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Brave, the browser meant to block ads and trackers by design, has launched what might be a fairly controversial service: the ability to tip websites via bitcoin.

Central banks are playing hot potato with America’s debt. The first six months of this year saw foreign central banks sell a net $192 billion of U.S Treasury bonds – double that of last year.

The post As Central Banks Sell off Record US Debt, Blockchain Offers Cost Cutting for Financial Industry appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Brave, a web browser that blocks third-party trackers and unwanted ads from websites and allows users to reward preferred web content, has detailed how it accomplishes these things in a blog by Brendan Eich, founder, president and CEO. Brave recently introduced a beta version of its bitcoin-based payment system that automatically pays the websites that […]

The post Brave Details Payment Process for Supporting Websites; Users Get Paid Too appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Finance Insider is Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.

The US economy added 151,000 jobs in August, fewer than forecast, while the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9%, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Donald Trump's campaign reacted to the disappointing August jobs report on Friday by contending it was further proof of the “stagnant Clinton-Obama economy.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook has continued to rail against the European Commission for Competition's ruling that the company got a special deal from Ireland to avoid taxes, which is against EU rules. And he said something else that raised some eyebrows.

"We provisioned several billion dollars for the US for payment as soon as we repatriate it, and right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year," Cook told RTE's Paschal Sheehy.

Barclays lent $3 billion (£2.2 billion) to Qatari investors to buy the bank's shares and help it avoid a government bailout at the height of the 2008 crisis, Amanda Staveley, the dealmaker at the centre of the transaction, alleged in court documents.

There's an EpiPen Tycoon computer game, and it is a gentle reminder of the monster we've made of our stock market, according to Business Insider's Linette Lopez. 

In other news, Uber tried to buy Lyft but negotiations fell apart over price, TPG-Axon Capital Management is shutting its office in Hong Kong, and Hillary Clinton announced plan to address 'unjustified' price hikes on lifesaving drugs.

The average American is gripped by fear, according to Byron Wien, Blackstone's vice chairman and investing guru.

Finally, here are 26 airport travel hacks that'll make your next flight a breeze.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday:

See Wall Street's slow, devastating decline in one chart — It has been a rough couple of years on Wall Street.

DEUTSCHE BANK: America's 'energy shock' is over — One of the biggest stories over the past few years has been the struggling American energy sector.

Everyone should stop acting like the world is going to end — The headline averages of the major stock indexes appear to be riding high, sitting near all-time records set just a few weeks ago.

BYRON WIEN: I spent all summer meeting with rich people and no one was excited about anything — Blackstone vice chairman Byron Wien spent the summer meeting with power players in US finance, real estate, technology, and politics.

Samsung just gave a big gift to Apple — The iPhone 7 is expected to be boring.

A shipping giant's bankruptcy could have terrifying ripple effects on the economy — The bankruptcy of the Hanjin shipping line has thrown ports and retailers around the world into confusion, with giant container ships stranded and merchants worrying whether tons of goods will reach their shelves.

BERNANKE: The Fed shouldn't shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet — I attended the Fed’s recent gathering in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming—the first time I had been since the end of my term as Fed chairman. I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with many friends and former colleagues.

This clothing line wants to solve the biggest problems with shopping for a work wardrobe — Ola Hixon used to hate shopping for professional workwear. 

SEE ALSO: This brilliant map renames each US state with a country generating the same GDP

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A web conference this week found a notable selection of industry thought leaders exploring lesser-publicized solutions for bitcoin scaling.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Although many financial services firms are implementing strategies aimed at staving off disruption — including partnering with fintechs, launching incubators, and building solutions to help them better compete — new data suggests that most executives think these initiatives are not enough to protect their businesses.

Eighty-three percent of UK financial services executives believe that the expansion of fintechs will negatively impact their ability to maintain or grow market share over the next 12 months, according to data from Robert Half.

