Berkeley City Council Member Ben Bartlett has become the first elected official to ever purchase cannabis with cryptocurrency as we are about to read in the coming altcoin news below. According to the news reports from the Daily Californian, the Berkeley City Council Member purchased cannabis using cryptocurrency during the event that was organized by the Blockchain Advocacy Coalition last Tuesday. This event was held in order to increase awareness to a bill proposing the cryptocurrency payments for California’s cannabis industry. Bartlett purchases the cannabis via the crypto-financial platform CRED in a transaction that only took seconds to complete. Ohana Cannabis Co- which is the cannabis merchant in the transaction simply accepted the payment via the LBA token which is cred’s native cryptocurrency. Bartlett declared:

‘’By providing a cash-free method of cannabis tax collections, AB 953 can reduce costs and safety risks for cities and businesses. The Green Rush is a 21st-century industry; it deserves 21st-century legislation. Tax collections leveraging stablecoin technology will help bring this new industry into the light.’’

According to the US Federal Statutes, cannabis is still illegal despite the many attempts to make it legal for recreational use in states like California. The business is still cash-based and there is almost zero banking support. The federal banks in the United States have been known to close down the accounts of many marijuana investors. The nature of the industry that is cash-based causes serious problems when considering the sales and city tax payments. The state tax officials tend to spend some more money and their time to accept payments in large fiat deposits. For the co-founder of cred, Dan Schatt, cryptocurrencies can provide solutions for these problems:

‘’Not only does crypto result in significant cost reduction for consumers and merchants, but it also enables highly productive tax collection, transparency, and predictability for city and state governments.’’

Cannabis is still a very taboo subject and so are the cryptocurrency payments and systems but it still seems like crypto is the perfect transactional tool for the industry. Berkeley’s Blockchain department’s Liam DiGregoria commented on the efforts that Bartlett made in leading the way for marijuana to become normalized among the elected officials and as he noted for the latest cryptocurrency news reports:

‘’There’s a negative public perception that people in higher levels of office shouldn’t use (cannabis), let alone buy it.’’

The latest cryptocurrency news show that the South Korean arm of the cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has decided to remove support for five major altcoins. It is true that OKEx Korea delisted Monero, Dash and other coins due to new international regulations. As a blog post originally published on September 10 shows, OKEx Korea confirmed that it would halt trading of Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN) and Super Bitcoin (SBTC) on October 10. As the exchange revealed, the main reason for this is that as since they are focused on privacy, the coins fall foul of the new guidelines set out by the intergovernmental body which is the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). OKEx Korea delisted these altcoins, the blog post confirms, showing:

“Support for trading of 5 different cryptocurrencies, XMR, DASH, ZEC, ZEN, SBTC, will be terminated.”

As the news site reported, the sweeping changes to crypto transaction rules currently demand businesses to identify the two parties which are sending funds to each other - if a transaction exceeds the limit of $1,000.

"According to the statement corresponding to FATF R.16, OKEx Korea has restricted its implementation as the ' travel rule' recommends that exchanges be able to collect relevant information such as the name and address of the sender and recipient of the virtual asset. privacy-oriented cryptocurrency, aka that ' the dark Coin "has decided to take the deal end-of-support measures of the corresponding event," the blog post showing that OKEx delisted the five altcoins shows.

This comes in period when more than 200 countries are forced to theoretically implement the rules by June 2020. Still, the altcoin news show that there are concerns that doing so is physically impossible for a lot of decentralized blockchains. Now that OKEx Korea delisted the five cryptocurrencies, all of them make it possible to identify the sender and recipient of a transaction by design. An OKEx representative was also featured on many best cryptocurrency news sites a while ago, telling that the coins will only be delisted on OKEx Korea (OKEx.com.kr) but will remain listed on the global OKEx platform. The value of these coins, as the coming altcoin news show, has remained unchanged.

The CEO of Ripple is selling XRP to some institutional buyers at major discounts, reports in the latest cryptocurrency news show. We are talking about Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of the California-based blockchain startup, who recently confirmed that XRP is sold at discount for some of its clients. Garlinghouse was in the altcoin news after his interview with CNN, when he was asked at what price does the Ripple sell XRP to financial institutions which they are dealing with - and whether the startup gives these institutions discounts and if there is any lockup. The CEO noted that there are times when Ripple is working with financial institutions which want to buy a large amount of XRP. He said that Ripple is selling XRP to them but also that they are careful about any potential lockups which may prevent them from dumping it on the market.

“We would hypothetically have restrictions about what they can sell and how often, and usually those are based upon volume in the market,” Garlinghouse noted.

He also talked about the price at which XRP is sold, being featured in the coming altcoin news for his unique response to the interviewer's question:

CNN asked "So you might give them it slightly cheaper but you say to them, ‘hey, you’re not allowed to sell it for six months, let’s say, or a year’,” on which the CEO of ripple replied “Correct, that’s basically correct,” even though the rest of his statement was cut off.

Also, the CNN interviewer asked Garlinghouse about the proportion of ownership that Ripple has currently, as well as its amount of power and ability to control the price. The CEO replied that Ripple is still the largest owner in the XRP community and that they would never dump XRP which would go "against their best interest." Garlinghouse also said that the team has "taken steps to lock up most of the XRP we own in escrow, so that we can’t touch it.” https://twitter.com/jchatterleyCNN/status/1172151590763016193 What's also interesting is the fact that in August, the CEO of Ripple has confirmed that Ripple hasn't increased - but instead decreased its sales by volume Q/Q and since then, the inflation rate of XRP and the circulating supply has been lower than the one of BTC and ETH. In value, sales for Ripple increased by 48% which is probably another reason why Ripple is selling XRP with a discounts - to trigger further growth. In either case, the company confirmed that it "plans to take a more conservative approach to XRP sales" in Q3 this year. The interview was featured on many best cryptocurrency news sites.

The Square Cash App is all over the latest cryptocurrency news for apparently testing a new feature which will allow customers to buy and sell stocks. According to Bloomberg's reports on September 12 which cite a source familiar with the matter, the San Francisco-based startup and its employees began testing the new feature in the recent weeks. Once the Square Cash App releases the new stock trading features, it will allow its users to make free stock trades. Praised on many best cryptocurrency news sites as a great feature, there is a lot of buzz around this - even though Square has reportedly not yet determined the date of the launch of this feature. For those of you who haven't been following our Bitcoin and altcoin news, Square made Bitcoin (BTC) deposits available on its Cash App in late June. At the time, the deposits were limited to $10,000 worth of BTC over the span of 7 days. Square Cash App was limited in terms of transfers too - it could take several hours for one to be confirmed on the blockchain. In July this year, the Square Cash App also announced a giveaway of $50,000 worth of BTC following the growth of its stock price. At the time, the stock of Square was up about 56% in 2019, after starting the year at $57.2 and trading at $81.8 at the time as MarketWatch data showed. The founder of Square Cash App and Square as a company, Jack Dorsey, is also the creator of the social media giant Twitter. Earlier this year, he was putting together a team of dedicated experts committed to improving the crypto infrastructure in general. Back then, he commented on the advantages for Square too, stating:

“Just from a business perspective, we don’t look like an Internet company today. An Internet company can launch something and it’s available around the world. Whereas with payments, you have to go to each market and pay attention to regulators. You need a partnership with a local bank. This is a very slow process in any new market.”

The new announcement about stock trading features on the Square Cash App has been well received by the crypto community.