[US Firm Chooses Token-Based Solution to Clean Up Indonesia’s Plastic Waste]

US Firm Chooses Token-Based Solution to Clean Up Indonesia’s Plastic Waste

US Cleaning Supplies Firm SC Johnson has announced that it plans to launch blockchain rewards-based recycling centers in Indonesia to help solve the problem of plastic pollution. The company, which also which owns such brands as Glade, Ziploc and Mr Muscle, will open eight centers with the support of Plastic Bank using a tokens-for-waste payment system for local users. Plastic Bank was the featured in the award-winning documentary A Plastic Ocean.

Recent research has shown that that five Asian countries — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — account for more than 55% of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean. Indonesia, currently participating in a number of blockchain programmes, is also a significant contributor to ocean pollution. They allow users to exchange plastic waste for digital tokens which can then be used to purchase goods and services.

The founder of Plastic Bank, David Katz, suggests that blockchain is the tool that can combat ocean pollution with such innovations, and the new project could also reduce poverty in Indonesia. A Norwegian company has recently come up with its own way of freeing the oceans of plastic waste with a similar tokens program. The project launched by Empower enables the public to remove plastic waste to any certified recycling station and be rewarded with waste tokens.

https://bitcoinnews.com/us-firm-chooses-token-based-solution-to-clean-up-indonesias-plastic-waste/

Key Highlights Ripple price declined sharply, but the $0.4340 support acted as a solid support against the US dollar. There is a connecting bearish trend line formed with resistance at $0.4485 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair (data source from Kraken). Ripple Price Analysis There was yet another rejection noted near the $0.4600 level in ripple price against the US Dollar.

The price surpassed a major bullish trend line with support at $0.4550 on the hourly chart. The current price action is positive above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $0.4603 high to $0.4263 low. On the upside, the price may face sellers near the $0.4500 level.

There is also a connecting bearish trend line formed with resistance at $0.4485 on the hourly chart of the XRP/USD pair. Besides, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the $0.4603 high to $0.4263 low is at $0.4473. Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for XRP/USD is back above the 50 level.

https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/10/30/ripple-price-analysis-xrp-usds-downside-thrust-and-reversal/

Key Highlights ETH price declined sharply and broke the important $197 support against the US Dollar. There was a break below a crucial contracting triangle with support at $199 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken). ETH/USD moved into a bearish zone below the $200 and $197 support levels.

Ethereum Price Analysis After trading in a range for a few days, ETH price started a downside move against the US Dollar. The price broke the $201, $200 and $197 support levels to move into a bearish zone. During the decline, there was a break below a crucial contracting triangle with support at $199 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD.

It moved above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $203 high to $190 low. It also represents the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $203 high to $190 low. Looking at the chart, ETH price is under a lot of pressure below the $197 level.

https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/10/30/ethereum-price-analysis-eth-usd-sellers-in-control-below-200/

[North American Bitcoin Conference]

Florida staked its claim as a significant name in crypto as two pizzas delivered by Papa John’s in Jacksonville once cost the crypto equivalent of $65 million in today’s money, and now with Miami staking its claim as Bitcoin capital of the US, the dream lives on.

Miami is on a charge and has seen a surge of blockchain and crypto conferences setting up their annual venues there over the years. It’s unsurprising, given that there’s also a history there too, as it was not only the home of the first North American Bitcoin Conference but also witnessed the birth of Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum experiment.

This year’s North American Bitcoin Conference heralded in even more startups, some 30 in number, raising millions, and now gives way to the next conference in the queue, Blockchain Shift to be held in late October bringing IBM, Tesla, KPMG, Bloomberg into its orbit. It promises to be another extravaganza with late-night dancing and yacht parties scheduled, living up to the current festival mode employed by crypto conference organizers.

Miami started the crypto ATM revolution, with machine provider BitStop out of Palmetto Bay now providing services for client all over the state and in California with a network of 50 transaction points.

One of Florida’s movers and shakers, George Levy, award-winning Lecturer and Senior Instructor on the blockchain, had a hand in starting Miami’s Blockchain Institute of Technology (BIT), an online training academy which teaches people more about cryptocurrency and its technological foundations. Levy now has students in 166 countries around the globe and follows up his online training with personal appearances in many of those. Lately, he’s taken the leap to South America, where Bitcoin raised early interest. He now works alongside the engineering department at the University of Curaçao.

