Bitcoin wallet Caricoin Ltd., that launched its first bitcoin mobile wallet to Caribbean users for bitcoin transactions and payments in June, has now announced its partnership with airtime merchant Bitrefill to integrate bitcoin mobile top-up functionality to its mobile wallet.

According to the official release, Caricoin users in the Caribbean and anywhere in the world can now use the digital currency to easily top up their mobile phones. Using the Caricoin app, they can directly send credit to anyone in the Caribbean at great prices. The region will support networks including Digicel, bMobile, Claro, Flow to name few.

“Mobile top up is the ideal introduction to the world of digital currencies for new users in the Caribbean. Since some of the best top up rates worldwide are available to bitcoin customers, there is a strong incentive for people to start using bitcoin to access these benefits,” Karsten Becker, CEO of Caricoin said.


http://www.econotimes.com/Caricoin-and-Bitrefill-collaborate-to-bring-bitcoin-mobile-top-up-in-the-Caribbean-262394

A new report from the World Economic Forum predicts that the underlying technology introduced by the virtual currency Bitcoin will come to occupy a central place in the global financial system.

A report released Friday morning by the forum, a convening organization for the global elite, is one of the strongest endorsements yet for a new technology — the blockchain — that has become the talk of the financial industry, despite the shadowy origins of Bitcoin.

“Rather than to stay at the margins of the finance industry blockchain will become the beating heart of it,” the head of financial services industries at the World Economic Forum, Giancarlo Bruno, said in a statement released with the report.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/business/dealbook/bitcoin-blockchain-banking-finance.html?_r=0

Skin betting sportsbooks Fanobet and CSGOLounge both experienced bot disruption Thursday that compromised the ability of users on the sites to facilitate skin wagers on the outcomes of professional esports events.
According to posts by bettors on Reddit, as well as an official announcement by Fanobet, game maker Valve Corporation, which ordered both sites last month to cease and desist the use of its Steam platform to facilitate skin betting, is believed to have taken the action against the sites’s trade bots.


http://www.esportsbettingreport.com/fanobet-csgolounge-skin-betting-sites-bitcoin/

Many people still view blockchain and the distributed ledger technology that enabled bitcoin and other forms of digital currency as all but impossible to fully comprehend.

Still, it’s an article of faith among believers that blockchain technology will soon revolutionize the world, and a few law firms already have dispatched lawyers to advise companies in this nascent industry on the numerous challenges, which range from whether bitcoin is a property or a currency, accounting and tax treatment and various other issues.

This week, Steptoe & Johnson announced it will soon accept payment in bitcoin.
https://bol.bna.com/will-work-for-bitcoin-steptoe-johnson-says/

Broker-dealer TradeZero launches first 'dark pool' exchange for bitcoin

TradeZero, a Bahamas-based online broker-dealer, said on Thursday it had launched the world's first "dark pool" exchange for bitcoin to enable institutional investors to execute large trades.

The company will eventually open the exchange to other digital currencies such as ether and litecoin.

TradeZero has partnered with Jered Kenna, one of the earliest bitcoin investors and founder of the now defunct bitcoin exchange called Tradehill, for the venture.

Dark pools refer to trading outside the exchange done by large institutional investors. Off-exchange trading can make up about 40 percent of all U.S. stock trades.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-trading-darkpool-idUSKCN10M1ZA

Leading cryptocurrency news outlet Bitcoin.com echoed my earlier reporting of Digital Currency Group’s Barry Silbert in a well written piece by reporter Jamie Redman. You can read their round-up of my claims here.

