Recap Of Bitcoin News This Week
On Monday, there was a cheerful report about Paxful and the launching of the #BuiltWithBitcoin program in 2017. This was achieved by donating $50,000 for the construction of a nursery school in Rwanda, and starting the construction of a second school in the African country. The school is meant for students aged 6-15 in the Nyamata Sector of Rwanda’s Bugesera District. The total cost of the construction is estimated at $100,000. The balance will be collected via an online crowdfunding campaign. Donations can be made in digital coins that include BTC, ETH, LTC, and Dash.
Tuesday was all about the altcoin panic. The altcoin market has been under severe trauma and there is panic in the crypto community all over web forums. The market was indeed very ugly with cryptocurrencies such as BNB, and Vechain nursing 20% losses in a single day – 25% in the case of the latter. The total value of the cryptocurrency market had dropped to $194 billion at the time of writing. BTC was the head of the market with a 53.5% dominance.
On Wednesday, the news was about popular cannabis magazine High Times which did not accept cryptocurrencies for its IPO. A filing with the SEC reveals that the company’s previous statement about it was a mistake. High Times claimed that the announcement was “distributed in error as the Company will not be accepting bitcoin as payment for shares.”
Reports came on Thursday that security researchers claimed they had successfully send signed transactions with John McAfee’s “unhackable” Bitfi wallet. Someone had been able to demonstrate the root control of the device just by installing the classic video game Doom on it.McAfee’s reaction in a tweet goes thus: “A video played on your Bitfi wallet has nothing to do with the safety of your funds. This is amateur hour, not a hack! Any device with a computer and screen can be used to play games. I should start watching my YouTube videos on Bitfi wallet.” He later added: “Laughing so hard I can barely catch my breath. “Hackers” play Doom, play videos, root the device, play music on the BitFi wallet. We don’t charge extra for those facilities. No-one has taken the coins from our pre-loaded wallet. No one will. Isn’t this what matters?”
Friday, we had reports that Boinance was launching a fiat-to-crypto trading platform in Liechtenstein. Their plan was to build up a team of up to 15 professionals for the Liechtenstein office using a joint venture with LCX. The office will manage customer support, legal requirements, due diligence, KYC, AML and government communication, while the Binance team will be in charge of the maintenance of the platform. Trading for Swiss francs (CHF) and Euros (EUR) against major cryptocurrencies will be offered by the new exchange, with the promise of adding more trading pairs in the future. The Prime Minister of Liechtenstein welcomed the venture by saying: “We are confident that Liechtenstein’s existing and future legal framework and practice provide a robust foundation for the Binance LCX and other blockchain companies to provide exceptional services here in Liechtenstein.”
Buying hairspray with bitcoin was the news covered on Saturday. Women’s style magazine The Cut revealed that the beauty collective R+Co, founded by stylists Howard McLaren, Thom Priano, and Garren, has started incorporating BTC and BCH payments into its policy. R+Co’s president Dan Langer said: “Blockchain technology is going to be one of the future disruptors in the beauty industry. It will allow consumers the ability to leverage their data and purchase behavior in all kinds of new shopping ways… from reviews to rewards to product benefits. In order to stay at the forefront of this emerging thinking, we wanted to integrate components of it while still in its early stages – like paying with Bitcoin – and learn with it as it evolves.”
