December 26, 2018 @ 10:30 am By Cali Haan  |  

A team of seven economist scholars has found that pump and dump schemes in cryptocurrency trading are ‘pervasive’: “The surge of interest in cryptocurrencies has been accompanied by a proliferation of fraud. This paper examines a pervasive tactic long known to financial markets: pump and… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 7:12 am By Cali Haan  |  

If all goes well with current tests, Russian telecom companies will soon be required to implement new content-censoring tech in order to surveil and intercept messages sent on prohibited anonymizing apps like Telegram, BBC Russia reports. The system, which has been being competitively tested by… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 6:07 am By Cali Haan  |  

Over 340 British crypto companies have folded this year (up from 139 last year) says British news outlet Sky News. And thanks to bad timing, some inexperienced and over-leveraged crypto investors – members of the general public – have even lost their marriages and homes:… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 5:51 am By Cali Haan  |  

“An enormous amount of data” collected by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) in its December 2018 Exchange Volumes Report shows, “clear evidence of wash trading,” across 80% of bitcoin-altcoin pairs on 95% of exchanges: “Based on this data over 80% of the CMC (CoinMarketCap) top… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 4:44 am By Cali Haan  |  

Individuals behind a “fork-merge” of Bitcoin and a fork of ZCash called ZClassic, “Bitcoin Private,” are in hot water this week on Twitter following the publication of an article by CoinMetrics that alleges they secretly pre-mined and vested themselves with BTCP coins and failed to disclose these… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 3:27 am By Cali Haan  |  

GMO, a large Japanese Internet-service provider, announced December 25th that it is abandoning the manufacture of hardware for the mining of cryptocurrencies following “extraordinary losses” in the company’s cryptocurrency division in Q4 2018: “After taking into consideration changes in the current business environment, the Company… Read More

December 26, 2018 @ 1:10 am By Cali Haan  |  

Top 100 cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin announced December 21st that it has “disqualified” 10 tokens and is delisting them from trading on the exchange. The affected tokens are: Jibrel Network (JNT) WePower (WPR) Modum (MOD) EthLend (LEND) STK (STK) Asch (XAS) Bread (BRD) BitClave (CAT) Mobius (MOBI)… Read More

December 24, 2018 @ 12:07 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The stubborn Bitcoin satellite-coverage hole over Asia has been closed. Blockstream, a California-based company dedicated to building out Bitcoin infrastructure, has launched the fifth of five planned satellites sent aloft to allow the world to transmit Bitcoin with or without Internet and/or the permission of… Read More

December 24, 2018 @ 10:18 am By Cali Haan  |  

The Central Bank of Israel is soliciting position papers from the general public regarding how the country should support and regulate domestic cryptocurrency/security token ventures and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for finance in the country. The bank has assembled a team (“The Interministerial Team for Regulatory… Read More

December 24, 2018 @ 9:58 am By Cali Haan  |  

Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev has told the local press his ministry is exploring the creation of a digital currency for the EAEU region – in part as a response to international sanctions, Rambler reports. Moiseyev says the currency may be expected in 2020… Read More

December 24, 2018 @ 7:01 am By Cali Haan  |  

Twenty-eight Chinese blockchain and Fintech companies have found a home at a newly-inaugurated blockchain incubation centre located in the Guangdong Financial High-tech Zone, CSDN reports. The 120 000 square meter ‘”Blockchain + Financial Technology Professional Incubation Centre” will be located in former ‘Foshan Folk Finance… Read More

December 23, 2018 @ 9:40 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The cryptocurrency mania of 2017 was impossible for Wall Street to ignore, but a mainstream avalanche into crypto is easier said than done, and a stampede of clients demanding crypto-based products from their institutional brokers just hasn’t materialized yet, Bloomberg reports. “The market had unrealistic… Read More

December 23, 2018 @ 9:28 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Researchers at the Mosaic “cryptoasset data and research platform” have assembled a report showing that Asia is still the centre of the universe when it comes to crypto-price action. The company begins by describing “key headline events” in China, Korea and Japan during the course of… Read More

December 23, 2018 @ 9:55 am By Cali Haan  |  

Cybercrime police in the Indian city of Pune have arrested 10 individuals accused of defrauding 8000 investors in a Bitcoin-related Ponzi scheme called “GB21.” According to The Times of India, the leader of the scheme, Amit Bharadwaj, and his brother Vivek, ran a company called Gain Bitcoin,… Read More

December 22, 2018 @ 5:08 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Republican Senator for Texas Ted Cruz and Congressman Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, introduced a new bill into the American Senate and House Thursday, a bill designed to “impose maximum financial pressure on Iran. The “Blocking Iranian Illicit Finance Act” (H.R.7321) was also co-sponsored… Read More

December 22, 2018 @ 4:53 pm By Cali Haan  |  

ConsenSys, Ethereum’s largest start-up, may be downplaying the size of impending layoffs at the company in order not to scare off potential investors, The Verge reports. Not so, says the company. Earlier this month, ConsenSys founder and “cryptobillionaire” Joe Lubin circulated a letter to company… Read More

December 22, 2018 @ 2:14 pm By Cali Haan  |  

About one week after its CEO delivered a keynote address to the Korean parliament on the regulation of crypto markets there, the Upbit cryptocurrency exchange’s board chair, finance director and an employee have been indicted for allegedly, “inflat(ing) the volume of transactions by making ($226.2… Read More

December 22, 2018 @ 8:07 am By Cali Haan  |  

Cleveland car dealer Bernie Moreno recently became the first businessperson in the entire US to pay company taxes in Bitcoin, thanks to the Ohio government’s new portal, “OhioCrypto.com,” where businesses can pay 23 different taxes in cryptocurrency, The Detroit Free Press (DFP) reports. “Digital currency and… Read More

December 19, 2018 @ 3:46 am By Cali Haan  |  

About 20% of respondents to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC’s)  “Systemic Risk Barometer” survey this year identified “Fintech” (blockchain, AI, cloud computing) as a possible source of risk in global securities settlement in 2019. Only 15% expressed similar concern last year. Commenting on… Read More

December 19, 2018 @ 1:33 am By Cali Haan  |  

A Romanian citizen arrested last week by local cyber police and American Secret Service agents has been released on bail in the city of Cluj where he runs one of the region’s largest crypto exchanges. The agents flew to Romania to seek the arrest and… Read More