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The post Bitstrade Hit With Cease and Desist by New Jersey Watchdog appeared first on CCN

New Jersey’s Attorney General says the online bitcoin investment platform has been fraudulently selling unregistered securities in the state. The New Jersey Bureau of Securities, a division of AG Gurbir S. Grewal’s office, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bitstrade, effective immediately, alleging that the company is in violation of the State’s Uniform Securities Law

The post Bitstrade Hit With Cease and Desist by New Jersey Watchdog appeared first on CCN

• A Wikipedia rival just landed $30 million in an equity deal, partially funded by Mike Novogratz's new crypto merchant bank. 
• Everipedia is moving onto the blockchain to create a crypto-twist of Wikipedia. 

A Wikipedia competitor that is moving onto the blockchain just landed $30 million in funding in an equity deal involving a number of investors, including a fund overseen by Mike Novogratz's new merchant bank Galaxy Digital.

Everipedia, founded in 2015, will use the money to fund a blockchain protocol the company is working on, cofounder and president Sam Kazemian told Business Insider.

The protocol is built around a digital token, kind of like an ether token, which will function as a key to the backend of the online encyclopedia. Holders of the token will be able to create new articles, monitor activity on the site, and update articles. 

"What we are building is a token, not a Chuck-E-Cheese token," Kazemian said. "It has a specific utility."

Those tokens, according to Kazemian, will be airdropped to holders of EOS — another digital currency. The protocol will make the editing process on the site more transparent, Kazemian said. Token holders who want to make an edit will have to put up a small collateral in order to do so, deterring trolls who would have to pay to make dubious edits to articles. The tokens also give holders voting rights over what is added to the site. 

The investment is among the first made by Galaxy Digital, the merchant bank recently launched by Novogratz. 

“We’re delighted to support Everipedia and look forward to the growth of a more modern and inclusive encyclopedia that puts the world’s knowledge on the blockchain,” said Novogratz in a news release. 

Bloomberg reported on Wednesday the crypto enthusiast raised $250 million for the bank. 

Everipedia has 3 million unique visitors a month and over 6 million articles. Still, it's a far cry from Wikipedia's 40 million.

SEE ALSO: High-speed trading firms have been hoping for market chaos just like this

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

The post Legendary Billionaire Investor Carl Icahn Shuns Bitcoin, Blames Himself appeared first on CCN

The activist investor won’t go near bitcoin for three reasons. Carl Icahn in an interview with CNBC expressed his distaste for cryptocurrencies, calling them “ridiculous,” but unlike others who were quick to write digital coins off, he admitted that in this case, the problem may lie with him. In true curmudgeon style coupled with a

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The post JPMorgan: Bitcoin Must Evolve, Blockchain’s Not a Threat appeared first on CCN

It may surprise some people to learn that JPMorgan Chase is invested in the blockchain. Umar Farooq, a banker turned blockchain leader at JPMorgan, discussed how the bank is using the blockchain and didn’t shy away from bitcoin. He was speaking at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit for Crypto in New York earlier this week. He spoke

The post JPMorgan: Bitcoin Must Evolve, Blockchain’s Not a Threat appeared first on CCN

The price of bitcoin clocked a six-day high above $9,000 Saturday as the crypto markets continued to show signs of regained poise.

I have had my Amazon Echo for over a month now. I use it to check the weather, traffic, and sports scores. But frankly, other than that, it’s a speaker taking up space.

As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rise in popularity and their prices swing wildly, so too are they entering the consciousness of mainstream financial institutions.

Not only are big banks looking at the applications of bitcoin and the blockchain technology attached to it, so too are they worrying about the impact the volatility could have on their customers.

This is particularly true when it comes to people using credit cards to speculate on bitcoin.

Although there is only anecdotal evidence of this, there is believed to be a growing number of people maxing out their credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies in the hope that their price will appreciate.

Banks are concerned that wild swings in cryptocurrency prices will expose their customers to heavy losses, making them unable to repay their credit card debts.

As such, some lenders have barred their customers from using credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies, with American banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup leading the way. A number of UK banks have now followed suit, but which ones?

Business Insider asked all the UK's major high street banks for their positions on allowing customers to buy cryptocurrencies on credit. Check them out below.

Lloyds Bank: BANNED

"Across Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA, we do not accept credit card transactions involving the purchase of cryptocurrencies."

