Mobile payment company Square’s Cash App has recently rolled out Bitcoin (BTC) trading in all 50 states, the firm confirmed in a Tweet August 13. According to the company’s announcement, Cash App users are now able to conduct Bitcoin buy and sell transactions in all the U.S. states. Square first launched Bitcoin trading on its app for a fraction of users back in November 2017. On Jan. 31, 2018, Bitcoin trading on Square’s Cash App was launched for almost all Read more …
Adult entertainment publisher Playboy is suing a Canadian blockchain startup for fraud and breaching a contract the two companies signed earlier this year. According to a lawsuit filed in early August with the Los Angeles Superior Court, Playboy and Global Blockchain Technologies (GBT) signed a memorandum of understanding in March stating that GBT would help Playboy integrate the Vice Industry Token (VIT) onto its platforms. Playboy planned to use the token to reward its audience for watching videos, writing comments and Read more …
Bitcoin continues to extend its downward momentum on Tuesday, lately falling to its lowest trading since June this year. The BTC/USD today opened at 6250-fiat and started recording losses thereafter – during the early Asian trading session. The pair formed a bear pole in pursuance of a breakout towards the south, as we had predicted in our previous analysis. It broke towards 5857-fiat, just shy of extending its bear run towards the June’s bottom at 5754-fiat. The European trading session Read more …
Facing hyperinflation as well as international sanctions that have brought Venezuela to its knees, controversial President Nicolás Maduro has mandated that his recently-developed Petro cryptocurrency become the nation’s second official currency. Maduro Adopts the Petro as Venezuela’s Second National Currency The news was announced by Maduro in a televised address today, and will officially be in place by August 20, when the “sovereign Bolivar” will be joined by the Petro. In attempts to combat rampant inflation, the move is set to apparently take five zeros away Read more …
The lightning network is due for a privacy boost. That’s according to Dr. Ayo Akinyele, a computer scientist who has focused his efforts on building a zcash implementation of anonymous off-chain payment architecture called BOLT. And today that work was published on Github. First conceived by zcash founders Matthew Green and Ian Miers in 2016, the code is inspired by the bitcoin scaling solution, lightning network, and seeks to unlock high levels of transaction throughput while adding payment confidentiality. “The lightning Read more …
After the closure of an IPO funding round in August, the Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain is now worth $15 billion. Bitmain’s aim to raise $18 billion at a market capitalization of up to $50 billion could potentially result in one of the largest IPO in history. Founded only five years ago by Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, Bitmain has presided over the transformation of Bitcoin mining from a quirky hobby into a multi billion-dollar industry. In a cut-throat environment where Read more …
At the recent Distributed 2018 conference in San Francisco, Rick Lewis and Dave Hollerith from the Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network interviewed a host of different personalities in the blockchain space about digital privacy. First, the team interviewed David Chaum, one of the forefathers of cryptocurrency as we know it today. Starting from these humble beginnings, Chaum describes a brief history of the earliest days of digital money, as he built much of the enthusiasm for cryptography himself. His brief account Read more …
Bearish Sentiment as derived from Bitfinex long and short position data in the Bitcoin market has rapidly advanced in the past week two weeks, with Short positions at the exchange doubling from 17k short to 34k in the price decline from $7,500 to $5,900, showing no immediate sign of slowing. At the same time, long positions have decreased to lows of 26k, meaning that the bears are outweighing the bulls by 30%. Bears Need New Lows Under $6K This is Read more …
Crowdfunding In recent news pertaining to initial coin offerings (ICO) regulations, an EU report has advocated the regulation of ICOs according to crowdfunding legislation, the governor of Korea’s Jeju Island wants his jurisdiction to become a special economic zone regarding cryptocurrencies and blockchain, and the U.S. SEC has warned consumers regarding the risks of self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts that offer exposure to ICOs and cryptocurrencies. Also Read: Markets Update: Bloody Crypto-Markets Suffer More Losses EU Report Advocates Incorporating ICOs into Fundraising Read more …
This month, we celebrate Ethereum’s third birthday and reflect upon the many milestones that have occured in the industry since the dawn of the original smart contract blockchain. Mainstream interest is burgeoning, market capitalization for the industry has increased by over 5,900 percent, and the number of cryptocurrencies currently in circulation is at an all-time high. Up until recently, it seemed as if Ethereum would be one of the only platforms capable of fostering the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. Read more …
The government of South Korea announced it had excluded cryptocurrency exchanges from legislation governing venture businesses in a press release issued Monday, August 13. The brief document from the country’s Ministry of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Startups (MSS) explained that contrary to previous decisions, it would now place exchanges alongside bars and nightclubs as businesses that it would “not encourage as a venture enterprise.” A rough translation of part of the press release explains: “The Small and Medium Read more …
Within a period of two weeks, from August 1 to August 14, the price of Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, dropped by 44 percent. In 14 days, the price of Ethereum plummeted from $470 to $260, reaching its lowest point in 2018 by falling below the $300 mark for the first time since early November, 2017. The entire cryptocurrency market experienced a steep decline in valuation, losing nearly $150 billion of its valuation in a month. But, Read more …