Coin News

 Hey friends, and welcome back to a partially new episode of the TechCrunch bitcoin podcast, better known as TCBTC. A few weeks back, this little show hosted Jason Rowley on the program, shooting video in the mix. However, due to production overlaps, we didn’t get the full audio version up. So, without further ado, here is our show with Mr. Rowley, in proper sonic format. If you… Read More

 Abra, a remittance service built on top of the Blockchain, has closed $12 million in Series A funding. Investors in the round include Arbor Ventures, RRE Ventures, and First Round Capital. Total funding to date by the company now totals $14 million. The company’s app, which will launch soon to the general public, lets users around the world transfer funds denominated in any currency at… Read More

Saffron Bacchus made Bitcoiners very happy internet participants lately when she launched her new membership site, (NSFW) Bacchus Entertainment. As she told Redditors: I think 2015 is going to be huge for bitcoin so I think it's time to stop getting screwed over by credit companies and just go 100% on bitcoin! :) You can check her out on Twitter here. Interview with Saffron Bacchus What made you interested in making videos? SB: We realized that there are lot of niche fetishes out there that don’t get a lot of new, high quality content, and we thought it would be […]

The post NSFW: A Niche Fetish Site Just For Bitcoiners appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Banks and governments are warming up to the possibility of leveraging the power and resiliency of the blockchain to implement smarter financial systems that permit faster and cheaper local and global transactions, permanently recorded in a tamper-proof blockchain. At the same time, financial institutions and states find some aspects of Bitcoin worrisome. One concern is that the Bitcoin network relies on anonymous miners to validate transactions. This concern is addressed by various concepts and implementations of “permissioned blockchains” that are popping up, which would offer the advantages of digital currencies powered by public blockchains but be restricted to banks and vetted financial operators. Permissioned blockchains have been supported by Accenture and Digital Asset Holdings CEO Blythe Masters, and criticized by […]

The post Bitcoin for Governments, but Without Privacy and with Taxes appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This week, five Bitcoin startups, including Chronicled, Chain, Abra, Case and Coinalytics, have raised more than $45 million in funding from Wall Street investors and banks, Silicon Valley venture capital firms and angel investors. The recent funding rounds also showed a significant increase in corporate investors, rather than just traditional venture capitalists. These five funding announcements follow several months without any big fundraises and may signify that the bitcoin investment market is beginning to heat up again. Chain Inc. Raises $30 Million from Visa and NASDAQ Chain Inc., a blockchain software company, has raised $30 million from Wall Street investors and companies, including Visa Inc., Citi Ventures and NASDAQ Inc., to enable developers and financial institutions to design, deploy and operate blockchain […]

The post Bitcoin Venture Capital Markets Heating up as Five Bitcoin Startups Raise $45 Million appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Cubits, an all-inclusive platform to buy, sell and manage bitcoin, has entered into a strategic partnership with ApcoPay, a global online payment service provider to enable more than 500 businesses to accept bitcoin, as well as major cards and e-wallets. “Our collaboration with ApcoPay is another important step for us in bringing Bitcoin to the global marketplace,” said Cubits CEO Tim Rehder. “Through ApcoPay, we reach a wide audience of businesses and can make them aware of Bitcoin’s advantages easier than ever before. It is our main goal to develop a flexible payments ecosystem for merchants and customers alike. With ApcoPay, we found a trusted partner with which to grow.” Through the partnership, both Cubits and ApcoPay hopes to urge […]

The post Cubits Partners with Gobal Payment Provider ApcoPay for Bitcoin Payments appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

New York-based bitcoin exchange Celery has integrated the products of Vogogo risk management and bank/payment verification platform to enable Canadian residents to exchange between bitcoin and fiat currencies. Celery was founded in 2013 and has been funded by Draper Associates and BoostVC. Celery supports more than 10,000 users in the United States and has processed more than $2 million in volume since its launch in early 2015. Due to its success in the U.S., the company has decided to launch its services in Canada with the integration of Vogogo’s bank verification API and risk-management technologies. “This release marks the first expansion of Celery outside the U.S. Vogogo’s unified payments, risk and bank verification API enabled Celery’s Canadian integration to be straightforward […]

The post Bitcoin Exchange Celery Partners with Vogogo Inc. to Expand to Canada appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

When you think of tech innovation, places like Silicon Valley and Boston spring to mind. But flying under the world's radar is Switzerland, where inventions like a solar plane that just completed the longest solo-flight ever without fuel are born.