“We’re seeing innovation coming out of Latin America, as well strong developers based in Argentina,” he says, adding that, “The fact that I’m here in Miami gives me a very close spot to be able to engage that. It’s a great hub.”

South Americans have viewed cryptocurrency as an escape from financial oppression for years, as exemplified by Bitcoin’s huge following in Venezuela where the fiat economy is a total burnout. Because of its Latin American connection, Miami has a renewed spark of life as a potential crypto hub for South America as a result of political unrest there, geographic proximity and Spanish speaking population.

With such a vibrant cryptocurrency ecosystem comes regulatory concerns, one of the motivations by State government’s June decision to appoint a “Cryptocurrency Chief” to oversee the industry, according to Florida’s chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis, an “…active, comprehensive and balanced approach” providing an “appropriate level of scrutiny for emerging digital asset technologies.”

https://bitcoinnews.com/miami-is-fast-becoming-a-us-crypto-trendsetter/

[Why would you need to partition a blockchain?]

On October 9, American financial services giant Mastercard was granted a patent for a method to partition a blockchain so that it can store multiple transaction types and formats. The filing published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveals the details of the new system — not the first of the kind for Mastercard.

Why would you need to partition a blockchain?
Simply put, different blockchains store their transactions in different blocks — say, Bitcoin (BTC) uses one kind of system to record data on its blockchain, while Ethereum (ETH) opts for alternative metrics.

Now, imagine a company that wants to use blockchain technology to store different kinds of data or use multiple cryptocurrencies for their business. It will have to run multiple blockchains, because, as per the recent patent’s filing, the transaction records are “often required to be of the same format and include the same types, and sometimes even sizes, of data.” Consequently, this company will also have to be able to afford all the extra resources and computing power involved.

This problem might be caused by varying degrees of permissioned or open access of blockchains. On the one hand, there are non-permissioned blockchains that allow anyone to view record or be part of it — just like the aforementioned BTC and ETH with their public ledgers. On the other hand, they can also be permissioned — those require special permissions to read, access, and write information on them. They are more common among industry-level corporations, for whom security, identity and role definition are crucial.

Mastercard’s new patent claims the inflexibility of blockchains in terms of data formatting restricts the usage of permissions on permissioned blockchains:

“[...] an entity may want to operate a permissioned blockchain, where varying levels of permissions may be used for participation in the blockchain, such as by limiting the nodes that may add new blocks to the blockchain. However, because all transactions in a traditional blockchain are formatted similarly, the permissions may not be extended to access to the actual transactions in the blockchain … The patent authors say their partitioned blockchain could bypass such limitations and provide ‘enhanced usage of permissions’.

So how would that work?
Mastercard’s new system aims to expand blockchain’s utility by allowing blocks to receive data from “a plurality of subnets”.

“Subnets” are proposed partitions, which would be internally consistent but would interact in a wider, single system: “a subnet may have rules about data in a transaction record, the organization of the data, the size of each data value, and the hashing algorithms used in the formulation of the subnet’s merkle root.” Therefore, subnets would be able to receive information from different computing devices and allow to add data of any kind and size without following a standardized data format. However, the amount of subnets is limited, as the proposed system supports a maximum of three.

Not a first for Mastercard: ambitious plans for blockchain
Mastercard first applied for the above mentioned patent back in July 2016 — it is a time consuming process. The patent office publishes applications up to 18 months after they are filed, and it can take years to decide whether to grant patent protection.

However, the grant for a partitioned blockchain is just one of many for Mastercard. Its first blockchain-related patent was approved in November 2017 titled "method and system for instantaneous payment using recorded guarantees". Since then, the company has come a long way in terms of studying the technology: according to IRP Daily’s August report titled “2018 Top 100 Global Blockchain Patent Enterprise Ranking”, the American credit giant is the third largest with a hefty 80 patent filings, surpassed only by Alibaba and IBM, which makes it a key participant of the potentially forthcoming patent war in the field of blockchain.

Just last month, USPTO published Mastercard’s series of three similarly-written patent applications, where the company argued that the distributed ledger technology (DLT) could significantly simplify business-to-business (B2B) transactions, noting that “21st century B2B collaboration sits on an unwieldy, unconnected and largely unchanged mid-20th century B2B payments platform”. Blockchain, in turn, as the patent authors argued, would store data in a system that is easily accessible by involved firms and is highly-resistant to forging.

