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Local / India / [2018-04-07] BS:Amit Bhardwaj: The mastermind behind Bitcoin Ponzi scheme
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on: April 07, 2018, 07:49:26 PM
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Amit Bhardwaj: The mastermind behind Bitcoin Ponzi schemehttp://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/amit-bhardwaj-the-mastermind-behind-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme-118040700071_1.htmlAmit Bhardwaj, the mastermind behind one of the largest Bitcoin Ponzi schemes in India, was arrested this week. The 35-year-old had been actively marketing his scheme since 2015, before it came to the notice of the authorities.
Several investors were lured to his Ponzi schemes, which promised handsome returns.
Zakhil Suresh, a finance student living in Kerala, was one of them. In a petition to the Delhi Commissioner of Police to arrest Bhardwaj, Suresh said that he and his friends met Bhardwaj in 2015 at Delhi where the latter explained his five-year business plan. Bhardwaj claimed his company had a mining pool in China and for every contract of one Bitcoin, his company promised to pay back 0.1 Bitcoin a month, for 18 months, translating to an effective monthly return of 10 per cent.
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Local / India / [2018-03-17] IE: Bitcoin fraud: 6 including directors of a firm booked
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on: March 19, 2018, 12:38:49 PM
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Bitcoin fraud: 6 including directors of a firm bookedhttp://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/bitcoin-fraud-6-including-directors-of-a-firm-booked-5100680/ Six people have been booked for allegedly selling bitcoins worth Rs 1 crore without the knowledge and consent of their owner. According to police, Bhimsen Baburam Agarwal (65), a resident of Pradhikaran, Nigdi, was allegedly persuaded by two accused, Amit and Ajay Bharadwaj, to invest in Gain Bitcoin Company.
Since September 2016, Agarwal had invested up to Rs 1 crore in the company and purchased 93.5 bitcoins. But the accused allegedly sold the coins to a third party without Agarwal’s consent, who then filed an FIR at the Nigdi police station. Police have booked Amit and Ajay, both directors of Gain Bitcoin Company, Rupesh Singh, Hemant Chavan, Kaka Ravde and Hemant Suryawanshi.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2018-02-06] Hindu: Fearing cryptocurrencies
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on: February 06, 2018, 06:44:50 AM
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Fearing cryptocurrencieshttp://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/fearing-cryptocurrencies/article22661656.ece The hope that private cryptocurrencies would become mainstream money suffered a setback last week. In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the first time explicitly said that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are not legal forms of money in India and that the government would take steps to eliminate their use. Mr. Jaitley is not the only politician worldwide to consider cryptocurrencies a danger to the status quo. Under the guise of protecting investors, governments in China and South Korea recently took steps to suppress the use of cryptocurrencies, thus adding to the extreme volatility of their price moves. Why are governments so keen to destroy private cryptocurrencies?
The reason is that these currencies pose a significant threat to the massive economic power that national currencies, such as the rupee and dollar, provide their governments. Today every country’s government has a legal monopoly over the issuance of the currency that its people use. This means that no entity other than the government may create and sell currencies. The very point of legal tender laws is to ban anything other than the currency issued by the government from being used as a medium of exchange.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-26] ET: Bitcoin is ready to lose more weight, reveals Cboe data
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on: December 26, 2017, 10:38:34 AM
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Bitcoin is ready to lose more weight, reveals Cboe datahttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/bitcoin-is-ready-to-lose-more-weight-reveals-cboe-data/articleshow/62247536.cms Indian investors in bitcoin, beware. Early trends on Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) show that the crypto currency could be in for further correction since hitting a new high last Monday. CFE, home to volatility futures Cboe Vix, launched trading in bitcoin futures on December 10.
The near month contract expiring on January 17, 2018, witnessed a steady rise in open interest (OI) accompanied by a price correction of almost 27 per cent to $13960 a contract (1 contract equals one bitcoin) last week. A rise in OI along with steep price correction is indicative of traders mounting huge bearish bets on a traded contract.
Though refraining to comment on the bitcoin itself, Rajesh Palviya, derivatives head at Axis Securities, said, "The signs (jump in OI and price fall) point to a corrective trend."
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-26] ET: This one factor could tell how far bitcoin will plunge
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on: December 26, 2017, 10:33:38 AM
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This one factor could tell how far bitcoin will plungehttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/this-one-factor-could-tell-how-far-bitcoin-will-plunge/articleshow/62248797.cmsWhile the sharp drop in bitcoin - 25 per cent, or nearly $4,000, overnight (and 33 per cent from the beginning of the week) -- has some predicting the bubble is starting to burst, it may also provide evidence of the cryptocurrency's longevity.
