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…
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….
PayPal, the world’s primary method of online payment as just announced it was stopping online domestic payments in Taiwan. Today the online payment company issued a notice to its Taiwan customers announcing it was stopping domestic transactions in the Island. The company argued that this decision was made to comply with local laws and regulations. PayPal announcement stated: “Dear customers, We’ll be streamlining our services in Taiwan, and our system will be enhanced to ensure that domestic commercial payments will not be processed, in compliance with local laws and regulations. These changes will take effect from September 21, 2015, and you will not be able to use your PayPal account registered in Taiwan to send payments to, or receive payments from,…
Blythe Masters, the former JPMorgan executive who helped pioneer credit derivatives in the 1990s, has re-emerged as chief executive of Digital Asset Holdings. The Digital Asset Holdings is a venue for buyers and sellers of financial assets to meet and transact, switching currencies into bitcoin in order to cut the cost and time of settlement and make use of the decentralised Blockchain. Blythe Masters sits on the Top of blockchain technology startup Digital Asset Holdings, where she became the CEO in March. She spent 27 years at JPMorgan Chase, where she held some leadership positions, most recently as the head of its global commodities unit from 2007 to 2014. She has also been the CFO of its investment bank and held various roles managing credit risk at the…
Factom is perhaps the most anticipated project in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for 2015. Factom promises to introduce new blockchain based software that will bring developers the tools to build a new generation of applications using the blockchain technology while making it available to every type of organization. Factom introduced the first functional blockchain technology that provides an unalterable and safe record-keeping system. By using another data layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, the Factom protocol can secure millions of real-time records in the blockchain with a single hash. Factom Genesis, the beta version of Factom software, has already been launched and to celebrate, the team secured “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in 443 different…
Puerto Rico has recently used legislation to force capital controls. The country has imposed a 2% fee on any money transmission, forcing Paypal’s to pull out of the country. Following an attempt to start capital controls, Puerto Rico government passed a law that forces all peer-to-peer transactions to be taxable at a 2% rate. With this move the country’s government is looking to extract any additional sources of income from Puerto Rican citizens. This was the main reason leading the international online financial institution, PayPal to abandon the country. With the new imposed fees PayPal decided to leave Puerto Rico next month. PayPal issued the following announcement to Puerto Rico citizens: “Due to new government policies in Puerto Rico, we have made the…