Bitcoin Magician

SBI Holdings to Exclusively List Ripple’s XRP at Launch of SBI Virtual Currencies Tokyo-based SBI Holdings has announced that its digital assets exchange, SBI Virtual Currencies, which launched in beta yesterday, will list Ripple (XRP) as the only cryptocurrency supported at launch. XRP is the first and the only cryptocurrency to be listed on SBI Virtual Currencies during its initial launch period. The newly released digital asset exchange, owned by SBI Holdings, is designed to streamline cryptocurrency trading for its institutional customers and individuals in Japan. The company originally proposed its plan for launching the exchange in late 2016 but at the time had not disclosed either the release date or which cryptocurrencies would be supported. SBI VC is among the first group of companies to apply for and receive Japan’s digital currency exchange license in November 2017. Additionally, the recent formation of a consortium of Japanese brokerages, headed up by SBI Ripple Asia,  w

e-Chat can conduct Ethereum Hardfork after the ICO Hardforks in the Bitcoin system don’t surprise anyone anymore, but the Ethereum fork, carried out simultaneously with the ICO conducted by the e-Chat team is really something revolutionary for the entire crypto-community. The thing is that the project has long outgrown the limits of the usual blockchain-based messenger and transformed into an interesting, self-developing start-up. The e-Chat team decided to transform the messenger into a multi-functional platform where any participant or business can create their applications based on the e-Chat platform, as well as create their own tokens to pay for services provided both inside the application and outside it. A wide range of services will be available, from a taxi to a babysitter in the neighborhood. Similar functionality exists in the WeChat application, but the degree of protection in it leaves much to be desired, and all payments are possible only in fiat currency. At the momen

BitCar Raises SGD 6.5 Million in Pre-ICO “Crypto for the Car Industry” Singapore January, 2018 – Blockchain company BitCar.io has sold SGD 6.5 million of BITCAR tokens in its pre-ICO, amid strong interest for its exotic car pegging and trading platform. 75 million BITCAR tokens were purchased in the pre-ICO with up to a maximum 175 million tokens being made available in the company’s ICO, which begins 31 January at 3 P.M Singapore time. Singapore headquartered BitCar is developing its Blockchain platform that will facilitate cryptocurrency payments for fractional ownership of highly collectible hyper and classic cars. BitCar co-founder Dr. Gov Van Ek said: BitCar’s platform is designed to allow users to peg their crypto to scarce hard assets, like rare and exotic cars, some of which have outperformed gold, stocks and property over the past decade. Rare exotic cars such as Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Bugatti’s will be acquired for BitCar and stored or displayed for up to 15 years

Bitcoin Questionable as a Currency, but as an Asset it’s as Good as Gold As investors eagerly wait in anticipation to see where exactly Bitcoin will go, its prospects as a viable currency are coming under scrutiny. Cryptocurrency, Minus the ‘Currency’? Bitcoin is looking less and less like a viable currency every day, as companies continue to drop the popular cryptocurrency as a method of payment. One such company dropping support for Bitcoin is Stripe . According to the self-proclaimed “first major payments company to support Bitcoin payments,” lengthy transaction times and high failure rates have made Bitcoin payments anything but convenient, and the rapidly fluctuating price of the cryptocurrency creates headaches for businesses. Worse yet, high fees make Bitcoin transactions about as costly as bank transfers. Because of this, we’ve seen the desire from our customers to accept Bitcoin decrease. And of the businesses that are accepting Bitcoin on Stripe, we’ve seen their revenue

Taipei Partners With IOTA To Become A Blockchain-Powered Smart City Taipei hopes to become a ‘leading’ smart city with the help of IOTA’s Tangle technology. Taipei, Taiwan is seeking to become a smart city by utilizing the power of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), or Blockchain . The city has chosen to partner with IOTA , the inventors of the so-called Tangle technology for the Internet of Things (IoT), to provide a number of new technology features for residents. Wei-bin Lee, Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology in Taipei City Government, suggested in an official press release that the ‘unique technology’ offered by IOTA will usher in a ‘new era of smart cities for the citizens of Taipei’. The first project on the docket is the creation of citizen ID cards built on the Tangle technology. Called ‘TangleID’ cards, the creation is designed to eliminate risks of identity theft and voter fraud , while at the same time providing a simple means for tracking he

Ranging Reactions to Facebook Cryptocurrency Ad Ban Facebook has banned cryptocurrency adverts - prompting ranging reactions on social media. Facebook users will no longer be bombarded by cryptocurrency, initial coin offering and Bitcoin adverts on the social media platform. The company has instituted an all-out ban on cryptocurrency, ICO or Bitcoin adverts - citing “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices." Unfortunately, legitimate financial service providers will also be painted with the same brush- which effectively rules out any advertising of cryptocurrencies or related products on Facebook. Adverts failing to comply will be banned from Facebook, and its partner platform Instagram as well as its advertising platform Audience Network. Facebook’s advertising tech director Rob Leathern said the ban was ‘intentionally broad’ in an effort to weed out ‘deceptive and misleading’ advertising. Social media reac

