Tuesday, June 30, 2015
France Creates National FinTech Program to Rival London, New York
Puerto Rico’s $72 billion in Debt ‘Unpayable’ as Island Seeks Bankruptcy
Digital Currencies a Silver Lining in the Dark Cloud of Greece’s Economic Crisis
As the world watches nervously, Greece, under pressure from the European Central Bank, takes the serious step of imposing capital controls: Banks are closed, ATM withdrawals are limited and funds cannot be sent out of the country.
Capital controls will be in place at least until July 7 after Sunday’s citizens’ referendum that will ask Greeks if they want to remain in the European Union and accept their creditors’ terms.
Will Bitcoin benefit from the current crisis?
There’s lots of speculation that the rate of adoption of digital currencies may increase more rapidly as a result of the current crisis in Greece.
CNN makes the case noting:
“The world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges tell CNNMoney they’ve seen a surge of business from Greece.” and
“Ten times as many Greeks are registering to trade bitcoins on the German marketplace Bitcoin.de than usual, according to CEO Oliver Flaskaemper. Bitcoin trades from Greece have shot up 79% from their ten-week average on Bitstamp, the world’s third-largest exchange.”
In an article on CNBC , Brendan O’Connor, CEO of digital currency-specialists Genesis Global Trading says:
“(Bitcoin) had been middling around the $235-245 range for several months, and all of the sudden this crisis escalates and you’ve gotten yourself a nice 10-point pop…Greece was likely the only factor behind the digital currency’s upward momentum.”
Daniel Roberts, writing in Fortune Magazine, disagrees and makes the case that the small spike in the price of bitcoin would have happened anyway:
“There may be a growing global interest in purchasing bitcoin that is coinciding roughly with the Greek crisis — the currency’s 2013 mega-spike coincided with a similar financial crisis in Cyprus — but the hike this summer began before the situation grew so dire in Greece.”
Eli Dourado, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University says:
“I think we are seeing a boomlet in global demand as a hedge against any kind of uncertainty, not just [the uncertainty] in Greece. I think the value of the concept is being affirmed.”
As Bitcoin Magazine reported yesterday, there are indications that some Greeks have been buying up bitcoin for some time now.
For Greece’s European neighbors, particularly in Italy, Spain, Portugal and even France, there is growing anxiety about the effects of Greece defaulting on the euro and the subsequent impact on the value of the euro and their savings.
In the wake of such economic uncertainty, it would seem more likely that Europeans will be looking more closely at digital currencies as an alternative to fiat currency.
Capital Controls for Cyprus – So How Did That Work Out?
In 2013, Cyprus was near bankruptcy and the ECB and IMF had proposed a deal that would see banks in Cyprus lose substantial funds. These caused a run on the banks, and the government subsequently imposed capital controls.
This devastated Cyprus’s economy, and the controls remained in place for almost two years with the last restrictions lifted in April 2015.
In a recent article in Bloomberg Business, Katia Porzecanski says about imposing capital controls: “Unfortunately for Greece, history suggests it hardly ever works.”
“While dozens of countries from Mexico to Iceland and Thailand have imposed such measures since World War I to boost revenue, prop up currencies and hold down interest rates, the International Monetary Fund found that only those few with sound economies and strong institutions succeeded in slowing capital flight.”
Some Bitcoiners weigh in on the crisis
When Andreas Antonopoulos was in Toronto earlier this year he told the audience:
“I often get asked why I don’t recommend Bitcoin as the answer to Greece’s economic problems. I tell them the citizens of Greece should have the choice to use both digital currencies and fiat currency. Bitcoin alone isn’t necessarily the answer but it can be part of the solution.”
If people in Greece want to use bitcoin, they can and will. All these calls for bitcoin as a “solution” for Greece miss the point of bitcoin
— AndreasMAntonopoulos (@aantonop) June 22, 2015
Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift.io, sees a huge opportunity for bitcoin in the current crisis. In a series of tweets yesterday, using ChangeTip, Voorhees gave away $5 in bitcoin to people concerned about the future of the euro.
Banks frozen in Greece? Try Bitcoin instead… here is $5 @mtvgreece $5 @ChangeTip #GreeceBitcoinDrop #grexit #euro #eurozone
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) June 29, 2015
Roger Ver is also optimistic that bitcoin can only benefit from the current situation:
Thanks to the invention of Bitcoin, the era of government caused misallocation of resources due to manipulating money will soon end. #Grexit
— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) June 29, 2015
Traumatic as the current economic crisis is for Greece and Europe, this may be an unprecedented opportunity for bitcoin to “take it to the next level.” As the old saying goes: “When one door closes, another door opens,” and the open door may be a brighter future for digital currencies.
Coinkite Announces TOR-enabled ‘Bitcoin Pay Button’
The Fear of Capital Controls May be Spreading from Greece to Italy
Yesterday, Bitcoin Magazine reported that Greece had closed its banks and imposed capital controls to prevent financial chaos after the breakdown of bailout talks with its international creditors. The decision came at the end of a weekend that brought Greece closer to “Grexit” – the potential exit from the Eurozone and perhaps the European Union (EU) itself – and confronted Europe with a serious crisis.
Today, Jose Pagliery, the author of “Bitcoin – And the Future of Money,” reports on CNN Money that Greeks are rushing to bitcoin. The article includes testimonials from top bitcoin exchanges such as bitcoin.de, Bitcurex, and China-based LakeBTC, stating that they are seeing a surge of business and inquiries from Greece.
This is, according to Pagliery, a pivotal moment.
“Bitcoin was created as an independent, computerized money in 2009 to provide a stark alternative to government-issued currency held at banks,” he says. “This could be its moment to shine.”
The introduction of capital controls is likely to push people, not only wealthy investors but also ordinary people, to the conclusion that governments and banks couldn’t be trusted with their hard-earned savings. They may then start looking for alternative ways to store their savings, out of reach of predatory central banks, and choose bitcoin as the best alternative.
With limited access to their bank account and no legal way to transfer money abroad, the Greeks are likely to experience difficulties in buying bitcoin at the moment. But while it’s late for the Greeks who waited until now to act, other less optimistic Greeks have been buying bitcoin for some time now.
In other countries, especially in neighboring European countries with troubled economies, it seems likely that people will begin to realize that the government can – and will – impose capital control and cut them from access to their savings if the economic situation worsens.
Based on real-time reports collected by The Wall Street Journal, Zero Hedge notes that the contagious fear of capital controls may already be spreading from Greece to neighboring Italy. Several Italian banks reportedly failed to start trading on Monday as fears over a Greek debt default induced many investors to shed peripheral stocks, including Italian, with banks suffering the most.
Sales orders on Italian stocks, in particular financial stocks, piled up before the market opening. At the start, the sales orders were so numerous that the system couldn’t manage to process them, something that often happens when specific news causes a sell-off on a stock.
Speaking to Italian daily La Stampa, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales noted that a psychological contagion could spread immediately to Italy, because the Italian economy is not growing. “The question is: Would [Italians] too think to withdraw their money from the banks or not?”
