Coin News

California-based bitcoin mining company and MegaBigPower franchisee has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Bitrated has announced an online reputation management system for its multi-signature (multisig) escrow service for bitcoin payments. The two innovations combined provide unprecedented consumer protection to Bitcoin users, buyers and sellers alike. Bitrated‘s bitcoin payment service uses multisig transactions where a trusted third party (trust agent) is nominated to resolve disputes and reverse payments in case of fraud. Two out of three signatures are required to unlock a payment: the seller’s, the buyer’s and the trust agent’s. So if the buyer is happy with the purchased goods or services, the payment can be unlocked by the buyer and the seller alone, with no intervention required from the trust agent. Otherwise, the trust agent will arbitrate the dispute for a fee, […]

The post Bitrated Unveils Reputation System and Multisig Escrow appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

WordPress accepting Bitcoin for its premium services was big news throughout the tech world at the end of 2012, garnering coverage in magazines like PCWorld. The popular blogging platform is many people’s first introductions to content management systems. Over the years, it has managed to keep up with the times, and even with the advent […]

The post WordPress is Still a Big Believer in Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Wallet software provider Blockchain has opened its 3 millionth bitcoin wallet, having doubled downloads in less than a year.

Decentral Talk Live features a diverse collection of guests this week from all over the decentralized and disruptive technology community. Topics include security and regulatory compliance, publishing, branding, web-development, and building features on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Balancing security and privacy with regulatory compliance is a tricky business when it comes to digital currencies. This week, DTL talks with Amber Scott, founder and “Chief AML Ninja” of Outlier Services. Scott is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and a Certified Privacy Professional (CIPP) with a degree in psychology from the University of Waterloo, where she helped develop the first applied psychology course on criminal profiling. In 2013, she founded Outlier Solutions to provide AML and CTF compliance for financial […]

The post This Week on Decentral Talk Live appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

For all the press Bitcoin has received, many contrarians are still attracted to sub-contrarians derived from the original contrarian. Many see Bitcoin’s glass as half-empty, instead of half full. That doesn’t apply to Coinbase head Brain Armstrong, who made news Monday morning with his Twitter commentary on the state of the digital currency universe. Coinbase […]

The post Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong: Bitcoin is Way Too Far Ahead appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

By Lewis Krauskopf

(Reuters) - Congestion at the U.S. West Coast ports could take as much as two months to unwind, according to port and trade group officials, with retailers and other companies bracing for further shipment delays after the apparent resolution of a months-long labor dispute.

A tentative labor agreement involving 29 ports was announced late on Friday involving 20,000 dockworkers. Tensions over their lack of a contract since July had led to chronic cargo backups. But port officials and companies warned it will take time to restore a normal flow of traffic.

"It's not going to be fast," Jon Slangerup, chief executive officer of the Port of Long Beach, told CNBC television. "It's going to take us a couple of months to dig out, but we were at full strength on Saturday night, all full strength yesterday, and we're going to stay at it until this backlog is cleared."

The port slowdown has rippled through the U.S. economy including the retail, auto and agriculture sectors.

Port officials have informed retailers it will take 45 to 60 days to clear out the backlog, said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation trade group.

"It’s going to take time to get through all that and get to a normal rotation," Gold said.

"It could still mean there will be a delay in getting merchandise to the store shelves," Gold said, including seasonal items such as spring or Easter apparel and footwear, and patio furniture.

ConAgra Foods Inc , which has seen delays in export shipments of its Lamb Weston frozen potato products, Swiss Miss cocoa drink mixes, and ACT II popcorn, was bracing for congestion "to continue as the ports return to normal operations," spokeswoman Shelby Stoolman said in an email.

Lowe’s Companies Inc uses most of the cargo gateways in the United States and plans to continue contingency routes "until we feel the congestion has eased on the West Coast," spokesman Steve Salazar said in an email.

Perry Ellis International Inc said last week in its preliminary fourth-quarter results last week that it was unable to fill $23 million in sales orders because of late receipt of goods in fiscal 2015 resulting from port delays.

