36-year-old cryptocurrency specialist Virgil Griffith – who was recently arrested by American authorities for allegedly helping North Korea use blockchain technology in violation of US sanctions – has pleaded not guilty in court today. Griffith was formally indicted for “conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” and his case was been assigned to SDNY Judge P. Kevin Castel in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. On January 7, 2020, according to a Forbes article, a Grand Jury indicted Virgil Griffith and he will stand…
Day: January 31, 2020
Virgil Griffith Pleads Innocent in Blockchain North Korea Event Case – Faces Up To 20 Years in Prison if Convicted
36-year-old cryptocurrency specialist Virgil Griffith – who was recently arrested by American authorities for allegedly helping North Korea use blockchain technology in violation of US sanctions – has pleaded not guilty in court today. Griffith was formally indicted for “conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” and his case was been assigned to SDNY Judge P. Kevin Castel in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. On January 7, 2020, according to a Forbes article, a Grand Jury indicted Virgil Griffith and he will stand…
Bitcoin Price Pulls Back to $9.2K, BTC Realized Cap Hits All-Time High
Bitcoin price (BTC) pulled back to $9.2K levels on Jan. 31, or almost 1% lower over the past 24 hours, after exceeding $9,500 earlier today. “It’s over 9 thousand” BTC price hits new 2020 high The move to $9,530 resulted in a new 3-month high for BTC/USD alongside rising volume, pointing to an overall bullish trend that has persisted in the first month of 2020. Bitcoin daily price chart. Source: Coin360 Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of Global Macro Investor, Raoul Pal, suggested today that more interest rate cuts by…
Financial Firm SBI Holdings to Offer XRP Cryptocurrency as Shareholders’ Benefit
Japan’s crypto-friendly financial services company SBI Holdings is to give shareholders the option to receive the XRP cryptocurrency as a benefit. SBI announced on Friday that shareholders could either take the benefit in XRP or another product offered by its health food and cosmetics subsidiary SBI Alapromo. Under the scheme, newer shareholders on the company’s registry as of the starting date of March 31 can accept XRP to the value of 2,000 yen (around $18), while those who’ve been shareholders for over a year will receive 8,000 yen ($73.50) in…
Bitcoin Will Be $8 Trillion Economy by 2030, Top Wealth Manager Explains Why
Bitcoin could become an $8 trillion asset by 2030, according to Andy Edstrom of California-based WESCAP Group. The wealth manager said the cryptocurrency could take away a part of capitalization from all the leading markets. They include gold, shares, fiat, offshore assets, or demonetized store of values like real estates. He added that investors would explore bitcoin also because of its new use-cases as its technology grows in the next decade. Excerpts: “Whether it’s micropayments or similar things enabled by [the] Lightning [Network] or it’s Abra or similar systems whereby you…
University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies Releases New Report on Supply Chains
“Despite the increasing opportunity for digitisation and looming disruption, currently, application areas and progress of DLT adoption in this area are not well understood. This report seeks to shed light on where DLT is being applied functionally in global physical supply chains and within certain sectors.” This report is the first comprehensive outlook on the state of DLT in the global physical supply chain sector. Food provenance is an increasingly hot topic for the industry and both start-ups and corporate projects are working to develop DLT-based solutions, and substantial progress…
Overstock’s tZERO to Launch Broker Dealer in First Half of 2020
Overstock’s blockchain arm tZERO aims to launch its cryptocurrency and digital asset broker dealer service in the first half of 2020. In a letter to investors released on Jan. 30, tZERO CEO Saum Noursalehi provided a recap of the company’s progress over the last year and highlighted tZERO’s goals for 2020. One of the main objectives of the company is to roll out a digital assets broker dealer in the first half of the current year, dubbed tZERO Markets. Noursalehi said that the company is working closely with regulators on…
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Miners Gaming the Network Amid Low Transaction Volume
Despite attempts to improve the difficulty adjustment protocol for Bitcoin Cash (BCH), miners are still able to ‘game’ the network while transaction volumes remain significantly low. Bitcoin Cash Experiences Five Hour Downtime On Thursday (January 30, 2020), the Bitcoin Cash blockchain experienced downtime of more than five hours. During the period, miners were unable to discover a block header. The likely cause of the anomaly appears tied to the ability of miners to alternate between Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin (BTC) mining. BCH, a hard fork of the original Bitcoin…
‘Key Milestone’ for Hyperledger as Fabric Blockchain Platform Reaches 2.0 Release
Enterprise blockchain project Hyperledger has released the most significant update of its DLT framework Fabric since launch in July 2017. The Hyperledger Foundation announced Thursday that Fabric 2.0 is designed to improve the usability and performance for the end user, with updates including new features such as decentralized governance for smart contracts and several enhancements for handling and sharing private data on the platform. Describing the release as a “key milestone,” IBM’s VP of blockchain platforms, Jerry Cuomo, said it would allow IBM to upgrade its protocol “to leverage the…
Bitfinex Users Can Now Trade Tether Gold Stablecoin Against Bitcoin
After launching trading of gold-pegged stablecoin Tether Gold (XAU₮) last week, Bitfinex now allows users to trade Tether Gold against Bitcoin (BTC). On Jan. 30, Bitfinex has rolled out three margin trading pairs for Tether Gold, a digital asset backed by physical gold, which was introduced by Bitfinex’s affiliate firm Tether on Jan. 23. The crypto exchange exchange now allows traders to trade Tether Gold against Bitcoin as well as the U.S. dollar and dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT). Margin trading — a feature that enables traders to borrow funds to…