Cointed: The Hottest Crypto ATM Provider Shares It All The crypto world, with all its freedom, risks and rewards, seems like something out of a western. Within this wild west-like world, see seeing a company committed to transparency and accountability to its community is a rare treat. But there are some who do it. If you missed the news, Cointed (a major crypto ATM provider and exchange) has just released its Transparency report . In it, you can find everything about their company structure, ownership as well as get the details surrounding their different businesses. Here, we’ll highlight the things you MUST check out from the report. If you want to learn about the company structure and ownership, check out this article . Want to learn more about Cointed and the future of money? Check out our full profile of one of the hottest crypto players out there! Crypto ATMs Cointed own a total of 120 crypto ATMs located in Austria, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Lichtenstein, Bangkok. They have tw

Turkish Football Team Buys Player With Bitcoin Harunustaspor, a Turkish amateur football team, just bought a player using bitcoin. The Bitcoin space might be struggling from a price and a sentiment perspective right now but that hasn’t stopped the flow of quirky news that’s become prevalent over the last six months or so, as the cryptocurrency and blockchain spaces have moved out from under the radar and into the mainstream. The latest report of this type has come out of Turkey, which (as many reading will likely already be aware) has had something of a turbulent relationship with cryptocurrency over the last few months. The BBC reported today that a Turkish football (soccer, for our North American friends) club has signed a new player using bitcoin. At the top tier of football in Europe, when a club says they have acquired a new player through purchase or transfer, it normally means that the club in question has paid another club for the player that’s being transferred. That’s n

Rent A Rig And Mine Any Coin You Want With Rent A Hash If you are looking to get into the cryptocurrency mining game or you have a special project that requires additional hashing power, Rent A Hash is the kind of service you are looking for.  Rent A Hash is a professional mining platform that allows you to rent hashing power as it becomes available on the platform for the period of time you need to achieve your goals. You will not have to deal with setting up rigs, importing machines or GPU cards, renting and maintaining warehouses, securing the site or paying the bills. You can get all the advantages of having a rig without the work involved with a reliable hash power supplier. How Does Rent A Hash Work? If you are looking to rent a rig, here is how Rent A Hash works: Open your account at https://rentahash.io/ Login and start looking for the kind of rig you would like to rent from the list. You can organize your search according to several categories, including speed, price per

Coinfirm Gets Over 16k ETH in Token Sale and Adds Internationally Recognized Joey Garcia to Advisory Board January 31, 2018 – Leading token sale advisory firm TokenMarket has supported Coinfirm , a global RegTech enterprise focused on anti-money laundering for Blockchain, to sell $19 million worth of AMLT Tokens . Combined with its successful Token Sale, Coinfirm has also announced today it has added one of the industry’s most renowned lawyers, legal pioneer Joey Garcia. Garcia of Gibraltar law firm powerhouse ISOLAS joins an advisory board of the leading regtech company that already includes veterans of the world’s largest banking and software companies. He further has been recognized as one of the 12 best blockchain lawyers in the world by Chambers and Partners for helping shape the regulatory environment. Pawel Kuskowski, CEO and Founder of Coinfirm, said: We are delighted to be able to count on Joey’s deep knowledge and experience of the blockchain compliance and regulatory l

Goldman Sachs Is Not Starting A Crypto Trading Desk, But They Did Invest In One Goldman Sachs’ CEO Leo Blankfein says Sachs will not be opening a crypto trading desk, even though the bank invested in crypto trading desk Circle in 2015. Leo Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs , refuted the Bloomberg report that Goldman Sachs will be opening a crypto trading desk in an interview with CNBC , although the New York bank has owned a stake in a crypto trading desk since 2015. In 2015, Goldman Sachs’ principal investment strategy group , which invests specifically in technology companies, participated in a $50 mln funding round with Bitcoin-startup Circle Internet Financial. The deal closed on April 29, 2015, when Bitcoin (BTC) was trading at around $225.59, according to CoinMarketCap . By press time, BTC was trading around $10,040, about a 4400 percent increase from when Goldman Sachs invested in the Bitcoin-startup. Circle is made up of Circle Pay , which is a fiat money sending service

