About author: Kieran Smith

As altcoins ride a tide of bullish sentiment, one unlikely crypto is surging ahead; bitcoin cash has broken back above the 0.1000 handle against bitcoin.   Bitcoin Cash, the wayward child spawned from last August’s’ hard fork, was up over ten percent on Wednesday and continued to make gains on April 19. At the time of writing the coin is…

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Coinone have announced that they will be opening up cryptocurrency trading in Indonesia, making them the first South Korean exchange to offer services outside the country. According to the press release, the Indonesian branch opened for pre-registration on April 16 and will launch officially in June. It will initially support only six currencies; bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH),…

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Lightning Developer Igor Cota has submitted a proposal to connect Lightning with near-field communication (NFC) on April 5, to make everyday payments feasible with bitcoin. The Lightning Network is billed as Bitcoin’s most promising scaling solution, but is still in the alpha phase and lacks a simple user interface. By integrating Lightning with NFC, users could potentially make transactions using…

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As the world asks how cryptocurrency can be classified and valued, two economists from Imperial College have released a paper centering on two crucial questions: What type of asset is bitcoin, and what is its fundamental value? Emiliano Pagnotta and Andrea Buraschi, two professors of finance at Imperial College Business School in London, explore the general equilibrium of a decentralized…

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In an interview with the Hong Kong Economic Journal, NEO founder Da Hong-fei said that the China cryptocurrency regulation has been effective at eradicating the scams and fraudulent ICOs that trouble the market. Bubble of Innovation Hong-fei founded NEO in 2014, long before the frenzy of unregulated Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) hit the crypto markets, which has caused growing concerns…

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The government newspaper of China, The People’s Daily, has today printed a feature that recognizes the profound impact cryptocurrencies could have, and concedes that they are challenging to ban entirely. The feature, titled ‘The Ideal and Reality of Digital Currency,’ is written by a representative from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and is educational in bent, exploring the…

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Just weeks after launching one of the most successful ICOs ever, Telegram is to be banned in Russia. The ruling came after the company refused to yield encryption keys to the Russian authorities and Moscow has now ordered telecommunications companies to block the app. Why Telegram? Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said they need the keys to monitor the messages…

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The Polish media have made a tenuous link between the arrest of two companies on suspicion of money laundering, and the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. The news comes two months after it emerged that Polish Central Bank had funded a social media campaign against crypto. But is this latest scandal another smear campaign, or a legitimate claim? Verifying a Network of…

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In a recent bi-weekly developer meeting, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has come out against the proposal for a hard fork that would disable Ethereum ASICs. The hard fork proposal would mean the blockchain changes its software to limit the performance of ASIC mining hardware, which is designed to yield the majority of block rewards and represents increased centralization. The EIP…

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After banning all adverts relating to cryptocurrencies in March, Twitter has now singled out the bitcoin-bashing handle @Bitcoin and delivered a suspension. The handle, thought to be the property of Roger Ver and notorious for its flagrant promotion of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), was suspended on Sunday, April 8, presumably after complaints mounted up from Bitcoin (BTC) supporters. The account has…

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