Bitcoin Magician

Dubai to Launch Blockchain-Powered Automobile Tracking Service Car owners in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates will soon be able to track their vehicles entire life history, thanks to a government-backed blockchain platform. What’s Your Car’s Story? According to Arabian Business, the transportation authority of Dubai has unveiled plans to create a blockchain -based vehicle management system, allowing owners to track their vehicle throughout the duration of its existence — from its construction to its destruction. Initially, the blockchain-powered platform will only track all cars in Dubai, but later stages will launch coverage for all cars in the United Arab Emirates — effectively unifying vehicle information across the sovereign state. The Roads and Transport Authority claims the system will launch sometime in 2020. The RTA’s chairman and executive director, Mattar Al Tayer, hopes the new blockchain-powered system will be the first government-launched platform in the world offer

Germany: Blockchain Service Bitwala Introduces ‘Crypto-First’ Banking German Blockchain-based payment service Bitwala is launching a banking service with debit cards. The German Blockchain-based payment service provider Bitwala announced that it is launching a new “crypto-first” banking service for German customers, complete with accounts, international bank account numbers (IBAN), SWIFT codes, and corresponding MasterCard debit cards, Cointelegraph Deutsch reported Tuesday, Feb. 27. An application process is currently underway with the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) to approve the project. The payment service provider highlights that German deposit insurance will protect customer funds for amounts up to 100,000 euro. The service labelled “blockchain banking” will offer Bitwalas’ customers a comprehensive package for trading and paying with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With the integration of bank accounts, the service will also enable normal bank

Russia: Municipal Court In St. Petersburg Rules To Unblock 40 Bitcoin-Related Websites The Municipal Court of St. Petersburg has annulled last year’s decision to block 40 Bitcoin-related websites in Russia. The Municipal Court of Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, annulled a trial court’s previous decision to ban 40 Bitcoin -related websites in the Russian Federation , local news outlet RIA Novosti reported Tuesday, Feb. 27. In July 2017 , the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg granted the application of the St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office and ruled to block 40 Bitcoin-related websites. Earlier in March 2017, St. Petersburg prosecutors filed a lawsuit to ban websites such as Bestchange.ru and 24paybank.com because they were “spreading information” about digital currency that “is not backed by any real asset and does not provide information about its owners.” As a result, the Oktyabrsky District Court decided to ban 40 websites based on the argument th

Porsche ‘First’ To Test Blockchain Technology For Cars Porsche is teaming up with Berlin-based startup XAIN to improve locking capabilities, autonomous driving, and business practices with the help of Blockchain technology. Automobile manufacturer Porsche is exploring Blockchain apps in its vehicles in cooperation with the Berlin-based startup XAIN , Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported yesterday , Feb. 27. In their press release published Feb. 22, Porsche stated that the company is “the first automobile manufacturer to implement and successfully test Blockchain in a car.” Possible applications for Blockchain technology range from locking and opening car doors via an app, with the possibility for temporary access authorization, to new and improved business models through encrypted data logging. Porsche also stated that Blockchain technology could be applied in further improving the safety and capabilities of driverless cars. Financial strategist for Porsche, Oliver Döring, is con

Crypto Culture Platform Coins A New Way To Stop Touts sponsored The price you pay for tickets to gigs and museums are often inflated by resellers, but a new app is aiming to thwart the touters. Cultural Places, a platform specializing in connecting cultural institutions and visitors is vowing to clamp down on ticket touts through Blockchain technology. The Austrian Company wants to tackle the inflationary effect touts have on the secondary ticket market by introducing its own cryptocurrency – the Cultural Coin. The coin, based on the Ethereum framework will allow consumers to buy tickets directly from museums, music venues and tourist sites, while providing a transparent venue for resale if they are unable to attend. The detrimental impact of touting has prompted governments around the world to restrict the practice, as those purchasing second-hand tickets are not always guaranteed access to events. Cultural Places is planning to stand out from other Blockchain ticketing website

Coinbase: BTC Buys And Sells Issue Resolved, Bitcoin Performance Still ‘Degraded’ Coinbase has resolved the issue of intermittent availability for BTC buys and sells. Digital currency exchange and wallet service Coinbase has resolved the issue of intermittent availability for BTC buys and sells, the platform reported today, Feb. 28 at 08:24 PST. It took the Coinbase maintenance crew almost seven hours to investigate and fix the issue where one of their processes was “causing Bitcoin buys and sells to become temporarily unavailable”. The platform announced the system outage on its official Twitter account today at 1:53 a.m. PST: [status] Investigating: A recurring issue with one of our processes is causing Bitcoin buys and sells to become tem… https://t.co/Zc5he85Q8h — Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) February 28, 2018 Despite the fact the problem has been resolved, Coinbase has not tweeted an update on the fix or posted any official comments on the circumstances that resu