Big Investors Coming: A New Decentralized Exchange Makes Plans to Lure Them All sponsored A projects bets on innovative hybrid protocol mixing Blockchain and proprietary centralized platform. The  Legolas project , founded in France in 2017, is going to launch an innovative cryptocurrency and fiat exchange in Q3 2018. Despite its relatively recent emersion on the Blockchain startups map, the Legolas Exchange has definitely made a splash, having raised over 1,500 BTC (about $15 mln) during its private sale that was closed at the beginning of 2018. Previously, in November 2017, the project team announced a partnership with the Makor Group, an international brokerage firm specialized in cash equities, fixed income, derivatives and FX. Forecasting a huge catch Together, Legolas Exchange and the Makor Group plan to build the first regulated and secure cryptocurrency exchange corresponding to the needs of institutional investors. Over the last 10 years, institutional money managers have

Samsung ASIC Chips - Positive News for Miners Samsung’s foray into ASIC chip manufacturing is good news for the global mining community. Technology giants Samsung are said to be entering the cryptocurrency world in a move that has positive ramifications for miners at large. As reported earlier this week in Korean news outlet The Bell , the South Korean conglomerate will produce Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) processing chips in its own foundry in a deal with Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC. Ironically, TSMC provides the ASIC chips used in Bitmain’s Antminers, but it’s new partnership with Samsung could well provide the first real competitor to Bitmain’s chip manufacturing ventures. Bitmain’s stranglehold Chinese mining giant Bitmain has long had a monopoly on the mining community. Having developed ASIC chips, Bitmain quickly turned the Bitcoin mining game on its head. ASIC miners, which are highly efficient at solving the SHA256 algorithm used to confirm transactions

Media’s Role in Blockchain and Crypto, Interview With TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher Cointelegraph caught up with the experienced Tech Journalist, Editor-at-Large at TechCrunch Mike Butcher to talk about the World Economic Forum in Davos, media coverage of crypto, and highlights on Blockchain development. Cointelegraph had a chance to work together with different incredible media at the World Economic Forum in Davos. We were exchanging ideas, feedbacking on events, chasing speakers together to get an interview. But with one colleague we just couldn’t help making an interview ourselves- Mike Butcher is the one who set a trend of quality for tech journalism, the one who made first steps of media covering the development of Blockchain and crypto, the editor-at-large at TechCrunch. We discussed with Mike the media’s role in the digital economy and media driven market volatility, the modern reporter’s responsibility to the market and their readers, as well as his work in reporting on Telegra

South Korea Ends Anonymous Cryptocurrency Trading, Exchanges to Finally Add New Users As of Jan. 30, South Korean cryptocurrency traders will no longer be able to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum anonymously. As of Jan. 30, South Korean cryptocurrency traders will no longer be able to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum anonymously. Last week, major cryptocurrency exchanges in the local market including Korbit and Bithumb announced that starting Jan. 30, anonymous traders will be prohibited from investing in the market. Beginning today, investors are required to undergo a rigorous verification process to invest in the market. The Korbit team said in a statement obtained by Cointelegraph: “Non-Korean nationals, both resident and non-resident, will not be allowed to deposit KRW at any domestic cryptocurrency exchanges when the new KRW deposit method is implemented. In order to comply with the identification and anti-money laundering regulations being e

Blockchain Startup to Bring a Casino Platform You Don’t Need to Trust sponsored ‘Don’t trust us; trust the code’: The company aims to overcome the obstacles plaguing the gambling industry, even in the decentralized world. Gambling has been part of human history since the very beginning and its reputation never really has improved over time. The arrival of Blockchain technology might truly make a difference. SP8DE, a new Blockchain-based gaming project, aims to bring a platform capable of supplying unbiased public randomness for developing and running casino apps. No more trust issues SP8DE is built on Ouroboros, the POS protocol underlying Cardano Blockchain. The company intends to overcome the obstacles plaguing the gambling industry, even in the decentralized world. First, each block has to be mined which can cause delays in the settlement of values, something no casino can afford if they want to keep their gamblers happy in the highly competitive industry. Blockchain settlemen

Venezuela Says Crypto Mining Now ‘Perfectly Legal,’ Announces Petro Presale While announcing Petro coin presale, Venezuela has dramatically U-turned on its cryptocurrency mining policy, announcing it is now “perfectly legal”. Venezuela’s government has said cryptocurrency mining is now “completely legal” as it plans the presale of its Petro coin for next month. In comments during a TV address quoted by local news outlet TeleSur, the country’s newly-dubbed ‘cryptocurrency superintendent’ Carlos Vargas confirmed that citizens mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were not breaking the law. Last year, Venezuela made headlines on several occasions after reports emerged that police were cracking down on mining operations, accusing those involved of sapping power from the national grid. “It is an activity that is now perfectly legal,” Vargas announced in a dramatic U-turn. He continued: “We have had meetings with the Supreme Court so that people who have been victims of seizures

