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The former top cop regulating the New York banking scene just gave his public opinion of regulators. Wall Street might be surprised to hear what he's saying.

Benjamin Lawsky used to head up New York's Department of Financial Services before he resigned this year to launch The Lawsky Group, a consulting firm.

His mantra now? Let 'em play!

At Sourcemedia's Convene conference in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, Lawsky said that the role of a regulator should be like that of a good basketball referee. 

"The ref should get out of the way, as long as there are guidelines in place, and let everyone play," he said during a lunchtime Q&A session. 

This hardly sounds like the same Lawsky that was a hard-charging prosecutor or DFS chief. In his time there, Lawsky imposed billions of dollars in fines and held up large private equity transactions ensuring investors were following the letter of the law when they did annuities deals.

On Wall Street, Lawsky's tough-cop approach earned him the scorn of some finance professionals. 

But in his new role, he will advise technology companies and other firms on matters like security. During his on-stage Q&A, Lawsky said that while he's advising financial services firms on technology and security he is "doing no work in the virtual currency space at all." 

Lawsky published rules for running a bitcoin business in New York shortly before stepping down from his role as a regulator.

After his discussion Lawsky spoke with Business Insider about the event and addressed a column published on Tuesday in American Banker, a Sourcemedia publication. One of his ex-DFS colleagues penned a piece saying that consultants should be held directly accountable to regulators. 

Lawsky said that while he hadn't read Daniel Alter's column, he agrees with its premise. 

So, perhaps the man who was Wall Street's top cop hasn't changed very much at all. 

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According to a recent account by a member of the BitcoinTalk community, it appears that certain members of the Federal government have a much deeper understanding of Bitcoin than previously thought. The poster says that during a raid, the government knew to seize unused Trezor wallets and transfer seized bitcoins to their own bitcoin wallets. Hardware wallets, when used correctly, are a highly recommended way to store bitcoins. Understanding how to keep bitcoins secure is a fundamental problem that any new user will face. To quote the poster directly: When "homeland security" raided our house they took several Trezors still […]

The post Homeland Security Using Trezor Hardware Bitcoin Wallets? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the creator of the much maligned BitLicense revealed today that he’s not working in the digital currency space. “I’m doing no work in the digital currency space,” said Benjamin Lawsky at the America Banker Conference in New York City. “The rules are clear,” Lawsky explained. “I can’t work in the Bitcoin space on anything related to my work at NYDFS or BitLicense.” When Lawsky announced in May that he was stepping down, he revealed that he would be launching his own legal consultancy. The New York Post had reported that Lawsky “plans to advise companies on financial matters such as cybersecurity and digital currencies like bitcoin, a new sphere […]

The post Benjamin Lawsky: ‘I’m Doing No Work in the Digital Currency Space’ appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This is a guest post by Eric Lombrozo, the Co-CEO and CTO of Ciphrex Corp., a software company pioneering decentralized consensus network technology. Lombrozo is also a founding member of the CryptoCurrency Security Standards Steering Committee and has been a longtime contributor to the open source Bitcoin core development effort. Introduction In the last few months, a contentious debate has arisen surrounding the issue of a hardcoded constant in the consensus rules of the Bitcoin network. While on the surface it appears to be a simple enough change, this single issue has opened up a veritable Pandora’s box. What is the block-size limit and why is it there? When the Bitcoin network was first created, several assumptions had to be made regarding […]

The post Settling the Block Size Debate appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Payment processor Stripe has raised new funding from Visa, American Express, Sequoia Capital and other investors, valuing the company at $5 billion, The New York Times reports. The new funding comes six months after a previous funding round of $70 million, at a $3.5 billion valuation. Stripe didn’t disclose the amount of new funding, and said only that it was “less than $100 million.” American Express and Sequoia Capital were existing investors in Stripe, but Visa and venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are new investors, The Wall Street Journal reports. The most interesting aspect of the deal is the acquisition of Visa, one of the world’s largest credit card companies, as an investor and a partner. Stripe and […]

The post Bitcoin-Friendly Payment Processor Stripe Raises New Funding, Partners with Visa and American Express appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

  You could hear a pin drop at the recent Toronto DEC_TECH conference as Vitalik Buterin told a standing-room-only crowd about his remarkable journey to build Ethereum – a decentralized open source peer-to-peer web-based platform – that he calls “the foundational platform for everything.” Buterin has been called a “crypto-anarchist visionary,” and at the age of 21 he has already beat out Facebook’s Mark Zuckerman to win the World Technology Prize for software development and invented the Ethereum blockchain. At the DEC_TECH event, Buterin shared his “Launch Roadmap” for the release of different components of the Ethereum project: Frontier – soon! (we now know it’s July 29/30) Homestead – 2 to 4 months Metropolis – 4 to 8 months Serenity […]

The post Ethereum Project Opens Up New ‘Frontier’ for Developers appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin Press Release: US based HashingSpace Corporation (OTCQB: HSHS) is pleased to announce it has completed a reverse merger, and a ticker change from the old ticker MLSOD to HSHS. HashingSpace provides a wide range of services to the Bitcoin and blockchain communities including hosted ASIC mining and Bitcoin ATM’s. WENATCHEE, WA / July 27, 2015 / HashingSpace Corporation (OTCQB: HSHS), a Bitcoin ASIC mining and hosting company, announced today that it has completed a reverse merger transaction with Milestone International Corporation. HashingSpace completed its’ 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. HashingSpace will be traded on the OTC Markets with the symbol HSHS. The reverse merger was completed on July 10, 2015. HashingSpace Corporation merged with […]

The post Bitcoin Focused HashingSpace Corporation Announces New Ticker Symbol “HSHS”, Files 8-K, and Completes Reverse Merger appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

China's Shanghai Composite Index crashed through support on Monday and resumed decline as investors could not sell Chinese company stocks fast enough. Deja Vu CNBC eloquently reports that, following three weeks of relative stability in mainland markets, Monday saw the Shanghai Composite Index resume decline in its worst one-day drop in eight years. Readers will know that "eight years" marks the first round of sell-offs heading into the 2008 "Credit Crunch". Significantly, the index sliced through the psychological 4000 support level without pause as paniced investors rushed for the exit. Market Psychology CCN.LA partner xbt.social presented analysis in early July […]

The post China Stock Market Resumes Crash appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin technology could reshape the way financial markets operate.