La Stampa also reports that “The Bitcoin fever rises in Greece,” and mentions the recent April Fool’s joke of Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis: “Greece Will Adopt the Bitcoin If Eurogroup Doesn’t Give Us a Deal.” La Stampa describes similar scenarios as “unlikely, but potentially disruptive for Western economic culture.”
Photo Mārtiņš Bruņenieks / CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported
Bitnet Partners with Computop to Offer Bitcoin Payments for Over 3000 Merchants
Bitnet, a bitcoin payments processor and the developer of the largest payment gateway (CyberSource, acquired by VISA) has entered into a strategic partnership with Computop, a leading payment service provider, to allow global merchants to accept bitcoin on Computop Paygate.
Since its launch, Bitnet has focused its services to provide an enterprise-grade digital commerce platform with security, reliability and scalability standards demanded by global businesses.
Through the Computop and Bitnet partnership, however, the multi-national bitcoin merchant processor is attempting to implement its technologies to allow businesses of any size to accept bitcoin in a simple, safe and secure manner.
Bitnet bitcoin processors will be integrated in Computop Paygate, which will allow merchants to expand their businesses globally without cross-border fees. Furthermore, with offices spread throughout California, Northern Ireland and Singapore, Bitnet will fund its merchants with any local currencies of their choice.
“We recognize that the bitcoin ecosystem is growing throughout the world and are excited to be the first European PSP to partner with Bitnet to enable merchants to accept payments in bitcoin,” said Ralf Gladis, CEO of Computop. “Through this partnership, retailers don’t have to worry about the management of this evolving payment method. They can simply accept bitcoin as payment from customers, and know that the process will be smooth and risk-free for them.”
Computop Paygate, the platform which will support the Bitnet integration, is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard-certified platform which offers service providers and merchants with secure and fraud-proof payment processors for international standards. Computop Paygate enables international retailers and merchants to access more than 60 payment methods, which include – MOTO, mobile payment solutions, PoS solutions, e-commerce, etc.
Computop Paygate is also supported by leading e-commerce solutions such as Demandware, hybris, Intershop, Magento, IBM Webspehere and SAP Business ByDesign, which all recommend Paygate as a preferred payment service service for international payment processing. Furthermore, Computop Paygate handles more than $100 million USD worth of transactions annually, and supports more than 3,000 internationally recognizable retailers, such as TSamsung, Fossil and C&A.
With its global support and extraordinarily large user base, Bitnet hopes to see a rapid increase of bitcoin-accepting merchants in Europe in the near future.
“Our partnership with Computop enables us to extend our bitcoin payments processing functionality to merchants globally,” said Akif Khan, chief commercial officer at Bitnet. “We look forward to working with Computop to enable merchants throughout Europe, the U.S. and Asia to accept bitcoin payments from their customers.”
Despite Bitnet’s partnership with one of Europe’s most popular payment processing platforms, it still has to compete against international bitcoin processors that have recently expanded services throughout Europe, including Netherlands-based bitcoin gateway BitPay, American bitcoin service provider Coinbase and bitcoin exchange/merchant platform Coinzone.
Photo Mobiles Bezahlen mit der Vodafone Wallet / Photopin
BitGo Announces Launch of Solvency Proofs Verified by BitGo
BitGo announced today the release of its latest product offering, Verified by BitGo, a product that provides a real-time view of bitcoin assets owned by a company.
Whereas in the past, verification attempts were slow and often had security risk concerns, BitGo hopes that this will be a verification that allows it to publicly share all of its assets. Further, it will be able to cryptographically display that it is in a solvent state.
When dealing with brokerages and wallets, knowing that the provider is solvent can go a long way toward making a decision on using a service. This service will enable end users to analyze what the company’s assets are and compare that to its liabilities, even drilling down to ensure that the user’s own account is included in the total liabilities.
“We’re offering Verified by BitGo to selected partners as part of our unified platform offerings. The first step needed is to use a BitGo wallet for storing the business’ bitcoin,” Ben Davenport, CTO and co-founder of BitGo, said in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. “It is not yet available for general self-service signup, but we’re interested in working with other Bitcoin businesses to help their security & transparency.”
ChangeTip the First to Use
In the announcement, it was revealed that ChangeTip was the first business that would be using the Verified by BitGo service.
“Building trust is critical to expanding our user base within the Bitcoin community and beyond, and using BitGo to demonstrate our Proof of Reserves goes a long way to achieving it,” said ChangeTip CEO Nick Sullivan.
According to an email exchange with Bitcoin Magazine, Sullivan believes that, “having the Verified by BitGo logo gives users an extra sense of security.”
However, BitGo is opening up its operation to anyone who uses the BitGo platform offerings. As Davenport said in a statement, “Today we are launching our Verified by BitGo service, bringing the era of unverified funds to a close.”
It Could Have Prevented MtGox
MtGox is the perfect example of a business that was operating in an insolvent state for a significant period of time. Users had no idea that the amount of bitcoin they believed existed on the exchange was far more than actually existed.
The team at BitGo believes that if Verified by BitGo had been around when MtGox was operating that its service would have been able to alert users far sooner to the problems at the exchange.
“Yes, we believe it could have,” Davenport said. “Based on the information that’s been made public, we believe MtGox was effectively operating in an insolvent state for a very long period. While a regular audit like this would not have eliminated the possibility of a business going insolvent, it should help detect it far sooner, dramatically reducing the magnitude of the ultimate losses.”
In an internal crisis management document that was leaked, it was revealed that the company had lost 744,408 bitcoin in a theft that had taken place years earlier. Had a service like Verified by BitGo been around, it is feasible that many users would not have continued putting their bitcoin onto the exchange.
“We are already working with several other companies interested in the product, but don’t have specific names to disclose yet,” Davenport told Bitcoin Magazine.
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New Bitcoin Skill & Strategy Physics Game “Crypto Collider” Offers Unique Hedging System
Bitcoin Press Release: Just launched Crypto Collider is a new and unique, first-of-its-kind Bitcoin Game played with skill and strategy. The game features a transparent “GameChain” ledger and supports most popular digital currencies including Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Peercoin, NXT, Primecoin, LTC and more. It is fun, innovative and an excellent multi-functional hedging tool / trading platform.
How it Works
Collider is a peer-to-peer game so fees are generated only as transfer fees when coins are passed between players as a result of game-play. Play occurs with a variety of high-quality industry leading cryptocurrencies which allows players to win, trade and hedge between their different coins as their strategies play out.
The game takes place in a virtual physics world where crypto coins take on a virtual physical presence as they enter the Collider Arena in the precise sequence, location, velocity, angle and spin created by the players using their mouse or touch-screen. Each “coin-throw” has a different amount staked on it. The sum dollar value of that throw determines its in-game “weight” in both the physics calculation (ie. influence on the game objects) and percentage of winnings (when they win).
The end result is a first-of-its-kind Bitcoin skill based hedging game that is exciting and unpredictable while also fair and winnable with many second and third chances to profit.