Previously in July 2018, Mastercard filed a patent for consumer protection and payment transactions based on DLT. In it, the company described the form of a public blockchain-based method for linking assets between blockchain and fiat currency accounts.

Securing blockchain-related patents does not necessarily mean that the company will go on to create those new systems — whilst blockchain remains a relatively new field, some players just want to stake their claim before taking action. For instance, Bank of America — another top patent applicant — so far have prioritized having a registered technology over actually using it.

In 2016, Catherine Bessant, chief operations and technology officer at Bank of America, told CNBC that having blockchain-related patents is “very important … to reserve our spot even before we know what the commercial application might be.” Notably, those endeavors didn’t prevent the company from calling Bitcoin ‘troubling’ and uplifting its decision to ban customers from purchasing crypto.

The notable activity of Mastercard towards blockchain is backed by the ambitious statements, highlighting the company’s fundamental interest to the technology. In September, Ken Moore, the executive vice president and head of Mastercard Labs, told The Irish Times — on of the biggest Irish daily newspapers —the company’s Dublin-based unit was going “beyond the hype that surrounds new technologies such as blockchain to develop real, grounded services and products” that would be introduced the wider group. “This is not exploratory work for us,” he added, following Mastercard’s announcement that it plans to create 175 new jobs in Dublin with “new roles including blockchain specialists, data scientists and cloud infrastructure specialists”.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-mastercards-multi-blockchain-might-be-a-new-step-in-the-patent-race

The track record of the charity industry has been, regrettably, far from exemplary, and in some instances, at worst, disgraceful. Well-publicized scandals over the past few years have seen a decline in the public donations to charitable organizations, with some of those intuitions being brought into disrepute by misappropriation of public funds or inappropriate behavior of field staff.

Even now, a US investigation is looking into fraudulent identity activity in Myanmar where refugees fingerprints from amongst the Chin minority are causing confusion as fraudsters purchase refugees’ identities for their own ends. Also, in Bangladesh many Rohingya refugees in safe-harbor there have been registered multiple times and records of family groups have been almost non-existent,

Using Blockchain to clean up the industry is possibly the only way that many charitable institutions can survive, and regain public trust by demonstrating a greater level of transparency and accountability.

The main barriers to success in the humanitarian field have been lowering the impact of administration, transportation and documentation cost on donated funds, and making every aspect of donations totally transparent from source to final delivery of the benefit to the recipient.

Charities have been slow to take up the obvious benefits that can be offered to the industry. In fact, it is no exaggeration to suggest that there could be no more obvious and beneficial use case for DLT than its solution to the accountability problems that charities are currently suffering.

Luckily some organizations are on board, but far too few. The World Food Programme (WFP) has been quick to realise the potential of blockchain solutions. As Bitcoin News reported in the first of its humanitarian series, the uses in Jordan’s refugee camps has been essential, in not only feeding and providing work for Syrian refugees but also creating a renewed feeling of self-worth, particularly against female escapees from the war in Syria.

Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, as far back as 2011, was trying to deal with how to get donated funds from a source. At the time, a massive $40 billion was failing to reach its intended recipients, the money was diverted to corrupt officials and middlemen. Seven years on, the blockchain is now being used by the WFP to tackle this problem. Gustav Stromfelt, one of the project managers working on the WFP’s program commented:

“We have this rapid ability to understand where our money is throughout the process…It improves transparency, accountability, and communication across the board.”

This UN-supported programme in Jordan uses dollars at this stage, not cryptocurrency, but through DLT every cent is accounted for right up to the purchase and delivery of physical goods.

Charities accepting cryptocurrencies, and there have been many, were badly hit by the drop in the value of Bitcoin at the end of 2017 and much of the funds were seriously diminished before funds could be dispersed. Silicon Valley Community Foundation revealed in its 2017 audit 45% of its investment assets were unable to be turned into cash in 2018 due to government restrictions.

Many of these problems are now being overcome through online mining schemes which benefit charities and straight crypto donations fund by such organisations as Children in Need and others.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by 24-hour trading volume, has recently tried to address some of these issues with the announcement of a Blockchain Charity Foundation which aims to plug the transparency gap for multiple organisations with its planned donation tracking system: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao explains:

“Lack of transparency has been a problem for charities today. Some estimate up to 80% of donations does not reach the intended beneficiaries. With the ability to track every single transaction, blockchain technology seems tailor-made to solve this problem.”