Goldman Sachs Investment Chief: Crypto ‘Bubble’ Burst Will Affect 1% Of Global GDP Goldman Sachs’ CIO Mossavar-Rahmani stated in an interview that the cryptocurrency “bubble” bursting will impact 1% of global GDP. The chief investment officer (CIO) of the Investment Strategy Group at Goldman Sachs , Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, said in an interview with Business Insider on Feb. 27 that cryptocurrencies are in a bubble , which, when it bursts, will impact only 1 percent of global GDP. Mossavar-Rahmani, who guides investment strategy for clients with over $10 mln in assets, said that cryptocurrencies are “the hot topic” among her clients and colleagues. She said that Goldman Sachs acknowledges the opportunities that can be brought by Blockchain technology to many fintech companies, but cryptocurrencies “in their current format” are “in a bubble.” In the interview, Mossavar-Rahmani referenced data from a public report by Goldman Sachs’ Investment Strategy Group, comparing price tren

IOTA Threatens Researchers and Denies Critical Flaw – but Fixes it Anyway Over the weekend, various high-level security researchers and academic cryptographers gave cryptocurrency project IOTA a failing grade – exposing a critical weakness and suggesting investors sell their coins while asking researchers to ignore or abandon the project. ‘Extremely Embarrassing’ The controversy began after a series of once-private emails from various IOTA team members and a group of external security researchers was leaked, putting on display the developers’ apathy and arrogance towards a critical flaw in IOTA’s foundation. First and foremost, Boston University Ethan Heilman discovered that IOTA’s in-house hash function, titled Curl, was broken. Heilman and other researchers from the Digital Currency Initiative published a report exposing the flaw — and the team at IOTA didn’t like that. If you want a postcard summary of why you should avoid the Iota project — with your brains and your money —

Rolecoin – a Groundbreaking Blockchain-Based Platform for Skill & Career Development, Announces ICO RoleCoin , a revolutionary digital currency in the edtech space aimed to promote STEAM skills and career development globally announced its crowdsale starting April 15, 2018. RoleCoin will fuel the proof of progress economy in education through the STEAMRole app which connects students and young professionals worldwide with working Professional Role Models. The RoleCoin ICO public crowdsale will be conducted in 6 phases with aims to reach the CAP of 350,000,000 tokens in total. The company has already started the whitelisting process for the first phase of its ICO at Rolecoin.io. What’s Unique About RoleCoin? We have seen a number of ICOs before, but RoleCoin is unique because the company has some early launch partners like HP and unlike typical “whitepaper ICO’s” has a working app in private BETA that is set to launch not long after the ICO is completed. Interested participant

Dragon Inc.’s DRG Token Not for High-Rollers Only Another strategic partnership to integrate Dragon as a universally accepted utility token for the entertainment industry. (ASEAN – March 1, 2018) Dragon Inc., which is on track to drastically transform the high-stakes and the junket gambling marketplace through its Blockchain-based solution, announced an agreement with Dragonbet8. Dragonbet8, which is already partnered with traditional industry leaders such as Visa & Mastercard are now proud to accept and fully integrate Dragon Tokens (DRG) into its payment solution after its launch. This move by Dragon sees DRG tokens being not only used by high-rollers in casino junkets, but by the massive online gaming community as well. Paul Moynan Co-founder Dragon Inc. says: For us here at Dragon Inc the natural choice is to expand into online gaming and casinos such as the popular games DragonBet8 have on their platform. Dragon Inc itself is constantly seeking out vital and positive par

Dubai To Release Blockchain-Based System To Track Vehicle Lifecycles Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority has announced that it will launch a Blockchain-based initiative for tracking vehicles’ lifecycle for their customers. Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has announced plans to launch a Blockchain -based vehicle lifecycle management system in 2020 that would provide customers which a history of their vehicle from “the manufacturer all the way to the scrap yard,” local news outlet Arabian Business reported yesterday, Feb. 27. The Blockchain project, formed in connection with the Dubai 10x initiative , would show a transparent record of where each vehicle is at any moment of its life cycle. The initiative plans to begin by covering all cars in Dubai before expanding to all cars in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Dubai 10x was launched last year at the World Government Summit by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of Dubai, and the ch