How to Use as a Fun Hedging Tool
Users simply deposit some of the coin they would like to hedge OUT of and play with that coin in many little pieces, just not all at once, and keep playing as long as they can while playing only with that coin type. Once it’s all gone, whatever they have won in that time in other coins, is effectively what they have hedged their original deposit into.
The game points they earn playing can also be converted into Collider Coin, a core product of the game that unlocks special features and strategic ability. Collider Coins can be played in-game for strategy but can never be lost and generate a percentage from every game fee for every holder.
How to Play For Profit
Crypto Collider is easy to get started and difficult to master. Player’s winning percentages tend to improve over time with practice and understanding. Ask questions and watch replays frame-by-frame from the beginning to really understand what each player has attempted and who was successful.
Collider Coin’s can be played but never lost, they are a specifically engineered game strategy tool with many unique and invaluable properties. Players can experiment with Collider Coin to find more ways to improve their rate of success. Learning Collider is similar to any skill based game based on the laws of physics and predicting opponents moves. It’s a first-of-its-kind “E-Money-Sport”.
Crypto Collider’s “GameChain” – Innovation Under The Hood
Inspired by Bitcoin, Collider uses open source decentralised client-side physics code as a logarithm to create and confirm all results with complete transparency. Each game creates a chain / record in the resulting ‘GameChain’, which is a permanent public ledger of all game activity with many similarities to a blockchain. The game itself is the visualisation of this data. When replaying and watching a game players are both visually and mathematically confirming its results with other players at the same time all seeing the same precise movements. This creates a dynamic, exciting game with a new higher level of transparency, fairness, opportunity, innovation and entertainment.
Music Video Feed
The innovation continues with a spectacular user-driven background music video feed. Payers can enter the game and press the “Video” and then the “Play To Sync” button and enjoy this simple yet ingenious feature. Sharing, music, culture and entertainment are intertwined into the game experience as players create, watch and comment while playing and watching their favourite music videos in the synchronised background video display (powered by youtube). Players can adjust the video volume, size and visibility and also play their own choice of video (on their machine only) instantly at any time.
News and Market Monitoring
Crypto Collider is also a great tool for monitoring industry news and market data. A news panel aggregates multiple major Bitcoin news feeds and data on all supported coins including price, difficulty, supply and hash rate are quickly accessible via the coin-info panel. Collider provides a sleek gaming experience that also has some pretty powerful market monitoring capability.
Crypto Collider supports the majority of leading cryptocurrencies, and has been quietly refining and innovating with a small team dedicated to creating a good experience; the most fun, fair, innovative, and useful game in Bitcoin. A unique creation with many benefits for crypto traders, competitive gamers and mainstream gamers alike with many plans for the future.
To learn more please go to: http://ift.tt/1vyTlKU
Media contact:
Name: Clint Jones
Email: admin(at)cryptocollider.com
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Gallippi and Killeen Represent Bitcoin Community at UN 70th Anniversary Celebration
Friday, June 26, marked the 70th Anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco. Along with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Gov. Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and other dignitaries, a cohort of 70 digital leaders were invited to celebrate the historic event. Included among the 70 was BitGive Foundation founder Connie Gallippi and Alyse Killeen of March Capital, both representing the Bitcoin industry.
“It was a true honor and pleasure to be invited to join the United Nations 70th Anniversary Celebration and luncheon for the Top 70 Bay Area Tech Leaders,” Gallippi said. “Attending this event and representing Bitcoin’s philanthropic foundation was truly an inspiring and educational experience.”
After the formal public ceremony at City Hall, which included speeches and the presentation of the Key to the City of San Francisco to the U.N. secretary-general, there was a luncheon followed by a group discussion among the digital leaders.
“Our #UN70 Digital Leader peers generally came from two camps: 1) sophisticated technology innovators and investors, and 2) social impact entrepreneurs and funders,” said Killeen. “What was most exciting was the overlap that existed between these groups. The technologists were highly socially aware, and the social impact leaders were technically savvy. Bitcoin and blockchain further connects the two camps, and, as a result, was a popular topic of discussion.”
Killeen also noted that there was a good deal of diversity among the members. The list of leaders in the consortium included men and women from around the world.
“I met so many top-notch entrepreneurs and tech leaders with a common passion for making a positive social impact,” Gallippi added. “Everyone was very positive and open-minded, and many were curious and inspired by the possibilities for Bitcoin to help drive change on important issues.”
To everyone’s surprise, the secretary-general introduced a special guest at the leaders’ luncheon: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. She had asked particularly for the opportunity to speak with the digital leadership group.
“Meeting Malala was the highlight of the event for me,” said Gallippi. “She is such an amazing inspiration.”
She added that Malala spoke “off the cuff” about the potential impact of technology on empowering girls and women in the developing world, but that tech companies must be sensitive to the needs of the people they are trying to reach. The existing infrastructure also needs to be taken into consideration and adequate support must be offered.
Other highlights of the conference included the introduction of The Global Goals initiative which will roll out in September.
This ambitious collection of 17 goals, developed by U.N. representatives from all over the world, include ending extreme poverty, fighting inequalities and tackling climate change.
“It was quite exciting to see the perfect alignment of these Global Goals with the mission of the BitGive Foundation,” said Gallippi. “I look forward to leveraging bitcoin, blockchain technology, and the Bitcoin industry to help reach these universal goals for a better world for all!”
Killeen echoed Gallippi’s enthusiasm after the event: “I’m excited to take the next steps to work with other U.N. Digital Leaders on blockchain-based project ideas born at SF City Hall on the U.N.’s 70th birthday!”
The BitGive Foundation, the first U.S.-registered Bitcoin charity, is currently soliciting donations for its 2nd Anniversary online auction to be held next week. Thus far, the Foundation has collected items and services from individuals and companies alike, including autographed books from Zapchain and Purse, jewelry from Overstock, and getaways from Gem COO Ken Miller and Airbitz CEO Paul Puey, among others. All funds raised through the auction will support the foundation’s work to support various philanthropic efforts on behalf of the Bitcoin community.
Both Gallippi and Killeen will be presenting at the upcoming Inside Bitcoins conference in Chicago on July 10-11th, where the conference will also be hosting a fundraising campaign for BitGive.
For more information about the BitGive Foundation and its charitable mandate, visit http://ift.tt/1aEjhgc.
Photos courtesy of Connie Gallippi.
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Major Credit Card Companies Weighing the Pros and Cons of Bitcoin
The major credit card companies – American Express, MasterCard and Visa – are exploring uses of Bitcoin and the blockchain technology, International Business Times reports. They can see the threat from blockchain fintech, and are considering ways to integrate selected aspects into their own operations.
“We are not currently working actively on any bitcoin-based solutions, but we watch the cryptocurrency market closely,” said Andrew Buckley, head of MasterCard products for Europe. “We find them interesting from a technology perspective, but currently don’t see them as a viable solution for mainstream commerce.”
