crypto currencies with immediate effect, as the Liechtenstein-based bank announced on Wednesday.
Professional investors and financial intermediaries can invest in the digital currencies Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Ripple and Litecoin once a day via the Frick platform. Cornerbank, Falcon, IG Bank, Leonteq, Swissquote and Vontobel already offer similar services in Switzerland.
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17058306/coinbase-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-revenueThe digital currency exchange and wallet service Coinbase, founded in 2012 and backed by Silicon Valley investors, recently told shareholders that it booked $1 billion in revenue in 2017. A new independent analysis says about 43 percent of that came in December when the price of bitcoin was surging, and the company’s revenue has plummeted since then.
“By no stretch of the imagination are they continuing that same trajectory,” says Jonathan Meiri, CEO of Superfly Insights, which analyzes data about consumer behavior. “There is a rise up in December. It’s not like it stayed on this plateau into January, February. It came crashing down.”
Superfly Insights’ Coinbase analysis is based on anonymized and aggregated data from user email receipts from about 25,000 users through 2017 and the first six weeks of 2018, Meiri says.
The 43 percent figure lines up with what investors told Recode in January: Coinbase was expected to do about $600 million in revenue over the course of the year, but “bitcoin’s run between Thanksgiving and Christmas boosted the company’s 2017 revenue to over $1 billion.” Coinbase will be crossing it's fingers that bitcoin's price surges back up to $20,000 this year.
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https://www.cryptonewsbulls.com/2018/02/28/rabobank-rabobit-announces-crypto-wallet/Aaaaand another bank bites the dust. This time it’s Dutch multinational bank Rabobank that jumps on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. The Utrecht headquartered Rabobank announced an integrated cryptocurrency wallet called Rabobit. According to the brand spanking new website it will become a wallet that’s “hosted by a trusted party and within the secure online banking environment”. I think some banks are realising that they either embrace crypto and offer online wallets themselves, or Coinbase will take over the space and do to them what Amazon did to the retailers.
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http://uk.businessinsider.com/law-enforcement-problems-with-monero-zcash-dash-cryptocurrencies-2018-2?r=US&IR=TPolice cryptocurrency experts at Europol and London's Met Police told Business Insider that a subset of cryptocurrencies are associated with criminality.
Monero, zcash and dash have all raised flags.
These three currencies have extra privacy features which can frustrate investigations.
Exchanges which deal in these currencies are also less likely to cooperate with law enforcement. I wonder if we'll see exchanges like Poloniex drop Monero and Dash, as part of their deal with Circle?
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https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/27/algorithmia-launches-ethereum-based-ai-competition/Algorithmia announced an AI competition today that could usher in a new era of machine learning model development using the Ethereum blockchain.
The company is offering 3 Ethereum tokens (worth more than $2,500 as of this writing) to the team that can provide the best algorithm for determining voter preferences in the last presidential election, broken down by latitude and longitude. That contest, which has been coded into a smart contract, will last for 60 days. The first team to submit the most accurate model will be the winner.
This competition is really a proof-of-concept test of a system that could allow anyone to create their own smart contract and solicit a custom machine learning model to solve a particular problem. That could help organizations that want to apply machine learning to a particular problem but don’t have the resources to hire a data scientist. Algorithmia’s method doesn’t require participants to trust one another (since all of the components are controlled by the contract), and it automates reward payment.
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https://www.coindesk.com/chinas-crypto-exchanges-didnt-just-survive-theyre-thriving/It began like this: officials from the People's Bank of China stepped into the offices of the largest crypto exchanges in the country and sat down with their executives.
From the financial regulator's Shanghai and Beijing bureaus, the officials told the exchanges they were interested in identifying whether anti-money laundering and capital control mandates were being met.
But according to Robin Zhu, chief operating officer at Huobi, the regulators had an ulterior motive that January day.
"The regulator wanted to grab a big picture of how significant cryptocurrency trading was in China - how does bitcoin work; where does the money come from; where does it go to; how do people make and lose money?" Zhu said.
The PBoC also requested information on the exchange's trading volume and user numbers. In addition to the platform's data, Huobi had been regularly submitting information and reports about worldwide government policy in an effort to help the PBoC understand the industry.
Zhu definitely thought something was up. To him, it seemed like the PBoC was gathering information in an order to create a framework for regulating the industry, something many exchanges wouldn't have necessarily been worried about.
But then September came and with it the announcement that the PBoC was banning initial coin offerings (ICOs) and shutting down domestic fiat-to-crypto order book trading.
It seems the inquiries paved the way for the ultimate clampdown, one that severely affected cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.
In a previous interview with CoinDesk, Huobi's founder and CEO Leo Li reported trading volumes followed suit. On November 1, 2017, these figures were just 5 percent of what they were on Sept. 15, the last day before the close of order-book trading.
Yet, not to be deterred, exchanges such as Huobi have continued to thrive, finding new ways to grow their business.
Westward and eastward expansion
In fact, two of China's largest exchanges at the time, Huobi and OKCoin, already have offerings that again rank within the top 10 in the world by trading volume - Huobi Pro and OKEx, two platforms that now trade cryptocurrencies only.