Although the Blockchain Charity Foundation is still at concept stage, Binance suggest that the system will allow donors to give to one or as many chosen charities as they want whilst retaining anonymity if they wish: The company commented:

“Each BCF program will have its unique receiving address(es). BCF may choose to donate directly to the ultimate beneficiaries or work with other charity partners who then distributes the funds to the ultimate beneficiaries. Either way, the funds will be tracked in a transparent manner.”

Solutions to past problems are slowly being presented through new technology, but clearly, more urgency is required to reshape the face of the charity industry and restore public face so that charity can transit from giver to its needy target and arrive at its destination as the donor intended.

https://bitcoinnews.com/closing-charities-accountability-gap-through-blockchain-technology/

The Bank of Zambia (BoZ) has released an official communiqué reminding its citizens that cryptocurrencies “are not legal tender in the Republic of Zambia” and asserting its exclusive right to issue currency, further advising them to “be aware of the risks associated with the use of cryptocurrencies”. It is unknown what exactly prompted the BoZ to issue its statements, with the bank only citing an “increasing public interest in cryptocurrencies as evidenced by the growing number of enquiries that BoZ has been receiving” as its reason. Part of the BoZ’s statement is not unlike a similar one rendered last February by the Zambian Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the Commission urged investors to exercise caution in dealing with assets outside its jurisdiction of regulation.

Zambia on the Blockchain Zambia has recently been in the crypto news cycle, with the country signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Medici Land Governance (MLG) venture, a subsidiary of Overstock.com, in August, in order to begin using blockchain technology to store land registry title data. Medici at that time simultaneously signed an agreement with the World Bank to put its method into practice all over the so-called developing world. Medici and the World Bank, in signing their agreement, aim to effect a sort of revolution in the ability of “the developing world [to] secure the property rights [and] infrastructure needed to overcome many of its challenges”, in the words of Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, an enthusiastically pro-blockchain investor.

Last month, MLG was again in the headlines as Byrne personally purchased 43% of the company, which according to MLG CEO Dr. Ali El Husseini would “provide [MLG] the additional capital needed to develop systems for Zambia, the World Bank, and other potential partners so that all people can use their property assets as collateral to enter global commerce and markets.” Zambia's Struggles The BoZ announcement comes before what many predict will be a general crisis in Zambia’s economy, as the country’s un-repayable development loans both from Western institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and increasingly from Africa-hungry Beijing, foster ever more corruption and threaten to unravel Zambia as a whole. Many have speculated that people suffering the precarities of stricken economies, such as Zambia’s, are perfect candidates to embrace the use of cryptocurrencies.

https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2018/10/bank-of-zambia-warns-cryptocurrencies-are-not-legal-tender-in-the-country/

[We are a utility token, therefore you are afforded no rights]

The global phenomenon of initial coin offerings (ICOs) has taken the world by storm. To illustrate this strong appetite for a piece of the crypto start-up cake, between 2014 and 2016, the cryptocurrency equivalent of just $295 million was raised across the entire ICO space. In 2017, this figure jumped to more than $5 billion, and in just the first three months of 2018 alone, to more than $6.3 billion.

However, with Q2-Q3 figures appearing to dry up, on top of increased rumors of impending regulatory oversight, many argue that a new breed of crypto-fundraising could be on the horizon. This potential sea-change, known as a security token offering, bears a resemblance to a more traditional initial public offering (IPO). Companies that are looking to raise funds need to first receive approval from their respective national regulator — a process that in itself is highly stringent — and token holders would receive a range of investor rights in a similar fashion to that of a traditional shareholder.

As a result, the underlying specificities of a security token could have a positive effect on the industry, insofar that it would deter unsavoury projects from attempting to dupe investors into investing in a project that has little chance of success. Whether it’s the $660 million Pincoin/Ifan scandal, celebrity endorsed $32 million Centra project or any of the other ICO failures that have resulted in widespread fraudulent activity, it is highly probable that in the case of a security token offering, they wouldn’t have got past the initial due diligence stage.

We are a utility token, therefore you are afforded no rights

One of the key facilitators that has allowed ICO projects to circumvent regulation is the manner that they market their respective token. Upon scrolling through the project’s whitepaper, you will notice that there is a dedicated section on what the token represents. To give you an example, take a look at this segment from the EOS platform:

“The EOS Tokens do not have any rights, uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features, express or implied, including, without limitation, any uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features on the EOS Platform.”