“Our focus is on these hundreds of millions of people with a bit of plastic in their wallets,” he added. “How do we get them into this new digital world? Once we have sorted that out, and the two billion people that haven’t got a card, then we may start worrying about other things.”
Recently, MasterCard replied to the U.K. government call for information with a put-down of bitcoin and other digital currencies. MasterCard claimed that digital currency transaction costs are lower than credit cards only because providers of digital currency services do not bear any compliance costs, and that, while digital currency payments are not faster than the MasterCard network, credit card transactions are intrinsically more secure.
That should be interpreted in view of the recent announcement of MasterCard Send, a personal payments service that enables funds to be sent quickly and securely to consumers domestically and internationally. Barb King, a group head in the MasterCard Payment Systems Integrity Group, described the service to PYMNTS as “a breakthrough platform in the industry.”
“The distributed ledger is really useful for peer-to-peer transfers,” said Neal Sample, president of Enterprise Growth at American Express. “So the work that Amex does, while it could be supported by distributed ledger, goes far beyond peer-to-peer. It involves creating a set of guarantees and a set of services for both consumers and merchants that they wouldn’t get if they were just trying to transact with one another.”
According to Sample, payment is just one of many stages in the commerce cycles, and companies such as American Express provide a complete infrastructure for consumer protection. While bitcoin transactions are intrinsically irreversible, with no consumer protection against fraud, American Express will actively help its customers.
“There are two elements here: the blockchain technology itself, which is very interesting for transactions, then there is bitcoin the currency,” said Jonathan Vaux, executive director of innovation partnerships at Visa Europe. “We are certainly looking at applications involving blockchain. What can you do with this? We know there’s a peer-to-peer transaction network happening, but we don’t see it scaling unless there is trust in the system. Certainly we are looking at it in a lab environment, and as quick way of routing it’s exciting. We have a team in London looking at specific use cases.”
Like American Express and MasterCard, Visa is closely following other aspects of fintech innovation as well. “Visa is facilitating Apple Pay with tokenization, but the card holders won’t know about – I mean it makes them safer but they won’t know about that, and as far as they are concerned it will operate like a contactless transaction,” Vaux said.
Photo PE-Commerce Visa (Test tamron 17-50 2.8) / Photopin
Bitso Secures Investment and Launches Initiative with the Mexican Government
Mexican bitcoin exchange Bitso has secured a seed-funding round led by Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency group which was participated in by Mexico-based angel investors.
With the new financing, Bitso plans to expand its team in Mexico and aggressively push its project to use bitcoin for cross-border payments across South America. Since the majority of the population has no access to bank accounts or credit cards, Bitso aims to provide the nation with a cheaper yet robust mobile payment platform by connecting its bitcoin exchange with Transfer.
Transfer is a lightweight banking initiative developed by the Mexican government as a collaboration with Mexican banks and corporations including Banamex, Inbursa, Telcel and Oxxo.
Similar to M-Pesa, the popular mobile payment service launched by Vodafone in Kenya, the joint project of Transfer and Bitso allows users to send pesos using bitcoin to more than 100 million cell phones in Mexico. The receivers can withdraw cash at Banamex or Inbursa ATMs, creating a nationwide network of bitcoin withdrawal locations, thus increasing national bitcoin adoption.
“Whether you are talking about new payments services that help facilitate faster and cheaper money transfers across the world’s most active remittance corridor, or mobile money and microfinance opportunities for Mexico’s underbanked consumers, bitcoin and blockchain technology is poised to transform financial services in Mexico and all of Latin America,” said Silbert. “Bitso is well-positioned to emerge as the region’s leader in bitcoin exchange and payments, and we are thrilled to partner with them to help build a big, important company in this emerging industry.”
Bitso to Emerge as Leading Mexican Bitcoin Exchange
Launched in April 2014, Bitso is one of the most prominent bitcoin exchanges in Mexico, with top-tier security standards and strong focus on regulatory compliance. To compete against Mexico’s leading exchanges like Volabit and meXBT, Bitso recently acquired Unisend Mexico, a bitcoin exchange which operates in both Argentina and Mexico.
“Through Bitso, we have enabled an efficient and low-cost backbone for cross-border transactions,” explained Bitso founder and CEO Pablo Gonzalez. “We believe this will be a powerful rail to streamline international B2B payments, and remittances to the millions of unbanked and underbanked Mexican citizens.”
Founder talks Bitcoin Adoption in Mexico
“The most exciting aspect we are seeing firsthand is all the cross-border payment applications that are just beginning to happen: remittances, B2B payments, etc. Mexico is a hotbed for global payments,” Gonzalez told Bitcoin Magazine. The US-Mexico corridor is the largest in the world with $24 billion USD-a-year flow. International trade and commerce is even larger. $360 billion USD a year, and it is bi-directonal ($761 billion total.) Several partners, including traditional remittance companies, bitcoin remittance startups and cross-border payment businesses, have been running tests and pilot programs for the past few months.”
Gonzalez said that Bitcoin adoption has been growing steadily month-on-month in Mexico, as more businesses have begun to accept bitcoin payments.
“We talk to the regulators on a regular basis,” he said. “It is positive overall. They are very excited about the potential … However, they feel it is premature to regulate,” he said, a view similar “to some of the conclusions taken by the Canadian Senate recently.”
Greece Closes Banks and Stock Markets, Introduces Capital Controls
Greece has closed its banks and imposed capital controls to prevent financial chaos after the breakdown of bailout talks with its international creditors, The Financial Times reports. The decision comes at the end of a weekend that brought Greece closer to “Grexit” – the potential exit from the Eurozone and perhaps the European Union (EU) itself – and confronted Europe with a serious crisis.
The banks in Greece and the Athene Stock Exchange will remain closed until at least July 6, the day after the referendum on the austerity measures demanded by the country’s creditors. In the meantime, cash withdrawals at ATMs will be limited to 60 euros ($66) and transfers abroad will be forbidden. Greece is the second Eurozone country, after Cyprus in 2013, to impose capital controls.
The move is evidently aimed at preventing panicked Greek investors and savers from taking their money out of the nation’s banks and moving it elsewhere. In the days before the predictable stall of the negotiations with Europe, many Greeks rushed to withdraw their money. The Financial Times reports that many more Greeks are trying to withdraw their money now, but they are turned away by security guards.
“In the coming days, what’s needed is patience and composure,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on television. “The bank deposits of the Greek people are fully secure. The same applies to the payment of wages and pensions – they are also guaranteed.” He added that the European authorities, seeking to stifle the will of the Greek people, are to be blamed. “They will not succeed,” he said.
William Dudley, the president of the Reserve Bank of New York, said that Grexit risk was a “huge wild card.” He warned in an interview with the Financial Times that the financial market implications of a Greek exit from the euro could be graver than many investors seemed to believe, because it would set a “huge precedent” indicating that euro membership was reversible. “My personal view is if this goes badly the market reaction may be bigger than what we realize,” he said.
Even if Greece and the EU find a way to avoid Grexit, it seems likely that the introduction of capital controls will push people, not only wealthy investors but also ordinary people, to the conclusion that governments and banks couldn’t be trusted with their hard-earned savings. They may then start looking for alternative ways to store value, out of reach of predatory central banks.
