Coin News

 For months now, much of the media attention on the crypto space has been directed at ebbs and flows in the price of bitcoin on one side, and whiz-bang ICOs on the other. The price of the most valuable cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (specifically the BTC chain), has backpedaled significantly from highs set in December 2017. The chart below shows pricing data from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index… Read More

The post Upstart MMA Promotion Primal FC Wants to Pay Fighters in Bitcoin appeared first on CCN

Upstart MMA promotion Primal FC has a plan to set itself apart from industry heavyweights UFC and Bellator, and it involves Bitcoin. The Phuket, Thailand-based promotion held its inaugural event, Dark Moon Rising, in 2017 and is preparing to begin adding sponsors for its next one, slated for later this year. Primal FC CEO Joe

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The post Bitcoin Price Napkin Math – $15,882 appeared first on CCN

Economist 1, “Look, there is a $20 bill on the ground!” Economist 2,  “Can’t be. If there was a $20 bill on the ground, somebody would have already picked it up.” It’s an old joke, not exactly very funny, but it does illustrate how economists think.  Economists have the luxury of making assumptions.  If the government

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This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Homeowners across America are selling their homes for bitcoin to cash in on the cryptocurrency bubble.

Over the last year, an increasing number of real estate listings have begun accepting or requesting cryptocurrency for payment. Some sellers only accept bitcoin as payment.

According to Mashable, real estate site Trulia had about 80 listings that mentioned cryptocurrency last month, while Redfin said it's seen the number of listings accepting cryptocurrency rocket from 75 in December to 134 in January.

To make it work, you need two parties to agree on the transaction, according to realtor Piper Moretti, who has closed five sales using bitcoin.

Typically, the buyer and seller agree on a fixed price in dollars and then decide on a fair exchange rate at closing. The bitcoins are then converted to cash by a third party, like BitPay, and the cash is then given to the seller. The buyers take on all the risk, Moretti said.

The opportunity has allowed newly-minted bitcoin millionaires to offload some of their cryptocurrency, which changes value constantly, for a more stable asset.

But skeptics warn that the bitcoin bubble is about to burst. Fears over tighter regulation led the price of bitcoin to fall to $5,947 in February, or about 225% below its record high in December. The currency is now trading over $10,000 per coin, though it remains extremely volatile.

Check out what bitcoin millionaires are buying.

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley is so expensive that even Facebook and Apple employees can't afford to live near the office

According to the listing for this lake house on the edge of California's Joshua Tree National Park, it's a "money maker." The previous owner rented it out as a vacation home.

Source: Zillow

The four-bedroom, three-bath house has an in-ground pool, stunning lake and mountain views, and a gated entry. The asking price was $599,000 or the equivalent in bitcoin.

"It's just crazy what's going on," Michael McCrae, the seller, told Money magazine about his decision to accept bitcoin. The lake house sold for $570,000 (near asking price) in January.

Source: Money

The post ‘EcoCoin’: Uber Co-Founder Unveils a New Cryptocurrency appeared first on CCN

The ride-sharing co-founder is already known for disrupting one industry, and now he’s reportedly going after bitcoin, gold and fiat money. Garrett Camp, who co-founded ride sharing giant Uber, is behind a new cryptocurrency dubbed Eco, a decentralized global currency protocol, and he’s looking to the world’s top universities to run a verified node network. … Continued

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The post Louisiana Attorney General Probes Own IT Dept Over Bitcoin Mining Allegations appeared first on CCN

The Louisiana Attorney General, Jeff Landry, has opened a criminal investigation into his own office’s information technology division, including its recently ousted director, over allegations that former employees used state resources to mine bitcoin. While half a dozen IT employees were fired in September, Landry has until now refused to acknowledge the inquiry. State And

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Bitcoins! I want to know all about them and how I can make a million dollars!

CoinDesk data shows that the gap between South Korea's bitcoin prices, and those shown by the global market, closed over the course of February.

• Crime involving cryptocurrency has risen in line with the technology's prominence.
• Police forces were initially confounded by assets which defied conventional investigative techniques.
• Business Insider spoke to a police analyst at Europol helping to coordinate a fightback.
• It involves bringing different police forces together, negotiating with the crypto community, and expanding fledgling investigative techniques.

Where crime goes, the law follows — eventually.

Cryptocurrency was born in dark corners of the internet, and has a long association with illicit activity, and the sort of ultra-privacy-sensitive communities which make law enforcement nervous even if they're doing nothing wrong.

