Theymos, owner of bitcointalk.org and a moderator of /r/bitcoin, is claiming that he has been on the receiving end of legal threats from Josh Garza and his legal team. Garza is claimed to be demanding the removal of things from /r/bitcoin and the bitcointalk.org forums although it is not known which content Garza specifically takes offense to given much of what is being posted – such as claims of a $20 floor for Paycoin set by Garza and his $100 million backing in private funds – are known to have been said by Garza despite his attempts to re-write history by modifying previous posts. Continue reading
New Bitcoin Foundation Releases Year End Report
The new Bitcoin Foundation has issued a year end address where they have highlighted the work accomplished so far to produce a higher quality reference Bitcoin implementation. The foundation which came together in late October has focused their efforts on producing a patch set for the Bitcoin 0.5.3 codebase that results in a minimal reference implementation of the Bitcoin Protocol. Continue reading
South African Tax Review Expresses Concerns Regarding Bitcoin
In February of 2013, former Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan announced that the South African government would begin a review to assess the current tax policy framework and its role in supporting growth, employment, development and fiscal sustainability. The members who would make up that committee, which came to be known as The Davis Tax Committee, were announced in July of that year and their First Interim Report on BEPS1 was released for public comment late last month. Contained within the report are some concerns that Bitcoin might impact on tax compliance in the future. Continue reading
Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. ↩
Japanese Newspaper Reports 99% Of Bitcoins At Mt.Gox Lost Due To Fraud
Yomiuri Shimbun, one of five national Japanese newspapers, is reporting via its English 'The Japan News' website that of the 650,000 bitcoins that went missing in the aftermath of the Mt. Gox collapse, 99% of the coins have been lost due to the fraudulent activities by an unknown individual or party. An additional 7,000 bitcoins are reported to have been stolen due to cyber-attacks. Continue reading
Qntra (S.QNTR) December 2014 Statement
The Bitcoin Network Regains Positive Momentum As It Enters 2015.
Despite two consecutive drops in the Bitcoin mining difficulty this month, the network is set to see out 2014 and enter 2015 with renewed growth in the hash rate. Continue reading
2014 Story of the Year: Mt Gox Finally Dies
This year's biggest story in Bitcoin actually predates the founding of Qntra. Back in February Mt Gox finally closed its doors. Since Jed McCaleb opened it for Bitcoin Trading in July of 2010, through its astounding three years of incompetence and mismanagement under Mark Karpelès Mt Gox had served as a central source of drama and uncertainty in the Bitcoin space. Continue reading
Bloomberg: FBI Investigating Companies For Retaliatory Cyber Attacks
According to Bloomberg the FBI is investigating companies for violations of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act amid rumors that companies are taking offensive action in retaliation against "attacks" on their information technology infrastructure.
The SWIFT Institute Calls For Research Into Risks Faced By Third Party Payment Providers
The SWIFT Institute, an organisation founded in April 2012 which receives funding and secretariat services from global giant SWIFT, is calling for proposals for research into the risks – money laundering, terrorist financing, gambling, fraud and phishing – third party payment providers using virtual currencies such as Bitcoin face. The selected proposal will be awarded a EUR 15,000 grant with completed research and a working paper to be submitted by August 2015. Continue reading
Collected Points From the NSA's Recent Document Dump
Numerous media outlets are going deep into the NSA's recent Christmas Eve document dump while Der Spiegel is supposing itself to cover new Snowden documents.In addition to the unsurprising post-Snowden revelation that NSA analysts routinely acted outside of their legal ability to monitor, a number of technical revelations came out about the NSA's surveillance abilities as they care to disclose them two years ago. As this document dump was an official agency disclosure take it with a grain of salt or several trucks full of salt as you feel necessary. Continue reading