And Zhu told CoinDesk that Huobi Group has more than doubled its staff to over 400 since September, signaling a strong commitment even facing a tightened regulatory landscape.
"The shift to over-the-counter trading is an unexpected pivot to us. We had never anticipated that to be one of our business strategies," said Zhu.
But until some of the pressure is lifted, Huobi is proceeding with an aggressive expansion plan.
Over the past few months, the exchange has opened offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and the U.S.
Through partnerships with Japan's SBI Group and an unnamed partner in South Korea, Huobi is expecting its new exchanges in those countries to be running by March of this year. And in San Francisco, the company's new office is focusing on research and fostering blockchain startups, but Huobi has also employed compliance experts that as well, hinting at a possible crypto service launch in the U.S. too.
"Once we have fully understood the legal issue in the U.S., opening a new exchange remains to be the next phase of the plan," Zhu said. Presumably the profits of these exchanges are now taxed in the new locations - so the Chinese govt has lost out.
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https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/26/bitcoin-mining-quebec-the-big-picture/Bitcoin mining is a weird industry. Vast banks of dedicated computers solve complex equations to generate hashes worth a fraction of a coin, consuming huge amounts of power in the process. For such operations to be economically feasible nowadays, miners need the cheapest electricity possible.
Energy is cheap in certain regions of Asia but many nations there are becoming increasingly hostile to cryptocurrency. China, for instance, is concerned that a sudden Bitcoin collapse could cause economic chaos. More importantly, it wants to cut off cryptocurrency operations near coal-fired energy plants that cause extra pollution in an already-polluted country.
The answer, for many bitcoin miners, is to be found in Quebec. The Canadian province has some of the lowest electricity prices in North America, and produces an energy surplus that amounts to 100 terawatt hours over a decade -- enough to supply 6 million homes in a year, according to Global News. As such, rather than turning away miners like China is, the province's power agency, Hydro Quebec, has been encouraging them to come.
Quebec generates nearly 97 percent of its electricity from hydro projects and produces around 1,245 tonnes of carbon per TWh of power, between 50 and 240 times less than the industry average in North America. Cryptocurrency mining is thus relatively clean and cheap in Quebec, making it interesting for both the province and miners. "Of the world's top five largest blockchain players, we have at least three or four," David Vincent of Hydro Quebec told Reuters.
Bitfarms is one of the biggest players in Quebec, and the above photo was snapped by Reuters photographer Christinne Muschi at one of its four Quebec sites. The company plans to open another three sites in Quebec, and many other players are interested in coming to the province, too. It's even drawing in industries that have nothing to do with Bitcoin, like forestry and paper producers who could rent out space in their factories. "They want space and cheap power," said Resolute Forest Products CEO Chad Wasilenkoff. I really like the idea of having bitcoin mining concenrated in a stable democracy like Canada. It makes the protocol safer because the miners are out of the reach of dictators.
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https://www.bitwala.com/bitwala-bank-account-coming-soon/We are excited to announce that we are building a German online bank account for the blockchain generation, enabling a seamless transition between the crypto and fiat worlds. We aim to introduce the new Bitwala accounts to the world within the next few months.
In the next few months, we will be building a full-fledged German bank account that will come with a German IBAN, BIC along with a real debit card from MasterCard. Bitwala accounts will be fully regulated by The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany (BaFin) (current application pending), meaning your funds up to €100,000 will be guaranteed, in our case by the deposit guarantee scheme of German banks.
Bitwala accounts will be the perfect solution for those seeking secure and crypto-friendly banking services. We’re hard at work to launch an online bank account that combines all features of traditional banking that you are familiar with an entirely new crypto-first current account.
You will be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies alongside managing your daily expenses and setting up direct debits.The best of both worlds, all in one place.
The new Bitwala account will come with a debit card that is linked to your account (no more bitcoin prepaid cards!). This means that the balance on your Bitwala account will be immediately available on your Bitwala contactless debit card as well. Having the new card will also mean that you will have much lower fees and higher spending limits. No more top-ups or card loads necessary!
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according to the following article: https://fortune.com/2018/02/26/circle-cryptocurrency-trade-bitcoin/On Monday Circle will announce, as Fortune can confirm for the first time, that it has bought Poloniex, one of the world’s most active cryptocurrency exchanges. A person familiar with the terms of the deal who was not authorized to speak about it tells Fortune that the price tag comes in around $400 million.
The acquisition will instantly make Circle a rising threat to Coinbase, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., as well as Bittrex and Kraken, the runner-ups. Counting contributions from Poloniex, Circle’s revenues over the past three months, excluding February, exceeded $250 million, placing the company on an annual run rate greater than $1 billion. Not bad for a 5-year-old upstart.
