Category: Exchanges

The South Korean government is said to be considering imposing a 20 percent tax on all cryptocurrency transactions. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Monday that officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s income tax office had been reviewing a new proposal that could see the country adopt a clearer regime for how it taxes cryptocurrencies. An anonymous official speaking to Yonhap suggested South Korea is considering re-classifying returns made on cryptocurrencies as a type of “other income,” placing it in the same category as money earned from lotteries,…

Industry veteran Jonathan Wilkins, a co-founder of bitcoin tech start-up Blockstream, is joining up-and-coming bitcoin brokerage River Financial as chief security officer (CSO). River is a bitcoin-only financial institution for buying and selling the digital currency (emphatically not an exchange; it says it’s “for the long-term investor”). Currently available only to testers who have received invites, the San Francisco-based outfit is working on an interface it hopes will be as slick as Jack Dorsey’s Square Cash, equipped with automatic recurring buys. Wilkins brings C-level gravitas and cypherpunk bona fides to…

A Palestinian militant group took millions of dollars-worth of bitcoin donations to finance its operations, according to a new report. Obtained by the Jerusalem Post and reported Sunday, the report from the Israeli International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) found the al-Nasser Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), used bitcoin sent from overseas as a means to fund operations both in and out of the Gaza Strip. ICT researchers linked the group to the bitcoin wallet address, “1LaNXgq2ctDEa4fTha6PTo8sucqzieQctq,” which showed “an irregular increase in the scope of…

View Bitcoin’s dramatic overnight fall from $9,200 is telling a tale of buyer exhaustion. A break below Sunday’s low of $8,461 would invalidate the recent bullish trend and could yield a drop to $8,200-$8,000. Dips could be short-lived as the longer duration charts are still reporting bullish conditions. Bitcoin may make another attempt to pass the 200-day average at $9,027 if support at $8,461 continues to holds ground. Bitcoin’s price rally is looking tired following Sunday’s sudden drop from above $9,000. Even so, the bias remains bullish with support near…

China-based RenrenBit, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency lending and wallet startup, has disclosed it took $600,000 in net income from revenue of $2.3 million in 2019. The startup, founded by well-known Chinese over-the-counter trader Zhao Dong, who’s also an investor in Bitfinex and Binance, published an unaudited income statement on Monday as part of its commitment to revealing financial data when it raised $21 million in a token sale last year. In addition, the 35-member team posted an unaudited balance sheet that shows, as of Dec. 31, it was holding about $168…

Co-founder Ketuan “Micree” Zhan was stripped of his director role at not only Beijing Bitmain Technology, but the cryptocurrency miner maker’s parent entity, BitMain Technologies Holding Company, corporate records show. A filing of the Cayman Islands–incorporated holding company, submitted Dec. 10, reveals that Zhan’s role as a board director was “ceased” on Oct. 30. That was one day after rival co-founder Jihan Wu returned to the company’s Beijing office and announced the seeming conclusion to a long-running power struggle. The takeover may have lasting effects on the world’s largest bitcoin…

Plaintiffs in three separate putative class action lawsuits against Bitfinex and Tether have moved to consolidate their cases, according to a Thursday court filing. Court filings by David Leibowitz et al, Eric Young et al, and Bryan Faubus et al, accuse the sister companies of manipulating the crypto markets. Their cases share common threads, filings show, including allegations that Bitfinex and Tether manipulated the price of bitcoin and bitcoin futures in violation of federal law. All three cases were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of…

You might have heard of bitcoin’s “lightning network,” but don’t know what’s going on with it right now. Who are the mysterious big players behind this magical technology that allegedly solves all of bitcoin’s problems?   Lightning is one of the most promising technologies in the space right now, even drawing in Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Given current technical constraints, blockchains don’t support many users, let alone the world’s population. Lightning could multiply the transactions possible, while making transactions faster (like a millisecond) and cheaper.  Nerds have eagerly been…

This is part of a series of op-eds previewing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. CoinDesk will be on the ground in Davos from Jan. 20–24 chronicling all things crypto at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elite. Follow along by subscribing to our pop-up newsletter, CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Jeremy Allaire is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Circle, which, with Coinbase, pioneered the open standards CENTRE Consortium and USD Coin (USDC) – a dollar-backed stablecoin used in millions of financial transactions around the world. He has also been named…

Financial advisor and crypto advocate Tyrone Ross joins The Breakdown for a discussion on financial advisors, DeFi and the most important company in crypto. One man. Three piping hot takes. In this special interview episode of The Breakdown, financial advisor and crypto advocate Tyrone Ross shares his thoughts on: Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests…