Coin News

After weeks of investigation, WIRED has determined that Bitcoin's creator is probably Dr. Craig Steven Wright, a media-shy Australian entrepreneur.

The post Bitcoin’s Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Probably This Unknown Australian Genius appeared first on WIRED.

BitX, a Singapore-based, global cryptocurrency platform, has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from Venturra Capital, a Jakarta-based venture fund. Venturra joins an investor group that includes Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and The Naspers Group, a South Africa-based global platform operator and investor. BitX raised $4 million USD in July in its series A round, according to techinasia.com. Naspers Group and the Digital Currency Group led the round. Bitcoin Wallet And Payment Solutions BitX provides mobile wallets, institutional quality exchanges and APIs for business integrations. The company claims it provides less expensive and faster transactions, online buying, trading and storing […]

The post Singapore Crypto Platform BitX Receives Additional Funding appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A newly introduced proposal for how the bitcoin network can be scaled to handle greater transaction volumes is gaining traction among developers.

Bitcoin price has traded sideways for three days and according to the bitcoin chart's average true range, a tipping point is in sight. 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: 14h30 UTC OKCoin 3Mth 1-Hour Chart From the analysis pages of xbt.social, earlier today: No substantial change from yesterday, and the 1hr chart continues conforming to the indicator and MA conditions at the previous juncture circled in the chart. One concern is […]

The post Bitcoin Price Heading Due East appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Goldman Sachs had 600 traders in New York City making markets in US stocks in 2000.

That number is down to fewer than 10 today.

The statistic is one of several nuggets from a Credit Suisse report on how the bank uses technology, following a conversation with chief information officer Marty Chavez.

The analysts estimate that Goldman spends $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion on technology each year, or about 7%-9% of revenue.

This has big implications for the bank's staff. In some ways, technology can make their lives easier. Last month, the bank announced a new initiative designed to make the lives of junior investment bankers easier — by letting technology do more of the grunt work for them.

But technology might also soon replace more workers. The note said (emphasis ours):

Embrace Disruption—management of Goldman is very much of the belief—and we can't argue with this—that there will be far more value ascribed to those who embrace new, albeit disruptive, technologies. This disruption can be people "destructive" at times, but it can be far more destructive to be left behind in a business poised for profound change. Importantly, these changes may be disruptive, but also both relationship and profit margin enhancing, through delivery of a better product to Goldman's clients.

There's ways for Goldman to be more efficient with its tech-spending. About 30% of the annual expense goes for maintenance, which covers things like communications, market data expenses and software licensing. The bank wants to get that down to 10%, which is more comparable with software companies.

That would free up $600 million to $800 million, which could either go back to the bottom line, or be reinvested strategically, Credit Suisse estimates.

These strategic investments could include things like investing in blockchain technology that underpins the use of bitcoin, with the Credit Suisse analysts noting that Goldman Sachs is "very interested in the use of Blockchain/distributed ledger technology." 

Other investments include Symphony, the instant communications platform out to displace Bloomberg's terminal, and Goldman's Marquee app, which delivers data and analytics to staff and is now being rolled out to clients.

SEE ALSO: The robot revolution is coming for Wall Street traders

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A representative survey covering a hundred CEOs and board members of financial companies in Germany has shown that financial executives aren’t enthused by bitcoin. In a survey conducted by the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media or Bitkom -- a German trade association and think tank – 95% of those surveyed see digital currencies including Bitcoin will remain in the niche over the next decade. Furthermore, 2% of the finance executives believe that the cryptocurrency will be an accepted mode of payment, in tandem with existing payment methods. The remaining 3% believe that bitcoin will be completely […]

The post German Finance Suits Don't See a Big Future for Bitcoin appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent who stole more than $800,000 worth of bitcoins during the investigation into darknet marketplace Silk Road, has been sentenced to 71 months in prison. In June, Bridges pleaded guilty to siphoning off the bitcoins from Silk Road before moving them an account on Mt. Gox. At the sentencing in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg called the theft “an extremely serious crime consisting of the betrayal of public trust from a public official” and concluded that “a high-end sentence” was warranted, according to Ars Technica. Prosecutors had sought a “high-end Guidelines' sentence […]

The post Silk Road Agent Shaun Bridges Gets 71 Months in Prison appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Meeting minutes, published yesterday, show board chairman Brock Pierce declaring that the Bitcoin Foundation is "close to running out of money".

Indian software services giant Infosys is looking to double its existing staff in Ireland by adding 250 new jobs in areas such as blockchain and analytics. A new expansion plan by Infosys will include new jobs at the company’s first dedicated, product-centric research and development lab outside India in its endeavor to expand operations in Ireland. The company notes that 95 jobs will be added to the facility while a second Irish facility is expected to gain 155 new jobs. The R&D center is specifically positioned to focus on Fintech research and development. The center will embrace an open innovation model, […]

The post Infosys Aims for New Blockchain & Fintech Jobs in Ireland appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Shaun Bridges, the second federal agent taken to court for stealing Bitcoins while investigating Silk Road, has been sentenced to 71 months or almost six years in prison. US District Judge Richard Seeborg told the court that he was compelled to hand...

Bitcoin exchange and wallet provider BitX has extended its Series A round to include undisclosed funding from Venturra Capital.

Microsoft has issued an update to its blockchain toolkit offering, revealing it is exploring how to add Ripple's Interledger protocol.

According to multiple sources close to Overstock, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a S-3 filing for online retailer Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) to issue new publicly traded shares of the company on the Bitcoin blockchain.

An Overstock spokesperson declined to comment on the situation but said that the company would be issuing a formal statement in the next 48 hours.

Form S-3 is a securities registration form that gives companies a simplified process for issuing publicly traded securities. Unlike Form S-1, which is the comprehensive filing required for companies which plan to hold an initial public offering (IPO) of their stock, the S-3 is for companies that already have achieved a certain level of compliance with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Specifically, a company must have at least 12 months of properly filed reports with the SEC to be eligible to file an S-3.

Overstock’s t0 (tee-zero) platform has been working on bringing equity trades and settlement to the blockchain since it was first announced in April 2015. In July, Overstock sold the first cryptobond on the blockchain. As a proof of concept, FNY Managed Accounts agreed to buy the $5 million bond, with assurances in place in case the technology failed.

In an effort to enter the financial industry, t0 acquired Wall Street brokerage firm SpeedRoute for $30.3 million in August 2015. “It’s a routing service that is connected to all 11 exchanges and 25 dark pools in the United States, it’s a very significant node within the national market already … We knew that we wanted to bring the blockchain to Wall Street and rather than build it in isolation and try to get people to adopt it, if we bought a node within the national market system and then built the crypto on top of it so it was all regulatory compliant and speaks the technology of FinTech … We didn’t want to be a Mt.Gox trying to build something and sneak it past the regulators,” said CEO Patrick Byrne in an interview with the Tabb Forum.

For Overstock, though, issuing shares of the company on its platform is a viable proof of concept. Fundamentally, t0 operates with the mentality that “the trade is the settlement.” In traditional equity trades today, the markets operate on a trade date plus three days (T+3) settlement mechanism in which the exchange of payment and securities can take up to three days to settle. With the blockchain, it can be instantaneous and occur at the same time as the trade.

The t0 platform is built utilizing colored coin technology, which allows for fractions of bitcoin to be used to track ownership of many assets besides bitcoin. For example, a colored coin could be used as a token to prove that an individual owns shares of Overstock. This technology is built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and is secured by the distributed public ledger.

Jacob Cohen Donnelly is a consultant and journalist in the bitcoin space. He runs a weekly newsletter about bitcoin called Crypto Brief.

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