Crimea was part of Russia until 1954, when the communist party decided to transfer it to Ukraine. But at that time both were part of the USSR, so the change was only theoretical.

It has had a Russian ethnic majority since about 1900, which continued after the dissolution of the USSR. The Russians resented being part of Ukraine, presently forming about 70% of the population, and naturally wanted to be part of their Motherland. In 1992 constitutional independence was declared, but the government in Kiev refused a referendum to confirm this

For me it's all about freedom. The 2nd Amendment gives us the right to keep and bear arms. That right has been infringed upon enough. Gun control is a joke. How would you like to live in a society where only the police and criminals had guns ? Not me.

The demand for a Bitcoin debit card that has real-time currency conversion feature has long been there; not many companies tried to bring it

The demand for a Bitcoin debit card that has real-time currency conversion feature has long been there; not many companies tried to bring it. Gauging the demand, the BIT-X Debit Card which can truly be called a revolutionary debit card with real-time currency conversions has been launched in the market. Using this debit users can shop online anywhere and pay for goods & services as well.

Additionally, as the BIT-X debit card allows users to withdraw cash at ATMs worldwide using any of balances that include BTC, LTC, USD, EUR and GBP, it is expected to become popular a lot around the world. The organization behind the launch has also announced cash back reward for the existing and new users. Thus, if someone is already using a BIT-X Debit Card, he can register an account on BIT-X and add card number on Balance page.

Though verification is not obligatory, there is limit set for the users i.e. it will be lower than for verified and partner bank approved users’ cards. To raise the limits the users can click “Raise Limits” on the Balance page.

The Debit Card Comes with High-End Security

The company that launched the Bitcoin debit card assures that it has brought in high-end security where users can set daily and monthly limits, limits for card operations or operations made with the magnetic stripe. Additionally, they can restrict payments to one country and link or unlink wallets to the card at any time as well as set individual wallet priorities.

Although PIN code changes are not currently possible, the company informs that in the case of a damaged or lost card, the users should immediately contact the customer support and unlink all of the wallets from the card.


Read more : http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/01/25/bit-x-bitcoin-debit-cards/

Bitcoin is dead. Or, not. We don’t know what the future holds, but what we do know is the pioneer in the cryptocurrency movement is in some trouble.

In periods of trouble, companies either fix their flaws, either real or perceived, and bounce back, or they’re quickly replaced by a better alternative.

Zcash is one such alternative.

Much like Bitcoin, Zcash uses the blockchain, a public ledger of all transactions using the currency. Where it differs is in the “public” part. Zcash is completely anonymous and relies on “zero-knowledge proof” to offer the same anti-forgery assurances, while masking the sender or receiver if they so choose.

We’ve seen “Bitcoin killers” come and go, but Zcash is in a unique position amongst cryptocurrency enthusiasts in that it uses the blockchain to secure and verify transactions, but it doesn’t pass along identifying data.

This could lead to the world’s first truly anonymous currency system.

According to Zooko Wilcox, a 41-year-old cryptographer and the creator of Zcash:


Zcash’s early investors offer additional intrigue.

Naval Ravikant was an early investor in Twitter and Uber, Barry Silbert founded a startup equity-trading platform called SecondMarket and Roger Ver has serious cryptocurrency street cred after investing in bitcoin startups, Blockchain.info and Bitpay as well as bankrolling the defense of now-convicted Silk Road creator, Ross Ulbricht.

One other interesting departure from the bitcoin model by Zcash is in its corporate structure. That is to say, it has one. Zcash is a for-profit company that aims to ‘tax’ mined Zcash coins at a rate of 11 percent.


Read more : http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/01/25/zcash-is-an-untraceable-bitcoin-alternative-with-some-heavy-hitters-backing-it/#gref

This year’s IPO market has gotten off to a shaky start, with Melbourne-based Bitcoin Group Ltd’s bookbuild, which ended on Monday, raising just $367,902.20. The tentative listing date has been pushed back to February 8.

Executives, who hoped to raise around $20 million by selling shares, maintained a brave face by stressing that the ASX bookbuild funds don’t include application subscriptions directly sent to the Computershare register from cheque postal applications, and those processed by the company.

“We are very happy with the broad spread of new investors and the funds brought to the Bitcoin Group IPO by the ASX bookbuild service,” Chief Executive Sam Lee told Business Spectator. He was unable to disclose more about the total amount raised for now, saying the process had not been finalised.

It was always going to be a tough task to persuade investors to jump aboard in the face of the sharp market downturn of 2016. And Bitcoin Group, which provides the algorithmic service of mining the cryoptocurrency, had its own problems, having to reissue its prospectus three times due to what it said was all part of setting a precedent in a new industry.