Here are the study’s other key findings:

• Direct competitors are perceived to be the biggest threat. Twenty-six percent of executives believe that online investment firms are most likely to cause disruption to incumbents over the next year, while 24% said it would be digitally focused challenger banks. These fintechs most closely resemble existing institutions and provide a wide array of services, making them a threat to multiple areas of business for legacy banks and investment firms. 
• Financial services firms are seriously worried about competition for talent. Ninety-one percent of executives believe that the growth of the fintech industry will negatively impact their ability to attract new employees, while 83% are concerned about losing staff to fintech competitors. This concern was recently echoed by HSBC's head of digital, Raman Bhatia, who said the banks that win the war for talent will be the ones able to compete in the future. 

We think that these executives' fears are largely unfounded, and that in the future, we will see more partnerships between incumbents and fintechs. Eventually, we expect to witness the acquisition of these fintechs by incumbents, once it's been ensured that the new technology and business models work.

This will reduce potential competitors, while bolstering activity for financial services firms by enabling them to operate more efficiently and offer more services. In turn, they will likely become more competitive with any remaining stand-alone fintechs. 

Regardless of the executives' feelings, it's clear that 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 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, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem 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 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. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and 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 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.

Join the conversation about this story »

WeBank, launched last year by China’s internet giant Tencent whose instant messaging service Wechat and QQ is used by around 650 million people, is to present at Shanghai’s Global Blockchain Summit on the 23rd of September. As China’s first online-only bank, WeBank has extended $4.5 billion in loans, but faces stiff competition from Ant Financial’s […]

The post A Chinese Online-Only Bank Will Present at the Global Blockchain Summit appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

In March, Bitcoin Magazine covered the launch of the Brave browser, which offers faster browsing by replacing ads with clean and light ads....

The post Brave to Integrate Bitcoin Micropayments: For "Users Who Will Take a Stand and Fight Back" appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Brave — a web browser co-created by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich —launched Brave Payments in beta yesterday.

The Brave browser blocks ads, but it also offers a novel solution that allows publishers to keep generating revenue. Brave Payments allows users to top up an account with bitcoin, select a monthly budget, and select sites that they would like to pay when they make a visit.

Brave automatically pays these publishers based on the amount of time users of the browser spend on the publishers' web properties and how much the user is willing to give. BitGo is providing bitcoin wallets for Brave users and Coinbase is providing the marketplace for bitcoins to be purchased.  

Brave faces three hurdles before it can be a successful micropayments browser: 

• Gaining platform share: Chrome dominates platform share with nearly 50% share of global usage, followed by Safari with nearly 13%. Browser usage is habitual and Brave will need to provide a compelling case for why users should adopt it — the ability to pay publishers likely won't be compelling for most people. 
• Getting the support of publishers: Publishers that use ads as a revenue stream could do a lot to raise awareness about Brave, but they are unlikely to do so. Publishers in the industry has already labeled Brave's ad-blocking technology as "blatantly illegal" and for publishers with a softer stance, supporting Brave would still be a big gamble. Publishers could take the view that ad-blocking is here to stay and Brave presents an opportunity to win back revenue, but even if Brave grows in popularity, there is no guarantee that its users' will top up their accounts to pay publishers. 
• Convincing people to pay: There is some evidence that people will pay for web content. Almost 15% of US adults say they would prefer an internet experience with no ads in which all content was paid for, according to survey data from Zogby Analytics. But that preference doesn't necessarily indicate wat behavior will look like. The friction associated with downloading a new browser, learning about bitcoin, and buying it in order to pay for content that is otherwise free is significant. 

Brave technology is a solution to one of the big hurdles to a fee model based on time spent on content. Even if people begin paying for website visits, they are unlikely to pay much and these online transactions are typically made with credit and debit cards. These small-value card payments are a big problem for publishers because they carry fixed per-transaction fee in a addition to a variable fee based on the amount spent.

That means that low value transactions tend to be less profitable and can even create losses. But fees for Bitcoin transactions are next to nothing, which makes low-value payments viable online. BitGo's pricing for outgoing transactions is 0.1% of volume. 

