Bitcoin News Roundup – 01 Aug.2015

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

August 1, 2015

Recapping the week’s biggest Bitcoins stories from around the web.

Mark Karperles, former Mt. Gox CEO, is facing charges of fraudulent system manipulation.According to Drew Cordell of Bitcoinist, Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department has charged Karperles with “fraudulently producing and using private electromagnetic records”, with the aim to manipulate the exchange’s system and inflate the balance of fake bitcoin accounts. Although the authenticity of the information cannot be verified yet, if it is real, it is a relief for all those users who are trying to recover their funds from Mt. Gox.

Following the Citi’s recent announcement about working on its own cryptocurrency (Citicoin), Fidelity seeks to launch Fidelitycoin. As P.H. Madore of CryptoCoins News writes, Fidelity, one of the leading mutual funds has filed an application with the US Patent Office and Trademark Office concerning “financial services, namely, financial exchange services for virtual currency; electronic wallets; charitable services in the nature of virtual currency.”Although Fidelity neither confirms nor denies that the fund experiments with its own cryptocurrency, spokesman Stephen Austin stated “I can confirm the filing, we are always experimenting with emerging technologies.”

Former governor of Texas and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry favors the bitcoin.

As Gola Yashu of NewsBtc reports, Perry supports “regulatory breathing-room” for the cryptocurrency in an effort to attack Hilary Clinton’s sharing economy views and criticism against Uber’s disruptive technology. Perry’s comments also attacked the Wall Street and related government policies with a negative impact on the American middle class.

Candidate for 2016 London mayoral elections is considering putting London’s budget on blockchain. According to Katherine Fletcher of Coin Report, when interviewed by Felix Online, the student newspaper of the Imperial College London, George Galloway stated that, if elected, he would implement the Mayors Chain system. The blockchain-based public expenditure management system would allow the public to see online how the mayor manages London’s GBP17 billion budget. Galloway thinks that the system will bring transparency in the UK’s public finances and could perhaps create a trend for other governments around the world.

Trees, the San-Francisco based company specialized in tree trimming, seeks to deliver bitcoin-purchased cannabis via drones. As Yessi Bello Perez of Coin Desk reports, Trees accepts bitcoin payments along with traditional methods of payment and plans to deliver medicinal cannabis via drone to people who can certify their medical condition with a doctor’s evaluation. When ordering, users need to provide their medical and driving license. Currently, due to local regulations, the drone delivery option is not available. Users get their cannabis orders through in-house delivery services.

Accenture proposes a closed blockchain system for the financial markets. As Giulio Prisco of Bitcoin Magazine writes, two Accenture corporate technology executives are impressively in favor of a blockchain system and rather bearish about the bitcoin as a currency. They both estimate that global banks and financial institutions can capitalize on the enormous opportunities presented by the blockchain technology as the “blockchain represents the first solid, working implementation of distributed consensus.”In contrast, the bitcoin protocol introduced high costs, including a proof-of-work algorithm, public transaction data and a validation scheme.

Payments

Stripe joins forces with American Express and Visa to improve positioning in the digital payments industry. As Mike Isaac of The New York Times reports, the San-Francisco based digital payment processor raised new capital from partnering with American Express and Visa, among others. The new company is valued $5 billion. Especially, the partnership with Visa, one of the leading credit card companies in the world, will help Stripe not only to improve its digital transactions, but also to seek international expansion through Visa’s global customer relationships.

Onebit develops NFC technology to facilitate bitcoin transfers. As Brian Booker of 99bitcoins writes, the Czech-based bitcoin wallet, seeks to allow users to make payments in bitcoin using their smartphones via a wide credit card payment network, including MasterCard as well as other leading credit card companies. The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology has been increasingly accepted as a popular and reliable form of payment.

Updated: 2015-08-01