- Julian Assange sees Bitcoin as a support for a free Catalonia!
- After China Chaos: Japan is now the largest Bitcoin market!
- JPMorgan buys Bitcoin, although CEO Dimon called Bitcoin a Fraud!
- The Pirate Bay secretly experiments with Monero Mining!
- Blockchain Task Force to help the Government in Malta!
A recent report from BBC News shows that the Spanish government will take control of the finances of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia within 48 hours if they do not cease with the "illegal" referendum on independence.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, immediately twittered his support for the referendum as well as commenting on the importance of Bitcoin in this regard.
Support from Wikileaks
This vote was launched after having been paid more into the central government than in public services. The Spanish government has threatened to take control of all financial transactions in order to stop the state budget for illegal acts. Spain's Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro says categorically:
The fact that Bitcoin is a non-government controlled currency that can function without centralized governmental systems makes it resistant to geopolitical upheaval. This principle of value stability is what many industry insiders bring to call it "digital gold".
Assange's post says that those who want freedom from funding and the expropriations of the government through unfair and restrictive practices will have to work hard in favor of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. The liquidity and applications for Bitcoin continue to grow so that it can stabilize its position as a supra-state currency in the future.
In the wake of recent uncertainties about the Chinese Bitcoin and crypto market, the volume of Bitcoin traded in the Chinese national currency has drastically decreased, which implies an extreme decline in the overall Bitcoin trading volume in China. In the gap left behind by China, Japan has now hit the market, which according to current data from CryptoCompare accounts for almost half of Bitcoin's sales. The Japanese Yen currently accounts for about 45% of the global trading volume.
Currently, it looks as if the Japanese crypto market is the biggest profiteer of the China crisis. Apparently, many crypto investors have temporarily left the China business in a mixture of frustration, anxiety and resignation, shifting their activities across the East China Sea to Japan.
At the same time, the yen also outperformed the US dollar as the dominant currency, which was bound up in the crypto area. The trading volume of the US dollar is only 25% before the Chinese, which in the meantime fell below 10%.
This move also fits well into the consolidation of Bitcoins and the entire crypto market, which has recovered strongly in the last 24 hours and on which nearly all crypto currencies went through in the double-digit range.
Last week, after a series of uncertainties, the order was given to China's crypto exchanges to cease operations by the end of September. The biggest crypto exchanges OKCoin and Huobi was granted another month grace period. Whether the Japanese Run is a temporary phenomenon or whether the Japanese market will be able to establish itself in the top position in the long term or whether the US market will regain the dominant position in the long term will be exciting in the next few weeks. In the long term, even a consolidation of the Chinese market is conceivable if China's crypto exchanges reopened in the near to medium term with a regulatory framework.
The investment bank JPMorgan is eagerly buying Bitcoin - although its CEO Jamie Dimon called the crypto currency a fraud.
Just a few days ago, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon delivered an energetic statement on crypto currencies and Bitcoin and said he would fire any of his employees who deal with Bitcoin. Because this is "against our rules and stupid". In addition, he described Bitcoin as a "fraud".
But apparently, the investment bank acts differently than its boss speaks. Just a few days after Jamie Dimon's assessment of Bitcoin, his investment bank was caught buying Bitcoin XBTE. These are stock exchange-traded papers that represent the Bitcoin price.
According to data from the Swedish Nordnet Bank, the two companies JP Morgan Securities and Morgan Stanley bought Bitcoin papers worth about 3 million euros on Friday. Goldman Sachs and Barclays also bought Bitcoin papers that day.
The three banks took the opportunity to buy the papers relatively cheaply. Because the Bitcoin course had collapsed massively due to the hard action of the Chinese authorities against the Bitcoin exchanges of the country.
Possibly even the cited annihilating words of the JPMorgan boss over Bitcoin had an influence on the immediately following course down.
Even if JPMorgan has not invested in the bitcoin papers, but for its customers, this is in contradiction to the words of Jamie Dimon, Bitcoin is "fraud" and an investment in the crypto currency is "stupid".
The Bitcoin papers are particularly popular with traditional investors and asset managers who want to invest in Bitcoin, but want to avoid dealing with the technology itself. Bitcoin papers are offered by the Danish Saxo Bank, which calls the papers "Bitcoin Tracker". They represent the Bitcoin price in Euros or in US Dollars.
Due to the increase of the Bitcoin price, the papers have also developed very well. Despite the downtrend of the last week, the price of a Bitcoin with currently around $ 4,035 is still about 240 percent higher than at the beginning of the year.
JPMorgan not only speculates with Bitcoin papers, but also invests massively in the underlying blockchain technology!
For example, since 2014, the investment bank has filed a patent for a "Bitcoin alternative" more than 175 times unsuccessfully in the US. In addition, JPMorgan is working on an ethereum-based blockchain in the "Quorum" project. In addition, a number of former employees of the investment bank are now active in the Blockchain and Bitcoin divisions. The former JPMorgan commodity trader Daniel Masters wanted to launch a Bitcoin hedge fund in 2014.
And the former JPMorgan banker Blythe Masters founded her own blockchain company Hyperledger. The investment banker is considered the authoritative inventor of the financial derivative credit default swap, a credit default insurance. Her company Hyperledger is now run by the Linux Foundation. But Blythe Masters is still heavily involved in the project and sits on the company's board of directors.
Secret Monero Mining with javascript: The makers of the torrent site The Pirate Bay obviously wanted to ascertain whether they could earn thereby significant money. Many users were angry, however, because no consent was obtained.
The file sharing site The Pirate Bay has experimented with a new source of income. The operators have run a script in the browser for at least 24 hours, with which the crypto currency Monero can be mined. Because the users were not informed before, many were not enthusiastic.
The action was not unnoticed by users because it significantly increases the utilization of the CPU. At Reddit, many affected people spoke up. The Pirate Bay has now admitted in a statement to Torrentfreak, the software in a test to have used to check whether so new sources of revenue could be opened up.
Javascript was used. The snippet is from Coinhive and appeared under the name coinhive.min.js in the code of results pages of The Pirate Bay. On the other hand, the script itself should not have been used. Meanwhile the test is to be completed. When checking the results pages, I could not find the miner anymore.
Users are upset
Users are mainly upset, because they were not informed about the use of crypto mining software. The use of the program can of course be prevented if Javascript is disabled in the browser.
The government of Malta has now officially announced the launch of a blockchain task force . After the Cabinet of Ministers adopted the National Blockchain strategy in April, concrete steps are now being taken to create a "clear roadmap".
Digital Republic
With a population of around 433,000, Malta is one of the smaller European countries that want to gain a lead with blockchain technology. As the Independent reported, the Maltese Secretariat has given a "push" towards concretising the blockchain strategy.
The blockchain task force is headed by Parliament member Vincent Muscat, with the help of blockchain expert Steve Tendon, law expert Dr. Ian Gauci and other experts from the field.
In a press release it says:
According to the press release, the influx of local and international private investors has hitherto been huge. All innovative ideas will be discussed openly and used as a "catalyst for the further development" of Malta.
The European Commission is also very interested in the blockchain development of Malta.
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