With the expansion, Circle is laying the groundwork for a day when cryptocurrencies become pervasive, prices grow less volatile, and the utility of digital tokens goes undisputed. If most of the dozens of exchanges competing today are just places to buy and sell coins, Circle has loftier ambitions: It wants to eventually help consumers turn their trading profits into a Tesla, a mortgage, or a portfolio of blue chips. Circle has ample funds, mainstream investors, sophisticated tech, a new network of customers annexed from Poloniex—and, with some luck, a legitimate chance at building the bank of the next century around crypto-finance. I had a look on Poloniex's website, but there was no announcement - but perhaps they haven't yet woken up in that part of the world. |
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https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/would-you-believe-this-steve-wozniaks-bitcoins-actually-got-stolen/articleshow/63075377.cmsSteve Wozniak has an inventive mind, so it comes as no surprise that he’s a fan of Bitcoin. The Apple cofounder spoke at the ET GBS about what made him a fan of the cryptocurrency. “Bitcoins to me was a currency that was not manipulated by the governments. It is mathematical, it is pure, it can’t be altered,” he said.
Unfortunately, all of this doesn’t safeguard Bitcoin from fraud. The American inventor and philanthropist told a full house at the summit how his own Bitcoins got stolen. “The blockchain identifies who has bitcoins… that doesn’t mean there can’t be fraud though. I had seven bitcoins stolen from me through fraud. Somebody bought them from me online through a credit card and they cancelled the credit card payment. It was that easy! And it was from a stolen credit card number so you can never get it back. This is the danger of credit cards. And I believe that this is the reason many banks have banned purchasing bitcoin with credit cards - users scammed them by cancelling the purchase while keeping the coins. If you want to sell, do it on a proper exchange.
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It's surprisingly balanced and realistic. See for yourself: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/foreign-exchange/articles/bitcoin-a-part-of-the-international-payments-landscape/The Takeaway
Using bitcoin for international payments potentially increases payment speed and security, reduces costs, and helps to protect businesses from currency volatility in some countries. However, limited international acceptance of bitcoin currently makes it difficult for companies to work entirely in bitcoin. Using bitcoin thus exposes companies to FX risk, which can be significant because of bitcoin’s exchange rate volatility, and for which at present there are few hedging tools. However, as cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based payment systems are more widely adopted, bitcoin seems likely to become an important part of an ever-changing global payments landscape. |
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https://news.bitcoin.com/46-last-years-icos-failed-already/Given enough time, everything withers and dies, from the most robust institutions to the most popular crowdsales. No one expected all of 2017’s ICOs to last the course. The pace at which they’ve withered and died may come as a surprise though. Tokendata, one of the more comprehensive ICO trackers, lists 902 crowdsales which took place last year. Of these, 142 failed at the funding stage and a further 276 have since failed, either due to taking the money and running, or slowly fading into obscurity. This means that 46% of last year’s ICOs have already failed.
The number of ICOs that are still a going concern is actually even lower. An additional 113 ICOs can be classified as “semi-failed”, either because their team has stopped communicating on social media, or because their community is so small as to mean the project has no chance of success. This means that 59% of last year’s crowdsales are either confirmed failures or failures-in-the-making.
Trawling through 900 ICOs in one sitting is a deeply depressing experience, news.Bitcoin.com can report. Abandoned Twitter accounts, empty Telegram groups, websites no longer hosted, and communities no longer tended are par for the course. A digital graveyard, complete with metaphorical tumbleweed, characterizes the crop of 2017 that decided to take the money and run. Many raised zero; some raised a couple of thousand dollars; and a handful raised over $10 million. In each case, the end result was the same though: no MVP, no alpha release, and no contribution to the decentralized web for the betterment of humanity.
Many of the dead ICOs were doomed from the start. It will come as no surprise to learn that projects such as Clitcoin, Neverdie, and Zero Traffic didn’t make it. (Update: Neverdie has since been in touch to claim that reports of its demise are premature.) Some, which fell flat at the fundraising stage, are doing it all over again this year and hoping that 2017’s failure can be written off as a trial run. Freight trucking platform Doft is one such example. Looking at the countries of origin for failed ICOs shows that developing nations – and an entire continent in the case of Africa – are over-represented. Nevertheless, every major country and continent features in the list of shame. How many people on this board have lost money on an ICO?
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http://bitcoinist.com/cryptocurrency-japanese-money-laundering/According to reports, the National Police Agency in Japan suspects 669 cases of cryptocurrency-utilized money laundering between the months of April and December.
The reports come directly from the cryptocurrency exchange operators themselves, which are obligated under Japanese regulatory measures to report suspicious transactions which may signal money laundering. The measure has been established to prevent criminal transactions — one of the biggest fears associated with digital currencies.
It is important to note, however, that the overall number of suspected money-laundering cases in Japan in 2017 currently stands at 400,043 — which means cryptocurrency cases reported during those 9 months only accounts for less than 0.17 percent of all suspected money-laundering cases.
The incredibly small percentage of crypto-utilized money-laundering cases seems to undermine the argument that digital currencies are tools for criminals looking to wash their money, though it could admittedly suggest many criminal cryptocurrency transactions go unnoticed.
What triggers a report from Japanese exchange operators is not currently known, though — according to Reuters — “questionable transactions repeated frequently in a short span of time” are likely what raises red flags.
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