US Regulator CFTC Allows Staff To Trade Cryptocurrency, BTC Futures Remain Off Limits Cryptocurrency trading is now on the menu for Commodity Futures Trading Commission staff, its chief lawyer has said. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has formally allowed its employees to trade cryptocurrencies, but maintained its ban on Bitcoin futures participation, Bloomberg reports Wednesday, Feb. 28. The regulator, which together with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversee asset and commodity legislation nationally, report that they made the decision earlier this month. The CFTC chief lawyer, general counsel Daniel Davis, wrote in a memo to staff Feb. 5 that in response to “numerous inquiries [sic]” they could freely engage in the trading of cryptocurrencies. Investing in Bitcoin futures products, which the CFTC began regulating after giving them the green light in December, would continue to be against the rules, however. “In this environment, the situat

Jack Dorsey: Square Will Go Further With Bitcoin Than Buy/Sell Option Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square, calls Bitcoin a “transformational technology”, plans to develop further options for users Jack Dorsey, CEO of San Francisco-based payment service Square , revealed the company’s plans to focus on developing increased options for Bitcoin (BTC) use in a conference call Tuesday, Feb. 27 with Market Watch . Dorsey, who is also the CEO of Twitter, specifically discussed the company’s Cash App , which now allows all users to buy and sell Bitcoin, telling Market Watch: “Bitcoin, for us, is not stopping at buying and selling. We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry, and we want to learn as quickly as possible.” According to Square’s 2017 Q4 report , also published Feb. 27, the company’s total net revenue and adjusted revenue have significantly increased compared to Q3 of 2017. Specifically regarding Bitcoin use in Square’s Cash App, the report stated posit

So Why Did Goldman Sachs-Backed Circle Really Buy Poloniex? Goldman Sachs-backed startup Circle made waves earlier this week when it acquired cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. A couple of experts share their thoughts on the implications for the soon-to-be first compliant US crypto exchange and its customers. Most Crypto Exchanges ‘Over-Regulate Themselves’ As the dust settles on Circle’s acquisition of Poloniex, U.S. regulators are keeping a close eye on KYC/AML compliance of cryptocurrency exchanges. Joseph Weinberg, OECD Think Tank Special Advisor and Chairman of Shyft, a blockchain protocol that will create a new standard for the KYC/AML mandates, shared his comments with Bitcoinist. He states: Most crypto exchanges that are processing fiat to crypto transactions are very compliant and, in some cases, even more so than banks. It all really depends on jurisdictions and the compliance policies given by countries to crypto exchanges. He continued: For crypto exchanges, the ch

eticket4 Announces the Start of the Ico on March 5, First Investors Will Get 10% Bonus Eticket4 , an international p2p-marketplace for buying and selling tickets for sports, music, theater and other events to secondary market participants,  announces the start of the ICO on March 5. The first week of ICO will be able to buy tokens ET4 those investors who subscribed to the whitelist . In addition, anyone who enrolls in the whitelist before the start of the ICO gets a guaranteed 10% bonus. ICO will last until March 30. Soft cap – 100 ETH, hard cap – 13 800 ETH, the maximum number of ET4 tokens – 30 million. The price of the token is fixed and equal to 1/1000 ETH. Tokens can be bought for ETH and BTC. Under the terms of the smart contract, all unsold tokens will be burned after the completion of the ICO. By the way, this ICO received High Quality Rate 5.6/7 from digital rating agency DigRate and good 3.8/5 from NewsBTC site. The ET4 Token is a utility-token with which buyers can rec

Malaysian Police Arrest Gang of Bitcoin Mining Equipment Thieves Police in Malaysia have arrested 9 individuals that were involved in the theft of Bitcoin mining machines, amounting to over $250,000 USD. Those that engage in the world of cryptocurrency have increasingly become the targets of criminals . The usual case of criminal mischief is of a person buying or selling virtual currency being robbed of the cash they’re carrying. Now it appears that Bitcoin mining equipment is no longer safe. Police in Malaysia have just arrested 9 people who were involved in the organized stealing of such equipment. A Lot of Machines Stolen Malaysian police say that they received 5 separate reports of stolen Bitcoin mining equipment recently. The thefts occurred from January 17th through February 16th in Serdang. The scale of the thefts is pretty impressive. A total of 153 mining machines and power supply units (PSU) were stolen, which are worth more than 1 million RM ($250,000 USD). The police

How To Make Money From The Regulation Of Bitcoin Regulation is quickly becoming a hot topic in the crypto-world. The unregulated, “Wild West” environment of the crypto market left investors wide open to fraudsters, scammers, and shady firms out to make a quick buck. The technology of blockchain and Bitcoin is here to stay. But to bring value to investors, it’s going to need tighter rules and more responsible companies with their eyes on the future. The crypto market, worth $450 billion , won’t disappear overnight. The next step will be figuring out how to establish rules, expectations, and regulations for making the market work smoothly. And one company is positioned to meet that need: Hashchain Technology Inc . ( TSX:KASH.V ; OTC:HSSHF ) This is a blockchain company that can do it all: mine coins, diversify investment in a variety of different crypto-currencies, and navigate the crypto marketplace. But KASH is going a step further: it’s working on proprietary methods and new tech