In comments before Friday's labor agreement, the apparel company said it anticipated "potential continued disruption in shipments and higher costs associated with continued port delays." A spokeswoman for Perry Ellis on Monday declined to comment further.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, who arrived in San Francisco last week to help broker a labor deal, said on CNBC Monday that 25 people representing the union at the negotiating table unanimously agreed to the settlement, signaling likely adoption by longshore workers.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Christian Plumb)

Join the conversation about this story »

On Tuesday, February 17, the Canadian Bitcoin community was surprised to learn that its biggest and longest-serving exchange, CAVIRTEX, was to wind down operations by March 25. Enter QuadrigaCX, heir apparent to the title of Canada’s largest Bitcoin exchange. An older version of the CAVIRTEX database, including 2FA secrets and hashed passwords, may have been compromised. Their website states, “We believe that damage to the company’s reputation, caused by the potential compromise, will significantly harm our ability to continue to operate successfully.” Kyle Kemper, VP of CAVIRTEX, also cited a difficult banking relationship as a contributing factor. CAVIRTEX was the second exchange to go down in Canada this year; Vault of Satoshi also declared its intent to close as of […]

The post Canadian Exchange, QuadrigaCX, Takes Spotlight After CAVIRTEX Bows Out appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin.de has announced enhanced services as a result of its partnership with Fidor Bank, allowing EUR/BTC trades to be completed within "seconds".

Bictoin might make money transactions easier in the digital age, but it’s also brought about another way for people to get robbed. Dwayne Richards, a New York City-based firefighter, was the most recent victim of a bitcoin robbery, reports the New York Business Journal. Richards was stabbed by the thieves he was in contact with for a bitcoin-for-cash exchange in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 

If you’ve heard of Bitcoin but don’t know where to start, visiting Freebitcoins.com is step 1. The exciting new website freebitcoins.com is giving away bitcoins to the first million visitors to their site in a groundbreaking effort to introduce the increasingly popular currency to those who want to own some, completely free. Those interested simply […]

The post Freebitcoins.com Giving Away Bitcoin to First 1 Million Takers appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

WordPress, the web's most popular blogging platform, has removed bitcoin from its list of supported payments.

Bitcoin trading has reverted to selling behavior, and the bears are clawing down the chart for all they’re worth. Buyers have set up strong buy orders between $225 and $237. The past 24 hours of decline have eaten into these. Will support at $230 hold? This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour […]

The post Bitcoin Trading Hammering Downside Support appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

The CEO of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has repeated his conglomerate's intention to "probably" accept bitcoin at some stage, at a company financial conference in Tokyo today. Without disclosing a specific timeframe in which it might happen, company CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said: “We are thinking about [accepting bitcoin] and we probably will.” The CEO, one of Japan's wealthiest individuals, previously […]

Are you a gamer? Do you occasionally like chilling out with Xin, Annie, or one of the many other characters of League? And you like bitcoin? Well now, this might be for you. League of Legends (LoL) is an MMO (massively multiplayer online), where players go head to head against each other in 1v1, or up […]

The post League of Legends Gambling: Win Bitcoin! appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Achilles Labs, a Bitcoin mining hardware provider located in China, Is offering a huge 33% discount sale on AM-6000, AM-3400, and AM-1700 Bitcoin miners. While fluctuations have affected the Bitcoin mining industry as a whole, a drop in sales volume for Achilles Labs means that you can pick up some serious hardware for a big […]

The post Achilles Labs Massive 33% Off Sale appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

In a recent interview with John Light’s podcast, P2P Connects Us; Matthew Dieters said of the project he helped start, Assembly.com: Assembly is a platform that allows people all over the world – designers, developers, community people, people that want to do marketing – to collaborate together on building real products. […] At the end […]

The post Assembly Uses the Bitcoin Block Chain to Monetize Development appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

By Jo Winterbottom and P.J. Huffstutter

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Across the U.S. Midwest, the plunge in grain prices to near four-year lows is pitting landowners determined to sustain rental incomes against farmer tenants worried about making rent payments because their revenues are squeezed.

Some grain farmers already see the burden as too big. They are taking an extreme step, one not widely seen since the 1980s: breaching lease contracts, reducing how much land they will sow this spring and risking years-long legal battles with landlords.

