Day: July 6, 2017

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has granted Ledgerx the full status of Swap Execution Facility. The company is on its way to become the first federally-regulated bitcoin options exchange and clearinghouse.

Also read: Ledger Holdings Generates $11.4 Million to Open U.S. Bitcoin Options Exchange

Ledgerx Now a Swap Execution Facility

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on Thursday that it has granted Ledgerx LLC the status of a Swap Execution Facility (SEF). SEFs are platforms that operate under the CFTC’s regulatory oversight for the trading of swaps.

The agency stated that after reviewing Ledgerx’s application and associated exhibits, it has determined that the company demonstrated compliance with the Commodity Exchange Act and the agency’s regulations applicable to SEFs. “With this order, there now are 25 SEFs registered with the CFTC,” the agency noted. However, there are only two with bitcoin investment products, Ledgerx and Tera Exchange. The latter was granted the SEF status in May 2016.

In May, Ledgerx’s parent company Ledger Holdings received funding of $11.4 million. “These investments will further our application to become a regulated exchange and clearinghouse for bitcoin options,” Ledgerx CEO Paul Chou said at the time.

But Not yet a Clearinghouse

Ledgerx had two applications with the CFTC. The first was to become a SEF, for which it received temporary registration approval from the Commission in September 2015 and now full registration status on Thursday.

The second application is to become a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), which any clearinghouse must register as before providing clearing services for futures contracts, options on futures contracts, and swaps.

If the latter is also approved, “Ledgerx would be the first federally-regulated bitcoin options exchange and clearinghouse to list and clear fully-collateralized, physically-settled bitcoin options for the institutional market”, the company claims, adding that:

Upon approval, participating institutions can use the Ledgerx platform to obtain and hedge bitcoin using exchange-traded and centrally-cleared options contracts.

In an interview with Bitcoin.com in February, Chou explained that initially Ledgerx will list bitcoin vanilla puts and calls with standardized strikes and expirations. “Strikes will be in a range around the current spot price and expirations will be from one-to-six months in tenor,” he said, adding that the products will be listed on the Ledgerx SEF and cleared by the Ledgerx DCO, once approved. The company aims to be “an integrated exchange and clearing operation so all parts of the transaction lifecycle from contract listing, trade matching, to final settlement are handled by us,” Chou described.

While Ledgerx is not the first bitcoin derivatives platform to become a SEF, it will be the first to receive both the SEF status as well as the DCO status, if approved. The platform will then be the first to operate as both a bitcoin swap exchange and a clearinghouse under the CFTC’s oversight.

Will you trade on Ledgerx’s platform? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, CFTC, and Ledgerx

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Ledgerx Receives Federal Approval as a Regulated Bitcoin Swap Exchange appeared first on Bitcoin News.

One of the financial regulators’’ worst fears when it comes to bitcoin is that the virtual currency keeps the users anonymous. Once you convert your fiat currency to bitcoin, those funds are kept in a virtual wallet, and are assigned a private key. From this point, it is impossible to tell who owns the bitcoins, which protects the owner’s identity.

On the other hand, fiat currency can be traced through bank account and credit card details, so the authorities will always know where the money goes. By monitoring transactions back and forth, gambling regulators are able to monitor casino’s activities and impose necessary regulations. Most of the casinos and gambling sites, like the ones listed at www.topratedbingosites.co.uk/new/, are operating solely using fiat currencies and those may not be the safest options for your privacy. With bitcoin, this is not very easy to do, which begs the question of whether gambling regulations are being rendered ineffective by bitcoin.

Legislation of gambling with bitcoin

There are currently no particular laws that address gambling with bitcoin, which leaves the gambling industry in a grey area. With no specific laws about the practice, it is generally accepted that you can use bitcoin in gambling within regions where both bitcoin and gambling have been legalized.

Meanwhile, for those regions where either gambling or bitcoin have been restricted, bitcoin allows residents in these areas to bypass these laws and keep on gambling. These situations are the ones that make gambling regulations seem ineffective in the face of bitcoin. For example, online gambling through offshore sites in Norway is not allowed, but Norwegians still do it using bitcoin.

Are there any dangers to gambling using bitcoin?

Regulators monitor gambling activities because the industry can be used for nefarious activities like money laundering. If these regulators notice any suspicious activities, they can proceed to trace the transactions and confirm if there was any illegal activity. Using bitcoin for the same purpose will be very difficult to determine, and this leaves the regulators’ hands tied.

Besides, regulators monitor gambling activities for match fixing. They can tell if this happened by tracing the source of the funds to the results of the matches. Again, this is not possible if the fixers used bitcoin, making the regulations seem useless.

What are the regulators doing?

Knowing the dangers that gambling with bitcoin pose to the industry as a whole, the regulators are trying to come up with new ways to prevent, or at least control and monitor, gambling transaction with bitcoin. In several countries, legislation has been passed requiring the gambling institutions to screen their clients and establish their identities.

Other laws have been passed that restrict payment providers from processing transactions for bitcoin. However, these laws do not target use of bitcoin in particular, and there are still many loopholes.

Are the regulations unneeded?

Even though use of bitcoin in gambling is making the current regulations ineffective, these laws are still very much needed. Looking at the dangers posed by gambling through bitcoin, the industry could be threatened if appropriate and effective laws are not passed to regulate the industry.

Key Highlights Ethereum classic price is placed well above the $17.00 handle against the US Dollar. This week’s major contracting triangle pattern with resistance at $17.60 on the hourly chart (data feed via Kraken) of ETC/USD is about to break. The price is currently above the $17.00 support and the 100 simple moving average. Ethereum … Continue reading Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD To Break Higher?