A  spokesman for Lloyds said the decision was made to "protect customers" from making unaffordable losses on Bitcoin.

Barclays: ALLOWED

"We constantly review our protections for customers as a responsible bank and lender, and are keeping this matter under close review.

"At present UK customers can use both their Barclays debit card and Barclaycard credit card to purchase cryptocurrency legitimately. We take precautions to assess affordability before extending credit, flag and prevent any suspicious transactions and also closely monitor credit risk."

Royal Bank of Scotland: ALLOWED

"We constantly review transactions but do currently accept credit card transactions for cryptocurrencies," a spokesperson for the RBS group told Business Insider.

• Prince Charles' title has 18 separate elements, and takes up three lines of text.
• It is a mixture of honours, titles, and ceremonial roles.
• Scroll down for an explanation of each individual part, and its history.

British royalty have a lot going on in their full titles — as well as having more given names than normal people, there is also a flurry of dukedoms, honours, and awards to deal with as well.

Of the senior tranche of royals, the most extravagant moniker belongs to Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth's oldest son. As the heir to the British throne, Charles has a lot of noble titles by default, and has also been awarded successive extras over the years.

His full title is more than three full lines long:

His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, PC, ADC, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.

The order above is the full version as presented by Clarence House, Charles' private office. Here, Business Insider breaks down each element and explains what it means:

His Royal Highness (HRH)

This is the style given to senior royals, and is one rung belong "His/Her Majesty", which is reserved for kings and queens. Prince William, Kate Middleton, their children, and Prince Harry also have HRH status.

Prince

This one's easy, and is because he is the son of the monarch. His children, and their children, are also princes or princesses. People they later marry, like Kate Middleton or Meghan Markle, do not become princesses.

Charles Philip Arthur George

Royals don't have surnames like regular people, but do have a lot of given names. They tend to be drawn from a relatively narrow pool: There have been two King Charleses and six King Georges. Philip is the name of Charles' father, while Arthur has been associated with British royalty since the days of legend.

Due to a quirk of royal protocol, when Queen Elizabeth, dies Charles will have the opportunity to take any of his four names as his official "regnal name," and could from then be known as King Philip, King Arthur, or King George. 

Read Business Insider's rundown of everything else that will happen when the Queen dies here.

Prince of Wales

This title belongs to whoever is first in line to the throne. It dates back to 1300s, just after Wales was conquered by the English and ceased to be a separate kingdom. Charles is the 21st English Prince of Wales.

KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO

These abbreviations all represent knightly orders of which Charles is a member, they are:

Knight of the Garter (KG): The most senior chivalrous order, led by the monarch. Foreign royals including the King of Spain, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and the Emperor of Japan are also members.

Here's a photo of Charles, the Queen, and Prince William in full Knights of the Garter get-up:

Knight of the Thistle (KT): Scottish equivalent of the Garter.

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB): The top rank in the Order of the Bath, which is occupied by nobles and figures from public life such as the civil service and military.

Order of Merit (OM): A 20th-century order peopled by figures from the arts and sciences. Members include Sir David Attenborough and Time Berners-Lee.

Knight of the Order of Australia (AK): An order based in Australia.

Companion of the Queen's Service Order (QSO): An order based in New Zealand.

Privy Counsellor (PC)

This is a group of figures who together make the "Privy Council," a large body of people meant to advise the monarch. The Prince is automatically one, along with the Prime Minister, all members of her Cabinet, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, and many other legal and religious figures.

Aide-de-Camp (ADC)

Aides-de-Camp are a small body of personal advisers to the monarch, mostly military figures. In ceremonial uniform, they wear a decorative rope ornament called an aiguillette to mark their status.

Earl of Chester

This is an ancient noble rank linked to the city of Chester, near England's border with Wales.

William I created the title to give to somebody to guard against attack from the Welsh. Since the 1300s it has always belonged to the Prince of Wales.

Duke of Cornwall

This title, the oldest dukedom in England, has automatically belonged to the heir to the throne since 1337. When in Southwest England, Charles is sometimes referred to by this title first.

Unlike the other titles, it comes with a large economic benefit: As duke, Charles owns some 150,000 acres, mainly in southwest England. Its 2017 accounts say the Duchy has assets totalling more than £913 million, and makes him £20 million a year.

