Day: March 7, 2018

Users of Binance have reported suspicious activity that reportedly is the result of a hack via third-party trading tools #NEWS

Various banks have begun preventing customers from purchasing cryptocurrencies with their payment cards. It seems this trend will not slow down anytime soon. Scotiabank is the latest institution to take this aggressive course of action, even though their reasons for doing so may raise a lot of questions in the end.

Scotiabank Blocks Cryptocurrency Purchases

It has almost become a global trend at this point. Banks all over the world have made it more difficult for their clients to purchase cryptocurrencies through convenient payment methods. While bank account transfers remain possible at this time, the use of credit cards is heavily discouraged. In some cases, it is even impossible to buy Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency with a credit or debit card. This is a problematic development, although most traders will be able to find a way around this problem.

Scotiabank customers are no longer able to purchase cryptocurrencies with their credit and debit cards either as of right now. This change comes as a rather big surprise, considering Canada has been pretty Bitcoin-friendly so far. While the government is still looking into regulating this market, there has never been any negative attention paid to Bitcoin. All of this makes the decision by this Canadian financial institution all the more strange.

In an email sent out to clients, Scotiabank indicates it will block all card-related purchases of cryptocurrencies. According to the email, the bank has taken this aggressive stance due to “risk and regulatory factors which continue to evolve”. It is a very vague statement, all things considered, but it seems the bank wants to err on the side of caution in case the Canadian government bans cryptocurrency. Right now, that seems highly unlikely, but nothing has been decided as of yet.

It is quite intriguing that this decision only seems to impact Visa-branded payment cards issued by Scotiabank. While it is a bit unclear if this decision was forced upon the bank by Visa itself, it is quite interesting to see the statement phrased in such a manner. Any Scotiabank product linked to a Visa debit or credit card will no longer be eligible for crypto purchases moving forward. This does not affect regular checking accounts, by the look of things, although that situation may still change in the future.

It will be interesting to see if this affects other Bitcoin-related activities across Canada in the future. We have seen a fair few companies move to this country to set up Bitcoin mining businesses, and local municipalities are seemingly keen on embracing this business model as well. When banks try to make it difficult to purchase cryptocurrency, however, it indicates that things can evolve in either direction as of right now.

Whether or not other Canadian banks will follow Scotiabank’s lead remains to be determined. Anything is possible as of right now, especially with more and more financial institutions feeling threatened by this new form of money. It is evident banks want to remain relevant for quite some time to come, although blocking cryptocurrency purchases is not the right way to go about things. It’s an interesting situation to keep an eye on; that much is evident.

Bitcoin’s price fell more than $1,000 on Wednesday, dropping below $9,500 before recovering back above that level.

MDL Talent Hub is proud to announce that they have achieved their pre-sale hard cap target raising 500,000USD, their crowdsale is due to start on March, 10 2018 with a hard cap of 20 million USD.

Disclosure: This is a Sponsored Article

MDL Talent Hub

The trustchain for the talent sourcing industry has achieved its pre-sale hard cap and is eagerly anticipating its Initial Token Offering. The ITO is expected to raise up to 20 million USD, MDL using these offerings for the development of the platform, cross-border scaling, and business development, as well as for R&D, further implementation of BC & PIDS technologies.

MDL Talent Hub’s platform will bring transparency and efficiency, two fundamental characteristics of the new era to the talent sourcing market. This market will enfold many varieties of talents. MDL’s project aims to consolidate supply and demand channels and establish permanent and immutable reputation scoring for each market participant.

The MDL Toolbox

The tools provided by MDL will help to overcome a solid variety of existing problems in the talent-booker relationship including a comprehensive talent search engine, reputation tracking, convenient, standardized presentation tools on both sides of the platform.  

As the project develops, the marketplace will be set up for talents and performers to exchange, sell, or rent equipment and gear, as well as micro-KOL partnership programs to exchange with brands to advertise their products and services. This action will be performed using platform participants with high-reputation scores. Meta-data mining will be enabled via SkyLedger CXO protocol. The MDL token will support all of these functions.

For the Long Term

As the value of the MDL token will naturally increase from our expansion in the talent sourcing market, which itself is continually growing. When the market saturation has reached its peak, MDL is going to implement more functionalities for MDL tokens, such as a marketplace ecosystem, partnership programs with brands, and live streaming across the board!

While holding MDL tokens allow for the opening up of more versatile functions within the MDL platforms. This will be implemented via Token Hours – the longer you keep your MDL tokens, and the more tokens you hold, the more tokens you will acquire, the platform participants will want to have more. The MDL token is currently partnered two big projects with a concrete community.

What MDL are Doing and Why

In the ongoing Blockchain mania, there are so many projects that seem to be less genuine or even scams. ICOs became an easy tool for startups to raise funds and so scammers are rearing their heads too. The MDL Talent Hub is a determined and genuine project with a determined vision and development plan.

Using the MDL Token an ecosystem will be created, which will allow MDL not only to attract more participants but also spread sources of income. Thus commission on transactions will be decreased and hence we will outrange MDL’s possible competitors.

It is absolutely not necessary to be an IT professional or blockchain enthusiast to be able to use the MDL platform on a full scale. Friendly user interface and intuitive UX/UI will allow the participants of MDL.life platform to use all the benefits of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency without any skills in IT. By utilizing blockchain technology MDL are aiming at solving existing problems on the already existing market.