As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have become mainstream, with soaring valuations per coin, they have also been adopted by a much broader array of criminals than the Silk Road users of the past — down to unsophisticated drug dealers on the streets of London.

In a briefing attended by Business Insider, London's Metropolitan Police said it is now not unusual for police to check smartphones for crypto wallets when they seize them as evidence.

Numerous police commanders have told Business Insider that their forces are making their first steps towards seizing cryptocurrencies from criminals after arrest, with an eventual view to distributing them for the public good under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

More criminals taking up crypto means that police forces have to come up with new ways to respond, especially as it its privacy features frustrate their traditional tactic for investigating crime: follow the money.

But while tracing cryptocurrency is hard, it isn't impossible. Several years down the line, detectives are starting to catch on.

Europe's crypto fightback

In Europe, much of the crypto-tracing activity and strategising takes place at a continent-wide level, orchestrated by Europol.

The pan-European police agency helps connect the many hundreds of law enforcement organisations across the continent, and provides a centralised system by which officers can access information and pool tactics.

Business Insider spoke with Jarek Jacubchek, a cybercrime analyst at Europol's HQ in the Netherlands, who gave an impression of the system as a whole.

Jacubchek works in Europol's cybercrime centre, a kind of nexus for high-tech crime which is available to help other forces do things that are not within their own capabilities.

This part of Europol has ended up handling cryptocurrencies as well. Jacubchek declined to tell Business Insider exactly how many staff now deal with crypto policing, but said it had risen sharply in the past year.

These things can include consulting a large database of IP addresses and digital wallet identifiers linked to persons of interest, or running new searches.

The results of these can open up new leads for detectives, or give officers the evidence they need to make a crucial arrest. They also produce how-to guides for agencies getting to grips with crypto for the first time.

Getting inside the infrastructure

One advantage Europol has is that they form relationships with the cryptocurrency infrastructure itself: Exchanges, brokers and other assets you have to use to deal in bitcoin and the like.

Every year Europol arranges the Virtual Currencies Conference, a closed-to-the-public meeting where crypto experts and police can meet and talk frankly.

The fifth one is due to be held in June this year. In a press release following the 2017 conference, Europol said that some 150 investigators turned up, along with representatives of parts of the crypto world.

Europol named participants including Bitcoin.de, Bitfinex, BitPanda, Bitonic, Bitstamp, BitPay, Coinbase, Cubits, LocalBitcoins, SpectroCoin, and Xapo.

Each year has seen a huge stride forward in the capabilities on offer, Jacubchek told Business Insider. He said: "Basically the first conference was 'what is bitcoin and how does it work?'"

"We never touch these basic topics any more, we already assume people are familiar and we can start talking about tracing technologies and about topics that are much more practical for the investigators."

The conferences have practical results, too. With encouragement from law enforcement, crypto services have developed and strengthened KYC ("Know Your Customer") procedures, bringing themselves in line with traditional finance by asking for proofs of identity, address and the like before people can access services. Some even ask people to submit selfies.

With these in place, even if the asset you're dealing in is essentially untraceable, you very much are not.

Jacubchek characterises the crypto companies he's had dealings with as "very cooperative" — not least because they want the police to help them in return. Their aim, he said, is to identify the types of data most valuable to law enforcement, and make sure that getting hold of it is "as frictionless as possible."

Exchanges and the like are obvious targets for hacks, theft and other illicit activity, and by keeping good records and maintaining good relationships with the police, they maximise the likelihood that criminals can be caught and dealt with.

The approach is the opposite taken by some cryptocurrencies, which have developed a reputation for criminality far beyond that of other coins. Jacubchek named monero, zcash and dash as especial markers of wrongdoing, an impression backed up by London's Metropolitan Police. (You can read a full story about problem cryptocurrencies here.)

But for the most part, police and the crypto community appear to be moving closer together, at the same time as virtual currencies take up a more permanent place in financial system.

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• Britain's runaway labour market is showing signs of slowing down, with unemployment rising, and job growth stuttering.
• That poses a serious threat to the UK's overall economic health, according to John Wraith of UBS.
• Rising unemployment could make Brexit even more complicated, Wraith argues.

LONDON — Britain's labour market — the country's "sole economic bright spot" — could be about to weaken significantly, according to a senior strategist at Swiss bank UBS.