And while Europe was busy debating bitcoin's future, Switzerland already opened up the region's first bitcoin ATM earlier this year.

The country has managed to maintain its No. 1 ranking on the Global Innovation Index for four years in a row.

Switzerland's résumé is definitely impressive: The country boasts the second-highest number of patents per person — second to Japan. Its residents have won more Nobel Prizes per capita than any other country. But the key to creating the best inventions is a highly qualified workforce, and this is what distinguishes Switzerland from the rest.

So how is Switzerland breeding the most innovative minds? It starts very early. The Swiss have a unique dual-system of vocational education and training, or VET — considered by many to be the best in Europe.

A practical education

Once students in Switzerland reach the ninth grade, they can choose either to continue to upper-secondary education or to enroll in a VET program — which 70% of them do. VET is overwhelmingly popular because students study theory at school coupled with a three- to four-year apprenticeship at a company in their industry of choice. They can do anything from working on machinery to advising investors — everything a full-time employee does.

This program is an equally important investment for companies and the government as it is for the students. For starters, it helps fuel the economy, so much so that Switzerland boasts a 3.4% youth unemployment rate. To put that into perspective, as of July 2015, the youth unemployment rate in the US was a staggering 11.7%.

The VET program is an important factor in maintaining Switzerland's stronghold in the tech and biotech industries as it creates highly qualified and competitive candidates for employment in the STEM fields. In fact, about one-third of people in the country's research and development field are graduates of the VET program.

A diverse workforce

But not all of the country's talent is homegrown. About a quarter of the workforce is made up of non-Swiss. High quality talent flocks to the country for its high standard of living, career and research opportunities, and education system.

Top tech and biotech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Biogen have established operations there to tap into this diverse talent pool. Because Switzerland is attracting top talent from all over, it's now one of the top five most cosmopolitan economies.

With the combination of its diversity and excellent education system, Switzerland is grooming talent to lead the world’s tech and biotech industry for years to come.

Learn more about how Switzerland is creating the right talent for innovation.

This post is sponsored by Switzerland Global Enterprise.

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Economists at Citi put out a scary research note this morning, laying out their views on the Chinese economy and how it'll effect the world.

Chief economist Willem Buiter now thinks the most likely scenario is one in which China tugs the world into a "global recession."

He and Citi are not defining a global recession as an actual drop in world output — they mean "an extended period of excess capacity: the level of potential output exceeds the level of actual output."

More simply, it means more people are out of work than needed. Global GDP would grow at about 2% or less per year for a couple of years.

To put that in perspective, GDP has grown by less than 2% only one year during the 21st century — 2009, when the full effect of the global financial crisis came crashing down and total global output actually fell.

For starters, Citi thinks China's true real GDP growth rate is more like 4%, or even lower, not the 7% or so that the Chinese government reports. Their "global recession" call suggests that growth will dip to just about 2.5% by the middle of 2016. China's growth hasn't been lower than that since 1976, when Chairman Mao was still alive.

That's a big problem for Beijing. The country's investment levels have gone through the roof since 2008 as the country tried to stimulate its economy, but there's been a lot of waste along the wayl. They weren't good investments, but they still need paying off, so debt levels have surged too. 

China is going through a painful rebalancing phase, attempting to shift from being a low-income mega-exporter which turned its massive trade surpluses into investment, to an increasingly services-driven middle-income economy which saves less and consumes more. But that's hard. Here's Citi:

Can such a necessary structural rebalancing of aggregate demand (and a corresponding change in the structure of production from physical goods production to services and from capital goods to consumer goods and services) be achieved in China without passing through a recession? In principle, certainly. In practice, we consider this unlikely.