The critical issue is transactions. And if you are looking for where the bottom could be to bitcoin's plunge, that's a pretty good place to start. Tom Lee, one of Wall Street's biggest bitcoin bulls and head of research at Fundstrat, said on Bloomberg TV on Friday morning that anyone who says bitcoin is based on nothing hasn't "done their homework." The increase in bitcoin this year has followed an uptick in the value of transactions. At the start of the year, there were $275 million in daily transactions in bitcoin. Earlier this week, that had grown to more than $5 billion. That's a 1,700 per cent increase, which is more than the rise in bitcoin this year, even before its current tumble.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-26] ET: Bitcoin rises 10%, recovers from last week's brutal selloff
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on: December 26, 2017, 10:30:05 AM
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Bitcoin rises 10%, recovers from last week's brutal selloffhttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/bitcoin-rises-10-recovers-from-last-weeks-brutal-selloff/articleshow/62250036.cms Bitcoin extended its recovery in holiday-thinned trading on Tuesday, rising 10 per cent to be up more than a third from last week's lows of below $12,000.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, fell nearly 30 per cent at one stage on Friday to $11,159.93 and, despite a late recovery, had its worst week since 2013. At 0445 GMT on Tuesday, it was quoted around $15,049 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-24] ET: Bitcoin and friends offer 1,000 ways to lose your money
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on: December 25, 2017, 07:03:03 PM
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Bitcoin and friends offer 1,000 ways to lose your moneyhttps://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/view-bitcoin-and-friends-offer-1000-ways-to-lose-your-money/articleshow/62230484.cms There are 1,036 virtual currencies out there, from Bitcoin to -- no joke -- BigBoobsCoin. The price of almost every single one was down Friday morning. Bitcoin, the one that kicked off the whole shebang with its rigid algorithm to cap supply, hit its lowest point in two weeks before climbing back to about $14,000.
Is this the epic bursting of the bubble the bears have been waiting for? Not yet. The selloff certainly looks like a reversal of the herd buy-in that hit fever pitch this year. But, in absolute price terms, cryptocurrencies are only looking very marginally less insane.
Even after sinking 35 per cent from a record high, Bitcoin is still 1,200 per cent higher than where it was at the end of 2016. And corrections are common in this market. Bitcoin dropped 13 per cent in one day just three months ago, and 22 per cent in one day back in 2015.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-24] Mint: The year of bitcoin
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on: December 25, 2017, 06:55:42 PM
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The year of bitcoinhttp://www.livemint.com/Opinion/b2qvKYsBeGmkzDGGxwDQzI/The-year-of-bitcoin.htmlA quick look at Google Trends shows the number of searches for “bitcoin” has increased 20-fold since Christmas 2016. The normalized data shows that there were some months in 2013 and 2014 when the number of people searching for information on the digital currency picked up, but that interest did not hold for long. The game changed in 2017. Google searches for “bitcoin” showed gradual improvement, and then took off vertically after November. The interest was no doubt correlated to the sharp rise in bitcoin prices this year.
Meanwhile, a new survey of European economists undertaken by the Centre for Macroeconomics and the Centre for Economic Policy Research tells us two things. Most of the surveyed economists do not believe bitcoin is a threat to financial stability because of its limited usage in economic transactions, but they said the use of the cryptocurrency for tax evasion means that greater regulatory oversight is needed. Expect more on the latter front in the coming year—not just in other parts of the world but in India as well.
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Local / Press & News from India / [2017-12-23] Zee: Bitcoin falls 30%, posts worst week since 2013
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on: December 25, 2017, 06:53:56 PM
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Bitcoin falls 30%, posts worst week since 2013http://zeenews.india.com/international-business/bitcoin-falls-30-posts-worst-week-since-2013-2069054.html Bitcoin plunged by 30 percent to below $12,000 on Friday as investors dumped the cryptocurrency after its sharp rise to a peak close to $20,000 prompted warnings by experts of a bubble.
After falling to as low as $11,159, it recouped some losses to trade above $14,000 on the Bitstamp platform, down 9 percent on the day. It is down around 25 percent this week, its largest weekly loss since April 2013.
It capped a brutal week that had been touted as a new era of mainstream trading for the digital currency when bitcoin futures debuted on CME Group Inc, the world`s largest derivatives market on Sunday.
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Local / India / [2017-11-21] BS: The promise of blockchain
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on: November 22, 2017, 06:58:08 AM
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The promise of blockchain http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/the-promise-of-blockchain-117112101316_1.htmlState Bank of India (SBI) is all set to roll out two applications that adopt the revolutionary blockchain technology for banking. The use of blockchain could considerably reduce the costs of certain transactions while raising the bar for security.
The blockchain is an open electronic ledger system invented to provide a platform for bitcoin, a cryptocurrency. It was conceptualised by bitcoin inventor, “Satoshi Nakamoto”, as a method for verifying, while guaranteeing anonymity, transactions involving a digital currency that was not issued by any central authority.
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Local / India / [2017-11-21] BS: Bitcoin has unusual relationship with volatility
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on: November 22, 2017, 06:55:36 AM
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Bitcoin has unusual relationship with volatility http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/bitcoin-has-unusual-relationship-with-volatility-117112101346_1.htmlCryptoassets are showing the signs of a bubble. Market capitalisation is $222 billion, 16 times as much as a year ago, with no significant change in tangible economic value. The virtual currencies elicit investment excitement and breathless news coverage; sober analysis treating both technical issues and economic fundamentals is rarer. There is incessant cheerleading by people who own cryptoassets, manufacture them or sell associated services. A prominent example is the Amazon best-seller Cryptoassets, which is filled with classic financial hype and bubble logic. The book offers no clear evidence that investors will realise value from buying these assets today. There is no discussion of exit strategy, no speculation about who will pay to deliver profits to current investors.
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