Coin News

The EBA's new proposals for digital currency could make starting a bitcoin exchange more onerous than opening a bank, argues lawyer Adam Vaziri.

Hackers say they’ve breached a hacking group known as the Equation Group, which is widely speculated to be an offshoot of the National Security Agency. The hackers have provided some files including what could be parts of the agency’s surveillance tools, but are demanding millions of dollars in bitcoins for the rest.

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While the Bitcoin Community debates the merits of a bigger block size so as to accommodate more transactions per second (the current rate is approximately 7 transactions per second), the world’s largest corporations – from financial institutions to technology firms – have entered into the blockchain industry with new ideas and protocols to ensure the proliferation of the […]

The post As Bitcoin Debates Block Size, Multinationals Make Blockchain Progress appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A preliminary sale that would find bitcoin mining firm KnCMiner continuing under new ownership has been approved.

The Singapore banking establishment is keen to implement FinTech and blockchain innovations after the launch of its accelerator program, FinLab, earlier this month. On August 3, the Singaporean banking society, the United Overseas Bank (UOB) held its first accelerator program that focused on technology solutions for the financial sector and smart contracts. Nine startups that […]

The post Singapore Boosts Its Blockchain and FinTech Sectors appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

We’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.

No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new financial technology (“fintech”) revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world:  The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential briefing that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.       

Among the big picture insights you’ll get from this new report, titled The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.

And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. BEST VALUE:  Join our BI Intelligence INSIGHTS service level and gain immediate access to this report PLUS much more.  >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But to stay on top of the breaking developments in fintech—positive and negative—the INSIGHTS Membership is your best choice. It gives you a wealth of digital information, including the daily Fintech Briefing, which gives you all the latest news and analysis on the world of fintech.   

But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

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The Central Bank of Nigeria has passed a rule that leaves most Nigerian money transfer operators unable to provide services to that country, making bitcoin a more valuable remittance tool, according to The Daily Post Nigeria. Only three companies – Ria, Money Gram, and Western Union – can continue money transfer operations. Nigerians using these services will have […]

The post Central Bank Action On Money Transfer Services Gives Bitcoin Yet Another Boost appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin startup Blockstream has announced a slew of new hires that serve to further the firm’s already impressive development team.

For a four-week period during November this year coders from around the world will engage in what might be an epic battle for one of the biggest prizes in the blockchain hackathon space. Uniquely, the entire event will take part fully online and streamed live with more than 200 fans already registered. They’ll be able […]

The post More Than 500 Blockchain Hackers to Battle for a $50,000 Prize appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin Press Release: Opair, the Open and Fair cryptocurrency platform is holding the ICO of it crypto token Opair (XPO). August 11, 2016, Berlin – Opair, the new cryptocurrency platform announced the launch of its ICO, on July 26, 2016. The Opair crypto tokens (XPO) can be bought by investors during the month-long ICO period. The […]

The post Opair Project’s Cryptocurrency ICO: Functional Programming, Decentralized Debit Cards and a Unique Blockchain Platform appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Should the Bitfinex hack be seen as a call to action? That's the opinion of Nozomi Hayes, who argues it provides evidence decentralization is needed.

A Chinese court has awarded damages against China’s popular bitcoin exchange, OKCoin, after it was alleged that the company was aiding criminal money laundering and wasn’t properly registered. The court decision only affects OKCoin’s China-based bitcoin exchange, OKCoin.cn, and not its international exchange, OKCoin.com; however, it’s the first significant ruling by a court against a […]

The post Chinese Courts Says OKCoin Operates Illegally, Awards Damages appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A slimming down of the bitcoin protocol called Mimblewimble generates a blinding factor that can prove ownership of bitcoins, making private keys unnecessary, and offering a solution to the need to balance bitcoin privacy against fungibility while also improving scalability, according to a white paper that appeared mysteriously on a bitcoin research site authored by […]

The post Mimblewimble: A Stripped-Down Bitcoin Version Improves Privacy, Fungibility and Scalability appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

By Clare Baldwin

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex's plan to impose losses on all its trading clients for the theft by hackers of $72 million in Bitcoin rests on two flawed pillars, according to lawyers.

The Hong Kong-based exchange said on Aug. 2 that hackers had stolen 119,756 bitcoins from some clients' accounts, the second-biggest such hack in dollar terms, and later said it would spread the losses across all its customers, whether or not they had been hacked or even held bitcoin.

It said customers would forfeit 36 percent of their holdings and be given "BFX tokens" instead that could be redeemed by the exchange or converted to shares in its parent company iFinex.

Both elements of the plan are open to legal challenge, lawyers said.

Imposing losses on customers who were not hacked appears to go against the company's terms of service, said Ryan Straus, a Fenwick & West lawyer who advises financial technology companies on regulation and co-authored the U.S. chapter of a book on bitcoin law.

The terms state "bitcoins in your multi-signature wallets belong to and are owned by you", which Straus said implied a special banking relationship with clients that the Bitfinex plan would breach.

"The depository ... is obligated to return, on demand, the same monetary objects deposited," he said, quoting a line from his book.

The exchange's tokens could also be problematic, said Zach Zweihorn, a lawyer at DavisPolk who specializes in U.S. securities and trading laws.

The way they are currently being described - redeemable by the exchange or convertible to shares in iFinex - places them somewhere between a bond and a security and makes it highly likely that issuing them and trading them would require licenses in the U.S. that Bitfinex doesn't have.

"If they are issuing an equity interest in their parent company, I don't really think the fact that it's evidenced through an electronic token ... really changes the analysis of whether it's a security," said Zweihorn.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not return a request for comment.

Bitfinex did not respond to requests for comment on either issue.

"ROBBED"

Bitfinex's website acknowledges there are "protocol level details" still to be worked out for the tokens, and that U.S. residents can sell but not buy them for the time being.

"I feel like I was robbed," a 33 year-old investor who had a five-figure U.S. dollar amount on the platform told Reuters.

He said he took a 36 percent "haircut" across all assets, including U.S. dollar reserves, and as a U.S. trader he couldn't properly deal in the IOU token.

"Basically they took customers' funds in order to try to stay afloat. Nowhere in their terms of service did it mention that this was a possibility," said the user, who works in the financial services industry.

Bitfinex is nevertheless hoping that traders will be patient and accept that they won't get a better deal if legal challenges force it into liquidation.

"This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context," it told traders in a blog post a week ago, while the tokens gave them some hope of ultimately recovering their losses.

Traders will be aware of the fate of Tokyo-based crypto-currency exchange Mt Gox, which suffered the biggest bitcoin theft of all time in 2014, and consequently went bankrupt. Traders have not recovered any losses, and court proceedings are still ongoing.

"People are afraid to see their assets completely frozen if they sue Bitfinex too early," said 28-year-old Nathan Bourgeois, who is based in France and moderates a 2,000-member traders' messaging group called Whaleclub under the username dr Helmut.

He said he thought people would agree to the deal if there was a chance of getting some of their money back.

But Patrick Murck, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said the Bitfinex plan was unlikely to survive a legal challenge.

"It might be a pyrrhic victory. You might still end up with less money," said Murck, who is also co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation and its former general counsel, but the "odds are fairly low" that nobody will test it in court.

"It takes one grumpy hold-out ... to blow the whole thing up,” he said.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Additional reporting by Hera Poon and Tris Pan; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Even if bitcoin fades into obscurity, finance experts believe that the technology behind it will live on and even change how financial services work. According to a study conducted by Swiss non-profit World Economic Forum, the blockchain, which is th...