Plattsburgh New York considers rolling out tougher rules for crypto miners
Plattsburgh, New York, is considering bringing in stricter requirements on commercial cryptocurrency mining farms operating in the city.
Patrick McFarlin, a councilor of Plattsburgh's Common Council, proposed a new law last week that aims to introduce "zoning regulations" for commercial crypto mining activities. According to an update from the council Friday, a public hearing will now be held on Oct. 25 to determine whether to follow through with the proposal.
The suggested zoning rules cover a variety of categories such as fire safety, heat, nuisance abatement and special use permits. If approved, crypto mining farm operators in the city would immediately be required to keep the ambient temperature inside their facilities within 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius) at any time.
Should the average daily temperature outside the facilities be less than 40 degrees F (4.4 degrees C), mining farm operators must ensure that "no more than...
Post-ICO update for SONM decentralized fog computing platform
- Project name: SONM
- Ticker symbol: SNM
- ICO date: June 2017
- Market cap*: $20 million
- Circulating supply*: 359,600,000 SNM
- Total supply: 444,000,000 SNM
SONM is a decentralized fog computing platform with use cases targeted at general-purpose computing tasks. SONM facilitates the use and exchange of general-purpose computing power and computer architectures.
The marketplace for SONM is built on the Ethereum blockchain and uses an ERC-20 token as its standard. However, there are two tokens used in SONM’s ecosystem.
The first is the ERC-20 standard used on exchanges, and the second is the SONM blockchain token. The SONM blockchain token is pegged at a rate of 1:1 to the SONM token and can be exchanged between their native blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain.
When purchasing or leasing computing power, SONM suppliers and customers use the SONM blockchain tokens as a medium of exchange. The ultimate goal of the SONM platform is to give more resources to crypto miners and make better use of the total computing power in the network.
Use cases for SONM include machine learning, video rendering on CPU/GPU, CDN and video streaming, and so on.
SONM was founded by Sergei Ponomarev, a smart contract expert, and Aleksei Antonov, a blockchain proponent. SONM was able to raise $42 million USD in their four-day ICO period.
Since then, SONM has launched its main net and is in the process of gaining Customers and Suppliers to exchange computing power within their fog computing platform. As of the date of publication of the article, there are 106 deals in process...
Cryptocurrency Exchange OKEx Simultaneously Lists 4 Stablecoins
The third top crypto exchange by market cap, OKEx, has recently announced the listings of four stablecoins at once, according to an official blog post published on Monday, Oct. 15.
OKEx has added support for four stablecoins, including TrueUSD (TUSD), USD Coin (USDC), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), and Paxos Standard Token (PAX). According to the schedule mentioned in the statement, the stablecoins have become available for deposits today, at 05:00 PM on Hong Kong Time (HKG), with a number of crypto trading pairs. Withdrawal will be available starting tomorrow, Oct.16.
TrueUSD is the second stablecoin that has been introduced following the launch of controversial stablecoin Tether (USDT), which is backed by the U.S. dollar on a 1:1 proportion. Both listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Bitfinex, OKEx, Huobi and HitBTC, the stablecoins are deployed on the Omni and Ethereum blockchain networks.
Based on tokenization platform TrustToken, TrueUSD has been touted as “world’s first legally backed stablecoin,” and went...
Bitcoin Price Analysis: #BTC/USD Goes Haywire with USDT Decline
Bitcoin on Monday pursued a fake upside action across several exchanges, mainly BitFinex, after stablecoin Tether (USDT) started falling.
The BTC/USD responded to the upside action witnessed in the BTC/USDT market. USDT traders started exiting their positions amidst growing concerns about BitFinex’s insolvency and its impact on the coin’s liquidity. The more traders swapped USDT for other coins, the larger it dropped, eventually founding support near 85 cents. By that time, Bitcoin had established its upside just shy of $8,000 on BitFinex only – so as other top coins which recorded massive gains.
So far, Bitcoin has corrected towards $6,346. But indeed, the latest price action has messed up the technical outlook.
BTC/USD Technical Analysis
The Coinbase chart indicates that BTC/USD is struggling to find support near its 50H moving average for a potential reversal. If it drops below the pink curve, the pair will enter into a near-term bearish bias, which is further supported by the RSI indicator, which is on the verge of inflection, and the Stochastic oscillator which could continue its drop into...
Bitcoin's block size can be increased without a hard fork
Bitcoin (BTC) protocol developer Mark Friedenbach introduced a method for Bitcoin scaling he claims will not require a hard fork at a workshop in Tokyo October 5.
The new concept presented at the Scaling Bitcoin workshop, entitled “Forward Blocks,” suggests a major on-chain capacity boost by means of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) alternation that is done as a soft fork, combined with use of alternative private ledgers.
The proposal describes a method for scaling that claims to be able to increase “settlement transaction volume to 3584x current levels” and improve censorship resistance via sharding.
During the presentation, Friedenbach suggested major improvements for on-chain Bitcoin transactions, or those that appear on the Bitcoin blockchain. The so-called “soft-fork” alternation implies a strengthening of consensus rules where old nodes “still see the chain advance.” The research also represents a definition of “forwards compatible soft-fork,” for which non-upgraded nodes still receive and process all transactions.
In his presentation, Friedenbach emphasized the role of sharding...
Philippines deports $33 million Bitcoin pyramid scheme mastermind
The Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines had ordered the deportation of a South Korean national who is wanted in South Korea over his involvement in a bitcoin pyramid scheme.
Identified as Go Yongsung, the South Korean was arrested in the city of Las Pinas. According to Jaime Morente, a Bureau of Immigration Commissioner, the arrest was conducted by the Fugitive Search Unit of the government agency. A warrant had already been issued by a district court in South Korea for his arrest prior to his capture, according to Manila Bulletin.
