In an era of unprecedented global surveillance, it is unreasonable to expect the blockchain world to be any different. It is perfectly reasonable, though, to resist this surveillance through countermeasures that thwart the would-be surveillers. Digital privacy is a right that everyone is entitled to. Thanks to the provision of bitcoin mixers, you can claim that entitlement by shuffling your coins and emerging with untainted crypto whose origins have been obfuscated. Also read: How Dropgangs and Dead Drops Are Transforming Darknet Practices Before You Mix, Know the Basics Just as…
Day: January 16, 2020
Bill to Exempt Small Crypto Transactions From Taxes Returns to US Congress
A bill seeking to exempt personal cryptocurrency transactions from taxation for capital gains has been reintroduced in the Congress of the United States. What the bill looks to change Called “The Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020,” the bill would establish an exemption for virtual currency expenditures that qualify as personal transactions. Users would then not have to report instances when they spent crypto whose valued had changed relative to the U.S. dollar on day-to-day expenses. Representatives Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and David Schweikert (R-AZ) introduced the bill today, Jan.…
UN Warns Public Not To Attend North Korea Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference 2020
People should not attend a North Korean Blockchain and Cryptocurrency event to be held in February 2020, according to United Nations sanctions experts, In a confidential report due to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council later this month, they flagged it as a likely sanctions violation. The exclusive news, broken by Reuters, notes that the warning comes after independent UN experts told the council in August that North Korea generated an estimated $2 billion for its weapons of mass destruction programs using “widespread and increasingly sophisticated” cyberattacks to steal…
Dead Coins and Wallets: The Treasures of Atlantis or Zombie Uprising?
Amid the constantly growing cryptocurrency market, the number of irreversible coins in increasing affecting the whole industry development. The initial coin offering crypto buzz hit all-time high popularity in 2017 when there were 875 projects, a significant jump from 29 in the previous year. 2018 picked up on the trend, introducing a further 1,253 projects. To date, there have been a staggering 5,683 ICO projects with 2,318 of them being cryptocurrencies. Of the total projects, 4,932 are based on the Ethereum platform. However, only a few of these projects have…
Bitcoin’s Share of PoW Mining Rewards Now Above 80%
Rewards received by bitcoin miners form a major chunk of the salaries paid across major proof of work (PoW) blockchains, according to Yassine Elmandjra, a cryptocurrency analyst from ARK Invest. For example, bitcoin miners were paid over $15 million worth of the cryptocurrency as incentive to mine blocks and secure the network on Jan. 9. Meanwhile, the total rewards paid across bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH) and other major PoW cryptocurrencies including zcash (ZEC), litecoin (LTC), ethereum classic (ETC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin SV (BSV) were just a bit more…
Ex-CFTC Chairman to Promote Blockchain-Based USD in New Think Tank
J. Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), plans to promote the blockchain-based United States dollar with a new think tank. Giancarlo, who earned the “Crypto Dad” moniker for advocating a “do no harm” approach to blockchain regulation, is now setting up a think tank called the Digital Dollar Foundation to promote the idea of digitizing the U.S. dollar. Giancarlo’s digital dollar is based on technology behind Bitcoin According to a Jan. 16 report by The Wall Street Journal, the ex-CFTC chairman is establishing the non-profit…
Chrysler Building Owner Sells Stake in Zurich Property for ERC-20 Tokens and Cash
The new owner of the Chrysler Building is selling a property worth $135 million to a blockchain real-estate company, taking a fifth of the purchase price in tokenized securities. New York-based RFR Holdings, which purchased the Chrysler Building in a joint agreement in March 2019, agreed to sell its majority stake in a commercial property in Zurich to BrickMark, a Switzerland-based real estate agency. Announced Wednesday, BrickMark said roughly 20 percent of the purchase price will be paid in the firm’s BMT security token. The deal gives BrickMark 80 percent…
Bitcoin Price & Technical Analysis: BTC Rally Seized
By Dmitriy Gurkovskiy, Chief Analyst at RoboForex. BTC/USD tech analysis The application for launching the ETF for the BTC called back again CME Group started trading options for the BTC On W1 of the Bitcoin, there begin ascending dynamics after a breakout of the resistance line of the 6-months descending channel. It is too early to say this impulse can renew the high. First of all, we should consider a move to the long-term resistance line at $11500.00. All said above, the Stochastic and MACD are looking down, which may…
Coinbase-Led Crypto Ratings Council Plans Transparency Boost as New Members Join
The Crypto Ratings Council (CRC), the Coinbase-led organization hoping to create a standard for assessing whether different cryptocurrencies are securities under U.S. law, is adding new members. The group announced Thursday that eToro, Radar and OKCoin US have joined the aspiring self-regulatory group looking to streamline how exchanges assess whether a cryptocurrency is a security. The new members bolster the level of technical and legal information that the group can utilize, said Juan Saurez, a member of the Coinbase legal team working with the CRC. Saurez told CoinDesk in a…
Former CFTC Officials Ramp Up Push for Digital Dollar With Accenture Partnership
Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, former LabCFTC head Daniel Gorfine and Charles Giancarlo want to take the dollar digital – and they’re not waiting for the Fed. The three are forming the Digital Dollar Foundation, working with Accenture to design and push for a potential U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). The new not-for-profit organization has a multi-part plan to first create potential designs and proposals; convene economists, lawyers, academics, technologists and others to evaluate these designs; and create a framework for testing the new system,…