Peter Thiel is a well known name in the Silicon Valley and a billionaire. He is also the founder of PayPal and well known for making early investments in companies like Facebook. His company, Founders Fund bought 15 million of Bitcoin last year and told the investors that the firm’s value increased hundreds of millions of dollars due to rapid rise in Bitcoin’s price. However, it was not made clear whether the Founders Fund has sold any bitcoins or not.
Income Tax department is trying its best to tax the bitcoin owners in India. The department has already visited the premises of top cryptocurrency exchanges in Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kochi and asked them to share the identities of investors / traders, transactions done by them and their bank accounts. This survey was done under 133A of Income tax act to gather evidence for establishing the identity of investors and traders, transaction undertaken by them, identity of counterparties, related bank accounts used, among others.
NiceHash has announced on their official reddit page that the NiceHash payment system was compromised and all the bitcoin stored in their wallet has been stolen. They are still working to know the precise number of bitcoin but sources have told that around 67 million dollars worth has been stolen. The company has already reported this matter to the relevant authorities and working to restore the NiceHash service with highest security measure at earliest opportunity.
Bitcoin has been banned and called illegal in India many times already by Indian government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Today, India’s central bank, RBI again issued a strong warning about bitcoin and associated risks of investing in cryptocurrencies in general. The bank said that the users, holders and traders of crypto currencies should understand the potential economic, financial, operational, legal risks.
Withdrawal limits from CEX.IO to your MasterCard cards have been increased. For this, you need to have one of these account types – verified, verified plus and corporate. After that, you can withdraw up to $5,000 per one transaction. If you are not verified yet, take a chance to increase your limits by simply passing the verification process. The platform will charge the commission of 1.2%+$3.8 per transaction.
Bitcoin Cash trading is now live on Bitstamp which is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in world. It is being referred to as Bcash on their website and the entire crypto twitter cannot help but take jibe at the Bitstamp statement “..to help avoid confusion between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, please note that we refer to Bitcoin Cash as “Bcash (BCH)” on our platform.” To kick things off, Bistamp will not be charging any fee until 31st of December 2017.
If you are doing a lot of withdraw on Bittrex, you may come across this error “Basic account withdraw limit has been reached. Please try again in 24 hours. To increase your limits, please verify your account to the Enhanced level”. Let us explain why this error occurs. If you sign up on bittrex, you can get basic verification done by submit their name, address, and birth date. This is generally done instantly. Bittrex verify this through public records. If bittrex can verify you through public records, bittrex will accept your application for a basic account. If that fails as well, bittrex will need to proceed to an enhanced verification.
Bitcoin is often criticized for being slow and lethargic. These days it takes upwards of 4 hours to receive funds, especially if you go for lower transaction fees, which too are in range of $5 or more. If you choose to deliver funds faster, which is still around 30 minutes or so, you will have to pay hefty $10 or higher. This is because of tough competition from Bitcoin Cash which sometimes becomes more profitable to mine than Bitcoin. BTC Lite, unlike bitcoin, runs on Ethereum blockchain which is much more efficient.
The names of Bitfinex and Tether founders, Giancarlo Devasini and Philip Potter in Paradise papers may come as surprise to many. This massive leak has list of 120,000 companies and people who have taken services of offshore service providers operating in tax havens. These Paradise papers say that Appleby helped Philip Potter and Giancarlo Devasini in setting up Tether in British Virgin Island back in 2014. This leak is the world’s second bigger data leak which is shadowed only by Panama Papers leak that happened in 2016.
China has made Bitcoin mining illegal and is sending notices to Bitcoin mining farms. The notice says Sichuan Electric power company will soon stop supplying power to the Bitcoin mining farms. In the notice, they say that a lot of power is consumed by the mining machines. The report comes from caijing, a Chinese portal to which one Bitcoin miner commented that the bitcoin mining was being done using discarded water that is let go without producing electricity. This is the chief reason why the price of electricity is so low.