The tensions add to other signs the agricultural boom that the U.S. grain farming sector has enjoyed for a decade is over. On Friday, tractor maker John Deere cut its profit forecast citing falling sales caused by lower farm income and grain prices.

Many rent payments – which vary from a few thousand dollars for a tiny farm to millions for a major operation – are due on March 1, just weeks after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated net farm income, which peaked at $129 billion in 2013, could slide by almost a third this year to $74 billion.

The costs of inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds, are remaining stubbornly high, the strong dollar is souring exports and grain prices are expected to stay low.

How many people are walking away from leases they had committed to is not known. In Iowa, the nation's top corn and soybean producer, one real estate expert says that out of the estimated 100,000 farmland leases in the state, 1,000 or more could be breached by this spring.

The stakes are high because huge swaths of agricultural land are leased: As of 2012, in the majority of counties in the Midwest Corn Belt and the grain-growing Plains, at least 40 percent of farmland was leased or rented out, USDA data shows.

"It's hard to know where the bottom is on this," said David Miller, Iowa Farm Bureau's director of research and commodity services.

SIGNS OF TROUBLE

Grain production is, however, unlikely to be affected in any major way yet as landowners will rather have someone working their land, even at reduced rates, than let it lie fallow.

But prolonged weakness in the farm economy could send ripples far and wide: as farms consolidate, "there would be fewer machinery dealers, fewer elevators, and so-on through the rural economy," said Craig Dobbins, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Possibly also fewer new farmers.

Jon Sparks farms about 1,400 acres of family land and rented ground in Indiana. His nephew wants to return to work on the farm but margins are tight and land rents high. Sparks cannot make it work financially.

"We can't grow without overextending ourselves," Sparks said. "I don't know what to do."

Landowners are reluctant to cut rents. Some are retirees who partly rely on the rental income from the land they once farmed, and the rising number of realty investors want to maintain returns. Landlords have also seen tenants spend on new machinery and buildings during the boom and feel renters should still be able to afford lease payments.

"As cash rent collections start this spring, I expect to see more farm operators who have had difficulty acquiring adequate financing either let leases go or try and renegotiate terms," said Jim Farrell, president of Farmers National Co, which manages about 4,900 farms across 24 states for land-owners.

Take an 80-acre (32 hectare) farm in Madison County, Iowa, owned by a client of Peoples Company, a farmland manager. The farmer who rented the land at $375 an acre last year offered $315 for this year, said Steve Bruere, president of the company. The owner turned him down, and rented it to a neighbor for $325 -- plus a hefty bonus if gross income tops $750.

There are growing numbers of other examples. Miller, of the Iowa Farm Bureau, said he learned about a farmer near Marshalltown, in central Iowa, who had walked away from 650 acres (263 hectares) of crop ground because he could not pay the rent. Just days later, he was told a north-central Iowa farmer breached his lease on 6,500 acres.

COURTS OR LOANS

Concern about broken leases has some landlords reviewing legal options, according to Roger A. McEowen, director of the Iowa State University Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation. His staff began fielding phone calls from nervous landowners last autumn.

One catch is that many landlords never thought to file the paperwork to put a lien on their tenants' assets. That means landowners "can't go grab anything off the farm if the tenant doesn't pay," McEowen said. "It also means that they're going to be behind the bank."

Still, farmers could have a tough time walking away from their leases, said Kelvin Leibold, a farm management specialist at Iowa State University extension.

"People want their money. They want to get paid. I expect we will see some cases going to court over this," he added.

To avoid such a scenario, farmers have begun turning to banks for loans that will help fund operations and conserve their cash. Operating loans for farmers jumped 37 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 over a year ago to $54 billion, according to survey-based estimates in the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank's latest Agricultural Finance Databook.

Loans with an undefined purpose -- which might be used for rents, according to the bank's assistant vice-president Nathan Kauffman -- nearly doubled in the fourth quarter of 2014 from a year earlier to $25 billion.

Total non-real estate farm loan volumes jumped more than 50 percent for the quarter, to $112 billion.

"It's all about working capital and bankers are stressing working capital," said Sam Miller, managing director of agricultural banking at BMO Harris Bank. "Liquidity has tightened up considerably in the last year."

(Editing by Tomasz Janowski)

Join the conversation about this story »