Coin News

Bitcoin exchange itBit has filed an application for a state banking license in New York, the NYDFS reports.

Fusion's Felix Salmon delves into the seedy underbelly of the Bitcoin world and comes up with the real problem with cryptocurrency: the community is 96% men.

Here's Salmon:

Bitcoin, at its core, is an attempt to solve big socioeconomic problems through technology. But so long as it remains an overwhelmingly male domain, it’s going to continue to concentrate on the economic problems, while missing the big social problems. Which means that it’s going to continue going nowhere.

It's hard to have a currency that leaves out 50% of the population. 

SEE ALSO: A Florida couple recorded their vows into the Bitcoin blockchain in the first 'Bitmarriage'

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NOW WATCH: Here's how much sex happy couples have every month

Bitcoin ATM maker Lamassu is set to begin charging operators for technical support after a period of what it called "belt tightening".

Featuring speakers from Citi Ventures and CBW Bank, the FinTech Connection provided a unique forum for bitcoin discussion.

Ongoing Bitcoin price correction after an advancing wave from $220 to $240. The 15-minute chart’s 200MA will soon arrive in the area of price action and catalyze the next price wave. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 3 hour delay. Read the full analysis here. Not a member? Join now and receive a […]

The post Bitcoin Price Going Lower To Go Higher appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Everyone in the financial services industry is very excited about the digitization of money.  How exciting it would be to forego cash (and those annoying checks), in favor of a more efficient world of commerce and assets.  At the hand of Bitcoin, the argument goes, or Apple Pay, or what-not - our money would be more secure, more liquid, more flexible, and wield more control.  And while all that is true - and then some - we're also still a long ways away, because currency made with atoms is incredibly persistent.

South African Bitcoin startup Bankymoon has built the world’s first blockchain smart metering solution for modern power and utility grids, VentureBurn reports. The startup outlined its plans in a presentation titled “Smart Grids and the Blockchain – Bitcoin’s first killer App” at the recent Bitcoin Conference Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. Lorien Gamaroff, founder and CEO of Bankymoon, is expected to give another presentation on May 14 at the Bitcoin Conference in Prague. Modern “smart grids” permit efficient management of supply and demand, with Internet-connected “smart meters” that react to changing conditions and can be topped in real-time in case of need. According to Gamaroff, by 2023 most power grids will be smart: 80 percent of the grids in […]

The post Bankymoon Introduces Bitcoin Payments to Smart Meters for Power Grids appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

ING Bank hired global research firm, Ipsos, to survey 14,829 Internet users from 13 European countries, the United States and Australia. ING asked participants about mobile banking, payments and digital currency, such as bitcoin. The report has some sobering insights into how Bitcoin adoption is going in the West, including what consumers see as the biggest benefits and problems of mobile payments. 1.   People Are Using Less Cash According to European consumers, cash is on its way out. When asked if their use of cash has declined over the last year, 50 percent of European participants said yes. And out of the group who answered yes, 80 percent think that trend will continue throughout the next year. 50 percent in […]

The post 5 Revelations about Bitcoin from the ING 2015 Mobile Banking Survey appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Cory Fields have taken their development efforts back to school, in a sense. Andresen, who lives about two hours from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Amherst, Mass., wrote on his blog yesterday: I’m pleased to announce that I’ve joined the MIT Media Lab’s newly launched Digital Currency […]

The post Bitcoin Getting Serious? MIT Partially Funding Bitcoin Core Development appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Spain's bitcoin community is celebrating following confirmation that the cryptocurrency is exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT) in the country.

