Coin News

As the #3 cryptocurrency in the world for consumer payments behind Bitcoin and Litecoin, Dash is in the spotlight for doubling its blocksize (from 1 MB to 2 MB) recently. Furthermore, the alternate currency claims to be superior to Bitcoin in a number of ways such as: aiding in better person-to-person commerce  due to its […]

The post Dash Increases Its Block Size as Founder Confirms Instantaneous Transactions appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

As the #3 cryptocurrency in the world for consumer payments behind Bitcoin and Litecoin, Dash is in the spotlight for doubling its blocksize (from 1 MB to 2 MB) recently. Furthermore, the alternate currency claims to be superior to Bitcoin in a number of ways such as: aiding in better person-to-person commerce  due to its […]

The post Dash Increases Its Block Size as Founder Confirms Instantaneous Transactions appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Ripple, a provider of financial settlement solutions, and SBI Holdings, Inc., a financial services company, have partnered in launching a new company, SBI Ripple Asia, to serve China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and ASEAN countries. SBI Ripple Asia will establish a sales and engineering group to sell and install its enterprise solutions for cross-border payments at banks. […]

The post Ripple Teams With SBI Holdings To Meet Rising Asian Demand For Cross-Border Payments appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Ripple, a provider of financial settlement solutions, and SBI Holdings, Inc., a financial services company, have partnered in launching a new company, SBI Ripple Asia, to serve China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and ASEAN countries. SBI Ripple Asia will establish a sales and engineering group to sell and install its enterprise solutions for cross-border payments at banks. […]

The post Ripple Teams With SBI Holdings To Meet Rising Asian Demand For Cross-Border Payments appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

First Bitcoin Capital Corp., which bills itself as the first vertically-integrated, publicly-traded bitcoin entity, has signed an evaluation agreement with Emercoin International Development Group to provide distributed blockchain services for business and personal use. First Bitcoin Capital Corp. is a Vancouver, Canada-based mining company holding concessions in gold in Venezuela and is working on a […]

The post First Bitcoin Capital Corp. Signs Evaluation Pact With Emercoin, Will Promote Its Technology appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

On January 20, 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, during the panel on Transformation of Finance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a paper titled “Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations.”

“Virtual currencies and their underlying technologies can provide faster and cheaper financial services, and can become a powerful tool for deepening financial inclusion in the developing world,” said IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. “The challenge will be how to reap all these benefits and at the same time prevent illegal uses, such as money laundering, terror financing, fraud and even circumvention of capital controls.”

The paper is presented as a “Staff Discussion Note.” These documents showcase policy-related analysis and research being developed by IMF staff members and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate, with the disclaimer: “The views expressed in Staff Discussion Notes are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.” Plausible deniability all the way, but presenting the document at Davos seems to strongly suggest some degree of official support.

A key conclusion of the paper is that the distributed ledger concept has the potential to change finance by reducing costs and allowing for deeper financial inclusion in the longer run, states the IMF press release. This could be especially important for remittances, where transaction costs can be high, around 8 percent. Distributed ledgers can also shorten the time required to settle securities transactions, which currently take up to three days, as well as lower counterparty and settlement risks.

At the same time, notes the IMF paper, virtual currencies based on distributed ledger technology can also serve as vehicles for money laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion. Achieving a balanced regulatory framework that guards against risks without suffocating innovation is a challenge that will require extensive international cooperation.

A conclusion of the IMF paper is that virtual currencies fall short of the legal concept of currency or money. While acknowledging that there is no generally accepted legal definition of currency or money, the authors note that both are associated with the power of the state to issue currency and regulate the monetary system.

Currently, according to the IMF, virtual currencies are unable to function as money because of the high price volatility, the relatively small size of the virtual economy, and the fact that virtual currencies are hardly being used as independent units of account in a closed-circuit economy. In fact, notes the report, the retailers who accept payment in virtual currency usually quote prices in fiat currency.