Many within the cryptocurrency community argue that standardized whitepaper protections such as the above example are merely a way to avoid regulatory scrutiny. The reason for this is that should an ICO token resemble  a security, then it would need to receive the full approval of national regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

One such example of this was the SEC shutdown of the AriseBank ICO in early 2018, whereby the regulator explained that the so-called crypt bank was a security in all but name, adding that that the project was not registered with any securities or banking regulators.  However, according to the AriseBank whitepaper, the token resembled a utility. Nevertheless, this is one of the key reasons why crypto projects are so keen to avoid the dreaded “Tokenized Security” label, as seen in the recent court ruling involving Ripple.

How are Security Tokens different?

To illustrate what a security token can offer, it is well worth taking a quick look at the impending security token offering planned by billionaire investor Kevin O’Leary, who is most known for his role in the TV show the Shark Tank. O’Leary is hoping to raise $400 million in capital to purchase a hotel in the city of New York.

By opting for a security token, those who decide to invest in the project will hold a legal share in the hotel, proportionate to the amount they invest. In return for their financial contribution, investors will receive a digital token that represent their holding, all of which will be facilitate via a blockchain protocol.

However, unlike a traditional ICO — whereby currently no regulatory approval is required — the hotel will need to go through a due diligence process.  Although the project is still in its early days, O’Leary has stated that the tokenized offering will adhere to the very same rules as you would expect in a conventional IPO. As a result, not only will the project have a stringent regulatory oversight in the form of the SEC, but investors will themselves have a range of consumer safeguards which would otherwise be non-existent in an ICO.

Conclusion

Although we are yet to see the world’s first security token offering go live, if the phenomenon does take off, we could see investor appetite transition from the Wild West of ICOs over to that of their security token counterpart, which more closely resembles traditional equity offerings.

https://cryptos.com/could-the-rise-of-security-tokens-render-icos-redundant/

[New rumors about Bitfinex partner banks]

Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, allegedly entered into a partnership agreement with the British bank HSBC, while the market discusses rumors about the alarming financial state of Tether, affiliated with Bitfinex.

New rumors about Bitfinex partner banks

Customers suspect that Bitfinex opened an account in one of the largest banks in the world, HSBC. Bitfinex began to receive dollar deposits from customers to a private account of Global Trading Solution, LLC, opened in the US division of HSBC Bank N.A.

It is still unknown where Bitfinex stored its fiat deposits. After its conflict with the US bank Wells Fargo in the spring of 2017 and problems with Taiwanese banks, Bitfinex keeps information about partner banks secret. According to rumors, the cryptocurrency exchange stores its fiat deposits in the Puerto Rican bank Noble, and it also has a partnership with the Dutch ING.

Representatives of the exchange declined to comment on the alleged cooperation with HSBC.

“Bitfinex does not, and has never, commented on actual or potential business relationships and this is not subject to change now,” Kasper Rasmussen, director of communications at Bitfinex, said in an emailed statement.

The financial status of Bitfinex is questionable

A week ago, the crypto market was shocked by rumors about the financial problems of the Puerto Rican Noble Bank, which, presumably, serves the accounts of Tether, the issuer of Tether stable coins and affiliated with Bitfinex.

Noble Bank is “frantically searching for funding,” reported Modern Consensus, citing two high ranked sources, including one at a large cryptocurrency exchange. The situation is so difficult that the bank is said to be struggling to survive, according to the publication.

“If Noble doesn’t get cash soon, they will only have a few days left,” said one source familiar with the matter to Modern Consensus. “They’re desperate.”

Tether itself may be having troubles of its own. One of the largest holders of Tether tried to sell “tens of millions of tethers” without successfully finding a counterparty.

In response to these rumors, Bitfinex published a statement in which it gave references to three wallets for bitcoins, ETH and EOS, whose cumulative balance is worth more than $1.5 billion. Thus, the Bitfinex team tried to prove that the rumors about its insolvency are not true.

http://www.coinfox.info/news/10463-smi-kriptobirzha-bitfinex-vstupila-v-partners

Bitcoin (BTC) remained stable Sunday, October 7, capping a week of sideways trading as overall exchange volumes reached their lowest level for thirteen months.