Visit the MDL website here: http://mdl.life

Crypto in China is alive despite all bans. Chinese exchanges, digital currencies and Blockchain projects by conglomerates prove it #ANALYSIS

Kadena, the JP Morgan blockchain spinoff, has hired former Capco executive Ben Jessel to head its business growth efforts.

It is always interesting to see how people try to scam cryptocurrency users. It is a trend that will not go away anytime soon, yet people have shown an impressive degree of creativity in this regard. One of the “older” scams going around involves the supposed building of a church in the name of Jesus Christ. This effort requires Bitcoin donations, and it’s being advertised on Craigslist.

The Lord Wants Your Bitcoin

While it is certainly possible that legitimate efforts exist to build a new church funded entirely by Bitcoin donations, it does not appear this infamous Craigslist advertisement is one of them. In fact, it seems to try and trick Christians into donating to a fictitious church which will never be built. According to some Reddit users, this advertisement has been circulating on Craigslist for some time now, even though it doesn’t show up in every region.

According to the message itself, it seems the Lord is calling upon his disciples to build a new church. The main purpose of this church is to educate the “younger generation” as to how they should lead their lives. With so many changes taking place in the world today, it is only normal that religious beliefs are taking a bit of a backseat right now. New generations show less and less interest in going to church, praying, and religious beliefs in general. Turning that ship around will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

To combat this problem, this Craigslist advertisement calls upon all Christians to make Bitcoin contributions to a specific address. While there is nothing wrong with that per se, the lack of any contact information, address details, or even a name associated with this venture does raise a lot of questions. It appears this “church” is merely a scam intended to collect Bitcoin donations.

Anyone with a functioning brain will know such anonymous efforts to “raise Bitcoin” are usually scams. It seems this particular religion-oriented effort is not all that different in this regard. By listing such an ad on Craigslist, it has also become evident the people behind it are trying to trick as many users into donating as possible. Appealing to one’s religious beliefs to do so is certainly despicable, as building a new church can easily be done without Bitcoin and in a far more transparent manner.

Whether or not people will donate significant funds to this potential scam remains to be seen. It seems different Bitcoin addresses are used in different regions. This does indicate a well-orchestrated approach to this venture, even though there will always be Bitcoin users who only see the positive side of this effort and consider it to be legitimate just because it is done out of religious belief.

Unfortunately, it seems we will only see more of these efforts in the near future. After all, any scam related to cryptocurrency usually becomes quite profitable, and cashing out even one Bitcoin results in a paycheck of over US$10,000 right now. Most people have to work several months to see that kind of money. It is important that Bitcoin users remain vigilant at all times and never fall victim to these obvious attempts at stealing their money.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

As the saying goes, don’t keep all your stablecoins in one basket. Over-reliance on tethers could prove costly to an exchange such as Bittrex if U.S. regulators were to crack down on the controversial stablecoin. This week, Bittrex added a second stablecoin in the form Trueusd, in a move seen as a hedge against future Tether regulation.

Also read: New Study Looks at the Cost to Mine BTC Across the Globe

Bittrex Expands its Stable of Dollar Coins

Following months of inactivity, Bittrex has resumed listing new coins and tokens at the rate of about one a week. This week’s addition was an unusual one however. Unlike other coins, Trueusd (TUSD) wasn’t already widely available elsewhere. In fact, Bittrex is only the second exchange to list the stablecoin after Upbit. In the last 24 hours, $2.3 million of TUSD has been traded on the Bittrex, accounting for 56% of the dollar-pegged coin’s overall volume.

With $29 million of USDT traded on Bittrex in the same period, tether is still way ahead in the stablecoin stakes, but all that could quickly change, especially if regulators were to weigh in. The legal status of Tether has been debated to death, with critics asserting that it could be liable to a U.S.-led shutdown, likely for falling foul of AML regulations. That may or may not come to pass, but in the meantime, Bittrex’ decision to add Trueusd could be interpreted as a safeguard against that possibility. The U.S. exchange does not allow fiat currency deposits, although its CEO stated in an interview last month that it will be adding this provision.

Trueusd or False Stablecoin?

When it launched in late January, Trueusd was billed as “A USD-backed stablecoin you can trust”. Trust Token, which conceived TUSD, have evidently learned from Tether’s mistakes and are anxious not to be tarred with the same brush. Hence the emphasis on “full collateral, regular auditing, and legal protections”. To purchase TUSD direct from Trueusd, full KYC is required. Like tethers, TUSD may waver slightly in price, but is unlikely to deviate far from its $1 peg. As Trust Token explains:

Since traders can always trade Trueusd for the equivalent USD on TrueUSD.com, there will be an incentive to buy or sell mispriced Trueusd on exchanges and convert on Trueusd.com.

For all the measures it is taking to ensure full compliance, it is possible that TUSD could still run into hot water for issuing a “copycat” version of the U.S. dollar. This seems unlikely as it stands, not least because regulators have much bigger fish to fry, even if a case could be made against Trust Token and Tether on those grounds. Besides, Trust Token has said it may introduce a Euro-based version in future, which would be safe from such measures. The other major U.S. exchange that is currently reliant on tethers is Kraken. If it were to introduce Trueusd, it could signal the beginning of the end for Tether on U.S. soil.

Do you think TrueUSD is less susceptible to U.S. regulation than Tether? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Trust Token.

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The post Bittrex Adds Tether Competitor TrueUSD as Regulation Rumors Persist appeared first on Bitcoin News.