After a simplified explanation of distributed ledger technologies for virtual currencies, the paper focuses on regulatory issues.

“The potential for rapid change in the financial industry engendered by virtual currencies is a challenge for financial regulators and supervisors,” note the IMF authors, adding that the absence of effective regulations has contributed to both benefits and risks.

The IMF authors make a difference between cryptocurrencies and “legitimate” uses of the underlying distributed ledger technology: “The growing interest in blockchain technology, independent from a [virtual currency] scheme, a priori raises fewer policy concerns, because the technology would be used in a closed system administered by regulated financial institutions.”

While advocating regulation of virtual currencies, the paper acknowledges that there are unique regulatory challenges, including the fact that the geographically decentralized nature of virtual currency networks like Bitcoin doesn’t fit easily within traditional regulatory models based on local jurisdictions. Another challenge is the fact that the traceability of virtual currency transactions is is limited due to user anonymity and anonymizing service providers that obfuscate the transaction chain.

In fact, the push to increased regulation of virtual currencies is likely to be countered by the emergence of next-generation privacy-preserving digital currencies like Zcash.

The IMF paper concludes with a list of principles that could guide national authorities in further developing their regulatory responses. Besides the guidelines mentioned above, it’s worth noting that the IMF authors realize that new closed-circuit business models, where virtual money is re-used instead of exchanged for fiat, could escape regulations, and propose to extend regulations to wallet providers.

The IMF paper confirms two current trends: Virtual currencies based on distributed ledger technology are increasingly considered by top financial institutions as a necessary part of future mainstream fintech, and at the same time regulatory pressures are increasing.

Photo Mikhail Klimentyev / Creative Commons

The post IMF: Virtual Currencies and Their Underlying Technologies Can Provide Faster and Cheaper Financial Services appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

The long-lasting block-size dispute has catapulted into the center of attention again. One of the most talked-about developments is Segregated Witness, of which a public testnet iteration was launched last week. The innovation as recently proposed by Blockstream co-founder and Bitcoin Core developer Dr. Pieter Wuille is a centerpiece of a scalability “roadmap” set out by Bitcoin Core.

To find out where the broader development community stands on Segregated Witness, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to library and wallet developers; those who will need to do the heavy lifting in order to utilize the innovation once rolled out.

In part 4 of this series: Mycelium developer Leo Wandersleb.

Segregated Witness

Wuille’s Segregated Witness proposal is set to offer several improvements to the Bitcoin protocol. The benefit that has received the most attention is its potential to effectively increase the block size to a range from 1.75 megabytes to 2 megabytes without requiring a hard fork. Interestingly, however, many Bitcoin developers are more excited about the other Bitcoin protocol improvements that Segregated Witness has to offer.

Wandersleb, whose Mycelium has officially committed to integrating Segregated Witness once rolled out, acknowledged the importance of the innovation.

“Segregated Witness is not a block size increase, but a technical necessity to fix completely different issues, by also producing less load on the blockchain,” Wandersleb explained. “There is, however, a realistic chance that it will take a long while before it has an effect on total transaction throughput.”

The Mycelium developer believes, however, that Wuille’s Segregated Witness proposal is the best way forward, at this point.

“The fact that all of this is possible as a soft fork, which results in only a slightly more ugly protocol than a hard fork, is amazing at this point,” Wandersleb said. “It allows anyone to delay implementing the change, making sure nobody will be left behind.”

As such, Wandersleb is dedicated to implementing Segregated Witness in the Mycelium wallet.

“We have [been] experimenting with the Segregated Witness testnet a bit; it will probably be a very reasonable amount of work to implement, and can be done on our own schedule. Moreover, delayed implementation will not result in our users losing money, beyond the potentially higher fees they would have to pay,” he said.

Moving Forward

Roll-out of Segregated Witness on the Bitcoin network is currently scheduled for April of this year. Once a super-majority of miners agrees on the solution, Segregated Witness will be activated, and can be utilized by wallet software.