Duke of Rothesay

This Scottish title is another longstanding possession of the heir to the throne. Before 1603, when the crowns of England and Scotland were joined, the Duke of Rothesay was the title given to the heir to Scotland's throne — post-1603, one heir has held them both.

When in Scotland, Charles is frequently referred to as the Duke of Rothesay, like in the newspaper headline in the Scottish edition of The Times newspaper.

Prince William and Kate Middleton also have separate Scottish titles, as Business Insider explained last week.

Earl of Carrick and Baron of Renfrew

These are two separate Scottish titles, which also go to the heir to the throne. Carrick and Renfrew both refer to southerly areas of Scotland. Before the crowns merged, the earldom of Carrick was associated with Robert the Bruce, a Scottish king who fought a war of independence against England.

Lord of The Isles

This title refers to the islands to the west of Scotland, which remained functionally independent from the mainland until around 1500. Parts of the territory still speak an entirely separate language, Scots Gaelic.

One of the islands, Lewis, is notable for being the original home of Gaelic speaker Mary Anne MacLeod, the mother of US President Donald Trump.

The lordship of the isles was given to the Scottish heir to the throne, and then later to the English, and therefore now belongs to Charles.

Prince and Great Steward of Scotland

Charles's last titles are also Scottish, and date from the medieval period. "Prince of Scotland" used to refer to a smaller area than the Scotland of today. The Great Steward used to be a separate noble title, but has belonged to the heir to the Scottish throne since 1371. It comes last in the official order of precedence.

When Charles takes the throne, Prince William is likely to inherit almost all of the titles listed above, though he may not get them all immediately.

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• Two UK entrepreneurs announced a $327 million property development in Dubai last year.
• Some of the apartments are being sold in bitcoin.
• Lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone and her billionaire partner Doug Barrowman are behind the project and told Business Insider that all 50 of the apartments so far offered in bitcoin have been sold.

LONDON — A batch of 50 Dubai luxury flats offered for sale in bitcoin have all been snapped up.

Lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone and her billionaire partner Doug Barrowman announced plans last September for a $327 million (£235.7 million) property development in Dubai that would see apartments offered for sale in bitcoin.

Barrowman told Business Insider earlier this month: "We allocated 50 out of 1,300 developments. We’ve sold all out. Some bought ones and twos, and one individual bought ten."

Construction has begun at the site, located in Dubai's Science Park, and it is scheduled for completion in 2020. It is being developed by Barrowman's Dubai-registered firm Aston Developments, part of the Knox Group, which manages a £1.5 billion portfolio of assets including commercial property.

Prices range from studio apartments for $130,000 — currently about 15 bitcoins — to two-bedroom apartments priced at $380,000, or about 45 bitcoins.

Michelle Mone told Business Insider that there were a "mixture" of buyers but that "a lot" fit the stereotype of early bitcoin devotees — young male programmers in t-shirts.

"Actually, the team got a relationship going with them as well," Mone said. "They would talk on the phone — they’re not just like in their hoodies in the dark in the rooms."

Mone and Barrowman discussed sales at their Dubai development during an interview to promote their latest project, Equi, a cryptocurrency-powered investment platform.

"I like to see this crypto space being used to buy real-world assets," Barrowman said. "That’s the spirit of Equi as well. It’s transcending the crypto space into the physical and real world."

Mone said: "It was Doug’s passion and it was his baby because he was frustrated being in the cryptocurrency world with nothing to offer the community."

Barrowman added: "We’re still getting lots of inquiries. We’ve not released another batch. Particularly when bitcoin was riding high in the charts. I think a lot of people were cashing out over the Christmas period."

The pair initially pledged to sell a total of 15o apartments from the development in bitcoin, suggesting more batches will be released in future.

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NOW WATCH: Netflix is headed for a huge profit milestone in 2018

• The Bank of England is making it very clear that it plans to hike interest rates more than once in 2018.
• The bank's communications have been unusually forthright in its last handful of announcements.
• "Former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, once argued that a successful monetary policy should be 'boring.' On that criteria, the week’s developments suggest that the current MPC may not be doing too well," Martin Beck, lead UK economist at Oxford Economics wrote.

LONDON — Listen up. Interest rate hikes are coming, and they're coming at you fast.

That's the message the Bank of England is delivering, and it is doing so in the clearest possible manner for a central bank.

Central bank communication is a famously nuanced and often obtuse art, with the change of a single word in a policy statement able to shift perceptions and move markets.

