BitPagos has acquired Unisend Argentina, the country’s first order-book exchange, as part of an undisclosed deal for cash and equity. The announcement follows the sale of the exchange subsidiary Unisend Mexico, and BitPagos’ $1.18m funding round finalized last September. CEO Sebastian Serrano explained that the acquisition will provide BitPagos with a third product offering to complement its existing payment processing service and Ripio, its wallet and brokerage offering. Serrano told CoinDesk: “We want to build the access to bitcoin across Latin America and we thought that part of building that access is building liquidity. It was the next step to start exposing the liquidity generated by merchant services and the consumer side to the…
Recent court documents show that one of the operators of bitcoin exchange Coin.mx is involved in discussions on a possible plea deal with US prosecutors. Assistant US Attorney Eun Young Choi asked the US District Court for the Southern District of New York last week to grant a 30-day continuance “to engage in further discussions with counsel about the disposition of the case” with defendant Anthony Murgio. Murgio was one of two Coin.mx employees arrested earlier this summer and later accused of money laundering and operating an illegal money services business out of Florida. The court granted the continuance, which will be in effect until 9th October. According to Bloomberg, Murgio is also suspected of being involved in a cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase last year…
Mark Karpeles, the CEO of failed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, has been charged with embezzlement by Japanese prosecutors. Reports suggest Karpeles remains in the custody of Japanese police but has the option to request his release from the court while he awaits trial. The news comes after Karpeles was re-arrested in Tokyo at the end of August on allegations that he had embezzled ¥321m ($2.6m) from the company to fund his own personal projects. Karpeles was first arrested in Tokyo on 1st August amid allegations that he had manipulated volume on the now defunct bitcoin exchange. CrimeMark KarpelesMt…
OKCoin has stopped accepting bitcoin deposits from customers in the US, citing regulatory pressure. US users of the Chinese bitcoin exchange see the following message when trying to make bitcoin, litecoin or US dollar deposits: “Notes: Due to regulation, we don’t accept the charge from the US.” The company called the measure “temporary”, but offered few details when asked when the restriction will be lifted. A representative described the situation as “not very clear”. OKCoin head of international Jack Liu offered additional details by email, telling CoinDesk: “The latest change is part of an internal review we made on our policies and affects Level 1 individuals who self-indicated as US citizens.” Liu…
ItBit has hired former New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) general counsel Daniel “Danny” Alter as its general counsel and chief compliance officer. The three-year veteran of the NYDFS was involved in the formation of the New York BitLicense, the controversial licensing regime for digital currency businesses seeking to serve consumers in the US state. The move is perhaps surprising given the originally skeptical outlook on the technology Alter voiced at the New York BitLicense hearings in early 2014. At the two-day event, Alter was perhaps the most outspoken of NYDFS representatives on the potential downsides of digital currency regulation, arguing that the state’s money laundering obligations should take priority over…
Global bitcoin marketplace LocalBitcoins is operating again following over six hours of downtime it attributed to a “hardware failure”. The company announced the outage at 20:22 UTC yesterday. By 03:02 it said the service was “back up and running”, though it appears some site functionality – including user logins – is still problematic. LocalBitcoins community manager ‘Max’ told Reddit the problem was related to the company’s servers: “It seems a server got hung up … We’re about to move to new equipment as the current servers are quite old, sad that they had to crash before we moved.” Two weeks ago, the Helsinki-based site announced upgrades to its servers that would log users out. It is unclear if…