Blockchain News

P2P LocalBitcoins Trading Platform Restricts Services For Iranian Users

Published

3 months ago

May 23, 2019

Stefan

P2P LocalBitcoins trading platform which is the most popular bitcoin trading platforms has started to restrict services for their Iranian users. As reported in the altcoin news, creating ads for selling and buying old ads regarding the platform are restricted to Iranian traders.

In the near future, there could be a possibility of closing down the accounts of the users and their Bitcoins on the platform’s wallet. All of the big centralized exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase have previously restricted the users from Iran and some of them even seized their cryptocurrencies. Also, they prevented account setup in the ID phase so many people started using the P2P localbitcoins trading platform for localized trading.

The trading platform does not require any credit card or online payments which is much easier for the unbanked Iranian users. But, since the week started, the policy of the platform changed and threw shade on the Iranian users altogether. LocalBitcoins confirmed that will no longer provide services for the users in the country.

The restrictions increase the risks of insecure transactions since there is no escrow service. The exchanges that want a bigger market and follow the government’s regulations will continuously block Iranian users. This approach is contrary to what Bitcoin is for according to the community as reported in the best cryptocurrency news sites.

Previously, LocalBitcoins, an international peer-to-peer crypto exchange, announced today that the platform will be put under supervision by the Finnish Financial Authority. LocalBitcoins is based in Helsinki, Finland and the platform has stated previously that the parliament of Finland gave approval for the new legislation meant for legalizing crypto assets. The regulator gave a green light on the new Act on Virtual Currency Service Providers which is expected to come into force from November this year.

The new AML measures could improve the general opinion of the exchange and will also protect other users. It is also important that with the new regulation it is expected to increase the crypto adoption. LocalBitcoins is further making sure that the security level on the platform is updated and increased in order to be compliant with the regulatory framework.

The exchange also initiated a registration process so the users can have the ability to verify their identity while signing up to the platform. Each user will have a different type of account depending on the verification process and the type of trading the users will prefer.

DC Forecasts is a leader in many crypto news categories, striving for the highest journalistic standards and abiding by a strict set of editorial policies. If you are interested to offer your expertise or contribute to our news website, feel free to contact us at editor@dcforecasts.com

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Stefan

Stefan has been a Bitcoin Specialist for over 5 years. Providing daily news and updates for DC Forecasts.

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Blockchain News

Bitmain’s Hashrate To Increase By 50% With 600,000 New Mining Chips

Published

3 hours ago

August 24, 2019

Stefan

Bitmain’s hashrate will increase by more than 50 percent with the newest addition of 600,000 mining chips as per the reports in the coming altcoin news that we have today. As the optimism in the country is renewing and growing, Bitmain’s hashrate is also growing due to the investments in the crypto mining industry. Now, Bitmain is buying more than 600,000 new crypto mining chips and as a result of the new investment, the company expects to make up to $1 billion in profits. The battle to produce new and better cryptocurrency mining gear is heating up. In this direction, the Chinese Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain Technologies LTC is placing orders for a lot of machines with high hash rate capacity. According to the Chinese news outlet ‘’Recently a supply chain person close to TSMC broke the news. The source noted that Bitmain has recently placed new orders for more than 600,000 mining chips. As reported previously, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is Bitmain’s chip supplying contractor and this company ranks among the highest and profitable chipmakers in the world. Moreover, according to the same source, some of these chips include the new model of 7nm model with a single power of 50 Tera hashes per second. Therefore, in just a few months, the observers believe that Bitmain’s total network computing power could increase by more than 50 percent. Despite the loss in the first quarter in 2019, which reached about $625 million, Bitmain remains very optimistic about the strengthening of the mining industry and in effect with this new investment, the company will expectedly hit about $12 billion. Last year, Bitmain announced the new generation of the 7nm ASIC chips which aimed to improve the performance and energy efficiency. The chips were designed to mine cryptocurrency using the SHA256 algorithm for proof-of-work purposes as noted in the reports of the best cryptocurrency news sites. The antminer models came with enhanced hash rate capacity and in 2018 in April, the chipmaker announced the specifications for the latest 7nm Antminer 17 series. For example, the Antimner 17 pro will come in two variants and in addition, Bitmain is working with a specialist to prepare for the US share sale that could happen in the second half of 2019.

Blockchain News

BitPay Under Fire After Rejecting BTC Donation For The Amazon Rainforest

Published

3 hours ago

August 24, 2019

Stefan

Bitpay under fire after the crypto exchange denied helping raise funds for the saving of the Amazon Rainforest after the massive wildfires that destroyed it as we can read in all of the altcoin news reports these days. The bitcoin blocked donation has caused bitpay some headaches because the crypto community has trashed the exchange for their decision. According to the social media exchange on August 23, the cryptoprocessor is facing some harsh criticism after it failed to allow the $100,000 Bitcoin donation to go through. The payment came directly from a donor to the Amazon Watch charity which uses the exchange’s platform to accept cryptocurrency payments. BitPay rejected the payment because the Amazon watch’s maximum permitted amount was a little lower than $100,000 and after they ignored the formal complaint, the staff of the exchange told the charity on Twitter it could easily solve the problem by changing the settings in its account. This, however, turned out to be very untrue because in order to allow a higher level the company must first submit compliance:

“…We tried to increase the volume but can’t do it through the dashboard and were told we needed to email compliance.’’