Data from Cointelegraph’s price tracker and Coin360 show BTC/USD hardly moving compared with the same time last week, with daily and weekly movements concluding at around 0.03 percent up and 0.65 percent down respectively.

At press time, Bitcoin is trading at around $6,545, slightly up on its position during the first week of September, while seeing volatility topping $1,500 in the intervening period.

As commentators noted on social media, October is unlikely to see major announcements on issues that could significantly affect the Bitcoin price. Regulatory decisions on products such as a a U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) are expected in November, while Bakkt, the “regulated ecosystem” for institutional investors seeking Bitcoin exposure, is also scheduled to launch in November.

In the meantime, existing investors appear reluctant to trade, some sources claim, preferring Bitcoin as a store of value as global trade volumes hit their lowest point since July 2017 — below 2.2 million BTC as of October 1.

Other statistics, such as those from public resource Bitcoinity, suggest trading has not been so low for many years.

In altcoin markets, smaller movements than usual came on the back of Bitcoin’s recent stability, with Ethereum (ETH) dropping 0.3 percent on the day to trade around $222 at press time. On the week, ETH/USD lost about 4 percent, while still being up around 3.5 percent versus the same time last month.

Markets appeared ambivalent to casual comments from ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who on Friday revealed he was in the process of withdrawing from his active development role.

Other major altcoins fared broadly similarly, with Ripple (XRP) delivering the largest losses in the top ten assets, losing around 2 percent on the day. TRON (TRX) gained almost 10 percent in a reverse of the overall trend, while assets such as Litecoin (LTC) and Stellar (XLM) barely moved higher or lower.

https://cryptonewsmonitor.com/2018/10/07/bitcoin-altcoin-prices-shun-volatility-amid-multi-year-trade-volume-lows/

Venezuelans can only use the state-backed cryptocurrency, the Petro, to pay for passport fees starting next week, the country’s vice president Delcy Rodriguez said in a press conference Friday, Oct. 5.

Ahead of Petro’s official “launch” in November, Rodriguez confirmed that as of Monday, Oct. 8, fees for all passport applications will only be payable in Petro, and will cost an increased amount: 2 petros for a new passport and 1 petro for an extension.

The average monthly minimum wage in Venezuela, Bloomberg reports, is four times less than the cost of the raised passport fee. 

“In the case of Venezuelans who are abroad, until the first day of November the cost will be $200 for issuance and $100 for extensions,” Rodriguez stated, according to leading Latin American newspaper El Universal.

Venezuela has sought to combat the side-effects of rampant inflation and a failing economy by embracing the use of cryptocurrency to circumvent capital controls.

As Cointelegraph reported, Petro, President Nicolas Maduro’s purported solution to the country’s economic crisis, has consistently courted controversy, with accusations last week claiming its developers copied the whitepaper of altcoin Dash.

Along with the passport fees shake-up, Rodriguez also announced the formation of a dedicated migration police force, ostensibly designed “to preserve citizen security and migratory control.”

Bloomberg notes that around 5,000 citizens flee Venezuela each day.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-mandates-passport-fees-must-be-paid-in-controversial-cryptocurrency-petro

The IRS treats bitcoin and other crypto as property. So, each property transfer can trigger taxes. That can mean tax to the recipient, plus tax to the transferor. It is the latter that catches many people by surprise. The owners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are responsible for paying taxes on transfers.

A key tax question on each transfer is the market value at the time of the transfer. With the wild swings in value that many crypto assets have experienced, that can be a frightening proposition. Some crypto investors resort to putting their crypto in legal entities such as corporations, LLCs or partnerships. These entities can face the same transfer issues, but it is usually possible to contribute the crypto to the entity without triggering taxes.

Then, the thought may be that reporting and accounting with a business entity may be easier. Inevitably, though, there are tough tax issues to address. Another avenue now being considered is a crypto trust. This is really just a trust that holds crypto assets. Trusts can be taxed in several different ways, depending on their type.

There are living trusts that people usually use for estate planning, and those are by far the most common. Notably, living trusts are not separately taxed. If you transfer Bitcoin to your living trust, it usually isn’t a taxable transfer, since your living trust isn’t really a separate taxpayer. It is still you.

So you would still report the gain or loss on a later sale on your personal tax return. The trust is not separately taxable, typically until you or your spouse die. But aren’t there other types of trusts? Yes, there are non-grantor trusts, where the transferor is not taxed on them. These are separately taxed, and they file a separate trust tax return.

