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The story of bitcoin’s biggest hacks and thefts is the story of bitcoin itself. From its early days and its first hack, to the biggest theft of all time, bitcoin’s utopian promises often turned into a dystopian reality where  scammers, thieves, unaccountable and often amateur exchanges, some, even fully anonymous, proliferated in a wild west […]

The post The Bitcoin Biggest Hacks and Thefts of All Time (So Far) appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

 Of all the products I’ve seen this year none are more worthy of our time and attention than the Ripple Rug. Created by Fred and Natasha Ruckel, the Ripple Rug is a rug with holes and lumps in it. Your cat can climb inside, stick its paws out, and generally get all up inside that business. It’s 35 inches on each side and made of recycled plastic bottles. Why is the Ripple Rug so… Read More

Reimagining traditional finance to dreaming of alternative, self-sovereign futures has become possible with blockchain technology. That’s...

The post Simon Denny: Exploring the World of Blockchain Through Art appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Like any good movie, mission impossible music metaphorically came on last night around midnight London time, just hours before the opening of Devcon2, as Geth nodes – used by most of ethereum’s network – suddenly started crashing at block 2,283,416. Some villain, who presumably just wanted to see the world burn, had coded a smart […]

The post Ethereum Takes the Stage As Devcon2 Begins appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Bitcoin suffered a black eye in August because of the Bitfinex hack, but the digital currency quickly mounted a recovery.

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Banks collaborating with fintechs for mutual benefit has long been the preferred narrative when discussing the future of financial services.

But this narrative may soon need to be updated, according to data from a new study by IDC and SAP. While a third of global banks continue to view fintechs as collaborators, nearly a quarter now see them as acquisition targets. The survey also showed that there are notable differences between how banks in different regions feel toward fintechs:  

• Worldwide, six out of ten banks would partner with a fintech. Of that 60%, 34% would collaborate with a fintech, while 25% would consider acquiring one.  
• Banks in Asia-Pacific are keenest to acquire fintechs. Thirty-one percent of banks said they view fintechs as acquisition targets, while banks in North America were similarly keen, with 30% seeing fintechs this way. 
• Latin American banks are likeliest to collaborate with fintechs. Thirty-eight percent of Latin American banks view fintechs as possible collaborators, while in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), the figure is 36%.   
• Banks in EMEA feel most threatened by fintechs. Thirty percent of banks in this region said they view fintechs as a threat, and therefore as competitors. Within Europe, the UK, Ireland, and Italy are most willing to collaborate with fintechs, while the Nordics, Germany, and France are least willing. 

We will likely see more incumbents starting to view fintechs as acquisition targets going forward. This is because some banks are starting to move past the "testing stage" in which they collaborated with fintechs, either directly or through investment, to assess new technologies without fully committing to them. They now likely feel in a position to decide which fintech solutions effectively meet their needs and are worth going all in on.

Acquiring a fintech provides banks with full control of the solution, enabling them to shape it to their specific needs, while also allowing them to market innovations under their own brand. From a fintech's perspective, a sale can be attractive because it removes the pressure of having to achieve profitability and scale independently in an increasingly crowded market. 

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.

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An MLM-based investment scheme that used bitcoin as its transactional currency has gone bust, in Vietnam. A Vietnamese investment scheme that used multi-level-marketing (MLM) and bitcoin as its currency to promise investors returns of 144% a month has come to an end. MLM trading is illegal by law in Vietnam, as deemed by the Vietnam […]

The post Vietnamese Bitcoin MLM Scheme Sees Deposits of $1 Million appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Reddit ser DjPxH recently took to the Bitcoin subreddit to complain that digital casino BitStarz, a regulated entity of the Caribbean island Curacao, was withholding a recent sizeable win of around 5 BTC he had achieved. DjPxH wrote in distress: I don’t mind providing address, bill utility (as I already did), bank account statement, but […]

The post Bitcoin Casino Delivers 5 BTC Winnings After KYC Standoff appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Synereo, the startup behind its namesake decentralized blockchain-based social network has burnt half its holdings of pre-mined AMPs, its native token cryptocurrency. Half of all existing AMPs have been destroyed by Tel-Aviv based blockchain startup Synereo in a move to relinquish its control of over half of the blockchain’s native currency. An aggregated amount of […]

The post Blockchain Startup Synereo Destroys Native Cryptocurrency Worth $145 Million appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

A Japanese TV show called “BitGirls” will begin next month with a cryptocurrency theme. The show will feature interactive blockchain voting and a crowdsale to be hosted on a Japanese exchange, Zaif. Viewers who want to participate will receive tokens and use them to vote for future show themes. The show is expected to raise […]

The post Japanese TV Show ‘BitGirls’ to Feature Interactive Blockchain Voting ICO appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

French bank BNP Paribas’ Securities Services, its custody arm, has unveiled a blockchain platform that will enable private companies to lend money to business using mini-bonds in exchange for company shares. In an announcement today, BNP Paribas has announced a new blockchain platform that will enable investors to issue mini-bonds for private company shares, as […]

The post Blockchain Tapped by French Bank BNP for Mini-Bonds appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Press Release: Every day innovative technologies become an indispensable part of our lives. If 20 years ago we could hardly get used to mobile phones, today we easily master the “Internet of Things”, “Smart homes”, navigation maps on smartphones and other easy-to-life innovations. The financial world is also not lagging behind the progress: electronic and […]

The post New Money on the Net appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.