Government Funded Exchange BitSpark Shifts To Remittances

Hong Kong based Bitcoin exchange BitSpark has announced (archive) its decision to "temporarily retire" its exchange, opting instead to shift attention to remittances across the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Hong Kong and China. As part of that change of direction, BitSpark intends to launch a remittance focused product later this month at the 2015 Innotribe semi finals in Singapore. Continue reading

New York Update: Former NYSE CEO to TeraExchange Former FDIC Chair to itBit

As hard as the State of New York seems to be working to separate itself from Bitcoin in the manner the United Kingdom has, a number of relics from the fiat world are trying to latch on to a simulacrum of Bitcoin shaped in the fiat world's image.

  • TeraExchange, represented at the CFTF session on digital currencies has taken former New York Stock Exchange CEO Duncan Niederauer as an advisory director.
  • Sheila Blair, former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has joined New York based itBit exchange on their board. A formal announcement on the subject is expected in the next several days.

Readers are reminded that New York and Manhattan in particular overtly present a hostile legal and regulatory environment unsuitable for actual Bitcoin businesses.

CaVirtex Reopens Under Coinsetter

Just two short months after closing its doors following an apparently humiliating "potential compromise," CAD-BTC exchange CaVirtex has re-opened its doors under the purview of US-based Bitcoin exchange Coinsetter. Yes, that would be Jaron Lukasiewicz's Coinsetter, he being the fellow who thought that Ripple was a good idea apparently because he had too much money on his youthful hands.

For users of the revived CaVirtex, the only visible difference is a new landing page promoting the new partnership. Once past this landing page, the excessive familiarity reveals itself in a number of now factual errors, to the point where the exchange still advertises itself as a "Canadian Corporation" and that "all voting shareholders of CAVIRTEX are Canadian" despite its most recent claims to the contrary.

Another claim that the revamped CaVirtex is making is that they've employed "the Securicoin® system," which appears to be little more than Coinsetter slang for "cold storage" even though it claims to be "Wall Street grade,"1 and that over 50% of user funds are being held in insured Xapo Vaults.2

Trading volume at CaVirtex has been slow to rekindle since trading resumed on April 8, 2015, with the website claiming a meager 372 BTC traded over the past week. This figure is to be taken with a grain of salt, however, given that CaVirtex apparently traded at least a fraction of a bitcoin for as cheaply as CAD $0.01 during the last 7 days. (cache)

No word yet on whether Coinsetter plans to honour obligations to non-voting shareholders who were stripped of 4,000 BTC when CaVirtex delisted on Havelock Investments on December 31, 2013. According to CaVirtex's delisting notice, these investors own 10% of the company. At this time, it appears they may be left out in the rain.


  1. It would seem to this author that "MPEx grade" holds more cachet, but this exchange is marketed to the masses who've never heard of such a thing. 

  2. Yes, the same Xapo that wants to pay you to play video games. 

Users Of Evo Marketplace & BTC-E Are Like Two Peas In A Pod

With claims that the shut down of the Evolution marketplace may have netted the owners as much as 130,000 BTC, rumours began circulating yesterday that BTC-E ceased withdrawals so as to limit the ability of the thieves to exchange their new found riches for what some people call untainted coins.

The rumour that BTC-E had paused withdrawals as a result of stolen coins entering the exchange came from an Australian by the name of paulgr. Paulgr, who is a moderator for the BTC-E chat room said: Continue reading

Amid Decision To Close, AllCrypt.com Reports Hot Wallet Theft

Off the back of an announcement that the AllCrypt.com bitcoin/altcoin exchange would be going offline as of the 31st of March due to low trading volume, the site now reports that its hot wallet has been emptied to the tune of about 42 BTC 37 BTC1 The alleged theft comes just one month after AltCrypt.com's twitter account claimed that its users bitcoins were safe due to the site being "too small and insignificant" to matter. Continue reading


  1. It was at first claimed on the AllCrypt.com website that the theft totalled 42 BTC – 12 BTC owned by the site and 30 BTC owned by users. The AllCrypt.com twitter account claims different figures

Havelock Still Offline

Havelock Investments, the Bitcoin "securities" trading website,  which has in the past been home to ill fated ventures such as NeoBee and Cognitive Mining now has been offline for the declared purpose of "website updates" for a period approaching 10 days now. Today, March 2nd is the most recent estimate Havelock has provided as to when service might be restored. Their last announcement on this matter from Bitcointalk (February 25th, 2015): Continue reading