Day: November 8, 2018

Charlie Shrem Says He Never Owned Bitcoin Claimed Stolen By Winklevosses

boss

Early bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem is pushing back against an accusation that he stole 5,000 bitcoin from Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, according to recently-published court filings. In a document filed Monday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Shrem calls the Winklevoss brothers’ assertion that he stole 5,000 bitcoin “dead wrong,” while also arguing against a prejudgement motion to freeze certain of his assets. The Winklevoss brothers sued Shrem in September, though the complaint remained under seal until October, claiming that while they paid him…

Bitmain to Begin Selling New Bitcoin Miners Later This Week

boss

Bitmain is launching two new Antminer models targeting the bitcoin mining industry. The crypto hardware manufacturing giant announced Tuesday that the new Antminer S15 and T15 machines will be powered by its recently revealed 7nm ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) processor, and will go on sale on Nov. 8. The new miners “possess industry-leading hash rates designed to mine with the SHA256 algorithm,” according to a tweet from the company. The 7nm chip was first announced in late September by Bitmain CEO and co-founder Jihan Wu, who said it would be more…

Texas Regulators Enter Emergency Stop Against Crypto Mining Firm

boss

The Texas State Securities Board entered an emergency cease-and-desist on Tuesday against a cloud mining company based in Australia that it said was selling unregistered securities. In the order, Texas securities regulators claim that Automated Web Services Mining (otherwise known as AWS Mining), AWS Mining PTY LTD., a number of of AWS Mining’s officers, crypto wallet provider MyCoinDeal, and multi-level marketing organization AWS Elite were violating the state’s Securities Act and committing fraud by selling investment contracts in AWS’ cloud mining pool. According to the filing, the respondents promised investors…

Bitcoin Cash Price Climbs 11% to Hit 2-Month High

boss

The price of bitcoin cash rose more than 11 percent on Tuesday, pushing its price to a new two-month high. Market data shows that the cryptocurrency’s price has risen 30 percent since Sunday, and is currently trading at roughly $623. Bitcoin cash is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, CoinMarketCap data shows. The price of BCH was trading hands at $425 before surging 32.5 percent, where it reached a then-peak of $588 on Nov. 5, clocking a 5-week high in the process when it was later confirmed, according to Coinbase…

BBVA Puts $150 Million Syndicated Loan on Ethereum Blockchain

boss

Spanish banking giant BBVA has completed a pilot that put a syndicated loan for $150 million on the blockchain. According to a report from the Financial Times on Wednesday, the bank arranged the loan for Red Electrica, Spain’s national electrical grid operator. A syndicated loan is one, where a group of banks lends together to a single borrower. In this case, the BBVA’s co-lenders were Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and France’s BNP Paribas. The data for the loan was time-stamped at each stage of the process. The loan agreement…

Salesforce Wins Patent Tackling Email Spam With Blockchain

boss

Software giant Salesforce has won a patent outlining how a blockchain-based platform can be used to prevent spam or other unwanted emails from plaguing people’s inboxes. According to a document published Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a blockchain-based platform can be leveraged to check whether emails are changed or otherwise tampered with after being sent through a custom matching system. Moreover, this system can more efficiently filter spam than existing protocols, according to the document. The proposed platform would use a matching system to determine whether an…

Hackers Breach Popular Web Analytics Site to Target Crypto Exchange

boss

Cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io was apparently the target of hackers who compromised a widely used web analytics platform this week. According to a report from internet security firm ESET on Tuesday, bad actors compromised Ireland-based web analytics site StatCounter, in an attempt to steal bitcoin from the exchange’s customers. The attackers managed to inject malicious code into the script of StatCounter webpage, having also registered a domain very similar to the official one. The fake domain swapped two letters from the original to form “StatConuter”, which can be difficult to spot…

US Election Sees Crypto-Friendly Politicians Win Governor Races

boss

The U.S. 2018 midterm elections saw crypto-friendly lawmakers securing governorships in three states, while maintaining two others. Three new governors and two incumbent are ranked as very crypto-friendly, according to data compiled by the Digital Asset Trade Association (DATA), a blockchain advocacy group. The organization sent surveys to most gubernatorial candidates, rating their blockchain-friendliness based on their responses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these new governors include Jared Polis (of Colorado) and Gavin Newsom (of California), both have whom been vocal supporters of both cryptocurrencies and blockchain more broadly. Mark Gordon won his…

CFTC Chair Says Distributed Ledger Tech Can Aid Market Watchdogs

boss

Advances in financial technology may be useful for improving the regulation of derivatives markets, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo said Wednesday. Speaking at the D.C. Fintech Week Conference at Georgetown University, Giancarlo highlighted distributed ledger technology (DLT) and how it could be leveraged to automate certain regulatory processes in particular, which he described as “quantitative regulation.” This automation, in turn, would allow the regulator to more efficiently oversee markets while reducing costs. “As we think about the application of [financial] technologies to trading markets, it is no…

As Plasma Stalls, SNARKs Become New Hope for Scaling Ethereum

boss

Efforts to scale ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain, are growing more varied as one much-anticipated solution encounters pitfalls amid its continued development. At the forefront of this transition has been plasma, a concept widely heralded as ethereum’s best bet for short-term scaling. Already, researchers behind the tech have built five distinct versions of the protocol – but within these multiple iterations, there’s evidence that work isn’t proceeding as originally hoped, with little actionable code being put together well over a year since its inception. As plasma slows, however, attention is being…