Chile’s government has declared a state of emergency in a coastal town of Coquimbo where 15 foot waves came ashore in the wake of a massive earthquake that has left ten dead in the Latin American nation. Tsunami waves made landfall north and south of the quake’s epicenter along Chile’s long coastline, with tsunami warnings for the US west coast. The earthquake represents the largest quake in the world this year, its duration more than three minutes. Dozens of aftershocks followed. The initial quake could be felt in Brazil and Argentina: Damage along the coastline: Chile’s first Bitcoin exchange, SurBTC, wants to help in the aftermath of the 8.3 earthquake, which is stronger than the recent Nepal and Haiti earthquakes. “The damage in many fishing…
Laissez Faire (LZF) offers a new digital currency to Fiat exchange platform run by professionals. It aims to provide a secure trading environment working within the US legal standards. LZF becomes the first digital currency exchange to legally launch its services across 49 states by complying with the financial regulations of each state. The exchange decided to stay out of New York as a way of protesting against the BitLicence regulations proposal. LZF has been trying to comply with all the demanded licenses and regulations of all states except New York, where the BitLicense is seen as a burden and an impediment to innovation. LZF will be annually investing around $30,000 to maintain their fiat markets and to keep the platform in full compliance with U.S….
Cybercriminal group DD4BC, which stands for “DDoS for Bitcoin” (Distributed Denial of Service for Bitcoin) has been targeting financial institutions since the year 2014, demanding extortion in Bitcoin. The fugitive group threatens the financial institutions that if they fail to cough up a desired number of Bitcoin then they will take down their websites. The modus operandi of taking down a website is simple; DD4BC targets a website with traffic so heavy that the web server comes crashing down and the site goes offline. As per information analytics company Neustar, the cost of such a criminal action can go up to $ 100,000 per hour. The targeted companies mostly give in to the group’s ransom demands, otherwise they are hit with another DDoS attack and face…
Mark Karpeles, CEO of the disgraced Japanese Bitcoin exchange MtGox, has been charged by the Japanese authorities for embezzlement, according to Yahoo News. Karpeles was taken by the Japanese police last month on the charges of embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin. The allegations against France-born Karpeles include the charge that he is the beneficiary of this fraud and had falsified data. Although the CEO of the former Bitcoin exchange has been held by the Japanese authorities for six weeks, yet no formal charges had been levied on him. As per Yahoo News, he was first taken into custody after claims surfaced that he had manipulated the data and also transferred funds to firms that were under his control during the period of 2011 and…
Yes, the number of backlogged Bitcoin transactions climbed above 90,000 and the size of memory pool exceeded 150MB. This is because one London-based Bitcoin exchange decided to give away almost $48,000 worth of Bitcoin free on Thursday. MotherBoard Vice reports that CoinWallet.eu had released 200 Bitcoins at no cost in lieu of conducting its stress test. As a result, users are fervently making transactions in order to receive those coins, which is effectively leading to backlogging of transactions and expansion of the memory pool. CoinWallet.eu slowly released the addresses and private keys for Bitcoin wallets containing 200 coins split into numerous tiny transactions of 0.00001 coins each. The intention of the Bitcoin exchange is clear: It wants to clog the…
LedgerX, a New York-based trading platform for bitcoin options, has moved closer to becoming the first regulated exchange and clearinghouse to list and clear bitcoin options for the institutional market. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved LedgerX’s application for a temporary registration as a swap execution facility. LedgerX plans to list and clear fully-collateralized, settled options on bitcoin. The next step for the commission is to review the application for full registration. The CFTC approved temporary registration following a comment period from Dec. 15, 2014 to Jan. 30, 2015. The comments are available on the CFTC website. Comments from bitcoin industry players supported approval of the application. Some comments raised…