When capital controls were introduced in Cyprus, Bitcoin came to the rescue, and many people took money out of their saving accounts at the first opportunity, and bought bitcoin instead. The recent rise in the exchange rate of bitcoin seems to indicate that the same is happening now as a consequence of the Greek crisis. Actually, there are indications that pessimist – or savvy – Greeks have been buying bitcoin for some time now.
One thing is certain – when people start to lose confidence in the ability of their government and central bank to ensure a healthy economy and a stable currency, they start looking for alternative ways to store value. Today, crypto-currencies are replacing gold and other traditional alternatives.
Another possibility, which would have been dismissed as science-fiction only one year ago but is beginning to appear more and more plausible, is that governments could tolerate – or even adopt – parallel currencies including crypto-currencies.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Greece may need a parallel currency if talks with creditors fail, according to sources familiar with Schaeuble’s views. And Greece’s Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote a blog post in February proposing a similar IOU-based currency, which he dubbed Future Tax Coin (FT-Coin). Varoufakis is not impressed by bitcoin as a currency, but he is persuaded that its underlying technology could be put to effective use in troubled economies.
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Ascribe Raises $2 Million to Encode Artistic Copyrights on the Blockchain
Ascribe, a platform which enables artists to record their intellectual properties on the Bitcoin blockchain has raised US $2 million in a seed funding round from investors including Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, Earlybird Venture Capital, Freelands Ventures, and other angel investors.
With the new financing, Ascribe aims to improve its platform to make it more efficient for artists to record ownership of their works, to onboard new developers to build on their API that helps marketplaces and platforms to display the registered artwork, and to increase awareness of their platform.
Using the Bitcoin blockchain, Ascribe allows artists to create records of permanent and unchangeable copyright and ownership of their artwork that can be verified and tracked instantly. Since the data and copyright cannot be changed once it is registered on the blockchain, artists will be able to defend their works without the need to spend money on the traditional process of hiring lawyers to create legal documents.
While traditional forms of copyrights and patents are difficult to track and usually take days or even weeks to sell or transfer, Ascribe allows its users to sell their ownership securely and cost-free through the bitcoin blockchain.
Since the platform allows users to embed images and texts on the blockchain, artists also may register copyrights for physical art such as sculpture, by simply uploading images of the work with follow-up descriptions.
Copyrights to the artworks registered on Ascribe will be available to public like a torrent file, which can be downloaded and used freely. However, the distributor or the user in this case, will always have full authority over the artwork, and will always possess the power to deny or grant access to their works.
According to the company, more than 600 artists have already signed up for access, and over 2,600 works of art have been registered. Several marketplaces and platforms are also using Ascribe’s API to display the copyrights to the artwork.
Ascribe is currently in progress of designing a machine learning technology which will be able to search through the web to classify copied works without watermarks.
Encrypting Unique Data on the Blockchain
Ascribe is using the function of the Bitcoin blockchain to encode additional information in transactions. On May 6, rock band 22HERTZ encrypted the copyrights to their album on the Bitcoin blockchain, using a function of the blockchain called OP_RETURN, which is a standardized function of the Bitcoin blockchain that allows data to be passed onto a transaction.
In this case, a user defined sequence of up to 40 bytes can be stored in the blockchain, which is enough to store encrypted texts of links to images, songs and long texts.
While storing information and data on the blockchain has been criticized as being inefficient, the transparency of the blockchain makes it extremely easy for artists to track their copyrights and ownerships to their works instantly.
Image via Ascribe
Blockchain Technology: The Key to Secure Online Voting
Originally designed to democratize power within the financial system, Bitcoin’s blockchain technology is now playing a role in the area of democracy itself.
Despite receiving much attention, online voting adoption has yet to take off meaningfully worldwide, amid concerns that existing platforms are vulnerable to fraud, corruption and sabotage. Last year a team accredited to observe the 2013 municipal elections in Estonia – the only country to run Internet voting on a wide scale – revealed that they observed election officials downloading key software over insecure Internet connections, typing PINs and passwords in view of cameras, and preparing election software on insecure PCs.
Norway also canceled trials of e-voting systems in local and national elections, concluding that voters’ fears about their votes becoming public could undermine democratic processes.
There are, however, increasing examples of political organizations and technology startups experimenting with secure digital voting systems based on the use of Bitcoin’s blockchain technology. Last year Denmark’s Liberal Alliance became the first political party to vote using a blockchain-based system for its internal elections. Similar systems have since been adopted in Norway and Spain and the movement is gathering momentum in the United States.
“There is a common misconception that voting cannot be done online in a secure way. However, the introduction of blockchain technology is changing the conversation,” Adam Ernest, CEO of Virginia-based FollowMyVote – an organization committed to developing an online open source, transparent voting platform – explains.
Just as Bitcoin users make transactions by sending the digital currency to the recipient’s digital wallet, blockchain voting systems involve creating wallets for each candidate or option in an election. All voters are then allocated a digital “coin” that represents one vote, which they can cast by sending their “coin” to the wallet of their choice.
As in a bitcoin transaction, the entire process is recorded in the blockchain public ledger, meaning that unlike most current elections, a voter can verify that his or her vote was actually counted.
While the lack of anonymity in the Bitcoin system is a drawback for adoption in voting platforms, the use of anonymizing software can help ensure that voters’ identities are not revealed.
The New York-based V-Initiative is working on delivering open-source, fraud-proof, fully anonymous digital voting solutions based on the blockchain and uses zero-knowledge proof cryptography allied with IP masking software such as the “TOR” program to safeguard voter anonymity.
For many digital voting advocates, the end goal is “liquid democracy” – a combination of direct and indirect democracy whereby all citizens have the potential to vote on every issue but can dynamically delegate some or all of these votes to others that they feel are better qualified to vote.
Ernest notes that this concept is gaining much traction in countries such as Norway, Iceland and Germany. FollowMyVote, in partnership with BitShares and Cryptonomex, Inc., is working on a voting platform that is integrated directly with the BitShares 2.0 Smartchain that supports this use case.
Despite the positive reception in parts of Europe, Ernest is quick to point out that a number of obstacles remain along the road toward a fully digital democratic system.
“Pushing for provably honest elections in the U.S. and abroad, we have a tremendous amount of money and influence stacked against us,” he said.
As a result, FollowMyVote is changing its approach. Instead of trying to lobby election officials or legislators whom they feel have no incentive to improve the voting process in the U.S., it is preparing to launch an educational marketing campaign targeted directly at the voter in an attempt to get them to lobby the government.
Ernest says he is confident that once voters are better informed about the benefits of a blockchain-based online voting system – from convenience and cost-effectiveness to security and transparency – governments will have little choice but to adopt these systems.
“I firmly believe that in the future, voting will be done from our smartphones and our votes will be stored securely on the blockchain,” he said.
