Month: September 2018

Perennial bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital, claims bitcoin is positioned for major growth now that institutions are investing in it and big compananies are starting to accept it. Novogratz told CNNMoney’s “Markets Now” that big companies like Microsoft and Starbucks are allowing customers to use bitcoin and that, in the short term, more institutions will invest for fear of missing out (FOMO). Novogratz, a former principal at Fortress Investment Group, last week said bitcoin would post Read more …

Regulation Three U.S. agencies have taken action against international bitcoin-funded securities dealer 1pool Ltd., aka 1Broker. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says 1Broker violated federal securities laws. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) says it violated the Commodity Exchange Act. Meanwhile, the company says it is working on letting customers withdraw their funds. Also read: 160 Crypto Exchanges Seek to Enter Japanese Market, Regulator Reveals SEC’s Action The SEC announced Thursday that it has filed charges against Marshall Islands-registered 1pool Read more …

Ripple will lead a group of crypto startups to lobby lawmakers and financial regulators in D.C. to support crypto and blockchain innovation, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, September 27. According to the report, the coalition of San-Francisco-based crypto firms is planning to pay Klein/Johnson Group, a bipartisan lobby group, to assist the crypto and blockchain community in conveying to regulators that the industry needs support from the government. The new group, called the Securing America’s Internet of Value Coalition, aims to Read more …

The truth is that anything connected to the internet can be hacked. However, hacking wasn’t always a problem. The History of Air Gap Technology Data used to be held offline, in what’s now known as cold storage. Data on external paper cards, then moved to tape and digital media as technology evolved. The first computers built were by default on cold storage or ‘air gap’ technology. Even when networks were initially built, much of the data still had to be Read more …

One of the most popular cryptocurrency products being released in 2018 are stable coins, which widely market themselves as having all the benefits of cryptocurrencies, minus the volatility. Despite seeming like a practical product, some critics claim that they pose too many problems to ever be widely adopted. Controversy Surrounding Tether Sparks Frenzy The stable coin frenzy first began when investors lost confidence in the ethics and practices surrounding the most widely used stable coin: Tether. In January of this Read more …

This week, a United States federal district judge ruled that an allegedly fraudulent crypto token meets the definition of a commodity. That brought the case under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) purview, which has long argued that virtual currencies constitute commodities. Here what it means — and how the watchdog has been supporting its stance on cryptocurrencies’ legal status. Are cryptocurrencies commodities or securities? Well, they can be both The regulatory approach to cryptocurrencies in the U.S. is complex. Read more …

Altcoins Following some notable premiers in the genre recently, the next batch of stablecoins is on the way. A British startup is partnering with a bank to launch a GBP-pegged crypto, a Swiss commodities trader wants to mint a coin backed by metals, and a Mongolian telecom has been licensed to issue the country’s first digital currency with the same value as the national fiat. Also read: European Regulator Renews Restrictions on Crypto-Based Derivatives   Pound-Pegged Stablecoin on the Horizon in Read more …

Japanese tech firm GMO is expanding its nascent cryptocurrency mining operation beyond bitcoin through the release of a software client designed to mine zcash and other Equihash-based cryptocurrencies using general-purpose GPU chips. Japanese Firm Releases Zcash Mining Software Dubbed Cryptoknocker, the software has specifically been developed for mining rigs composed of Nvidia graphics cards (GeForce 8 or later). While the software itself is free, GMO wants a cut of the proceeds generated through it, namely, two percent of the coins Read more …

Saturday, September 29: crypto markets are mainly seeing red today, with only five out of the 20 top cryptocurrencies by market cap seeing some growth by press time, according to CoinMarketCap. The daily trade volume has dropped below $16 billion, currently amounting to $15.6 billion. Market visualization from Coin360 Bitcoin (BTC) has failed to hold $6,700 support, dropping below the $6,600 price point over the day. The top cryptocurrency is down around 1.8 percent over a 24 hour period, and Read more …

Bitcoin price on Saturday found a key support area near $6,464 after closing on the same level the previous day. The BTC/USD today rose as much as 2.5 percent from the intraday low in an upside correction attempt. Yesterday, the pair had broken below a critical near-term ascending trendline to target 6466-fiat as its primary downside, as was predicted here. It was the same level at where traders went long towards 6500-6600-fiat area, causing a corrective bounce back. By the time Read more …