Trust tax rules can be complex, but that means the trust itself pays the taxes. There can be another tax on the distribution to beneficiaries. But leaving distribution issues aside, where does the trust pay taxes? That depends.

Some trusts are foreign, meaning that they are set up outside the U.S. Those rules are complex, but if you are U.S. person, you should not assume that you can avoid U.S. tax with a foreign trust. The most you might consider is that it might be possible at the federal level to have your trust pay the lower corporate tax rate of 21 percent, not your individual tax rate.

Of course, if you are paying capital gain tax, you might be paying up to 23.8 percent. That’s not much of a savings. What about state taxes? This is where things get more interesting. Some trusts are being set up with an eye to reducing or avoiding state taxes. 

Say you are in California and don’t want to move to Nevada before you sell your Bitcoin. You want to cut the sting of California's high 13.3 percent state tax, but you aren’t willing to move, at least not yet. You could consider setting up a new type of trust in Nevada or Delaware.

A ‘NING’ is a Nevada Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trust. A ‘DING’ is its Delaware sibling. There is even a ‘WING,’ from Wyoming. Let's say you can’t move quite yet, so you wonder if a trust in another state might work? The usual grantor trust you form for estate planning doesn’t help, since the grantor must include the income on his return.

An emerging answer for the adventurous is a Nevada or Delaware Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor Trusts. The donor makes an incomplete gift—with strings attached—to the trust, and the trust has an independent trustee. The idea is to keep the grantor involved but not technically as the owner. New York State has changed the law to make the grantor taxable no matter what.

California’s Franchise Tax Board has not yet ruled on the issue. Some sellers hold significant assets and move states before they sell. California may have a claim on some of the sales proceeds even if the move is well-timed, bona fide, and permanent. Indeed, California can also dispute the move, arguing that a move in March really was not a move until July.

Thus, some marketers of NING and DING trusts offer it as an alternative or adjunct to the physical move. The idea is for the income and gain in the NING or DING trust not to be taxed until it is distributed. At that point, the distributees will hopefully no longer be in California. The chosen trustee must not be a resident of California.

If the NING or DING trust is formed to facilitate a business sale and the proceeds will be capital gain, there is the federal tax of up to 20 percent. Then, there is also the 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on net investment income. It makes the current federal tax burden on capital gain up to 23.8 percent. California taxes all income at up to 13.3 percent, and there is no lower rate for long term capital gain. It is one reason Nevada, Texas, Washington, Florida and other no tax states have always loomed large for California sellers.

Tax-deferred compounding can yield impressive results, even if it is only state income tax that is being sidestepped. If the NING or DING trust is being used to fund benefits for children and will grow for years, it may make even more sense. Parents frequently fund irrevocable trusts for children, and may not want the trust to make distributions for many years. The parents might also remove future appreciation of the trust assets from their estates.

For tax purposes, most non-grantor trusts are considered taxable where the trustee is situated.  For NING and DING trusts, one common answer is an institutional trust company in Delaware or South Dakota. For trust investment and distribution committees, the committee members should also not be residents of California. Even if you jump through all the requisite hoops, the NING or DING trust may still pay some California tax. For example, if the trust has any California source income, it will still be taxable by California. Gain from California rental properties or the sale of California real estate is sourced to California no matter what.

Outside of New York residents, the jury is still out on NING and DING trusts. The facts, documents, and details matter. California tax lawyers know that the state rarely takes moves that short the state lying down. Still, California seems more likely to attack these trusts in audits rather than through the legislature. Even so, state tax fights in California can be protracted and expensive. But if one is careful, willing to bear some risk, and there is sufficient money at stake, the calculated risks may be worth considering.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/do-crypto-trusts-save-taxes-expert-take

Ethereum (ETH) looks nothing like before, entering a true bear market, by returning to the lowest levels since the fall of 2017, with a very small net gain since June 2017, after rising to above $1,300 and crashing to nearly $400. ETH has also lost significantly since its peak BTC prices last summer, down 50% from 0.15 BTC to 0.073 BTC.

ETH is at a curious crossroads, pressured to a low price level, but also being central to the still strong ICO and dApp ecosystem. The Ethereum network, for all its flaws, attracts new projects almost constantly, and is currently hosting some of the first operational dApps. All other networks have fewer projects and dApps, and most run on promises.