Coinbase: Bitcoin Buys And Sells ‘Intermittently Available’ The crypto exchange and wallet Coinbase posted a status today that BTC buys and sells are currently only intermittently available, promises to restore full service soon Crypto exchange and wallet service Coinbase reported today at 1:53 a.m. PST, about five hours ago to press time, that Bitcoin (BTC) buys and sells are “intermittently available”. The notice on Coinbase’s status site states: “A recurring issue with one of our processes is causing Bitcoin buys and sells to become temporarily unavailable. Our team is investigating and working to restore full service as soon as possible. Coinbase customers may experience intermittent outages of BTC buys and sells over the duration as we resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” The official tweet announcing the service interruption this morning on Coinbase’s separate Support Twitter account was met with almost all negative comments from cust

Malaysian Central Bank: ID Now Needed For Any Crypto Exchange Transaction Malaysia has enacted anticipated legislation compelling cryptocurrency exchanges to identify traders. Cryptocurrency exchanges in Malaysia must now fully identify traders after new central bank anti-money laundering legislation came into effect Tuesday, Feb. 27. A copy of the legislation and official press release from the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) states that any exchanges offering crypto-to-fiat, fiat-to-crypto and even crypto-to-crypto trading must “identify the customer and verify that customer’s identity.” As Cointelegraph reported in November 2017, forecasting the regulations, BNM Governor Tan Sri Muhammad bin Ibrahim placed emphasis on the need to control potential criminal usage of digital currencies. “The advent of digital currencies as some have forecast will mark the beginning of a new era in the financial sector. As authorities, we cannot be oblivious to these developments,” the BNM Governor

J.P Morgan Sees Crypto As ‘Competition’ And ‘Risk’ To Its Business In SEC Annual Report J.P. Morgan Chase has now referred to cryptocurrencies as a “risk” to its business that could cause it to lose market share, according to its annual SEC report. J.P. Morgan Chase has added a segment on cryptocurrencies to the “Risk Factor” section of their 2017 annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), filed yesterday, Feb. 27. The annual report mentions cryptocurrencies under the “Competition” subsection when describing how new competitors have emerged that threaten J.P. Morgan’s operations: “Both financial institutions and their non-banking competitors face the risk that payment processing and other services could be disrupted by technologies, such as cryptocurrencies, that require no intermediation.” The report notes that these new technologies, evidently including Blockchain , although they don’t mention it by name, “could require JPMorgan Chase to spend more to

Embattled Rabobank Unveils ‘Cryptocurrency Wallet’ in a Major U-Turn The Dutch bank, which was fined $369 million for money laundering after calling Bitcoin “risky,” now plans to offer a cryptocurrency wallet. Rabobank: Store You Crypto With ‘Trusted’ Bank Hosts In what would represent a curious U-turn in its perspective on Bitcoin, Rabobank has launched a dedicated website for a project called “Rabobit.” Part of its internal kickstarter program dubbed “Moonshot,” the “integrated cryptocurrency wallet” offers customers the chance to “store your cryptocurrencies in a wallet hosted by a trusted party and within the secure online banking environment.” Rabobank hit the headlines earlier this month after its California unit pleaded guilty to involvement in laundering Mexican drug money. Prosecutors fined it almost $370 million. At the same time, the bank’s operations back home had begun refusing service to cryptocurrency businesses over what it decided were “compliance risks.” Wallet

5 Things to Know About Crypto, Courtesy of Rapper Nipsey Hussle 50 Cent may not be a Bitcoin millionaire after all, but Ermias Asghedom — better known by his rap moniker Nipsey Hussle — certainly knows what’s good with cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.  The rapper from Los Angeles invested in Bitcoin back in 2013 and owns an ownership stake in Amsterdam-based crypto company Follow Coin. Last month, Asghedom shared his wisdom with XXL. Here’s what you need to know. Mainstream Adoption Is on the Way If you think cryptocurrencies are valuable now — with Bitcoin currently pushing $10K at press time — just wait until digital currencies receive mainstream adoption. According to Nipsey Hussle, that’s when things will really take off. He told XXL: But imagine when you can pay for Starbucks with cryptocurrency, when you could checkout on Amazon with your cryptocurrency. What will that do to the value and the confidence of people investing? That’s the opportunity. When retail accept