That is according to Blythe Master, the chief executive of Digital Asset Holdings, and one of the biggest names in the business.

Speaking Tuesday at SourceMedia's Convene conference in midtown Manhattan, Masters said: "The potential addressable markets for these types of technologies are gigantic." 

Everything from stock to bonds and derivatives could be exchanged and paid for in the same way the cryptocurrency community is executing bitcoin transactions, Masters said. 

Still, it is early on. Masters compared where Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are now in terms of their development to early 1990s Internet. 

"In reality, the world is not there yet," Masters said. She said the industry would have to address regulatory hurdles as it confronts issues like authentication and security in coming years. 

Masters was one of a group of JPMorgan executives who helped create the market for credit default swaps in the 1990s, and later went to head its global commodities division.

She left the bank in late 2014 after the physical commodities business was sold to Mercuria, and in March became one of the biggest names on Wall Street to join the fast-growing cryptocurrency sector when she took the post at Digital Asset Holdings. 

She was named chief executive of Digital Asset Holdings in March and took a role with Santander Consumer USA, a leading auto lender in the U.S, earlier this month. 

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Yesterday's Bitcoin price move had pulled down to a local support floor near $286 (Bitstamp) and immediately began building a base for another wave of advance. With the prospect of an FOMC statement confirming US rates increases, tomorrow, the price chart should show a strong upside reaction between now and Wednesday evening. 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 $29 discount using the code CCN29. Bitcoin Price Analysis Time of analysis: 05h06 UTC Bitstamp 15-Minute Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier […]

The post Bitcoin Price: FOMC And US Rates Increase appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A new service, CoinTape, is offering bitcoin users an answer to the burning question: what is the optimum transaction fee?

Certified Financial Planner Jeff Vandrew explains the steps bitcoin holders should take when planning their estates.

Coin ATM Radar is the premier online destination for information on the nascent Bitcoin ATM industry. This industry, which has experienced serious growth since its earliest incipience, offers some of the most luxury-oriented products in the Bitcoin ATM industry, and stands out on its own as one of the few hardware oriented Bitcoin related products alongside miners.  The administrator for Coin ATM Radar, who prefers to go only by Vlad, has spent much of the last couple years designing and building the features for Coin ATM Radar. It is the go-to place for the Bitcoin ATM industry. Vlad became interested […]

The post Here's Where To Find Everything You Need To Know About The Bitcoin ATM Industry appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Around 1,000 people involved in the robotics industry have signed a letter urging a ban on artificial intelligence arms. An arms race could unfold where the winner is the one who makes the best robot killer. According to some of the brightest minds in the industry, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Stephen Hawking, feel that AI technology applied to warfare can be a "threat" to humanity.

The post Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, & Stephen Hawking: No AI Warfare appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

LONDON (Reuters) - One of the founders of trading venue Chi-X Europe is joining the race to bring "blockchain" technology, the system that tracks and identifies transactions in digital-currency bitcoin, to the wider financial world.

The objective is to allow people to transfer cash or make payments instantaneously without a bank or clearing party being involved, saving on transaction costs.

A venture called SETL, led by former Chi-X head Peter Randall and hedge-fund investor Anthony Culligan, said on Monday its blockchain-inspired technology would simultaneously transact real-world currencies or assets and provide a "golden record" of the trade, which takes days on some financial markets.

"We want to unlock the power of the blockchain for financial markets," said Randall in an interview. The technology will be regulator-friendly and "permissioned", meaning that participants' identities can be derived by regulators and auditors if required, he said.

With the financial sector under pressure to cut costs and protect profits in the face of post-crisis rules and sluggish markets, investment is pouring into tech-driven approaches such as blockchain to overhaul processes that are costly to maintain.

While bitcoin has in the past been viewed with suspicion by many in the financial sector, the industry is now seeing potential from using the technology behind it.

Managing, clearing and settling trades costs the financial sector between $65 billion and $80 billion, according to SETL, citing figures from consultancy Oliver Wyman.

SETL's network would work in the same way as the bitcoin blockchain, generated from each participant's server. The ledger of transactions would be stored on these servers, with encryption, but regulators or auditors would be given access to identify the parties involved.

SETL is not alone. Firms across the finance and technology space have been ramping up efforts to tap the potential of blockchain in overhauling the payment and settlement of financial assets, which currently use central authorities and clearing-houses to track and guarantee transactions.

International Business Machines Corp has been in informal talks about a blockchain-tied cash system with a number of central banks, Reuters reported earlier this year, while Nasdaq OMX last month announced a partnership with blockchain infrastructure provider Chain.

Sceptics cite a number of obstacles to wider adoption of blockchain, a report by the Institute of International Finance found, saying the computational power and associated maintenance costs would become increasingly difficult to manage.

SETL's Randall said the technology was in its infancy but was manageable in terms of complexity and the focus was on attracting investment with a "real-world" business plan.

(Editing by David Holmes and David Evans)

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