Writing to clients on Thursday, UBS' John Wraith described the labour market as the "critical determinant of the UK's economic fortunes," and warned that recent data suggests tough times could be on their way.

Even before Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, the UK's labour market was the jewel in the crown of the economy, with unemployment steadily falling for several years and new jobs being created at breakneck speed. In fact, the unemployment rate has fallen by such a degree in recent years that some commentators have described the situation as Britain's "jobs miracle."

But cracks have started to appear in recent data. The UK's headline rate of unemployment rose for the first time since August 2016 during the most recent data period.

"While the steady and significant decline in the unemployment rate from its peak at 8.5% in November 2011 has provided reassurance thus far, there were some potential developments in the most recent data that suggest the improvement may be reaching a turning point," Wraith told clients.

One of those "developments" was the continued slowing pace of job creation, which is "volatile" but has clearly declined in the last 18 months, according to Wraith.

"From an average of around +150k 3m/3m in mid-2016, the pace has slowed to around +80-90k over the past year," he said, pointing the chart below:Brexit further muddies the waters, Wraith says, as it threatens the supply of EU labour.

"As well as monitoring the evolution of employment and unemployment numbers, attention needs to be paid to fluctuations in net migration flows from the EU and elsewhere," Wraith writes.

"Although no changes have yet been made to freedom-of-movement arrangements between the UK and the EU, such changes may be forthcoming in the future."

A weakening labour market would take a heavy toll on the UK's "economic and political outlook" going forward.

Here's Wraith one final time (emphasis ours):

"Even more than usual, the UK economic and political outlook is likely to be heavily dependent on the health of the labour market over the coming months and years. If it continues to strengthen, the long-awaited return to robust real earnings growth becomes more likely, and will both underpin consumption through the Brexit process, and also potentially lead to more active monetary tightening by the MPC.

"If it starts to weaken, however, the prospects for consumption will be ominous as earnings growth becomes much less likely at a time of low savings, rising borrowing costs, and high debt levels.

"The pressure would also mount politically as demands for looser fiscal policy grow, and if any rise in unemployment is deemed a consequence of Brexit, the UK's route towards leaving the EU will become even more complicated."

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• Belgian finance minister tells BI: "Thousands and thousands of jobs depend on the business done with the UK."
• He wants a quick trade deal with the UK after Brexit to avoid a "tipping point where all of a sudden things get very bad."
• The minister was visiting London to meet finance companies and try to convince them to set up EU subsidiaries in Brussels.

LONDON — Belgium's finance minister wants the EU to strike a quick trade deal with Britain after Brexit in order to protect jobs in his country.

Johan Van Overtveldt told Business Insider in an interview this week: "Belgium is the fourth exporter, in nominal amounts, into the UK, on a par with France which is a much bigger country. And so, if Brexit goes the wrong way, in terms of the hard Brexit, it will hurt the Belgian economy seriously."

"We’re talking about thousands and thousands of jobs depending on the business done with the UK."

Van Overtveldt called for the EU to strike a quick trade deal with the UK after it leaves the EU in order to protect jobs.

"My fear is that these negotiations might drag on and on," he said. "The longer the process continues, the more it will drag down the economy.

"I think you have the danger of reaching a tipping point where all of a sudden things get very bad. We’re not there yet, and hopefully, we never get there, but the longer the discussion continues and the more hostile it becomes, if it goes that way, you will get to a trigger point that might be dangerous, certainly for the UK but also for the European economy."

Van Overtveldt said that the UK government has "not been that coherent" in negotiations, but said: "I fully understand these are difficult issues and the democratic process runs its way and you have a lot of discussions, a lot of adjusting positions."

He was speaking to BI in London during a visit to meet with finance companies and try to convince them to open offices in Brussels.

"According to my humble opinion London will be a major financial centre as far as the eye can see — full stop," he said. "What we try to do is offer Brussels as something that is, can be, should be, complementary to London."

Britain's future trading relationship with the EU is up in the air due to Brexit and many companies are opening up new subsidiaries in the EU to ensure they continue to have a license to sell goods and services to the 27 country bloc whatever happens. Major cities across Europe have been attempting to woo businesses ever since Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016.

Insurance marketplace Lloyd's of London is the biggest business so far to choose Brussels as its new European headquarters. Van Overtveldt said: "We immediately had the impression that a lot of the insurance industry would be interested as well, which indeed seems to be the case. One thing leads to another and we’re just trying to surf on the tide that has been developing."

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This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.