Blockchain technology, which is best known for powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is gaining steam among finance firms because of its potential to streamline processes and increase efficiency. The technology could cut costs by up to $20 billion annually by 2022, according to Santander.

That's because blockchain, which operates as a distributed ledger, has the ability to allow multiple parties to transfer and store sensitive information in a space that’s secure, permanent, anonymous, and easily accessible. That could simplify paper-heavy, expensive, or logistically complicated financial systems, like remittances and cross-border transfer, shareholder management and ownership exchange, and securities trading, to name a few. And outside of finance, governments and the music industry are investigating the technology’s potential to simplify record-keeping.

As a result, venture capital firms and financial institutions alike are pouring investment into finding, developing, and testing blockchain use cases. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, have begun researching the technology in-house, or have helped fund startups with products rooted in blockchain. 

Jaime Toplin, research associate for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on blockchain technology that explains how blockchain works, why it has the potential to provide a watershed moment for the financial industry, and the different ways it could be put into practice in the coming years.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Spending on capital markets applications of blockchain is expected to grow at a 52% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019, according to Aite Group, to reach $400 million that year.
• Banks and major financial institutions are working both collaboratively and independently to develop blockchain tech. Over 50 major financial institutions are involved with collaborative blockchain startups, like R3 CEV or Chain. And many are investing in the technology on their own as well.
• Putting blockchain to use for real-world transactions is likely not that far off. If working groups' tests are successful, firms could be using it to transact real value as early as the end of this year and we could see widespread industry application within the next few years. 

In full, the report:

• Examines the funding increases that are pouring into blockchain
• Assesses why blockchain is becoming so popular and what factors are driving up increased research and development
• Explains in full how blockchain technology work and what assets make it valuable and vulnerable
• Identifies pain points in the financial industry and profiles how various firms are using blockchain to solve them
• Demonstrates the challenges to mainstream adoption and their potential solutions

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and 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 however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of blockchain technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

A popular darknet marketplace has announced that it has prohibited the sale of fentanyl after a dramatic rise in the number of deaths related to fentanyl overdose in the last two years. According to NBC, in Philadelphia, there has been a 636 percent increase in overdoses from the medical-grade opioid fentanyl. What is Fentanyl? Fentanyl […]

The post Darknet Marketplace Issues Complete Ban Against a Drug appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

“Let’s Raise the Bitcoin Block Size!” That’s Roger Ver’s take on the block size debate. But the Bitcoin leader has been such a staunch proponent of increasing the block size, we at CCN, thought we’d take some of Roger’s most recent quotes on increasing the block size so that Bitcoin can take on more transactions […]

The post 7 Recent Roger Ver Quotes on Block Size Debate and Bitcoin appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Analysts reacted positively to news that exchange Bitfinex had redeemed roughly 1% of its outstanding debt tokens on 1st September.

The private blockchain consortium led by blockchain technology startup R3 has added its newest member in China Merchants Bank, a Chinese banking giant. Guangdong-based China Merchants Bank (CMB), the first commercial bank wholly owned by corporate legal entities in China is now the second Chinese member to join the R3-led banking blockchain consortium. As of […]

The post R3 Blockchain Consortium Includes Second Chinese Member appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The details of cyberattacks resulting in breaches of user data from two prominent bitcoin websites – bitcoin exchange BTC-e and Bitcointalk.or, the largest bitcoin forum around –  have been revealed. Data breach indexing and monitoring resource LeakedSource has revealed details surrounding data breaches suffered by bitcoin exchange Btc-e in 2014 and bitcoin discussion forum Bitcointalk.org in […]

The post Bitcoin Exchange BTC-E and BitcoinTalk Forum Breaches’ Details Revealed appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Brave, a web browser that blocks third-party trackers and ads, has introduced a beta version of its bitcoin-based payment system that automatically pays the websites that users want to support. Brave Payments allows users to reward sites for content they like without being tracked, including by Brave. The beta was announced in a blog by […]

The post Brave Browser Launches Bitcoin Micropayments For Rewarding User-Preferred Websites appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.