Alon Mask, the entrepreneur and chief technology officer, said he sees Bitcoin's design as "quite brilliant" and sees it as "a much better way to transfer value than a piece of paper." Musk denies any intention of involving Tesla in the crypto field.

Last week, it was reported that the online food retailer Rakuten, considered equivalent to Amazon in Japan, may support digital currencies in the new payment application. Launch of the app is scheduled for March.

Quinavis announced the acquisition of Neutrino, an Italian currency start-up. The CEO of Neutrino is notorious for having previously sold spyware to governments, governments, and corporations.

China's mining giant Bitmain has revealed that it lost half a billion dollars in the third quarter of 2018. Bittamin unveils economic data in an attempt to raise capital on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Samsung Electronics unveiled new smartphone models this week. Among the products exposed was also introduced the Samsung Knox phone, according to the network publications on this device integrated wallet hardware. Although Samsung did not mention it in launch.

In conclusion, Bitcoin's blockchain currently processes 3.8 deals per second or around 315,000 per day. This is the highest level since peak levels in 2017, when the limited capacity created high transaction fees. However, the fees are currently low, due to the additional capacity afforded by SegWit
Courtesy: macrobit.co.il

Billionaire investor and known Bitcoin (BTC) bull Tim Draper argued that in five years, only criminals will use fiat as crypto becomes universally widespread. Draper made his claims in an interview with American financial news tv channel Fox Business released on Feb. 18.

Reiterating his previous statements predicting that fiat money will become laughable and obsolete in five years, Draper has elaborated on his forecast, stating that nobody but criminals will keep using cash, since criminals who use crypto can be tracked via blockchain. He said:

“The criminals will still want to operate with cash, because they catch everybody who is trying to use Bitcoin.”

In August 2018, an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) noted that she prefers people to keep using cryptocurrencies, as the blockchain provides tool to identify criminals.

In the interview, Draper also said that he believes his money in the bank to be less secure than his money in Bitcoin. “My bank is constantly under a hack attack,” Draper has stated, adding that to date, nobody has managed to hack Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Claiming that his Bitcoin is more secure than a dollar is, the Bitcoin billionaire has compared cashing out from Bitcoin with exchanging gold into shells, arguing that there is no sense to go back in time as the future is about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

When asked how much crypto he holds, Draper provided a short response: “a lot.”

Draper’s recent statement has echoed the stance of young Bitcoin millionaire Jeremy Gardner, who said that the existing financial system is much more culpable for things like terrorism and crimes than blockchain technology perhaps will ever be.

In November last year, Tim Draper reaffirmed his April 2018 Bitcoin prediction that the biggest cryptocurrency will trade as high as $250,000 per coin by 2022. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has seen significant growth recently, having jumped around 7.6 percent over the day and trading at $3,907 at press time, according to CoinMarketCap. Courtesy:https://cointelegraph.com

Morgan Creek's new venture capital fund received an investment from Virginia's pension plans. The fund raised $ 40 million, mostly for investment in promising crypto companies, although part of the investment will also be allocated to Bitcoin.

A series of Wikileaks tweets condemned Craig Wright as a serial propeller. Wikileaks also presented documents that Craig claimed to have forged to support his claim that it was Satoshi Nakamoto.

US bank JPMorgan officially confirms that it is developing a digital currency close to the dollar. The bank will launch JPM Coin in the coming months, and through it will transfer value to its customers. Last year, JPMorgan forbade the purchase of Bitcoin by credit card and the bank's chief executive even called Bitcoin a fraud.

New details are revealed about the Argentine-Paraguay trade deal that took place in Bitcoin. Argentina exported pesticides worth $ 7,100 to Paraguay, which were paid in the Bitcoin currency. Although the amount is low, the deal sets an interesting precedent for international trade.

Finally, the Israeli Crypto Stock Exchange announced a data leak. Funds were not stolen and no user was directly affected. A list of encrypted e-mail and passwords of approximately 450,000 Kinamama customers is offered for sale at darknet. Kinamama is one of 24 companies from which information flowed. The recommendation for stock exchange users is to exchange passwords.
Courtesy: macrobit.co.il

Social media network Facebook has reportedly acquired Chainspace in its first apparent blockchain-related acquisition, Cheddar reportson Feb. 4.

Sources purportedly told Cheddar that Facebook acquired Chainspace, a small blockchain startup, in an ‘acquihire,’ or an acquisition of a company made primarily for the skills or expertise of its staff, rather than the service or products the company provides.

Per Cheddar, four of the five researchers that worked on Chainspace’s academic whitepaper will be joining Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson told Cheddar that, while the social media giant had hired on the new researchers, it had not acquired any of Chainspace’s technology.

The startup, which was founded by researchers from University College London, was reportedly working on blockchain scalability problems, notably by applying sharding to smart contracts, according to the Chainspace website.

