Latest posts of: Jambolb2

Failed Mobile Banking Initiative In India Creates New Bitcoin Opportunity

It has to be said, the plan by the Indian government seemed very solid on paper. In an attempt to recreate the success of M-Pesa-like services in India, the infrastructure was built to provide basic mobile banking services in the country. After many years of hard work and planning, the experiment seemed ready for take-off.

However, things took a turn for the worse, as the average consumer on the street was not all that interested. The government expected a rapid growth of the user base for this mobile banking initiative. However, since launching in August 2014, there has been far less interest in this initiative than projected.

READ MORE >>> http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/08/04/failed-mobile-banking-initiative-india-creates-new-bitcoin-opportunity/

UniCredit Shares Slide 5% as Italy’s Banks Fail Stress Tests

In gloom reminiscent of pre-crisis 2008, stress tests conducted by the regulator showed UniCredit, along with other Italian institutions, would not hold up in the event of sudden fiduciary problems.

Financial instability now looks set to spill over across the border, with the political future of Italy heavily dependent on the action of Matteo Renzi’s government.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/unicredit-italy-banks-fail-stress-tests/

What Does Jewish Traditional Law Think of Bitcoin?

This is important as religious law may transcend the pragmatic definitions of “money” nation-states must follow in order to suit domestic commercial and taxation practices.

Information site Chabad.org, which represents the Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic organization Chabad, approached the question this week with its article “Does Judaism Consider Bitcoins to Be Money?”

READ MORE : https://news.bitcoin.com/jewish-tradition-law-bitcoin/

Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/29/2016 – Potential Reversal?

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

Bitcoin price has been trending lower recently but it looks like sellers are tired from the decline.
A small reversal pattern can be seen on the 1-hour time frame, possibly indicating a short-term reversal.
Price has failed in its last two attempts to break below the $645 level, creating a double bottom formation.

Bitcoin price has formed a double bottom on its 1-hour time frame but has yet to break above the neckline before confirming the reversal.

READ MORE : http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/29/bitcoin-price-technical-analysis-07292016-potential-reversal/

New North Korea Hack Shows Enterprises Need The Blockchain

reliminary reports seem to indicate North Korea is behind the theft of millions of consumer records. The evidence pointing in this direction comes in the form of expressions used by the hacker. Apparently, a South Korean online shopping platform has been breached, resulting in 10 million personal records being stolen.

Furthermore, the South Korean police, who are investigating this matter, claims the digital breadcrumbs lead to the North Korean spy agency. A specific IP address has been detected, as well as used codes, which related to previous attacks by North Korea against their Southern neighbors.

READ MORE : http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/28/new-north-korea-hack-shows-enterprises-need-blockchain/

Coinbase expands services to Australia and denies upcoming ETC support

Coinbase, which is infamously known as the world’s largest bitcoin exchange and wallet service, has recently announced their plans to expand their services to Australia.

In a recent blog post, Coinbase stated that Australians can now buy bitcoin and Ether by using their debit and credit cards. Unfortunately, at this moment in time, customers from this region are unable to sell digital currency. It’s likely that Coinbase will grant users this possibility as well, in the near future.

READ MORE : http://themerkle.com/coinbase-expands-services-to-australia-and-denies-upcoming-etc-support/

Bitcoin Traders Should Explore Foreign Exchange Arbitrage Opportunities

When it comes to arbitraging Bitcoin exchanges, traders will usually stick to the same fiat currency. For example, one exchange trades 5-8 USD above or below the next, which creates a gap waiting to be exploited. Events like these are not all that uncommon, albeit less frequent than some people may like at this point.

But just a week ago, a reserve scenario had taken place. The volatility across foreign exchange markets is creating some interesting shifts very few people will take advantage of. Bitcoin, due to its global appeal, can be traded against nearly every fiat currency in the world. Given the volatile nature of some of these currencies, such as the Yen, Real, and Ruble, new price gaps emerge.

READ MORE >>> http://themerkle.com/bitcoin-traders-should-explore-foreign-exchange-arbitrage-opportunities/

Bitcoin ‘Whales’ Vote in Favor of Larger Tx Blocks

Of particular interest were two addresses containing significant amounts of bitcoin voting with the majority. On Bitcoinocracy, results are tallied according to the total amount of bitcoin backing or opposing a statement – so larger holdings matter a lot.