Photo London elections – e-count scanners / photopin
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Friday, June 26, 2015
Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset Holdings Acquires Hyperledger and Bits of Proof
In March, Bitcoin Magazine covered the digital economy startup Digital Asset Holdings, headed by the financial superstar Blythe Masters, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive.
Digital Asset Holdings uses distributed ledgers to track and settle both digital and mainstream financial assets in a cryptographically secure environment where counterparty risk is minimized, and settlement times are drastically reduced.
Now, Digital Asset Holdings LLC announced two acquisitions, Bloomberg Business reports. The company bought San Francisco-based Hyperledger and Budapest-based Bits of Proof for undisclosed amounts.
“Hyperledger and Bits of Proof add valuable new dimensions to our product offering and great talent to our team,” said Masters. “We build tools to help clients harness the power of distributed ledgers to serve their own customers. We integrate financial infrastructure with a variety of innovative new technologies inspired by the blockchain. Different ledger technologies serve different purposes and all of those we integrate with are additive.”
Hyperledger, a finalist in the SWIFT Innotribe startup challenge, developed an innovative distributed ledger to allow banks and other financial institutions to clear and settle transactions in realtime. The company’s technology enables financial institutions to create multiple private blockchains across a known group of participants. Unlike other distributed ledgers, Hyperledger does not have an inbuilt cryptocurrency and uses a proven consensus algorithm capable of thousands of transactions per second.
Bits of Proof developed and deployed an enterprise level server to integrate blockchain technology into financial applications.
Hyperledger CEO, Dan O’Prey, will become Chief Marketing Officer of Digital Asset, and CTO Daniel Feichtinger will join the senior engineering team. Támas Blummer, founder and CEO of Bits of Proof, has joined Digital Asset Holdings as Chief Ledger Architect.
According to information disclosed to Bloomberg Business by a person familiar with the matter, several large investors have expressed an interest in funding Digital Asset Holdings and entered private negotiations. A deal could be announced in the third quarter.
In related news, Digital Asset Holdings and other leading-edge fintech companies demonstrated their products and services to dozens of top bank, venture-capital and technology executives at the fifth annual New York FinTech Innovation Lab Demo Day organized by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City.
“[Digital Assets Holdings] is building next-generation, cryptographically secure distributed settlement and ledger services,” states the Innovation Lab press release. “The company will provide safe and efficient settlement of conventional and digital assets that eliminate counterparty risk and can reduce trade- processing time from T+3 to same-day settlement.”
At the recent Exponential Finance 2015 conference in New York, Masters said that Bitcoin’s underlying technology has the opportunity to improve settlement latency and system security for firms, and, therefore, the market for financial blockchain applications will ultimately be measured in the trillions. Digital Asset Holdings “bridges the gap between the blockchain development world and financial services,” she added.
“How seriously should you take [the blockchain]?” Masters asked. “About as seriously as you should have taken the concept of the Internet in the early 1990s. It’s a big deal.”
Image via Hyperledger
Blockstack Joins the Growing Number of Fintech Companies That Use the Blockchain to Streamline Mainstream Finance
Blockstack, a San Francisco-based firm, is adapting the technology of Bitcoin for mainstream finance, including clearing and settlement. A small group of banks have started beta testing Blockstack’s technology, Bloomberg Business reports.
The startup, run by former Google Inc. and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. employees, is jumping into the competition to use digital-currency technology to tackle financial companies’ slow, antiquated back-office operations.
“We’re not trying to destroy banking or financial services as they are today,” said Peter Shiau, Blockstack’s co-founder and chief operating officer, who previously worked at Standard Chartered Bank in product innovation. “We see what we’re building as technology that can help improve the back-office infrastructure that financial institutions are using.”
Blockstack’s team also includes Philip Harris, a former Nasdaq executive, as an adviser, and chief executive officer and founder Miron Cuperman, who used to work as a senior security engineer at Google.
According to the company’s website, Blockstack is a licensable software package to enable financial institutions and other enterprises to build sophisticated blockchain 2.0 applications on their own private blockchain.
Blockstack.io is a hosted version of Blockstack to allow anyone to start building applications on a fully-featured private blockchain. Available in private beta, Blockstack.io gives financial institutions a stack of inter-operable components to build on, including a private, hosted blockchain, a colored coin issuer for representing assets, a framework for smart contracts using oracles and multi-signature transactions, and the ability to plug in external open source components.
“The initial benefit of a private blockchain is simple: a financial institution can accelerate their learning about blockchain technology and prototype blockchain-based applications quickly and easily,” states the Blockstack product and service announcement. “The ultimate benefit of a private blockchain is that it gives enterprises a choice of infrastructure: whether to run an application on a public blockchain or run on a private blockchain with a group of known counter-parties.”
Blockstack includes critical functionality for financial services: managing time-dependent financial transactions like coupon payments for bonds, ensuring complex compliance requirements from multiple groups in an organization, and scaling up the infrastructure to handle millions of transactions at low latency.
The Blockstack platform is designed to work with technologies designed for Bitcoin Core. As improvements are made to Bitcoin, they can be rolled in Blockstack so that it stays current with the latest technology.
“When you have this private blockchain that’s shared by a number of financial institutions, all you’re doing is just keeping records of the transactions and who owns what,” Shiau said. “What’s nice about the blockchain is you can do that in real time. There are no fees involved.”
Blockstack joins a growing number of fintech companies that want to use or adapt the blockchain technology of Bitcoin to enhance the efficiency and lower the cost of traditional banking and financial systems. Other companies developing ways to use the blockchain to streamline mainstream finance are Nasdaq, which recently partnered with startup Chain to implement the blockchain technology in its Nasdaq Private Market, and Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset Holdings, which uses distributed ledgers to track and settle both digital and mainstream financial assets in a fast and secure environment.
BTC.sx Rebrands as Magnr, Introduces Bitcoin Savings Accounts
According to BitcoinRichList.com there are over $750 million worth of bitcoin sitting idle. Magnr, a company dedicated to providing Cryptocurrency Financial Services, is trying to change this by allowing the first-ever blockchain-based “savings accounts.” Magnr currently operates across two verticals: trading and saving.
“Magnr allows users to independently verify the safety of their deposit on the blockchain’s public ledger,” says CEO Joe Lee. “Additionally, the interest payout is calculated from blockchain data. This lets users verify they are being paid the correct amounts. This is the first time that savings accounts have received a fintech makeover.”
Magnr was created from the founding team of BTC.sx. It is a new, rebranded version of the BTC.sx trading platform. BTC.sx Bitcoin Trading Platform has brokered more than 60,000 trades since the introduction of its leveraged trading service in 2013.
Magnr generates interest from traders, which is partly paid out as interest to savers.
“One of blockchain’s greatest innovations is its immutable ledger,” says Lee. “When developing our interest-bearing product, we asked ourselves on a technical level how we could rely on the blockchain as an external database as much as possible. To calculate interest payable, we take the timestamp from each client deposit directly off the blockchain. At the end of each month, this allows us to pro-rata interest calculations to whole 24-hour periods on the realtime transaction record that is the blockchain.”