ETH recovered slightly to $458.56, down around 11% net this week. In the past quarter, ETH has gone without a net gain, despite the spike above $830. But now, a curious trend is happening, as trading volumes are returning, and ETH trading takes up more than 22% of all crypto trades. Additionally, ETH is seeing an increased influence of Tether (USDT) trading, an asset that previously supported Bitcoin, but moved into altcoins in the past months.

 

Thus, Ethereum may be the next coin to take up another rising trend, pushing up from the lows. But the coin is also pressured with extremely active selling, increasing the volumes to a three-month record in the past few days.

The Ethereum network is now also faced off with the allegedly better system of EOS. But the comparison has raised criticism that Ethereum is also, in a way, centralized, and the influence of Vitalik Buterin is too significant.


 
https://twitter.com/WhalePanda/status/1011207852801904640

Buterin is still looked up to for providing guidance and the Ethereum project has a centralized and planned timeline to develop into a different kind of digital asset, a staking coin. However, the ETH network so far has worked without a verification layer.

The influence of Vitalik Buterin was felt most significantly after the DAO hack, when a hard fork and a rollback was proposed. Again, during the launch of Ethash ASICs this summer, the Ethereum community suggested a change of mining algorithm to disable the machines — but Vitalik Buterin spoke in favor of preserving the current condition.

https://cryptovest.com/news/ethereum-eth-losing-50-against-bitcoin-since-last-summer/

Bitcoin dropped to the lowest level this year as pressure mounts on the embryonic digital-currency sector, with global central bankers raising questions of viability and government regulators increasing scrutiny.

The biggest virtual currency fell as much as 5.1 per cent to $5,832.68, piercing the previous low of the year of $5,920.72 that was set on February 6th, according to Bitstamp prices. That bought its decline from the record high of almost $20,000 reached in December to 70 per cent.

On Friday, Japan’s Financial Services Agency ordered six of the country’s biggest crypto trading venues to improve measures to prevent money laundering. The companies must submit their plans by July 23rd.

Peer-to-peer money has come under fresh pressure in recent weeks after two South Korean exchanges said they were hacked. That raised fresh concerns about the security of investor holdings. New pressure in Japan, one of the most crypto-friendly jurisdictions, demonstrated the market’s fragility to regulatory moves in the absence of much positive news.

Bitstamp is one of the major price sources for cryptocurrencies, which have no unified quotation system and can vary substantially among countries. Bloomberg’s composite pricing, which includes Bitstamp and other sources, showed Bitcoin closed on Friday at $6,070.19. – Bloomberg

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/markets/bitcoin-falls-to-lowest-level-this-year-1.3541924

[SUPREME COURT REEVALUATES ‘WHAT WE VIEW AS MONEY’]

SUPREME COURT REEVALUATES ‘WHAT WE VIEW AS MONEY’

As part of the summary comments on the case Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States, a judge mentioned Bitcoin while discussing “what we view as money” — suggesting it could at least have a future in how employees receive wages.

Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States involved a dispute over whether the railroad company’s worker stock options can be taxed in the same way as money when it constitutes a form of remuneration.

The case, which came to court in April and received its verdict this week, saw a reevaluation of the essence of money — with Supreme Court’s Justice Stephen Breyer arguing parties “should not be trapped in a monetary time warp.”

Supreme Court

A BITCOIN PAYMENT FUTURE? ‘PERHAPS ONE DAY’

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote:

A railroad employee cannot use her paycheck as a ‘medium of exchange.’ She cannot hand it over to a cashier at the grocery store; she must first deposit it. The same is true of stock, which must be converted into cash and deposited in the employee’s account before she can enjoy its monetary value.

Moreover, what we view as money has changed over time. Cowrie shells once were such a medium but no longer are; our currency originally included gold coins and bullion, but, after 1934, gold could not be used as a medium of exchange; perhaps one day employees will be paid in Bitcoin or some other type of cryptocurrency.

While Bitcoin achieves only a passing reference, reactions to Breyer were noticeably positive — with even mainstream media suggesting the Supreme Court could ultimately share a progressive stance on what Bitcoin is.

The event comes just a week after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum constituted securities. The SEC currently considers Bitcoin to be a commodity, not currency.

http://bitcoinist.com/us-supreme-court-bitcoin-positive/