The “whale” addresses were this one containing over 41,748 BTC and this one with 44,998.

The questions addressed many key concerns regarding what might happen in the event of a Bitcoin fork, with some politically-charged wordings. Questions voted on by the large-holding addresses were:

READ MORE : https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-whales-vote-larger-tx-blocks/

UK Male Escort Uses Bitcoin to Bypass Censorship

Sex workers is a taboo subject, and certain groups and governments have shown they are against these types of occupations. However, those who participate in this line of work believe it is their decision. Now, thanks to the digital age they are overcoming obstacles preventing them from working in the escort business. Bitcoin has helped Oz, an Australian male escort working out of London, to get over these legal obstructions.

Oz uses social media and cryptocurrency with his phone and laptop to boost his escort business. The sex worker maintains a website and has recently participated in a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) so people could learn about his escort life.

READ MORE : https://news.bitcoin.com/uk-escort-uses-bitcoin-bypass-censorship/

Coinbase Enables Credit and Debit Card Bitcoin and Ether Purchases from Australian Customers

The company has announced in their corporate blog the inclusion of Ethereum and Bitcoin buying services to Australian customers:

We’re focused on creating an open financial system for the world, allowing people to easily buy and sell digital currencies anywhere in the world. Along with this launch in Australia, we are also making the ETH/BTC trading pair available on our professional trading platform GDAX to customers in Australia.

The decision, however, does not include the selling of cryptocurrencies –only purchases will be enabled for Australian customers, the company has not disclosed when or if the platform will support Bitcoin/Ethereum selling.

READ MORE : http://themerkle.com/coinbase-enables-credit-and-debit-card-bitcoin-and-ether-purchases-from-australian-customers/

HaoBTC Expands Bitcoin Service Offering With A New Mining Pool

Decentralization and distribution are essential in the world of cryptocurrency. Especially where the mining scene is concerned, having more choice is never a bad thing. It is good to see additional mining pools come to the scene, as more distribution of the network hashrate is never a bad thing by any means.

HaoBTC has been around since 2014, albeit they never focused much on the mining scene until June of 2016. The majority of Bitcoin mining power is already pointed towards Chinese mining pools. This new option offered by haoBTC will only put more control in Chinese hands, albeit it may draw away some hashpower from other established pools.

READ MORE : http://themerkle.com/haobtc-expands-bitcoin-service-offering-with-a-new-mining-pool/

Kraken Adds Ethereum Classic, Coinbase Slammed for Funds Freeze

In a statement released today, the exchange said it “elected to support classic ether along with most of the major Ethereum exchanges.”

Kraken will offer ETC/XBT, ETC/ETH,ETC/USD and ETC/EUR pairs.

The move comes as the price of ETC, the token of the chain, which does not recredit investors from the DAO hack that caused the hard fork, has been gaining huge support within a short timeframe.

Frantic trading on exchanges such as Poloniex saw the token’s value soar by over 250% in just 2 hours. Volatility was and remains considerable.

READ MORE : https://news.bitcoin.com/kraken-ethereum-classic-coinbase-freeze/

New York City Electricity Spot Price Spikes By 1,000%

By the look of things, Washington is not the only area where electricity prices are on the rise. New York City saw a 1,000% electricity price spike due to a lasting heatwave after a thunderstorm. This is not good news for anyone who is mining Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency in this city, as their electricity bill will go up significantly.

READ MORE >>> http://themerkle.com/new-york-city-electricity-spot-price-spikes-by-1000/

Roger Ver Challenges Bernie Sanders Again, Raises Offer to $250K

To help spread the message of liberty activist Adam Kokesh wants to debate former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The discussion would be focused on the positive and negatives of socialism vs. libertarianism. Being an active supporter of peace, free markets, and the concept that good ideas don’t require force Bitcoin.com’s CEO Roger Ver is all about this debate. In fact, Ver offered both Kokesh and Sanders $50,000 each to donate to charity if they participated in a live 2-hour discussion. Now he’s upped the stakes and hopes Sanders and Kokesh can have a robust debate about the two ideological positions.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/roger-ver-bernie-sanders-250k/

