The Tokyo-based crypto exchange company BitFlyer plans to reopen new domestic accounts after a year-long hiatus due to issues with consumer identity verification. The company, which voluntarily suspended operations on June 20, 2018, has been working on improving its ID mechanisms and protocols after receiving an operational improvement order due to concerns about financial terrorism…
Prime Factor Capital Ltd., an investment management firm headquartered in London, has become the first crypto-focused hedge fund to be authorized by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as a full-scope alternative investment fund manager (AIFM) under European Union rules. The regulatory approval means that Prime Factor Capital can now manage in excess of 100…
With its latest partnership, the Rootstock (RSK) platform is taking a crack at decentralized cloud storage, a move in line with its ambitions to bring DApps to the fore of the internet’s core infrastructure and services. Last week, the Bitcoin sidechain project announced its recently struck-up relationship with the Ethereum-facing Swarm platform to develop an…
On July 1, 2019, Blockstream announced that it has launched a Liquid Swap Tool on its platform. This tool allows users to execute atomic swaps for crypto assets on the Liquid Network, Blockstream’s federated Bitcoin sidechain. Atomic swaps are trustless exchanges of cryptocurrencies between two parties based on a smart contract. The transactions can happen…
These are not the best of times for cryptominers in Iran. On Tuesday, June 26, 2019, Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher at Oxford University, tweeted an image indicating that cryptocurrency miners in Iran have moved their operations to religious centers across the country, which receive free energy in the country. According to the post, this move…
Bitcoin adoption is on the rise in the U.S. as an increasing number of investors are turning to digital assets to add diversity to their investment portfolios, according to new research by Coinbase. For the research, published as “The United States of Crypto,” the leading cryptocurrency exchange pulled data from a combination of public sources,…
A report by Chainalysis estimates that $1 billion dollars will be spent on illegal businesses on the dark web in 2019, but that the proportion of bitcoin transactions that involve illegal activity has declined. This analysis was delivered in the form of a webinar, laying out some of the basic terminology, methodology and results of…
On today’s episode, Dave and Grahm chat with the one and only John McAfee, who is currently living in exile in Cuba. They talk about freedom, Bitcoin, McAfee’s new McAfee Magic trading platform, as well as his 2020 presidential campaign, the McAfee movie starring Michael Keaton, death threats and more! Resources: McAfee Magic The McAfee…
At a conference in Osaka, Japan, on June 28 and 29, 2019, the leaders of the G20 economic bloc formally announced their support of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) cryptocurrency guidelines as laid out in late June. The FATF is an international regulatory organization with the set task of making formal policy recommendations to…
A new partnership is creating an anonymous identity scheme to meet regulators and users in the middle when complying with KYC/AML regulations. FATF’s Crypto Guidance The Bitcoin community and friends flipped their sats over the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) latest nonbinding guidance for keeping tabs on cryptocurrency activity (essentially, the report recommends that cryptocurrency…