Despite Bitcoin’s hockey-stick price chart over the last week, hitting $7,500 level, still, the general perception of the digital currency is that it can be largely used for illegal purposes like drug and human trafficking, terrorist financing and others.
Now, Vatican City is working with major financial institutions to better understand the use of crypto in human trafficking and ultimately explore ways to stop the illicit activity.
Millennials often get the blame for ruining traditions and the established order of things, but they may well be on the right path when it comes investing, but now a survey shows they might be responsible for keeping the rally in bitcoin alive.
A survey by venture capital firm Blockchain Capital found that about 30 per cent of those in the 18-to-34 age range would rather own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin than $1,000 of government bonds or stocks. The study of more than 2,000 people found that 42 per cent of millennials are at least somewhat familiar with bitcoin, compared with 15 per cent among those ages 65 and up.
There will almost certainly be no Bitcoin hard fork next week: the main organizers behind the SegWit2x project have "suspended" their efforts.
Called SegWit2x, the proposed fork would have increased the blocksize of bitcoin to allow quicker and less costly transaction processing. But it failed because of a lack of consensus support across the bitcoin community, including from bitcoin miners and exchanges.
The online search phrase “buy bitcoin” is now more popular than “buy gold,” according to the latest data from Google Trends. The tide began to change in favor of bitcoin only in the spring of this year, with “buy gold” search phrase completely dominating the field prior to that. On average, gold still wins out in 2017, but this might not be for long, as shown on the Google Trends chart.
According to online records, e-commerce giant Amazon, often seen as the “white whale of bitcoin payments, recently registered three cryptocurrency-related domain names: “amazoncryptocurrency.com,” “amazoncryptocurrencies.com,” and “amazonethereum.com.” The move was first reported by domain industry news website DomainNameWire (DNW).
The former digital chief of Credit Suisse is launching a blockchain-based investment platform that lets people share ownership of "experiential" assets such as artwork or a classic car, and is seeking to raise funding for the startup via an initial coin offering (ICO).
Marco Abele, who left the investment bank this summer, is offering investments in assets usually limited to high-net worth individuals through a new platform called Tend. Well-known fintech industry insider Oliver Bussman, a former chief information officer at UBS and the investment bank’s "blockchain guru" is a strategic advisor.
Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam on Thursday expressed caution about Bitcoin, saying the current interest in the crypto-currency could eventually subside.
“Bitcoin presents a number of challenges. The first of them is really the anonymity,” Thiam told a results news conference. “I think most banks in the current state of regulation have little or no appetite to get involved in a currency which has such anti-money laundering challenges.
Bitcoin prices have continued to climb overnight, building on consecutive highs in recent days and ultimately reaching a new all-time high close to $7,000. At 07:00 UTC, bullish bitcoin trading saw the cryptocurrency soar to a peak of $6,994.01, having opened the session at $6,750. At press time, the price of a bitcoin is $6,939, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index – a 2.8 percent gain for the day so far.