While many blockchain advocates laud the technology for its security and trustless capabilities in processing transactions, it is currently not scalable to the level of traditional payments systems like Visa or Paypal.The current number of transactions per second (tps) on the Bitcoin network fluctuates between two and 18, Visa is capable of 2,000 tps, while PayPal can process 115 tps.

Sharding runs on the parallel processing power of multiple networked machines that split up the workload of verifying transactions. It automatically divides networks into smaller sections, or “shards,” each of which runs a smaller-scale consensus protocol.

While processing in parallel, such a network is capable of processing hundreds of transactions per second per shard, which would dramatically increase the scalability of blockchain-based processes.

In late 2018, Facebook listed five new blockchain-related jobs on its careers page: two software engineer roles, a data scientist post and a data engineer, all at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

In early May 2018, the head Facebook Messenger, David Marcus, announced that the company had formed a group “to explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.” Marcus was a former board member of major United States crypto exchange and wallet service Coinbase.
Courtesy Cointelegraph

Bakkt, the much-anticipated digital assets platform operated by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has closed its first acquisition, a tweet from the company revealed Feb. 8.

The move marks the finalization of an acquisition of assets in futures commission merchant Rosenthal Collins Group (RCG). “With today’s closing of our transaction with Rosenthal Collins Group, we welcome great new team members to Bakkt,” the statement reads. By acquiring certain assets in the company, Bakkt said it hopes:

“RCG’s remarkable heritage, culture and expertise will help us build out a trusted institutional infrastructure for digital assets.”

Bakkt had announced the acquisition of assets in RCG in mid-January. As the company’s CEO, Kelly Loeffler, explained at the time, the acquisition means that the company is slowing down operations while awaiting regulatory approval by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for the launch of regulated trading in crypto markets.

Loeffler also added that the acquisition will allegedly expand Bakkt’s risk management and treasury operations with systems and expertise, and might contribute to Bakkt’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) policies.

On Thursday, Feb 7, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and over 20 other major exchanges — had its Q4 2018 earnings call. During the hour-long call, ICE CFO Scott Hill mentioned Bakkt, saying the firm’s investment in the digital assets platform “will generate $20 million to $25 million of expense based upon the run rate in the first quarter.” Later in the call, ICE’s chairman and CEO, Jeff Sprecher, called Bakkt a “moonshot bet.”

As Cointelegraph previously reported, Bakkt was first announced by ICE in August 2018. In late December, ICE reported it will update the launch of the Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Daily Futures Contract launch timeline in early 2019, in accordance with the CFTC’s approval process.

More recently, Bakkt published a list of eight evidently new vacancies at the company, all of which are based in Atlanta and New York City.

Courtesy of Cointelegraph 

The US-based stock exchange, Kraken, reported that it raised $ 100 million from private investors. The exchange also revealed that it has acquired Crypto Facilities from the UK specializing in derivatives.
This news shows that the Crypto futures are expected to reach Keraken.

BlockStream has unveiled a new tool to prove reserves. The tool provides a convenient and safe way for the crypto exchanges and the service providers to prove the reinforced bitcoin reserves.

An Iranian company, backed by four banks, issued a digital currency. The currency is called PayMon and is backed by gold.
The Iranian cricket exchanges are supposed to add the currency to their basket of currencies.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey chirped and announced the receipt of the lightning torch. The torch is a charge in Bitcoin Lighting that passes between people and grows. Dorsey, passed the torch to Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark.

Argentinian citizens can now pay public transport tickets through Bitcoin. This service is available in 37 regions throughout the country. Before adding the payment option in Bitcoin, the option was only available via PayPal.

Finally, Lukat Bitcoin stated that she would comply with the EU KYC regulations. Stricter procedures for verifying new users are expected to begin in early March.
Courtesy: https://macrobit.co.il

The Bitcoin currency has officially entered the biggest decline in history. The world's oldest digital currency, reached its all-time high on December 7, 2017, touching $ 19,764 since the currency hit a record low, making February 4th, 2019, the day's 431 consecutive decline.

The Canadian trading scene, QuadrigaCX, has announced bankruptcy when it owes $ 200 million to its customers. According to the company's website, access to the stock's cold wallets has been lost.
The allegation is that the founder, Gerry Cotton, died on a charity trip to India, leaving no backups for the wallets. Some suspect that this is a fraud that has gotten out of hand.

Still in the stock market, New Zealand's trading arena Cryptopia was breached for the second time in two weeks.
After 17,000 Atrium coins were stolen for the first time, another 1675 coins were stolen.

According to the legislature's website, Wyoming, the United States, published on January 31 a bill that would allow digital currencies to be used as money. The bill defines digital currencies as a tangible asset, and they will be limited by the same laws as the Fiat money. In fact, the proposal authorizes the banks to take care of their customers in digital assets. The offer will take effect on March 31.

Finally, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was hosted on Joe Rogan's famous podcast. Dorsey said he thought Bitcoin would be the currency of the Internet.
Courtesy: https://macrobit.co.il