There have been other hardships on the local IPO front to be sure. India Fund Ltd abandoned a planned IPO in 2015, saying its pitch had fallen on deaf ears. Just weeks earlier, insurance distributor Greenstone scrapped its $1.3 billion share sale.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2016/1/26/industries/bitcoin-groups-battle-bookbuild

A European Parliament committee held a public hearing on virtual currencies today in Brussels at which it discussed the possibility of regulating digital currencies following the recent Paris terrorist attacks.

The hearing of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) was a preparatory measure for the agency's forthcoming report on virtual currencies. Topics discussed included the risks and challenges posed by publicly traded virtual currencies, as well as the impact of blockchain and distributed ledger technology on which virtual currencies are based.

Panellists included representatives from the European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as academics and stakeholders from the private sector.

In his opening remarks, German MEP and committee member Jakob von Weizsäckerm was keen to reiterate the goal of the meeting and potential implications of its decision-making as governments look to get tougher on terrorist financing.

Von Weizsäckerm said:

However, he noted that he believes the technology should not be overregulated while it is evolving, as he recognises that there are potential advantages offered by the technology.

Thaer Sabri, regulatory adviser and CEO of the Electronic Money Association, who overall recommended a light regulatory touch, also brought up the subject of the Paris attacks in his address, saying: "We mustn’t let the pendulum swing too far."

"As far as financial crime is concerned, industry agrees regulation is a desirable thing," Sabri added. "If we don’t disuade criminals from using these products. the products could become disreputable."

Offering a counter argument, Jeremy Millar, a partner at financial technology consultants Magister Advisors, said that, since it is already illegal to fund terrorists, detection is key, not regulation.

Siân Jones, founder of the European Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Forum and advisor to COINsult, further explained that the use of virtual currencies in money laundering has been "grossly overstated", and that the ability to easily trace past transactions renders them unsuitable for such activities.

ECON is the European Parliament committee responsible for economic and monetary union, the regulation of financial services, the free movement of capital and payments, taxation and competition policies and the international financial system.


Read : http://www.coindesk.com/european-parliament-considers-virtual-currencies/

Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla and creator of the JavaScript programming language, has developed a new browser that will block unwanted web ads and replace them with ads generated by Brave. Eich’s goal is to make the browsing experience easier, to allow users to see ads they are more likely to want to see, and to enable all parties to receive revenue in the process. The last part of this ambitious proposition – remuneration – is where bitcoin comes in. Brave will pay advertisers, users, agencies and publishers in bitcoin.

The company has released a developer version of Brave for early adopters and testers. The software is available at Brave.com and the software repository Github.



According to its website, Brave is partnering with BitGo for bitcoin wallets and identity services. Brave plans to use bitcoin only for permissionless payment delivery to user and publisher wallets. The plan is to keep funds in bitcoin only in monthly payment buffers to minimize volatility.

Eich noted that user browsing habits will be surveilled to the best of the ad ecosystem players’ abilities. Thanks to tracking options that are inevitable with the web, a user’s private behavior and browsing intent signals can be extracted via their browser.

Blockers can make the user experience of the web much better. But with enough people blocking ads, the web’s main funding model is in jeopardy.


Read : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/brave-browser-seeks-revamp-web-ad-revenue-model-using-bitcoin/

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the post-trade clearing and settlement service that powers every single trade in the $22 trillion U.S. stock market has called for an industry-wide collaboration to adopt blockchain technology.

A new white paper issued by the DTCC has called for a coordinated effort among the financial industry to realize a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to modernize and empower its infrastructure with blockchain innovation, the technology that powers the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The white paper notes that while today’s systems used by financial markets have a proven track record of providing stability, reliability and certainty, they aren’t equipped for round-the-year processing and are ‘quite complex and siloed’

In a statement via a press release, president and CEO of DTCC, Michael Bodson said:


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wall-streets-settling-house-points-industry-toward-the-bitcoin-blockchain/

Experienced Bitcoin users will gladly tell people how the popular digital currency will not help much regarding privacy and anonymity. Even though mainstream media outlets keep preaching the exact opposite of that statement, a new study by Rutgers shows how transactions are not as privacy-centric as people assume. Plus, there are still some questions regarding Bitcoin’s convenience that need to be addressed.


To many people who have never used Bitcoin or any other digital currency, the entire concept seems to revolve around user privacy and anonymity. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as the recent Rutgers study indicates Bitcoin is neither privacy-centric nor anonymous by any means. However, the popular digital grants user some level of pseudonymity.

For people looking to gain more financial privacy or anonymity, Bitcoin has very little to offer them. In fact, one could argue that cash is the most anonymous form of monetary exchange in the world, as it is impossible to track its origins or whereabouts outside of bank accounts

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a protocol where transactions are broadcasted on a distributed public ledger. Anyone in the world can track Bitcoin payments from its source to destination in real-time, without having to register for access to the system. This effectively removes any illusion of privacy or anonymity when using digital currency.