The Magnr platform doesn’t require a settlement period or a wait time for them to receive funds as payments to client accounts can happen in real-time. This also allows for the saver to check the on public blockchain for payments made to his or her Magnr account.
The Magnr team is founded by investment banking veterans. Joe Lee, formerly of Barclays Bank and Macquarie Group, first discovered Bitcoin in 2011. Joe began trading bitcoin and turned $100 into $200,000. This profit was then used alongside seed-funding to start BTC.sx. Colin Kwan, COO, worked at the senior management level at UBS and Deutsche Bank. He ensures the company’s products have institutional-grade quality and compliance.
“Our team is currently focused on product refinements and back-office operations,” says Lee. “Experience from the banks and investment banks we used to work with has taught us the value of building out a solid back-office operation as a matter of importance. We find that client trust starts with prioritization of the fiduciary responsibility we have when handling our client bitcoins. As we seek to engage with institutions and regulators worldwide to push the adoption of digital currencies, a well-managed operation speaks loudly for itself. This shows proof that business can be built in a trustworthy way using blockchain as its core rails.”
“Fintech startups have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionize banking,” Lee said. “We are very excited to be pioneering digital currency savings accounts. This is transparency in modern finance, redefined.”
Filament Develops Ad-Hoc Mesh Networks of Smart Sensors Operating on the Blockchain
Filament, a technology platform company focused on Internet of Things (IoT) applications and long-range wireless sensor networks for industrial settings, is developing ad-hoc mesh networks of smart sensors for industrial applications, operating on the blockchain.
Announced at the O’Reilly Solid Conference, Filament‘s wireless sensor devices, or Taps, can cover industrial areas with low-power autonomous mesh networks for data collection and asset monitoring. Taps have built-in environmental sensors, a USB port for other sensors or devices, and are equipped with hardware cryptographic chips and long-range radios for secure accessibility and communication across large geographic areas. Taps can talk directly to each other at distances of up to 10 miles and have a battery life of up to 20 years.
“We believe that all economic elements, digital and physical, old and new, must be fundamentally autonomous and distributed in order to maximize their potential,” said Jabber/XMPP creator Jeremie Miller, now CTO of Filament.
Taps operates in a decentralized way without a central network authority. Designed to generate ad-hoc mesh networks in the absence of cellular or Wi-Fi networks, Taps will be able to process bitcoin payments and enforce digital smart contracts. The company is leveraging existing blockchain technologies to create an open platform for Distributed Sensor Transactions (DIST). The Filament platform builds on the blockchain (Bitcoin and Ethereum for transactions), Telehash (private communication), JOSE (smart contracts), TMesh (low-power mesh networking), and BitTorrent (firmware and remote management updates.)
Two DIST components have been created by Miller. TMesh and Telehash, a lightweight interoperable protocol with strong encryption to enable mesh networking across multiple transports and platforms, are available on Gitbub as open source software.
“Blanket a factory in sensors, or control the streetlights of an entire city – our standalone networks span miles and last for years, all without Wi-Fi or cellular,” says the Filament website. “We’ve combined end-to-end encryption (telehash) with private-key crypto hardware to provide ultra-secure, decentralized communications between millions of devices. By enabling operations on the Blockchain, we’ve made it possible to generate new, recurring sources of revenue by selling access to your devices or data.”
Before the conference, O’Reilly Radar noted that Filament and IBM are exploring how specially designed decentralized ledgers can be used to enable devices to communicate service needs and other information among their owners and vendors for household, commercial and industrial purposes. IBM is building a similar proof-of-concept system for the next generation of the IoT, dubbed Autonomous Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Telemetry (ADEPT).
Filament, after raising a $5 million Series A Round led by Bullpen Capital, started to ship an early version of its hardware and to provide services to pilot customers. It lists many possible applications for Taps networks in industrial sectors where risk and operational efficiency is critical to success. Applications range from locating thousands of bicycles across an urban bike-sharing service to monitoring weather and soil conditions across large farms, or avoiding collisions between vehicles on remote worksites.
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Thursday, June 25, 2015
The Financial Needs of Banked and Unbanked Meet in Bitcoin
Nasdaq Selects Bitcoin Startup Chain to Run Pilot in Private Market Arm
Nasdaq has partnered with San Francisco-based bitcoin API startup Chain to implement the Bitcoin blockchain technology in its newly launched marketplace, Nasdaq Private Market.
Previously reported by Bitcoin Magazine, Nasdaq announced its plans to implement Bitcoin’s blokchain technology into its pilot test, where shares of private companies are handled and traded as smart assets on the blockchain.
Unlike other decentralized asset trading platforms, Nasdaq plans to utilize the colored coin protocol Open Assets based on the Bitcoin blockchain instead of developing an alternative blockchain or digital currency.
“I am a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial services industry,” said Bob Greifeld, CEO of Nasdaq. “Clearinghouses are a wonderful invention, but if you have a public ledger that is trusted, you can evolve back to a bilateral (trading) world but proceed with instantaneous settlement. We currently settle at T+3 [within 3 days]. Why not settle in 5-10 minutes?”
Chain Bitcoin API
Bitcoin API startup Chain is set to provide Nasdaq with the infrastructure and simplified API for the Bitcoin blockchain. Its easy interface to transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain will simplify the process of trading shares and assets in Nasdaq’s pilot test.
“It currently costs a lot of money to make sure there are no mistakes, even when you’re using [software], because there are human factors involved in the transfer, recording and valuation work around securities,” explained Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain.
Stock exchanges have spent millions of dollars in handling transactions and shares of private companies over the last decades. The process of trading shares on the stock exchanges has always required labor-intensive operations, from managing spreadsheets to the completion of documents and the approval of lawyers. With the help of Chain and Nasdaq, Bitcoin may prove to be the solution to the long-time problems of stock exchanges.
Chain has rasied $15 million USD in funding from Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures and SV Angel. Within its first year of launch, the Chain API has been used by more than 3,000 developers creating Bitcoin apps and platforms.
With the growing popularity of Chain’s API, the Bitcoin startup’s shares are set to be the first to be traded on the blockchain upon the launch of the project later this year. The issued shares of Chain is set to be coded into a very small amount of bitcoin with metadata that states necessary information for shares trading: number of shares being transferred, receiver, and seller.
Photo: Times Sq. still weird even after all these years / Photopin
Introducing BitINKA, South America’s First Universal Bitcoin Platform
BitInka, a bitcoin platform that operates in Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil will soon expand its services throughout Argentina, Colombia and Chile, to become South America’s first universal bitcoin platform targeted for the unbanked.
Founded in 2013 by Roger Gabriel, BitINKA is one of the only companies in South America which implemented bitcoin trading to create a bitcoin exchange that allows its users to convert/withdraw bitcoin for many local currencies of South America, including the Peruvian Nueva Sol and the Argentinian peso.
Through its international and instant bitcoin exchange platform, the bitcoin startup aims to penetrate mainstream bitcoin adoption by implementing bitcoin in day-to-day finances and to provide a platform for users without any prior knowledge about the currency.
