A London-startup headed by a Credit Suisse veteran is launching a new debit card that it claims will allow people to spend cryptocurrencies across the UK. The London Block Exchange (LBX) launched on Tuesday. It plans to launch a sterling-to-cryptocurrency exchange and a prepaid Visa debit card, dubbed "Dragoncard," that will allow people to convert bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, litecoin and monero to sterling and spend it across the UK. The startup plans to add more cryptocurrencies in future.
Square is testing cryptocurrency support in their Cash app, according to TechCrunch reader Zach Miles on Twitter and confirmed by the company. The trial, which seems to only be available right now to a small number of users, lets you buy and sell bitcoin directly in the app.
The interface is very basic. Users who have access to the beta can swipe right from the Cash Card page to access bitcoin functionality. Once there users will see a balance in USD and BTC, a graph showing performance over the last day, month or year and buy / sell buttons.
The newest fork of the bitcoin blockchain is officially live after a rocky start. Bitcoin Gold, or Bgold, officially went live on November 12 2017. It was created as a way to counter Bitcoin’s mining centralisation. Public mining has begun, and the media are reporting that already multiple mining pools have been opened. Aside from the pools, the code has also been released on GitHub.
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.
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.
British financial technology firm Revolut said on Wednesday it has applied for a European banking license, as it bids to join a growing number of digital-only banks looking to win away customers from larger, traditional lenders.
Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko in 2015, Revolut is an app-based banking alternative with a multi-currency card and mobile app. An account can be created in seconds, enabling users to instantly send free money transfers in 26 currencies to banks around the globe; spend fee-free in 120 currencies with a contactless Revolut card; and exchange currencies at interbank rates in the app. It also offers peer-to-peer payments.
The Bitcoin price (BTC/USD) broke through the $6,000 on Saturday, setting a new record high of $6,194.88, according to Coinmarketcap. The price increase allowed Bitcoin’s market capitalisation to exceed $100 billion for the first time. Bitcoin has since then retreated to lower levels and is currently trading in the low $5,900.
Bitcoin initially breached the $6,000 threshold Friday morning at only one exchange, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex, where investors can buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. After remaining just a few dollars shy of the mark at other digital currency exchanges such as Coinbase, which is headquartered in San Francisco, Bitcoin officially crossed the milestone on all trading venues just as U.S. stock markets closed Friday.
Another Bitcoin split is in the works, with a group of developers planning to establish an off-shoot called Bitcoin Gold (BTG). On October 25, Bitcoin Gold (Bgold) will split off from Bitcoin to create an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency. A few weeks later, a significant group of Bitcoin companies wants to hard fork according to the SegWit2x plan as defined in the “New York Agreement” (NYA), which will probably result in yet another new coin. According to Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song, the aim is for BTG to become “a better gold than Bitcoin”.
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