Now however, the Bank of England is practically shouting at the British people and the markets.

On Thursday, after holding rates in a unanimous vote of its Monetary Policy Committee, the Old Lady of Threadneedle said that policy could be "tightened somewhat earlier and by a somewhat greater extent over the forecast period" if the economy continues to grow as forecast.

"It will be likely be necessary to raise interest rates to a limited degree in a gradual process, but somewhat earlier and to a somewhat greater extent than what we had thought in November," Governor Mark Carney then said in a press conference after the announcement.

For the average reader, those words likely seem fairly dry, and reasonably non-committal — but in the world of central bank-eze, that's as clear as it gets. 

"Former Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King once argued that a successful monetary policy should be “boring”. On that criteria, the week’s developments suggest that the current MPC may not be doing too well," Martin Beck, lead UK economist at Oxford Economics wrote on Friday, summarising the unusually vocal approach the Bank of England is taking to its policy.

"The publication of a surprisingly hawkish Inflation Report led the markets and ourselves to significantly reappraise the future path of Bank Rate."

The Bank made it even clearer it isn't bluffing when on Friday, Ben Broadbent — deputy governor for monetary policy, and Carney's effective number two — gave an interview to the BBC's Wake Up To Money.

Broadbent, who is one of the BoE's best communicators, was pretty much as unequivocal as a policymaker can be in public about the future path of interest rates, saying that should rates rise to 1% by the end of 2018, it would "hardly be a terribly big rise."

"We don't make promises about future interest rates," Broadbent was at pains to say, before effectively doing the opposite.

"There's nothing terribly dramatic going on here. The MPC said that they thought it likely that any rate rises required over the next two to three years would be limited and gradual. We wanted to emphasise that point yesterday. Yes, the path looks slightly higher, and rate rises may come a little bit sooner than expected in November."

"We do not fix the path of interest rates in advance. What is fixed is our remit, and rates change with the economy. Let's be clear, doubling of interest rates from 0.5% is hardly a terribly big rise."

"There's a reason they're low, there's all sorts of long term reasons as to why globally the level of interest rates required to keep inflation stable has been much lower than in the past," he continued.

"But nor do I think if there were to be a couple of 25 basis point rises in a year, that that would somehow be a great shock."

The bank's aggressive communication strategy appears to be doing the trick. Markets are now pricing a hike in May, the next time the quarterly Inflation Report is released — with BNP Paribas suggesting at least a 75% chance of a hike.

By August, the probability is now seen as 100%, according to market expectations.

The bank generally only changes policy on the day of an Inflation Report, as Governor Carney holds a press conference on those days, giving the bank a greater ability to communicate its reasoning behind decisions to the markets and wider public.

"Our expectation that the MPC will go for a further 25 basis points rise in Bank Rate in May has been reinforced and we now expect a second hike in 2018 in November."

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• House prices in hyper-expensive prime central London are starting to recover after a chaotic 2017.
• Knight Frank found that prices in the area declined 0.7% in the year to January, ticking up from -6.7% in January 2017.

LONDON — House prices in hyper-expensive prime central London are recovering after a chaotic run.

New data from Knight Frank found that prices in the area declined 0.7% in the year to January. The relatively modest nature of the price fall contrasts sharply with the annual figure of -6.7% measured in January 2017, and suggests the declines of the last 20 months have bottomed out.

There are other signs of recovery, too. A growing number of new prospective buyers relative to the new number of properties being placed on the market typically indicates that prices are ready to tick up. After four successive years of declines, the ratio of new buyers to new properties finally rose in 2017, as price declines became more modest.

Should the trend continue, prices are likely to tick into positive territory.

What happened in prime central London?

Loosely, Prime Central London is defined as the boroughs in the very centre of the capital, including Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, and Notting Hill.

The market, which counts a large proportion of wealthy foreign buyers, was hit badly by changes to stamp duty — a tax levied on every house purchase — which made it significantly more expensive to buy a house priced over £1 million. 

If you happened to be buying a second home — as many in prime central were — a further 3% surplus was added to the stamp duty bill.

Brexit uncertainty also played a significant role, especially among overseas buyers, as well as recent changes to capital gains tax for foreign investors which offset the discount offered by a cheaper pound.

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• Traders are piling back into the short-volatility trade that imploded earlier this week. 
• Assets under management by the ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF have more than doubled since Tuesday. 