As what is perhaps the most notable difference between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Classic, the former plans to roll out Segregated Witness through a soft fork, while the latter wants to deploy a block size increase through a hard fork requiring all full nodes on the network to switch.

Wandersleb has voiced support for a block size increase hard fork in the past, but has come around since.

“Maybe we fell for the trap of talking about the block size, rather than more abstract goals we should commit to instead,” Wandersleb explained. “The Number One priority is censorship resistance. Without that, Bitcoin would be just another PayPal. If censorship resistance is covered we can work on priority Number Two: process all the world’s morning coffees and more.”

And, commenting on the scalability road map as set out by Bitcoin Core:

“I believe that Bitcoin Core, committed to these values, should acknowledge that increasing the block size or other hard forks might possibly be necessary. Nothing more. No tiny hard fork now, but an acknowledgement that avoiding hard forks at all costs might not be enough.”

For more information on Segregated Witness, see Bitcoin Magazine’s three-part series on the subject, or part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this development series.

The post Mycelium's Leo Wandersleb: Segregated Witness a Technical Necessity appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Bitcoin users have not been shy about using the currency to make large purchases in the past. With the wide range of Bitcoin-friendly retailers on the Internet, it’s become even easier to purchase everything from land to jewelry with the digital currency.

As of January 17, 2016, in Philadelphia, you could buy a condo. The new Bitcoin-friendly condominiums went up for sale in the city’s historic Manayunk district at a price of around $365,000 – or 795 bitcoins, according to Curbed. This makes them the first condos in the city to be sold with Bitcoin users in mind.

A quick look at the Falcon Condominiums website reveals that the building was once home to The Polish Falcons Club. Now, condos sprawl throughout the structure, boasting hardwood flooring and extra-large windows with views of the city. State-of-the-art kitchens and private outdoor terraces round out the list of amenities, but could flexible payment options also be driving a new type of buyer to these properties?

It appears that those who have big money to spend are particularly interested in purchasing property using Bitcoin. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported on a Lake Tahoe property that sold for $1.6 million in bitcoin.

BitPremier founder and CEO Alan Silbert was behind the first large real estate transaction involving Bitcoin back in 2014. The transaction totaled around $500,000, according to HousingWire. Since then, Silbert has continued to see the market evolve directly on BitPremier.

“I think we are still too early in Bitcoin’s evolution to see substantial changes to the real estate market, but it has certainly started people thinking about disruption to the space,” said Silbert.

BitPremier, the Bitcoin luxury marketplace, is specifically geared toward consumers who want to spend their bitcoins on fast cars, vacation homes and everything in between (think private islands). Sellers who want to get rid of their luxuries can do so on BitPremier as well, making it a go-to spot on the Internet for all things related to Bitcoin trading.

“For now, the appreciation of bitcoin to date has created some wealthy Bitcoiners who want to diversify into other assets, be it real estate, commodities or whatever,” Silbert continues. “Real estate is seeing the benefit of that trend, as we witnessed first-hand with the villa sale BitPremier brokered between a property developer in Bali and an early Bitcoin adopter in the U.S.”

But Silbert sees the impact of Bitcoin spreading far beyond the real estate market.

“Every major financial institution has one or more people researching Bitcoin or the blockchain. I give everybody the disclaimer that it is a high-risk investment and they should only invest money they can afford to lose. That being said, Bitcoin has come a long way in a short period of time and the future looks very exciting.”

Krystle Vermes is a professional writer, blogger and podcaster with a background in both online and print journalism.

The post Real Estate Latest Bitcoin-Friendly Luxury appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

SBI Holdings, the financial services business division of Japan’s SBI Group, has announced it is creating a new company with Ripple.

