No less than one million people had to flee from their homes in Chile after a powerful quake jolted the country’s central region. To help the survivors, SurBTC, Chile’s first fully fledged Bitcoin exchange, has created an account with the aim to help in collecting funds. In a blog post, this Bitcoin exchange also outlined that the account will be only used to collect donations for the survivors. The features of this account are as under: 0% fee on every deposit, withdrawal or other transactions. This will be done both in Chilean Peso and Bitcoin. Every Bitcoin will be converted to Chilean Peso. SurBTC will only aid in collecting funds and the money will be given to chileayuda.com. The address is: 32hpM5uCFHFEkV1UuXWfwFef2u7GNKa4Yj As per a BBC report, close…
The Bank of England’s top economist has suggested that a digital currency based on bitcoin could alleviate monetary policy problems. Andrew Haldane, the UK central bank’s chief economist and executive director for monetary analysis and statistics, spoke at the Portadown Chamber of Commerce in Northern Ireland on 18th September. During his speech, Haldane offered several ways in which central bankers can conduct monetary policy during a period when interest rates are close to or below zero. Haldane suggested that central bankers consider making measures like quantitative easing a permanent part of their policy toolkit. However, he warned that trust in central banking could be marred as a result. One solution, he said, would be for the Bank of England to issue a…
Much like gold, oil, or soybeans, Bitcoin is now officially considered a commodity. The agency that regulates the US commodity trading market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has finally recognized the digital currency as a commodity. The debate on bitcoin can be defined as a commodity or not as been here for quite some time and the FCTC. By officially recognizing the digital currency as a commodity the CFTC assures its authority to supervise the trading of digital currency futures and options, which will now be subject to the agency’s regulations. If there is any irregularity, such as manipulation, the CFTC may file charges against the officials of that market. Furthermore, if a company wants to operate a trading platform for Bitcoin…
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon issued new remarks on bitcoin and the blockchain as part of the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference in New York today. During a 40-minute question-and-answer session, the noted bitcoin skeptic suggested that JPMorgan is optimistic about the potential use cases for bitcoin’s underlying distributed ledger, the blockchain, and other distributed ledgers. According to a report by American Banker, the CEO further spoke to the growing interest among major banks in blockchain technology and its applications, stating: “We have a study group on this whole thing. I think most of the banks do at this point.” However, he cautioned that it’s still unclear whether blockchain-based solutions will be more efficient and…
An Australian organic farm called Budafoods has created its own local bitcoin economy among farmers, using the cryptocurrency to facilitate faster and cheaper payments between merchants and small businesses. The community is also working on encouraging its partners to accept bitcoin as well. The farm, which is located in Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Queensland, has dealt with the negative impact of online payment systems on their sales and profits. These, along with traditional banking systems, have eaten into their margins by charging high fees per transaction and have taken long periods to process payments. Bitcoin and Farming The idea of using bitcoin appealed to Budafoods founder Mark Burgunder who thought that the decentralized currency could enable…
The question of how to best increase the transaction processing capacity of the blockchain may be bitcoin’s current crisis, but that isn’t stopping researchers from working to solve more forward-looking issues. Held last weekend in Montreal, the inaugural Scaling Bitcoin marked the first major conference for developers, and as such, it featured a broad sampling of technical experts working on solutions to problems that may come to light as knowledge of blockchain technology advances. One of the more novel proposals to debut at the event was developed by Cornell post-doc student Ittay Eyal, PhD student Adem Efe Gencer, computer science professor Emin Gün Sirer and research scientist Robbert Van Renesse. Called Bitcoin-NG (the “NG” is short…