August 20, 2019 @ 6:38 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has upheld an asset seizure from Lisa Cheng and Kevin Hobbs, principles of a “blockchain consultancy” called Vanbex, who, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), conducted an allegedly fraudulent $30 million CAD ICO (Etherparty/FUEL), “…by falsely representing corporate… Read More

August 20, 2019 @ 2:58 am By Cali Haan  |  

BitMEX, a platform that allows highly-leveraged trading of cryptocurrency derivatives, has announced that customers residing in Seychelles, Hong Kong, and Bermuda, where the company’s offices are located will be, “restricted from access to BitMEX.” The company claims the change, “will have no financial impact on… Read More

August 20, 2019 @ 1:54 am By Cali Haan  |  

Accredited investors who bought into Telegram’s $1.7 billion USD ICO (initial coin offering) in February and March 2018 have been selling the tokens in secondary markets without authorization, meaning buyers could “end up with nothing,” Coindesk reports. According to a GRAM token purchase agreement obtained… Read More

August 19, 2019 @ 9:53 pm By Cali Haan  |  

At least twenty local governments in Texas are now coping with a “coordinated ransomware attack on municipality computer systems,” the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) reports. Affected cities and towns are not named in the release. A response is being coordinated by the Texas Division of… Read More

August 19, 2019 @ 9:49 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A delegation of US lawmakers, led by Representative Maxine Waters, will be in Switzerland this week, on a trip that may have been spurned by Facebook’s decision to domicile it’s Libra cryptocurrency project in a nation known for both progressive financial policies and money-laundering, NZZ… Read More

August 19, 2019 @ 6:38 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Skeptical crypto-twitter commentators are throwing shade on the controversial stablecoin Tether, claiming a correlation between recently stable cryptocurrency prices and the cessation of “printing” at Tether, a company that has minted more than $4.15 billion synthetic USDs for the use in trading of cryptocurrencies. Self-declared… Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 2:48 pm By Cali Haan  |  

America’s federal financial crimes enforcement agency, FinCEN, has noticed “a gap” in the reporting of illicit use of cryptocurrencies at casinos and card clubs in recent years, the agency’s director told attendees at the 12th Annual Las Vegas Anti-Money Laundering Conference this week. Director Kenneth A…. Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 1:41 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints against crypto-derivatives trading platform BitMEX claiming the company violated UK advertising standards with an ad it published on the front page of a national newspaper in January. According to the ASA, the “misleading” ad featured a logarithmic… Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 12:54 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Bakkt, a subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has announced it has received necessary permissions from the CFTC and the NYDFS to launch its “institution-grade” platform for physically-settled bitcoin futures trades September 23rd. “One year ago, we announced our ambitious vision to bring institutional infrastructure… Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 11:23 am By Cali Haan  |  

Poloniex, the cryptocurrency exchange owned by Circle, a Boston based payments-app-turned-multiplatform-crypto-company, has announced it is “removing 23 trading pairs on August 16, 2019, due to low volume.” The pairs delisted on the 16th of August are: LTC/XMR, DASH/XMR, ZEC/XMR, MAID/XMR, NXT/XMR, BCN/XMR, LSK/ETH, GNT/ETH, MANA/ETH,… Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 8:07 am By Cali Haan  |  

Coinbase, a large, US-based cryptocurrency trading platform, experienced a shake up of its UK banking services this week. On Wednesday, an anonymous “rBitcoin” forum participant on Reddit posted that (Banco) Santander was refusing to deposit money to the individuals’ Coinbase UK account, probably because of… Read More

August 18, 2019 @ 8:02 am By Cali Haan  |  

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh announced this week that the Maryland Securities Division has joined “Operation Cryptosweep,” a coordinated crackdown on fraudulent cryptocurrency projects involving least 40 North American state and provincial regulators. Frosh notes that an environment of sometimes surging interest in cryptocurrencies can… Read More

August 14, 2019 @ 7:01 am By Cali Haan  |  

A cryptocurrency exchange called Beaxy halted trading across the board  August 12th after a high-volume sell-off of XRPs (Ripple tokens) tanked the tokens’ price on the exchange: The exchange corresponded about the suspension in a blog post, stating: “We recently experienced unusual(ly) high volume activity… Read More

August 13, 2019 @ 10:18 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The UK Government’s Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is taking a stab at using DLT (distributed ledger technology) to make pension payments more efficient and secure. The UK’s welfare ministry, however, has “abandoned” the tech in the past, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain… Read More

August 13, 2019 @ 8:14 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A judge has declared ‘moot’ Ross Ulbricht’s latest attempt to have his multiple life sentences voided/overruled lawyer Paul Grant failed to file papers withdrawing self as Ulbricht’s counsel. Ulbricht is seeking to have his sentences vacated and is alleging that original defense lawyer Joshua Drathel gave… Read More

August 13, 2019 @ 2:24 am By Cali Haan  |  

Indian telecom company Reliance Jio will launch, “one of the largest blockchain networks in the world over the next 12 months,” the company’s owner, Mukesh Ambani, told attendees at the company’s annual General meeting August 12th. Ambani also promised, “The network will have tens of thousands… Read More

August 13, 2019 @ 1:13 am By Cali Haan  |  

“Australia happens to be the only developed country where retirement money, superannuation money, can very easily be invested into cryptocurrencies,” Zebpay crypto exchange CEO Ajeet Khurana told a Financial Review reporter recently. Zebpay, a cryptocurrency exchange, announced last year that it was shutting down in response to… Read More

August 12, 2019 @ 8:45 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Bitmain, the world’s largest cryptomining firm and manufacturer of cryptomining equipment says the company name is being fraudulently used by a project called “Mangocoin.” “We recently become aware of the fraudulent use of the ‘Bitmain’ brand in the sale of a product named ‘Bitmain Cloud… Read More

August 12, 2019 @ 5:54 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The UK division of US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has sent letters to customers telling them to convert their ZCash coins or remove their balances by August 26th, Coindesk reports. Balances not relocated will be converted to British pounds. ZCash is a so-called “privacy coin” that… Read More

August 12, 2019 @ 5:19 pm By Cali Haan  |  

After five years in development, the deputy director of the People’s Bank of China’s Payments and Settlement Division, Mu Changchun, says, “(The) People’s Bank digital currency can now be said to be ready.” Shanghai Securities News (SSN) writes that  Mu made the announcement at the third… Read More