Over the last couple of years, there have been many surveys done about what Bitcoin is and what people think of Bitcoin. The Digital Currency Council (DCC) and Coin Report have done surveys to get consumer opinion on its progress. As Bitcoin has grown, so have the corporate players involved, and the number of countries […]

The post World’s Largest Bitcoin Survey: Over 12k People Talk Bitcoin appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

Last year, a Swiss art group called !Mediengruppe Bitnik created a robot to shop on Agora, which is currently the largest Darknet market. They gave the bot $100 per week in bitcoins and programmed it to randomly buy items. It bought a wide variety of things, which were delivered to the group’s gallery in Switzerland, […]

The post Bitcoin-Spending Random Darknet Shopper Bot Released from Jail appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

It has been more than a year since the collapse of Mt. Gox culminated in February of 2014, and it has had the misfortune of being the defining moment for Bitcoin’s ecosystem to this point. The one-time world’s largest Bitcoin exchange lost a reported 850k BTC in a sea of fraud, theft, negligence, and mismanagement. […]

The post Bitcoin Exchange Kraken Now Honors Mt. Gox Claims up to $1 Million appeared first on CryptoCoinsNews.

By Michael Flaherty and Jonathan Spicer

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sections of the U.S. financial system that may be vulnerable to investor panic are raising concerns inside the Federal Reserve, as policymakers preparing for the first interest-rate hike in nearly a decade seek to ensure that the market is ready and able to handle it whenever it happens.

The Fed is particularly worried about whether the booming asset management industry can withstand a run of redemptions in a financial crisis.

Chief among the Fed's concerns, increasingly voiced in public remarks, is that certain funds held by individuals and institutions will not have the underlying assets sufficient to back investors cashing out in a panic. The lack of liquidity would expose investors and the economy to sharp price swings.

Bond inventories at primary dealers have plunged due to bank regulations. The amount of Treasury securities in circulation also has dropped after the Fed's three rounds of bond purchases.

The fall in liquidity across portions of the bond market comes amid a jump in volatility, making it more important for Fed officials to telegraph their tightening plans well ahead of time.

The Fed's nightmare scenario is in surprising markets, exposing investors to the liquidity risks it fears, and causing a spike in borrowing costs that hurts economic growth.

"Some open-ended mutual funds offer daily withdrawal privileges but invest in assets that take longer to sell and settle," Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said in a speech last month. Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo and Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart have offered similar warnings about liquidity in the last few months.

Asset managers have said they are systemically safe. But Fed officials have noted a surge in asset management inflows and concentration. One example is fixed income exchange-traded-fund assets, which reached $246 billion in 2013 from their inception in 2002, according to Greenwich Associates.

New York Fed President William Dudley has warned that investors are less inclined to hold liquid assets as memories of the 2008 crisis fade.

The Fed could slow or delay rate hikes "if financial conditions were to tighten a lot," Dudley said this week. Still, the Fed will be as clear as possible. "I'll be very surprised if, whenever normalization occurs, it will be a big surprise to anyone - if we're doing our job properly," he added.

TANTRUM WORRIES

The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since Dec. 2008 and embarked on three rounds of large scale bond purchases to stimulate the U.S. economic recovery following the 2007-9 financial crisis.

While the Fed could hike rates in June, the economy's weak winter performance has pushed expectations of a hike more toward September. Futures traders are betting on a move as late as December.

    That disconnect sets up a potential collision if the central bank hikes faster than expected, a collision that could send ripples across the asset management industry.

    "Part of what's going on is (investors are) not being convinced that we're going to raise interest rates," Loretta Mester, president of the Cleveland Fed, told economists last week.

Bond markets are still susceptible to another "taper tantrum" such as the one that happened in 2013 when then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke caught investors off guard by suggesting the central bank could trim bond purchases earlier than the market expected.

Deutsche Bank pointed out in an April note that the volume of primary transactions in the Treasury market has dropped relative to the overall scale of the notes held by the public, though it also said the bank does not see "broad market impairment."

"But liquid markets could quickly turn illiquid in response to a shift in Fed policy or some other shock, which could amplify any adverse market response, as occurred during the taper tantrum," according to the note.

(Reporting by Michael Flaherty and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by David Gregorio)

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