Tagged: bitcoin

September 24, 2019 @ 10:27 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission’s newly-appointed chief, Heath Tarbert, appears to be carrying forward the pro-crypto/pro-blockchain approach established at the CFTC by his predecessor, J. Christopher Giancarlo. Tarbert told reporters at CNBC in a recent interview that he has a favorable opinion of “blockchain”… Read More

September 24, 2019 @ 10:17 pm By JD Alois  |  

Bitcoin rapidly deflated today. The world’s most popular crypto is now trading under USD $9000 (~$8700  $8400). At one point today, BTC tanked about USD $1000. So what’s the cause? A portion of the chatter claimed that Bakkt’s much-heralded launch this week was much ado… Read More

September 23, 2019 @ 10:06 pm By Cali Haan  |  

CME Group, also known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has announced it is seeking regulatory approval to launch options on its Bitcoin futures contracts in Q1 2020. According to the relevant release: “CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced it… Read More

September 20, 2019 @ 10:14 am By Cali Haan  |  

Financial services company Square Inc. (NASDAQ:SQ), co-founded in 2009 by Jim McKelvey and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has announced three new hires to the company’s Bitcoin-services development division. According to the company, Wallace is a former developer from Lightning Labs, the company behind the Lightning Network,… Read More

September 20, 2019 @ 9:07 am By Cali Haan  |  

A 35-year-old man from Toledo, Ohio, has been sentenced to one-year-and-a-day in prison and three years of supervised release for, “manufacturing fake IDs in a large-scale scheme funded in part with Bitcoin cryptocurrency,” Toledo Blade reports.  Aaron Kuns was sentenced on Wednesday, September 18th, after… Read More

September 19, 2019 @ 9:25 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A user of the Internet forum site Reddit claims his bank’s reaction to a Bitcoin deal gone bad has, “ruin(ed)” him: “TLDR (summary) – sold small amount of BTC on local bitcoins, Barclays bank closed my account, accused me of fraud and now I can’t… Read More

September 18, 2019 @ 8:25 pm By Cali Haan  |  

VanEck and SolidX have withdrawn their request to the SEC for a rule change that would have allowed the Cboe BZX Exchange to list retail shares issued by the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust. The application for the rule change was first filed January 30th of this… Read More

September 18, 2019 @ 9:59 am By Cali Haan  |  

The US Army’s Contracting Command (ACC) division in New Jersey took proposals this summer from providers of cloud-based blockchain forensics services. Blockchain forensics is a relatively new field that involves creating tools for the monitoring, tracing, and scraping of data from cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin… Read More

September 16, 2019 @ 3:18 am By Omar Faridi  |  

Ray Youssef, the CEO at Paxful, a leading peer-to-peer (P2P) Bitcoin marketplace and money translator service, recently shared his views and insights about the importance of providing quality financial services to the world’s unbanked (and underbanked) population. Youssef, a history graduate from Baruch College and… Read More

September 16, 2019 @ 2:41 am By Omar Faridi  |  

San Francisco-based payments technology firm Square’s Crypto division is giving the first of what will be a series of grants to the BTCPay Foundation, in order to support the development of Bitcoin-related projects. On September 14, 2019, Square Crypto revealed via Twitter that it will… Read More

September 14, 2019 @ 7:34 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Some Cubans fed up with being frozen out of global commerce by decades-old US sanctions have started using cryptocurrencies to transact online, Reuters reports. Jason Sanchez, for instance, who runs a cellphone repair shop in Havana, has been using cryptocurrencies to purchase spare parts for… Read More

September 13, 2019 @ 10:30 am By Cali Haan  |  

Coinbase UK has settled a lawsuit with the CEO of Alphabit regarding Coinbase’s alleged handling of Bitcoins worth almost $1 million USD that were allegedly stolen from Alphabit by hackers in July, Law 360 reports. Alphabit is UK-based “crypto-asset investment company” that claims to manage… Read More

September 10, 2019 @ 11:03 pm By Cali Haan  |  

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Jay Clayton has told a reporter at CNBC that manipulation in crypto markets remains a concern and that there is “still work to be done” before the Commission can approve Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETFs). Clayton told Bob… Read More

September 10, 2019 @ 10:49 pm By Cali Haan  |  

America and Asia’s two largest public-facing crypto trading platforms, Coinbase and Binance, also bear the most exposure to Tethers, a synthetic form of USDs introduced into crypto trading markets to give liquidity. This is the conclusion of CoinMetrics, a blockchain data analysis firm, which recently… Read More

September 7, 2019 @ 9:10 am By JD Alois  |  

Digital asset exchange and ecosystem Bakkt is nearing complete launch. Bakkt, part of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – a group that also owns the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), received the necessary regulatory approvals earlier this year. Bakkt proves a compliant platform that expects to… Read More

September 5, 2019 @ 2:19 am By Cali Haan  |  

Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro has identified a modification to an older version of “malvertising” malware called Glupteba that uses Bitcoin script to keep it from being expunged off the Internet. In addition to functioning as, “a browser stealer that can steal…browsing history, website cookies…account names and passwords… Read More

September 4, 2019 @ 10:12 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Bitcoin has started to lift its head off the mat in recent months, but new money has been flowing much more slowly into ICO and blockchain ventures this year, Crunchbase reports. The start up analysis platform notes, “not a popped balloon (in crypto), but certainly a… Read More

September 3, 2019 @ 9:17 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Van Eck and SolidX have announced they will commence selling shares in their Bitcoin Trust to qualified institutional buyers outside the US in coming days. The companies have been working to for more than a year to obtain a green light from the SEC to sell… Read More

September 3, 2019 @ 6:30 am By Cali Haan  |  

Scammers in the Canadian city of Winnipeg have been stealing Bitcoins from Bitcoin ATM customers using a simple poster hung near the kiosk. According to the Winnipeg police department: “Posters have been located on or next to Bitcoin ATMs informing users the Bitcoin ATMs are… Read More

September 1, 2019 @ 10:28 am By Cali Haan  |  

In a Reddit post titled, “Warning about using Wasabi: it can ruin your life,” a poster called “u/green105” has alleged that his or her partner was arrested and jailed “for days” for innocently handling Bitcoins traced to a serious crime. Wasabi is a Bitcoin wallet… Read More