There is a major difference between privacy-centric, anonymous, and pseudonymous. Even though plenty of people want to see Bitcoin as anonymous, it isn’t. This is also part of the reason the popular digital currency should not be used for criminal activities, as the truth will always prevail sooner or later.

Pseudonymity, on the other hand, is something Bitcoin does provide up to a certain extent. Any digital currency user can be identified based on their Bitcoin wallet address, although that piece of information will not reveal any other information that isn’t associated with the address. This concept is no different from using an alias in a chatroom, or your in-game character name when playing an online game. It is important to distinguish pseudonymity is far from being anonymous, although it is not hard to see why people would confuse these two terms.

https://news.bitcoin.com/rutgers-bitcoin-study-ideal-system-misunderstood-public/

Trade settlement giant DTCC has released a new report that recommends industry stakeholders experiment with blockchain implementations while cautioning against the growing hype surrounding the technology.

DTCC released its report more than a month after the firm announced its participation in an effort led by the Linux Foundation to develop an open-source blockchain initiative called the Open Ledger Project.

The report, entitled "Embracing Disruption: Tapping the Potential of Distributed Ledgers to Improve the Post-Trade Landscape", offers a tempered endorsement of the technology and identifies several aspects that could be applied to the post-trade environment.

The authors of the report state:


Yet, the report goes on to state that further work is needed before the financial services industry should move to adopt it.

Steps recommended include the development of industry standards and an analysis of whether the benefits of changing post-trade systems to utilize blockchain technology outweigh the costs.

"In addition, the industry itself needs to determine whether using the platform is more cost effective than improving existing technology and whether it can overcome its inherent scale and performance challenges," the report states.

Despite the questions, DTCC suggests that a number of market mechanics could be augmented or replaced with the technology, including securities issuance, settlement and servicing; collateral management; netting and clearing; and data management.

Read http://www.coindesk.com/dtcc-report-blockchain-hype/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoinDesk+%28CoinDesk+-+The+Voice+of+Digital+Currency%29

Blockchain technology has been a huge topic of conversation at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the subject was brought up by TechCrunch’s Matt Burns during a panel that featured TransferWise co-founder and CEO Taavet Hinrikus and MasterCard President of International Markets Ann Cairns. Both participants on the panel seemed to agree with the popular sentiment of dismissing Bitcoin while embracing its underlying technology, and Cairns even stated that MasterCard is testing the blockchain in its labs.

At one point during the panel discussion, Hinrikus questioned whether MasterCard could eventually be disrupted by blockchain technology.

MasterCard Doubts Bitcoin Longevity

When Matt Burns brought up the topic of Bitcoin, Cairns was quick to dismiss the digital cash system. She started by criticizing Bitcoin’s usefulness as a currency:
“I absolutely see a future for blockchain,” she said. “Bitcoin is just something that uses blockchain, and I don’t think the current construct of Bitcoin particularly has longevity. It behaves more like a commodity than a currency.”

The MasterCard official then took aim at the transaction speeds on the Bitcoin network. Although Bitcoin transactions are broadcast instantly, it takes an average of five minutes for a transaction to be confirmed in a block (a new block is mined every 10 minutes).

“It’s very slow,” Cairns said. “I mean, you read a lot of stuff in the press, but right now, it takes about 10 minutes to do a transaction. Imagine you’re waiting for a train. Do you just want to go through the barrier and tap your card, or do you want to wait 10 minutes for your bitcoins?”

Although Cairns claims about confirmation times are true, there are a number of workarounds for this problem currently in development. Off-chain solutions, such as Stash and the Lightning Network, currently hold the most promise in this area. There are also plenty of options for merchants to accept unconfirmed transactions

In addition to her points on the technical workings of Bitcoin, Cairns also discussed the issue of the cryptocurrency’s association with Silk Road and other controversial use cases.


read https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/mastercard-and-transferwise-executives-debate-blockchain-disruption-at-davos-1453735643

I think funded using his account as collateral, because account's password changed recently

as I can see in OP  number of posts is higher then activity so I think there is not any potential activity for this account.

what payment method you accepting for this trade, willing to sell lower amount

well the guy who runs that pool is busy enuf emailing about new pools he sent me an email earlier hours later no reply looks like weave bean done

shacoin.hardcoreminers.com any one no why this pool is down lost my coins

voted on mintpal relay like ecc lets hope its going places  

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Name:www.allcoin.comURL
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Response
DOWN
Allcoin.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..

missed this post glad it was brought back to the top interesting sha coin