Wall Street is unpredictable by nature, but this is one for the books. 

Traders are pouring back into the trade that imploded earlier this week: Short volatility. 

The ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY) and VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short-Term ETN (XIV) blew up in after-market trading Monday, falling from a combined $3 billion to $150 million — nearly 95% of their value in mere minutes. Credit Suisse said it would pull the plug on the VelocityShares fund later this month.  

But now traders are hoping back on the short VIX bandwagon. Assets in the ProShares fund have risen sharply from $300 million on Tuesday to $640 million Friday morning, according to Bloomberg data. 

The implosion of the two funds — which are designed to return the inverse of the Cboe Volatility Index — followed more than a year of stellar returns fueled by a market stuck in the doldrums.

This week marked a sharp departure from that environment. Not only did the stock market enter an official correction, but the VIX has stayed above 30 points. 

Ed Tilly, the head of Cboe Global Markets, the exchange behind the VIX, said much of the hype around the implosion of the two funds was overblown. 

"The US options and the US futures markets performed exactly as designed not only Monday but yesterday," Tilly said. "The media doesn't print the story that we worked exceptionally well."

"The short VIX strategy isn't going away," he added. 

That hasn't mollified investors' concerns about Cboe. The company has been under pressure this week because of its reliance on VIX-linked revenues. Its stock has dipped by more than 22% since the beginning of the week. 

"While we appreciate management proactively addressing investor concerns and providing some data points, we believe there was not enough detail for investors to regain full comfort in the stock," UBS analyst Alex Kramm said in a note to clients Wednesday after the exchange held an impromptu conference call. "As such, we believe CBOE could be a show-me story for now, with investors closely watching volume and open interest trends to see if market dynamics may significantly change."

SEE ALSO: The markets are spiraling into chaos — and that's helped lift one stock almost 40% this week

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• Maverick Capital, a $10.5 billion hedge fund run by Lee Ainslie, is betting against companies that will be hurt by the maturation of the smartphone market.
• The bet is the firm's largest collective short position, according to a year-end letter dated January 30.
• "The last ten years represented the glory days of the smartphone revolution; however, we believe the next ten years will be very different," the letter said.

Maverick Capital, the $10.5 billion hedge fund run by Lee Ainslie, is betting big against the smartphone market. 

The firm said in a January 30 letter to investors that its largest collective short position is companies that it thinks will be negatively impacted by a slowdown in the smartphone market. Smartphone sales declined slightly in 2017, reversing a trend of rapid growth over the past decade, as Business Insider's Steve Kovach reported. 

Maverick said in the letter that it's explaining its most critical positions to help "investors understand why we believe that our portfolio is well positioned for a meaningful rebound." Maverick was down about 2% through the fall of last year, and the letter describes "disappointing alpha generation on both the long and the short side" since mid-2016. The firm's flagship fund gained 1.8% in January, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named speaking about private matters.

In an analysis penned by Andrew Warford, who is chairman of Maverick's stock committee, the fund set out its thesis for why the smartphone market has hit a "tipping point." The thesis can be summarized as:

• "The last ten years represented the glory days of the smartphone revolution; however, we believe the next ten years will be very different."
• That's because technological change has slowed down, with processing power only increasing incrementally, and network speeds plateauing until the launch of 5G.
• "Optical sensing is interesting, but at this point, the greatest use case appears to be talking Emojis," the letter said. "The lack of killer feature functionality in new smartphones delays consumer upgrades."
• Operators now provide more transparency around the cost of upgrading, which consumers often deciding to keep their phones for longer as a result.
• "Over the last ten years, the value proposition was clear – you get an awful lot in terms of new functionality, which more than justifies the cost to upgrade," the letter said. "Today, the answers to those questions are different – you do not get much which does not come close to justifying the step function increase in the cost to upgrade, and as the below chart show the cost to upgrade changed dramatically with the introduction of the iPhone X. We believe we have reached a tipping point."
• Chinese handset makers have also entered a "down cycle," the letter said, driven by weaker domestic demand. That can have a dramatic impact on the smartphone supply chain, as they run with higher levels of inventory. 
• "If demand does not materialize, they drastically cut orders," the letter said. "We believe smartphone component vendors will be enduring the consequences of these cuts in the first half of 2018."
• As a result, Maverick said most of its capital dedicated to the trade is betting against companies in the supply chain. 

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.