Natwest Warns of Sub-Zero Rates, Savings NOT in Bitcoin at Risk

For now, the bank said that the negative interest rates would only apply to money held in current accounts of business customers, not their savings accounts or other types of accounts.Natwest

While only business customers will be affected, doing so sets a scary precedent, diminishing profits in the business sector and causing millions of retail customers to fear that the same treatment could also be applied to them. Even worse, if a prestigious bank like Natwest charges negative interest rates, other banks are likely to follow suit and also charge them as well. Eventually, if it spreads, everyone holding cash at a bank in the UK would have to pay interest to have their money held instead of earning interest on it.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/natwest-sub-zero-rates-savings-bitcoin/

Bright Future for Bitcoin After Florida Case Dismissal

The case and decision are now likely to have widespread positive implications for Bitcoin in the South Florida region, said the defense’s main expert witness.

Espinoza’s legal team had previously called the initial police investigation “a fishing expedition” and the trial a “guinea pig test case“. The lawyers had been hopeful Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler would throw out the case after they filed a motion to dismiss in May.

Central to Espinoza’s defense was the notion that Bitcoin is not defined as money or even a currency under Florida law.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/bright-future-bitcoin-florida-case/

Bitcoin Price Watch; Stopped Out, Looking Forward

So the day has now come to an end, at it’s time to take a second look at the bitcoin price market ahead of tonight’s Asian session. Thing shave been pretty volatile today, as we expected they might be, and we’ve got plenty to discuss before we get to the end, so here goes.

First, a look at the day’s action. When we outlined this morning’s strategy, we noted that action had primarily trended to the downside over the last forty-eight hours, and that this suggested we might be able to get in on a downside bias. As things turned out, this proved correct, but unfortunately, not to the degree we’d hoped. We entered short towards a downside target of 650 flat on a break of support, and price ran down towards our target pretty steadily in the period immediately subsequent to our entry. However, price reversed and bottomed out just ahead of our target, and took out our stop loss. In hindsight, we probably should have given the trade a little bit more room (from a risk perspective) but let’s not dwell on that right now.

READ MORE >>> http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/07/25/bitcoin-price-watch-stopped-looking-forward/

Gibraltar Lands First European Bitcoin ETI

BitcoinETI, which received approval for admission to both exchanges Friday, is an asset-backed ETI invested exclusively in Bitcoin. It will trade on both exchanges under the ticker BTCETI.

The product is issued by iStructure PCC PLC, and is the result of a joint venture between the Gibraltar government and the territory’s financial regulator, together with developers Argentarius ETI Management Limited and iStructure PCC PLC subsidiary Revoltura Ltd.

“By listing the ETI on the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, which is an EU regulated market, we are able to bring a high-level of transparency and liquidity to investors,” Ransu Salovaara, CEO of Revoltura said in a press release issued today.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/gibraltar-first-european-bitcoin-eti/

Reuters’ World-Check Database Selling for Bitcoin After Breach

The World-Check file cache contains millions of people’s profiles, and of those tens of thousands of them are linked to terrorism. The database creates its profiles on publicly available information, including international terrorist watchlists

World-Check, a product of Thomson Reuters of Reuters news agency, whose clients include 300 government agencies, nine of the world’s top 10 law firms and 49 of the world’s top 50 banks.

READ MORE >>> https://news.bitcoin.com/reuters-world-check-database-breach/

Bitcoin Network Hashrate Shows First Big Dip Since Halving

It is not uncommon for the Bitcoin mining hashrate to show a decline now and then. Once could argue the mining power on the network has been declining since the beginning of July 2016, albeit the differences were rather minimal. This sudden drop, however, has taken things down by quite a notch.

Looking over the charts of the Bitcoin mining pools themselves, there does not seem to be anything out of the ordinary right now. Disqus Fish, Antminer, BTCC, and BW are still representing the vast majority of Bitcoin mining activity. The number of blocks found today is not higher or lower than it should be either.

READ MORE >>> http://themerkle.com/bitcoin-network-hashrate-shows-first-big-dip-since-halving/