Since 2013, BitINKA has partnered with local banks, financial institutions and local collection agencies including Banco de Crédito del Perú and Banco de Crédito de Bolivia to enable a fast and easy withdrawal processes for its users. For some regions, BitINKA’s bitcoin exchange and wallet platform will be the first bitcoin-related application to be introduced.
Targeting Mainstream Bitcoin Adoption and the Unbanked
According to the BitINKA team, the biggest market of South America is based on day-to-day expenses, which includes e-commerce, convenience stores, taxis, kiosks (small stores), etc. However, credit card penetration is substantially low in South American countries and thus, is often not used apart from e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, banks and financial institutions require a long list of documents and qualifications for bank accounts, and credit cards including two government approved licenses, tax income of at least two years, and financial statements from at least two different financial institutions.
Pierna Caballero, the co-administrator of BitINKA told Bitcoin Magazine “In some countries where Bitinka operates, people are educating themselves recently to use Bitcoin and they are realizing that is something very easy and also is a currency that people themselves control. In Peru for example this is something new and gradually has captured the public interest, in Bolivia it is prohibited Bitcoin as a payment method, so Bitinka works as a virtual wallet for businesses and users affiliates.”
Bitcoin is widely used in countries like Argentina, where well-established bitcoin payment processing startups and exchanges like BitPagos are based in. BitPagos is one of the most prominent bitcoin merchant payment platform which raised over US$600,000 in a funding round participated by Tim Draper and Barry Silbert. The startup is already close to processing US$1 million per month.
However, bitcoin is still unfamiliar to a large number of people in the continent. BitINKA aims to help those unfamiliar with the benefits of the digital currency to easily accept, trade and receive payments using bitcoin.
Caballero explained, “Brazil is a country that already use Bitcoin in different ways, as an investment, savings, etc. in Peru just a few people know Bitcoin, Peru is a country where new things are more difficult to be accepted so what we are doing with Bitinka is helping Bitcoin to incorporate in people’s lives.”
Andreas Antonopoulos and Pamela Morgan Join C4’s Board of Directors
The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) has added two high-profile names to its Board of Directors: Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Pamela Morgan.
Antonopoulos’ role will be to assist in both the Certified Bitcoin Expert (CBX) and the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (CCSS) projects. The popular speaker and author of Bitcoin’s definitive book, Mastering Bitcoin, will work to ensure that C4’s more technical projects achieve their requisite levels of quality.
“C4 fosters the cryptocurrency community’s effort to develop standards, through an open, transparent and participatory organization,” says Antonopoulos. “These standards provide a benchmark by which organizations and individuals can demonstrate their professionalism. I have contributed to and implemented these standards myself and I am delighted to join the board of C4 to further advance these efforts.”
Pamela Morgan, legal expert and co-founder with Antonopoulos at Third Key Solutions, has joined C4 as its director of education.
“C4 has proven itself to be a community-centric nonprofit that actually gets things done,” says Morgan. “Though it’s a young organization, C4 has already established two professional certification standards, the CBP (Certified Bitcoin Professional) and CBX, and one organizational security standard, CCSS (which is still open for community comment). I’m thrilled to join the C4 board and use my experience in higher education and training to curate and build educational tools to support these standards.”
“As C4’s initiatives continue to grow and mature, our committees and board need to grow as well,” Michael Perklin, CEO of C4, told Bitcoin Magazine. “C4’s certifications and standards depend on the collaborative efforts of our industry’s best and brightest professionals. I look forward to working alongside Andreas and Pamela to further C4’s core mission.”
C4 has also added Gem CEO Micah Winkelspecht to the CCSS Steering Committee, following a recent pull request led by Gem’s Senior Software Engineer, Matt Smith. The enhancements and feedback provided by Gem include definitions and clarifications of many technical terms used throughout the standard.
“We’ve watched several blockchain companies suffer from large-scale security compromises in the past few years, which erodes consumer confidence in the technology as a whole.” says Winkelspecht. “By sharing security best practices and building a common security standard we can help the entire blockchain ecosystem by giving companies a clear roadmap for success, and ultimately boost consumer confidence in the technology.”
Rounding out the new additions to the C4 team is Ethan Wilding who will be chairing the CBP Exam Committee.
The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium is a non-profit organization that provides certifications to professionals who perform cryptocurrency-related services. In awarding certificates to Bitcoin professionals and businesses, the Consortium ensures that recipients have demonstrated comprehensive knowledge in various disciplines ranging from basic cryptography to low-level cryptocurrency development.
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European Banks Rumored to be Monitoring and Reporting Transactions Related to Bitcoin
An anonymous Reddit user who self-identifies as bank employee posted a warning saying that his bank received a memo from the national financial institute, with instructions to report anyone who receives more than €1,000 that may be linked to Bitcoin.
The five-page memo outlines how surveillance works, how the network is monitored and says that some bitcoin exchanges have been unwilling to cooperate with the authorities. The memo is accompanied by a report, issued by E.U. law enforcement agency Europol, stating that 84 accounts in the country (which hasn’t been disclosed) have been flagged as suspect, and 52 are under surveillance and investigation.
The poster says that an earlier related report from the national financial institute is available online. The report is in Dutch and was released on May 21, 2015 by the Dutch Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) — which likely implies that the undisclosed country is The Netherlands.
The report mentions that bitcoin is used by technology enthusiasts and speculators, but also by criminals who use the digital currency to fund illicit activities and launder money. The report mentions terrorism and child pornography. In 2014 the FIU investigated 75 cases in which bitcoin plays an important role. The results, which led to new investigations, have been shared with foreign financial intelligence units.
The poster says that the bank received a list of IBAN accounts that are already constantly monitored because they belong to high-volume traders and exchanges such as Kraken, Bitstamp and BitcoinD. The bank has to report any transfer above €1,000 that involves those accounts. The bank must also report accounts that receive more than €10,500 per year (outside of salary) if it suspects that the funds originate from bitcoin exchanges.
Of course, anonymous reports should always been taken with a grain of salt, but this warning is substantiated by the openly available report by the Dutch FIU, and it makes sense. Now that governments have taken notice of the fact that bitcoin exists and is used by the people, it seems evident that they are trying, or will try, to force the banks to monitor and report transactions to and from bitcoin exchanges, as well as any other transactions that may be linked to bitcoin.
The stated objective of the governments is to fight money laundering and organized crime, and of course they use hot trigger words such as “terrorism” or “child pornography” to persuade the citizens that what they do is right. Almost everyone hates terrorism and child porn, and most people don’t condone money laundering and large-scale tax evasion. But it seems odd that relatively small transfers of €1,000 should be considered suspect.
All bitcoin users should know that if they transfer more than €1,000 to or from a bitcoin exchange they could be investigated or monitored. That’s likely to annoy those who are paid in bitcoin (for perfectly legitimate work) and must cash out to pay bills and buy food. A better way to avoid surveillance, which is becoming easier, is to pay directly in bitcoin for goods and services wherever possible.
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