Over 1 Mln People Sign Up For Early Access To Robinhood’s Zero-Fees Trading Service Zero-fee crypto trading could really throw a cat among the exchange pigeons as Robinhood breaks the mold. One of the biggest gripes in the current crypto space, especially with the most popular Bitcoin being at the helm, is the expensive fees that are part and parcel of trading. Robinhood, however, took the whole scaling issue and flipped it on its head simply by offering zero-fees . It is a bold move by the mobile trading app, and the one that immediately challenges the hegemony of the major exchanges that currently rule the crypto space, such as Coinbase . Coinbase and other major exchanges are not fully decentralized , and they are using their power to hold a monopoly over the space. So, when a company like Robinhood comes in, using equally centralized methods , but methods that take away this power from those at the top, perhaps this is a revolutionary idea. Zero-fees are certainly enticing C

Bitfury Launches New Software To Fight Bitcoin Crime Blockchain tech group Bitfury launches Crystal — a software stack designed to fight crime that involves Bitcoin. Blockchain  tech group Bitfury , founded in 2011 as a Bitcoin mining  company, has launched a software stack called Crystal that is designed to help fight crimes involving Bitcoin , according to a press release issued Tuesday, Jan. 30. Crystal will allow users to detect and examine criminal activity that takes place on the Bitcoin Blockchain and avoid interacting with coins that are associated with illegal transactions. Crystal’s free demo version is available for individuals starting Jan. 30, while a full version for corporate clients will begin shipping in March 2018. According to Bitfury, it took about two years to develop Crystal. The company set out in 2015 with the idea to provide a tool that would help financial and government institutions fight against criminal activity committed with Bitcoin. “The industr

Blockchain Platform to Offer Effective Identity Management and Enhance KYC Procedures sponsored Blockchain technology could enable the possibility of data control and proper identity management by their real owners. Blockchain technology has enabled the possibility of data control and proper identity management by their real owners. It is this technology that Persona , a start-up, has employed in order to ensure that users achieve hassle-free identity management, signing-on for all websites through its single channel. Hosting individual data using the Persona platform could offer individual owners the ability to have total control of their data in a granulated manner. This implies that unlike what is currently obtained, identity owners will be able to determine the level of information that they share per time with any given network. Conquering existing limitations Data governs the digital world and every day millions of individuals share their personal details in order to gain a

Turkey: Football Chairman ‘Proud’ To Hire Player For Bitcoin In New First Turkish football club continues Bitcoin sports trend by signing player to be paid in Bitcoin, despite uncertain regulatory environment. Turkish football team Harunustaspor announced Tuesday, Jan. 30, that it will pay a player partially in Bitcoin (BTC) , local news outlet CNN Turk reports . As chairman of the amateur club Haldun Şehit told CNN Turk, the move was completed to hire 22-year-old Omar Faruk for 2000 lira ($528) in BTC and 2500 lira ($661) in cash. OFFICIAL: Turkish amateur side Harunustaspor have signed 22-year-old Omar Faruk in return for Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/zAt4LJrIVB — SPORF (@Sporf) January 30, 2018 The move is likely a first in semi-professional sporting circles for player hiring. It follows a bigger move in December in which Bitcoin Suisse opted to pay Denmark club Rungsted Seier Capital’s top player exclusively in Bitcoin , as part of a three-year sponsorship deal. Referring to the

South Korea Government ‘Will Not Ban Or Suppress’ Cryptocurrency – Minister South Korea’s government has confirmed it has “no intention” of banning or “suppressing” cryptocurrency trading in fresh comments on the industry. ‘No Intention To Ban’ In comments Wednesday quoted by Reuters , finance minister Kim Dong-yeon, who earlier in January said that a shutdown was still a possibility, finally ended apprehension surrounding the future of cryptocurrency trading in the country. Kim had faced a 200,000-strong petition demanding he be fired from his position after the comments, which along with those by justice minister Park Sang-ki, sent shock waves through cryptocurrency markets and sparked public outrage. “There is no intention to ban or suppress cryptocurrency,” he said. The confirmation may come as less of a surprise to some, as Seoul moves forward with regulatory improvements to the exchange sector at breakneck speed in recent weeks. In addition to tax and security obligations,

Major Japanese Chat App LINE To Open Crypto Exchange For Its 200 Mln Monthly Users Popular Japanese chat app LINE, which boasts a monthly user base of 200 million, seeks permission to launch a new cryptocurrency exchange Major Japanese social messaging app LINE has announced today, Jan. 31, that it is launching its own crypto exchange and in-app trading space for its 200 million active monthly users. According to LINE’s official statement today, their application to operate a new cryptocurrency exchange is currently sitting before Japanese regulators. Japan began operating a licensing scheme for cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017. The government has seen approved over twenty exchanges joining what become a popular industry , involving several major corporations. In its official statement LINE said it was establishing a new company, LINE Financial Corporation, to serve as a base to “provide a variety of financial services, including a place to exchange and transact virtual currenc