My reporting on every aspect of that story is sound and well sourced. Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group did indeed buy out CoinDesk earlier in the year, and CoinDesk’s coverage of Ethereum since that acquisition has shifted to a degree that is “discernible.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-seaman/from-bitcoin-maximalist-t_b_11457636.html

Bitcoin Traders Made 700% Returns Before Losing Millions in Hack Attack
For years, Tian Jia made the kind of returns on his money that investors in the rest of the world could only dream of.
The 29-year-old Beijing-based programmer had $440,000 on deposit at the Hong Kong bitcoin exchange Bitfinex until last week and, on good days, would wake up to find a couple thousand more dollars in his account than when he went to sleep. The earnings came from lending his dollars to traders who wanted to leverage their bets. The exchange allowed lenders like Tian to set their own rates, and he says margin traders paid as much as 700 percent annualized interest to borrow dollars. At times, he earned as much in one day as holders of U.S. Treasuries earn in a decade.
“The returns were really great,” Tian said. “Bitfinex was quite innovative and among the first to come out with products including margin lending.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-11/bitcoin-hack-upends-world-of-700-yields

Caricoin, the bitcoin wallet of the Caribbean, is pleased to announce that it has partnered with airtime merchant Bitrefill to seamlessly integrate mobile top up functionality into its mobile wallet.
Caricoin users at home and abroad can now use bitcoin to quickly and easily top up their mobile phones or send credit to anyone in the Caribbean at great rates, directly from within the Caricoin app. Networks supported in the region include Digicel, Flow, bMobile and Claro, among others.
“Mobile top up is the ideal introduction to the world of digital currencies for new users in the Caribbean. Since some of the best top up rates worldwide are available to bitcoin customers, there is a strong incentive for people to start using bitcoin to access these benefits," said Karsten Becker, CEO of Caricoin Ltd.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/08/prweb13609977.htm

Although the past week and a half have not been overly positive for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency remains very resilient. The Bitfinex hack could have easily crippled any other currency or investment vehicle, but not Bitcoin. Although some media outlets blame this as the Bitcoin network being hacked, nothing could be further from the truth.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/08/11/recent-bitfienx-hack-does-not-shake-the-bitcoin-protocol/

A NEW TROJAN targeting Linux servers has been discovered in the wild, exploiting servers running the Redis NoSQL database to use them for bitcoin mining.

Up to 30,000 Redis servers may be vulnerable, largely because careless systems administrators have put them online without setting a password.

The Linux.Lady malware was discovered by Russian antivirus software vendor Dr Web and is, intriguingly, written using Google's Go programming language, largely based on open source Go libraries hosted on GitHub.

The malware uses a more compact trojan called Linux.Downloader.196 to download the main payload after infection. Linux.Lady, once installed and running, sends basic information about the cracked system to the command-and-control (C&C) server.



http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2467678/linuxlady-trojan-turns-linux-servers-into-bitcoin-miners

Bitcoin may be the new big thing in global currencies, but don't count on it replacing the old, boring store of value, now or ever.

New paradigms often create market bubbles. They are a new technology or idea that will change the world and, along the way, offer investors unlimited profits.

Mania soon takes hold as prices detach from reality and people get rich, at least on paper. The mania soon fades, though, and before long prices fall, sometimes dramatically.


https://www.thestreet.com/story/13670599/1/here-is-why-internet-currency-bitcoin-will-never-be-digital-gold.html

A survey by an Irish company has found that one in six bitcoin users worldwide lose money to hackers and exchange shutdowns.

The study by the Bitcoin Marketing Team surveyed 770 digital currency users from 68 countries and found that thousands of euros worth of bitcoins are lost or stolen through hackers or with users losing access to their online wallets, according to the Irish Independent.

Jamie McCormick, the coordinator of the survey, said that while individuals stated that they like the freedom of bitcoin, negative feelings still circulate the digital currency. This was highlighted in hacks, exchange shutdowns, and technical issues.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/90249-2/

Bitcoin pioneer Jered Kenna and TradeZero offer digital currency dark pool trading

Bitcoin pioneer Jered Kenna has teamed up with online broker dealer TradeZero to create the world's first dark pool exchange for Bitcoin and eventually other digital currencies.

Dark pools are the name given to private exchanges or forums for trading securities, which facilitate very large orders without impacting the market and creating adverse price movements.