Goldman Sach’s co-head of technology, Don Duet, was recently featured on a company sponsored podcast titled “The Digitization of Finance.” The topics were broad, the resolutions ephemeral. But what is most important is that industry juggernauts are coming around to meaningful recognition regarding tech adoption. In Duet’s half-hour interview he addressed both the macro and […]

The post Goldman Sachs and “The Digitization of Finance” appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Will businesses of the future use cryptocurrencies for payments? Mark Højgaard thinks so.

“If you talk to any financial institution today, everybody says payment will be on the blockchain in the future," the CEO of Danish cryptocurrency business told Business Insider.

"I think we’re beyond where we’re wondering if the blockchain will be used for payments or not."

It's true that banks are going crazy for the potential of blockchain technology, which was first developed to underpin cryptocurrency bitcoin. Forty two have signed up to a working group, R3, looking at possible uses for the technology. Payments is just one of them.

Copenhagen-headquartered Coinify is not involved in the discussions but is hoping to ride the wave of blockchain enthusiasm in the financial service world right now.

The company runs a bitcoin trading platform for users to buy and sell digital currency. But it is also a payment service provider (PSP) that lets banks and merchants accept payment in 17 different cryptocurrencies while getting paid in their own local currencies.

“Once we get bitcoin coming in from our payments side, because we keep the bitcoins and pay out local currencies to our merchants, we can use those in our trade facility where we have demand of bitcoin," Højgaard says. "We make actually a profit on receiving bitcoin and selling bitcoin.”

It is on the payments side rather than the trading side that Coinify wants “to place our big bets," according to Højgaard. The company is signing partnerships with payment service providers around the world, offering a simple digital plug-in called an API that lets clients of the PSP easily accept payments in bitcoin and other digital currencies.

"9 months ago, you couldn’t get in touch with anyone from the payment services industry," Højgaard says. "But today, we see people calling us for our services in the PSP sector and we have 15 contracts."

Coinify's ambition is to be the go-to service provider for anyone who wants to accept any blockchain-based payment, be it bitcoin or otherwise. Højgaard says: "If there is a payment to be done on the blockchain, we are the ones to use, based on our great, very versatile platform."

Blockchain — also known as distributed ledger technology — is a name for a protocol underpinning bitcoin that uses complex cryptography and distributed ledgers, or copies of records in multiple places, to regulate, record, and enable transactions using bitcoin.

You cannot see when the user will adopt this and you can not even say that it’s going to be bitcoin. I cannot even say when the big uptick will be

Finance firms hope it has the potential to be faster than current systems and cut costs by eliminating the middle men who usually sit in between any transaction. But many are looking to use alternative blockchains to bitcoin's.

Højgaard says: "There will be hybrid models, there will be a lot of new alternatives, there might be a new blockchain – not the bitcoin blockchain."

Between the two sides of the business, Coinify is the fourth biggest bitcoin company in the world by volume. Over 15,000 merchants around the world are signed up and it has 10 to 15 new ones signing up each day. Højgaard highlights Danish food delivery start-up Hungry.dk as one of its biggest clients.

But Coinify's "big bets" rely on uptake of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for payments. US bitcoin companies that have banked on big consumer take up have faltered because people aren't using the digital currency anywhere near as much as they hoped. Coinify is hoping to avoid the same pitfalls by keeping things small.

“We are a lean startup business and we still act and think as a lean startup," CEO Mark Højgaard told Business Insider. Despite the volumes it deals with, Coinify still only employs 18 people.

"We spend out money wisely and we are hopefully having enough traction to maintain our position. We have great volume, we are actually making money, but we are not making more than we are spending of course. But we don’t have that same kind of burn rate that you see in the US."

But Højgaard concedes: "Nobody can tell the future right now. We had a big discussion yesterday with a lot of banks in a blockchain masterclass. We had a lot of financial institutions talking about what the future can be like and nobody can actually see at this point. That’s a risk factor in this.

"You cannot see when the user will adopt this and you can not even say that it’s going to be bitcoin. I cannot even say when the big uptick will be." Still, he thinks there will be an uptick.