It's worth stressing just how incredibly low 2.5% growth is for China. In the early 1990s, the rate fell below 5%, but never that low. The average growth rate for the subsequent 20 years was about 10%. The relatively sudden slowdown is an incredibly jarring experience, even though it's not actually a contraction. 

And here's why it matters to the world, in one chart: 

The country's share in world trade is now higher than that of the United States — based on the existing trend, it will soon be larger than that of the European Union. It has practically tripled in about 15 years. In 2011, the International Monetary Fund confirmed that China is the biggest source of real economic spillovers in the world. 

That means that while it's not as financially interlinked as the advanced economies, big changes to China's economy ripple through trade channels and the rest of the world feels the effect. 

Citi's analysts also explain that those figures don't even account for a lot of the trade that China does with the world: "A country could, however export nothing to China directly (and import nothing from China directly) yet export raw materials or intermediate goods and services to third countries that, directly or indirectly, depend on demand from (exports to) China."

It's a worrying prospect. Weak growth in the developed economies was being propped up by a handful of emerging markets, China most of all. But the tables are turning and emerging markets are going sour.

Worst of all, as the researchers notes, in the event of an even worse scenario, mainstream acceptable monetary policy is already exhausted, and political constraints make fiscal stimulus unlikely. As HSBC chief economist Stephen King warned previously, "the world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats."

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NOW WATCH: Animated map renames states for countries with similar GDPs

Abra, the startup developing a bitcoin powered remittance app, has raised just over $12 million in new funding.

Live blogging from CoinDesk's inaugural bitcoin and blockchain conference: Consensus 2015.

Case has raised $2.25m in seed funding round led by Future\Perfect Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $3.75m.

Recent controversy regarding alleged censorship at popular Bitcoin forums Bitcoin Talk and r/Bitcoin on Reddit in recent months has led to an exodus away from those previously popular forums. This brain drain has left people wondering if these forums are dying out. For that reason, CCN has put together a list of growing forums revolving around Bitcoin from various popular online portals. Reddit /r/bitcoinall - At the time of print, this subreddit has 528 readers. Its purpose is to bring together all of the various Bitcoin subreddits in one place, causing for considerable post frequency. This subreddit gathers from the […]

The post The Biggest Bitcoin Forums & Communities On The Web appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Did Bitcoinica founder Zhou Tong steal funds, return a part of them, then pay someone to keep it quiet? Well that would seem to be the impression created by the latest revelation contained in a Youtube video discussed on Reddit.      Bitcoinica – Some Background Zhou Tong founded Bitcoinica in 2011 at the age of 17. Bitcoinica was an online trading company that enabled users to speculate on contract-for-difference market against the Bitcoin to USD exchange rate. In March 2012, Bitcoinica reported that they had lost 43,554 BTC after an alleged hacking at web hosting provider Linode’s servers. A […]

The post Does Bitcoinica Founder Zhou Tong Have Some Explaining To Do? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

DOJ Digital Currency Crimes Coordinator Kathryn Haun discusses the common ground her agency shares with innovators in bitcoin and blockchain.

Pure-Central.com, a multi-currency P2P lending and trading platform, has added bill paying services, allowing users to pay bills in Bitcoin. The platform now serves as an online resource where members can either get bills paid or register as a bill payer and pay other members’ bills. The bill payment capabilities mark the most recent addition to Pure-Central.com’s bevy of financial services for cryptocurrency users. After launching as a cryptocurrency lending and trading platform in October of 2014, the Virgin Islands-based company now serves more than 30,000 users, according to James Donovan, chief operating officer. How Bill Payment Works Bitcoin users […]

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Bitcoin price pulled lower, today, in what appears to be a larger correction prior to a final wave of advance. While prediction is dangerous, especially about the future (Niels Bohr), there is some evidence in the cart that one more advancing wave is due. This analysis is provided by xbt.social with a 9 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: 14h54 UTC Bitstamp 15-Minute Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier today: Price made a deep correction today and […]

The post Bitcoin Price Pulling Back Before Advance? appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Six major financial institutions invested in Bitcoin developer platform Chain.com, marking it as the financial establishment choice.