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-pioneer-jered-kenna-tradezero-offer-digital-currency-dark-pool-trading-1575478

Big week in blockchain tech. Simultaneous to our coverage that Swiss-based banking giant UBS appears to be building a smart bonds platform using Ethereum technology, it was revealed that Bank of America Corp and HSBC have succeeded in developing a way to significantly reduce international trade costs, using technology from R3CEV.

R3, R3CEV LLC formally, is a blockchain technology company. It leads a consortium of 45 major member organizations in R&D and implementation of blockchain tech.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-seaman/ethereum-tests-light-spee_b_11452612.html

Wirex Limited, the Bitcoin debit card provider formerly known as E-Coin, has experienced amazing growth in user adoption over the last year according to data the firm has released.

More than just surviving in a new field teeming with startups the E-Coin/Wirex company has now been in full operation for nineteen months – and it appears to be thriving. Despite the fact that it operated without a marketing budget, it reports having expanded its customer base by 3000% in the past 12 months.

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/bitcoin-debit-card-wirex-reports-3000-growth-over-last-12-months/

UK company Razormind announced today that the DeOS Platform will open it’s doors to the public on 10 October. DeOS is the first global public record of ownership and identity, complete with decentralized storage and an operating system powered by state of the art blockchain technology. designed to protect your privacy. DeOS works by harnessing safe idle time on networked computers to perform tasks across thousands of machines - creating a sustained, worldwide, public supercomputer. At the heart of this platform is the DeOS Desktop which uses BitCoin as it's native currency.
DeOS for Business
DeOS Desktop services include secure, private banking, secure global identity, smart assets, smart contracts, decentralized storage and computing. DeOS provides a Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that organisations can use to design and deploy their own apps. DeOS provides global record keeping, safe decentralized storage, and genuinely protects your privacy through end to end encryption.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/blockchain/deos/prweb13608043.htm

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has halted its proceedings of how individuals should report the earnings they make from bitcoin after failing to provide additional guidance to a notice released in 2014, according to the Tax Revolution Institute.

In March 2014, the IRS was reported to have released Notice 2014-21 to the masses. Their aim was to inform people how they should apply current tax regulations to the digital currency, bitcoin. However, it did the exact opposite when it stated that bitcoin was a property and not a currency for tax purposes.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/irs-standstill-bitcoin-users-tax-professionals-remain-dark/

Russia's tax agency is encouraging its citizens to report the purchase or sale of digital currencies as currency transactions.

In a tax letter obtained by CoinDesk dated this May, the Ministry of Finance's Federal Tax Service responded to an electronic query on the subject in which it issued new guidance. The statements come amid larger debates domestically about whether bitcoin and other digital currencies should be banned entirely or allowed for specific uses.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-currency-russia-ministry-finance-tax/

Bitcoin Weekly 2016 August 10: Bitfinex trading coming back online, App Store fake Bitcoin apps, Kim Dotcom Megaupload Bitcache talk

Bitfinex is big news this week, especially after the hack last week, and the company has begun reporting that it expects to bring most of its trading platform back online along with deposits. The iTunes App Store is still having troubles with fake Bitcoin apps appearing—Apple has been removing those last discovered and reported but new ones have arrived recently.
Kim Dotcom from Megaupload fame has also been tweeting a lot more about the upcoming resurrection of the platform and how it will provide bitcoin microtransactions for uploaders sharing files. Although details on how this will work are slim.

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/08/10/bitcoin-weekly-2016-august-10-bitfinex-trading-coming-back-online-app-store-fake-bitcoin-apps-kim-dotcom-megaupload-bitcache-talk/

A poll of 770 bitcoin users from 68 countries around the world, including Ireland, reveals that thousands of euro worth of bitcoin has been reported lost or stolen as a result of cyber hacking or from users losing access to their online wallets.
The survey by Bitcoin Marketing Team, an Irish-based agency, comes just days after a cyber attack on a Hong Kong- based bitcoin exchange saw users lose up to €57m, dealing a further blow to confidence in the virtual currency.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/bitcoin-users-losing-money-to-hackers-shutdowns-34955529.html