The post Ethereum Classic Price Technical Analysis – ETC/USD To Break Higher? appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Last week was Money 2020 Europe week.  This year a gathering of 6,000 odd people – and I mean ODD – assembled in Copenhagen to talk all things FinTech and stuff.  That’s 50 percent up on last year’s first outing and, due to the numbers and a few brown envelopes from the Dutch, the whole shindig moves to Amsterdam next year.

On June 5 the Lightning Network Community published a blog post about the emerging developer ecosystem being built around the ‘Lnd’ Lightning Network infrastructure and the many applications being constructed using the codebase. The post revealed some tipping bots, a Mac GUI wallet, and other types of platforms modeled with the alpha release of Lnd.

Also read: Diane Reynolds: `Lightning Network Will Maintain Decentralization´

New Bitcoin Applications Built Using the Lightning Network Alpha Codebase

This past January Bitcoin.com reported on the Lightning Network alpha release which is a full implementation of Lightning called Lnd. Since then a lot has been going on with the Lightning project as developers are testing the code and building applications. This past April the team used the Lnd framework and bitcoin testnet coins to purchase beer at the popular Room 77 bar in Berlin. Although the project is still in it’s alpha phase, Lightning Network programmers say that developers are using Lnd to build “application-level projects (Lapps)” and new utilities that could benefit the bitcoin ecosystem.  

“Lnd is still in alpha, but we’re already seeing a handful of developers building on top of it,” explains the Lightning Network developers. “Starting first with application-level projects, a few user interfaces, and concluding with repositories and utilities that developers on Lightning will find helpful.”

Tipbots & User Interfaces

The first application mentioned, a Slack Tipbot, was created by software developer François Masurel. The tipbot was built for the Slack community, and the team calls it “the Lnd-based successor to Changetip.” Users just type “/lntip <amount in satoshis> @<Slack username>” to send a tip using Masurel’s micropayment enabled Lightning tipbot. The software is in its alpha form and is not yet intended for production details the tipbot’s warning.

Other projects built using the Lnd framework that offer a “user interface” theme include the Mac OS graphical user interface (GUI) wallet designed by Alex Bosworth. The wallet is the first user interface for Macintosh computers that utilizes the Lightning protocol. Another platform is the lightweight Lnd Dashboard created by François Masurel that offers a web client and dashboard for Lnd that’s written in the NodeJS codebase. Additionally, there is a mobile and desktop Lightning platform produced by Jack Mallers. The application aims to support bitcoin, litecoin and has already been tested to purchase coffee.

Monetizing Full Nodes With the Lightning Network and Bcoin

Back in April Bitcoin.com reported on the “Bcoin Hackathon” at the San Francisco-based Hackreactor HQ that featured over fifty developers messing around with the Bcoin protocol. The co-founder of Lightning, Olaoluwa Osuntokun (Roasbeef), was also in attendance, and the crowd witnessed a project called the “Monetizing Full Node Project.” The Lightning team details that the platform’s creators Michael Folkson, Alex Bosworth, and Nathan Basanese are continuing to work on this project utilizing Lnd for the payment network, Bcoin for full nodes, and Risk Bazaar for “risk contract” purposes.

Bitcoin Micropayments Applied to the Energy Sector

Another project designed with Lnd infrastructure is called “Voltachain — a pay-as-you-go solution for electric vehicle energy purchases.” Voltachain uses Lnd for micropayments, and the team just recently showcased their project at the Merkleweek Hackathon in Paris. Additionally, the platform is an open peer-to-peer application that developers can use for any vending service they’d like to create. The project is one of the first to apply bitcoin micropayments to the energy industry, and the team took first place at the Merkleweek Hackathon.

The Lightning Network team also reveals a bunch more developing tools and resources throughout the blog post and explain a full site dedicated to these Lnd-based tools is currently being built. The team says there is plenty of resources and guides available now for individuals and organizations to start creating with the Lnd framework.

What do you think about the applications built using the Lightning Network and Lnd? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, the Lightning Network team blog, and the Bcoin Hackathon.

Bitcoin is cool, and you know everyone wants in – even the ones who say they don’t. Show the world how cutting-edge you are with a bitcoin T-shirt, hoodie, bag, key-ring, even a Trezor hardware wallet. Shipping all over the world, quality merchandise and, of course, a payment system that makes people say “wow!”

The post A Look at the Bitcoin Apps Being Built Using the Lightning Network appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Looking at the long-term time frames reveals that there’s still significant downside pressure in play for MobileGo against bitcoin, ethereum, and the dollar.

The post MobileGo Price Technical Analysis for 07/07/2017 – Downside Pressure in Play appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Key Highlights Creditbit price after trading close to the 0.00024BTC support against the Bitcoin started a recovery. There was a break above a bearish trend line with resistance at 0.00025BTC on the 7-day chart of CRB/BTC (data feed from Coinmarketcap). The price is now above the 0.00026BTC level, which might act as a support in … Continue reading Creditbit Price Technical Analysis – CRB/BTC Holding 0.00024BTC

The post Creditbit Price Technical Analysis – CRB/BTC Holding 0.00024BTC appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Bitcoin price is testing the ascending triangle resistance, still deciding whether to make a bounce or an upside breakout.

The post Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/07/2017 – Ascending Triangle Resistance appeared first on NEWSBTC.

Hacker Michael Richo, who was arrested on October 5, 2016, has admitted that he stole a total of $365,000 worth of Bitcoin from darknet marketplaces.

The CFTC has issued an Order of Registration to cryptocurrency startup LedgerX granting it status as a Swap Execution Facility.

Source

Bithumb announces that it will pay each affected client 100,000 Korean Won, which is equivalent to around $86.50, after the recent hacking incident.