Per documents obtained from the authorities, Go and other accomplices defrauded South Koreans of over US$33 million by promising huge returns if they invested in bitcoin between December 2015 and June 2016. According to the authorities Go, who is 48, used a firm which was operating in Pasay City as a front in his fraudulent scheme.
Crackdown on Fugitives of Justice
After the arrest, Morente warned that the bureau would not relent in its efforts to ensure criminals faced justice regardless of which jurisdiction they committed their crimes...
TokenMarket and BECON Global partner for its Crypto Economy World Tour
Wednesday 9, May, 2018 - The award winning advisory firm TokenMarket has partnered with BECON (Blockchain Ecosystem Network) for its Crypto Economy World Tour, that takes place in over 10 different countries across 4 different continents.
BECON is set to host its next crypto economy event in New York on May 13th, 2018. This event will kick off its third leg of the tour with Michael Terpin delivering a keynote presentation on ‘Investing in the Crypto Economy”. In partnership with TokenMarket, BECON have organised a networking and drinks event on May 13, 2018 in New York prior to the Crypto Economy conference. BECON have successfully organised numerous networking receptions producing a high turnout of guests, investors and industry through leaders in New York.
The Crypto Economy World Tour has previously hosted events in; London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, San Francisco, Austin and Singapore. These series of events generated...
Crypto and South Africa – a Conservatively Optimistic Approach
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have proliferated the minds of millions across the world, as trading and crypto asset ownership continues to rise.
In the same breathe, many countries across the world have taken a tough stance against cryptocurrencies in particular. Some, like China, have outlawed their use, while others like Malta are at the forefront of cryptocurrency and blockchain development.
In an African context, this sector is slowly growing. At the southern end of the continent, South Africa sits in an interesting position. As one of the bigger economic hubs of Africa, it has the potential to lead the way in terms of blockchain development and cryptocurrency adoption.
With that being said, it's worth considering what the current climate is like in the country and what efforts are being made to drive innovation and acceptance of this burgeoning new industry.
The tax man
Cryptocurrency trading has become immensely popular over the past two years — as was demonstrated in the latter half of 2017, when Bitcoin and a number of altcoins cruised to all-time highs.
During this period, plucky investors flocked to the market in the hopes of cashing in on a spiralling bull run that made many early investors substantial sums of money.
Across the world, cryptocurrency exchanges were inundated with new users looking to open up accounts and get their hands on the increasingly valuable Bitcoin and the like.
Some people made massive profits while others were left watching their investments decline in value during the resulting correction. That didn’t change the fact that the tax man wanted his pound of flesh from those that had cashed in their profits.
This was the case in South Africa, where the South African Revenue Services (SARS) made it clear to registered taxpayers that they would be liable to pay tax on cryptocurrency gains.
How crypto is classified in South Africa
As the SARS pointed out, the word ‘currency’ is not defined in the Income Tax Act. It’s important for people to understand this because it means that cryptocurrencies themselves are not taxable.
“Cryptocurrencies are neither official South African tender nor widely used and accepted in South Africa as a medium of payment or exchange. As such, cryptocurrencies are not regarded by SARS as a currency for income tax purposes or Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Instead, cryptocurrencies are regarded by SARS as assets of an intangible nature.”
However, the value of a given amount of cryptocurrency can be valued in South African rands, and any income received or accrued from cryptocurrency trading can be taxed under the laws of gross income.
Simply put, South Africans that are actively trading cryptocurrency will be liable to pay tax on any income made.
Don’t stress, it's legal
In a South African context, the use of cryptocurrencies is legal. There are no laws governing the sector although the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is monitoring the situation.
The Reserve Bank issued a white paper outlining its views on cryptocurrencies in 2014. The institution does not recognize any cryptocurrency as legal tender.
In South Africa, the Reserve Bank has the sole right to issue and manage money, in...
Coinbase Rolls Out System to Addressing Bitcoin Payments
With transaction fees "volatile and unpredictable," sending cryptocurrencies can sometimes be frustrating.
So says U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase in a new blog post that sets out the issues rising from shifting miner fees, and exactly what it has been doing to address the problem.
As most who have sent or received bitcoin will know, the primary problem is that the fee variations can mean significant changes in the amount of time it takes for transactions to be confirmed. Coinbase says this wastes company time in pointless support requests and provides users with a "frustrating experience."
The reason fees rise and fall so readily is that rather than clawing back transaction costs via a percentage – as card firms like Visa and Mastercard do – bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies pay miners a fee to confirm transactions. And that's based on a model not dissimilar to bidding at an auction.
At times when the bitcoin network is busiest, miners have a queue of transactions to process and these are prioritized by dealing with the transactions offering the highest fee first.
But the method can cause lengthy delays before transactions are confirmed and the funds have "arrived." It can also cause spiking fees...
Bitmain Acquires Bitcoin Cash Wallet
Open source browser-based cryptocurrency wallet Telescope has officially announced its acquisition by Bitmain Technologies Inc., the world’s largest crypto mining rig manufacturer, which also runs one of the world’s most extensive cryptocurrency mining pools. The move comes at an important time for Bitmain, which is increasing its involvement in the bitcoin cash space as it continues to reinvent itself as more than just an ASIC maker ahead of its planned mega-IPO in Hong Kong.
Telescope is a browser-embedded cryptocurrency wallet that currently allows users of Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to send and receive BCH through a browser extension. Set up earlier in 2018 by former IBM software engineer Aaron Angert, Telescope also offers support for BitPay and MoneyButton. While it is currently optimized for Chrome and Firefox, the plan is for the application to eventually offer full support for other leading browsers as the project grows.
Telescope transaction keys are saved in the application’s browser extension, and then transactions are signed by the user’s browser directly and sent to a BCH block explorer....