There has been much discussion in the bitcoin community about whether the currency can actually handle the level of transactions that mainstream banking would require it to. High-profile developer Mike Hearn said this month that bitcoin's network is "on the brink of technical collapse."

Many banks also believe that bitcoin will be eclipsed by its underlying technology, with Goldman Sachs saying: "Bitcoin was just the opening act, with the Blockchain ready to take center stage."

Højgaard is unfazed. He says: "Us as a company, we are independent of the bitcoin and blockchain. We simply aggregate to the merchants. In that sense I think the technology will be used in some sense. Maybe the consumers doesn’t even need to know because it will be the underlying platform."

Coinify is currently in the process of raising a Series A round of funding but Højgaard would not disclose how much the company is targetting. He said Coinify hoped to transact €100 million (£76 million, $108 million) this year.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: London's new 'anti-gym' chain 1Rebel features music curated by top DJs and free beer

The state of New Hampshire isn’t accepting tax payments in the form of Bitcoin, yet. In what would have otherwise been a landmark legislative development in the application of Bitcoin, the New Hampshire House of Representatives has collectively decided that they are not quite ready to accept tax payments in the form of Bitcoin. Last year […]

The post New Hampshire Not Quite Ready To Accept Bitcoin Tax Payments This Year appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A draft bill that would ban “money surrogates” was submitted to the Russian Parliament last month. But what might it mean for digital currencies?

Bitcoin Press Release: FortuneJack Casino recently launched their Bitcoin Poker platform offering freerolls, up to 40% rakeback and more. Players can also purchase Bitcoin directly from the website or use the casino’s own cryptocurrency exchange. Provably fair Bitcoin casino FortuneJack is pleased to announce the launch of their new Bitcoin Poker platform. Anyone can play […]

The post FortuneJack Launches Bitcoin Poker Platform With Rakeback, Freerolls and More appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin Press Release: A small development team from Australia are poised to bring a potential trillion dollar industry to bitcoin. A team of three 20-something developers (Jesse Gileppa, Dao Zhou and Julie Lovisa), lead by Noel Lovisa, have created an entirely new software development technology, a technology that utilises a peer-to-peer network of software experts […]

The post Closing the Loop: Bringing a Trillion Dollar Industry to Bitcoin appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Cyber crime is growing problem for all businesses.

But it's not just about people on computers in remote locations trying to find a crack a firewall, there's a physical element too.

Attaching a device via USB to a company's computer can increase the effectiveness of a cyber attack – it's just a case of getting into the office to do it.

According to Peter Connolly, chief executive of Toro Risk Solutions, a gang can bribe a cleaner to do just that for as little as £80 ($116).

In 2013, Barclays lost £1.3 million in a hacking attack after an insider fitted a device that allowed a gang to access accounts.

Experienced criminals are often able to just talk their way in. Toro tests how vulnerable a company is to social engineering – or how easy it is for someone to gain physical access to corporate servers or computers by pretending to be someone else.

"It's real Derren Brown stuff," Connolly said.

He added that professional gangs of cyber criminals can encrypt a company's data for a certain period of time, demanding a ransom from the company with threats to wipe information on customers and erasing weeks or months of work.

Ransoms are often demanded in Bitcoin, the digital cryptocurrency, Connolly said.

Gangs have found that their victims are so confused by the demands that many have set up English-language telephone hotlines that help them convert their pounds and dollars into Bitcoin and pay the ransom.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 7 inventors who were killed by their own inventions

The blockchain is allowing musicians to monetize their work and engage with fans more directly, according to a recent CNN news report by Edith Suarez. By embedding music in the blockchain, those involved in its creation can get paid immediately in cryptocurrency. Hence, the blockchain has the potential to change the way the music industry operates. The […]

The post How The Blockchain Is Changing The Music Business appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A bill which would have allowed New Hampshire taxpayers to pay their taxes in Bitcoin was voted down this month - but the bill's author isn't giving up yet.