The debacle brought BitPay under fire due to the massive criticism which frequently engulfs the exchange. The prolonged bureaucracy compounded by another scandal including transaction fees which have led to frequent calls for business to open the source alternative payment processor and the logic as explained on Twitter pointed out in the comments on Amazon Watch’s difficulties is because Bitcoin is a free and open payment system and there are third parties that verify the transactions arbitrarily in order for the cryptocurrency to serve its purpose:

“…You don’t need (BitPay) to reject your transactions when you can verify them yourselves for free.’’

As noted in the latest cryptocurrency news, BitPay’s difficulties have had a long history since 2017 even when the executives opted to support the controversial SeGwit2x bitcoins scaling proposal which eventually led for the crypto wallet Trezor to ditch the company. Amazon watch even stated that it would look into using BTCPay an alternative open-source option which could copy that similar one of the travel agent CheapAir from 2018. The backlash over the previous actions of the exchange led to many customers closing their accounts and invoices.

Blockchain News

Coinbase Allows Its Customers To Access Dapps On Desktop Browsers

Published

1 day ago

August 23, 2019

Stefan

Coinbase allows now for a new feature via the decentralized web feature for its customers to access dapps from any browser using the new system called Walletlink. Let’s find out more about it in the altcoin news today. The popular San Francisco-based crypto exchange has announced officially today in a blog post that the open-sourced Walletlink acts as a secure bridge between the Coinbase ecosystem and the traditional web so this will be easier for the users of the platform. The feature will enable the Coinbase wallet users to access and administer their funds separately from their crypto holdings on Coinbase.com from a dapp desktop interface for the first time according to the Coinbase walled product lead Sid Coelho-Prabhu. Coinbase has a long supported use of the decentralized platforms with the help of the mobile app which is a feature that the company says managed to generate more than thousands of users. Now, the company has a plan to expand the access beyond the mobile app to desktop browsers such as Google Chrome, Brave and Opera. Though a user’s private keys are still stored securely on their mobile devices. Coinbase stated that this way they will save the users from having to install ‘’clunky browser extensions, copying and pasting private keys across devices and seeing fragmented wallet balances.’’ Instead, once a user scans a QR code that propagates an encrypted link between the wallet app and the browser, the system will also provide a security feature that will ping the users on their mobile devices after they make a transaction. Coinbase allows for the users to now get a hold of the most popular dapps in the market. The first four dapps supported by WalletLink offer decentralized financial services for crypto holdings. Even Coelho-Prabhu stated that the company approached the most popular dapp on the market with new features including Compound which is a protocol to earn interest but also an ETH lending service, IDEX, decentralized exchange and a protocol for margin trading. Coinbase plans to expand access to other dapp categories and in fact, Coelho stated that the company’s wallet worked with programmers to make the development process as simple as possible. In addition, as we can read in the latest cryptocurrency news, Coinbase wallet software enables access to the ERC-20 token platform and token airdrops as well as collecting non-fungible tokens and P2P crypto transactions.

Blockchain News

Kraken Pro Trader Believes Crypto Trading Is The New Wall Street

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2019

Stefan

Kraken Pro trader Nelson Minier who is also the head of OTC at the crypto exchange noted that the crypto markets still attracts former Wall Street traders as we can read in the coming altcoin news below. Nelson was featured on Nasdaq TradeTalks as a guest and explained how the trading dynamic has shifted. For example, the workforce of the Kraken exchange has expanded by more than four times from less than 200 to more than 800 and there is a reason for that:

"Wall Street ain't what it used to be. The first 15 years I was on Wall Street, it was fun. I was very fortunate, I started in the CDS market which feels a lot like crypto. Here you have a lot of financial innovation, a lot of trading...It feels very much like that, there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm about this progress and where it's going."

Another example is the Morgan Stanley alum Marcus Swanepoel who told the Financial Times:

"Over the past two years we have seen evidence building that bitcoin is an uncorrelated asset class so it makes sense to add it to portfolios."

The trend is growing towards more portfolio managers coming in including what Minier says is mavericks and savvy hedge funds entering the crypto space. The digital currency investment company Greyscale investments also saw its assets under management balloon to $2.5 billion and most of which originated from big investors including hotshot hedge funds. The Kraken Pro trader stated:

"I think it's going to be one of those things in a blink that everybody is going to start chasing it.’’

With the upcoming launch of the Bakkt bitcoin futures exchange, more traders could begin to feel the way that Minier does and Kraken has been experiencing an uptick with the institutional demand for crypto but he admitted it was too slow. In the meantime, the rival crypto exchange Coinbase based in San Francisco revealed that hundreds of millions of dollars in institutional capital is coming straight off the sidelines into cryptocurrencies a week as we noted previously in the latest cryptocurrency news. They sure can’t find these types of returns in any other asset class with rock-bottom interest rates and the equities mimicking bond yields. Bitcoin in the meantime has generated high returns of more than 150 percent year to date.