UK Bitcoin-Buying Service Bittylicious Adds Feathercoin

Marc Warne, CEO at Bittylicious, is keen to support Britain’s burgeoning cryptocurrency feathercoin, planning to offer it on his website next month.


This digital currency hails from Oxford, under the leadership of Peter Bushnell. He started feather coin in April 2012, in order to set up a currency that revolved primarily around a community.

Warne says of the feathercoin team:

“I liked their attitude. They are trying to build a functioning economy and ecosystem and there are a few places in Oxford that accept feathercoin already. They have a couple of pubs and a bike repair shop, it’s good to see it has a physical presence there.”

Bittylicious, a UK platform that enables users to buy bitcoins via bank transfer, has been running since April this year.

Sellers supply buyers with bitcoins at a premium price, but this means buyers can get their hands on bitcoins without waiting two days for a bank transfer to go through. In contrast, it takes between seven and 10 days for an exchange like Bitstamp or Mt. Gox to check a buyer’s credentials.

Warne told CoinDesk: “We’re planning to launch feathercoin on our platform in December for certain. The work has been done, mostly, and we just want to make some test transactions before we go live. In the new year it’s likely that litecoins will be a part of it too.”

When asked how Bittylicious is progressing, he responded positively:

“It seems to be doing pretty well – when bitcoin rises a lot, the amount we take in rises a lot. Turnover on a daily basis has risen four- or five-fold in the last five weeks, up from about £5,000 a day to £40,000 a day, from which Bittylicious takes a 1% cut of the bitcoins transacted.”

In terms of competition, Warne sees it as a good thing: “I’m not worried about competition, competition is great! We all have different ideas and everyone is in it together. The community is definitely there to help bitcoins become more popular.”

There are currently about 20 sellers on Bittylicious, of which around 10 are online at any given time. However, Warne’s company also sells its own coins when supply cannot meet demand.

UK policy

On the subject of tax in the UK, Warne highlighted that HMRC (the UK’s customs and tax department) demands 20% VAT on sales revenues over £79,000.

“So for example, if I bought a bitcoin for £100 and I sold it for £110, I would have to pay HMRC £20. So, obviously I would make a loss,” he explained.

Warne comments that HMRC has issued contradictory advice about tax, but asserts his customers have “different business models and tax arrangements” so it’s not necessary for him to keep track of all that information.

When it comes to Bittylicious’ know-your-customer (KYC) policies and records, the CEO pointed out he is required to keep personal data about buyers and sellers by law, confirming that Bittylicious conforms to data protection regulations and current money-laundering regulations (MLR) in the UK. He said:

“We’ve been challenged on this by one customer, but we simply quoted our registration number, and the issue went away.”

Warne also points out that Bittylicious doesn’t actually hold customer funds, so it is not in the legally complicated area that bitcoin exchanges are.

“We’re in the wrong country if we wanted to do that,” he chuckles. “We enabled Pingit yesterday, and if there were other suitable payment options in future, they could be added.”

Feathercoin value

Feathercoin may become a significant feather in the cap of Bittylicious, since the value of the currency has increased from just 10p (16 cents) two weeks ago to it’s current high of 40p.

The young cryptocurrency features an ‘Advanced Checkpointing System’ where trusted nodes in the network agree on the valid version of the feathercoin block chain every six blocks.

Warne mentions that with potential ASIC miners on their way for scrypt coins like litecoin and feathercoin, the possibility of a 51% attack may be on the horizon. However, he’s quick to note that feathercoin’s checkpointing system is an excellent defence against this possibility.

Feathercoin’s Chris Ellis told CoinDesk: “Thousands of people have signed up to the feathercoin forum at local.feathercoin.com, we have numerous merchants in the community, and more are joining all the time. We’re always looking forward and trying to develop a healthy and positive ecosystem for Feathercoin.”

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source: http://www.coindesk.com/uk-bitcoin-service-bittylicious-feathercoin/

UK Bitcoin-Buying Service Bittylicious Adds Feathercoin

U.S. judge freezes assets of Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange boss

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday temporarily froze the U.S. assets of Mt. Gox chief Mark Karpeles and allowed alleged victims of the shuttered bitcoin exchange to demand evidence of what they claim is a massive fraud.


The market for the digital currency was rocked last month when Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, ceased operations, and soon after filed for bankruptcy. Mt. Gox said it may have lost 750,000 bitcoins, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in a hacking attack.

The freeze on Karpeles’ assets, issued by Judge Gary Feinerman in Chicago, also applies to Mt. Gox’s U.S. affiliate and the Japanese parent company, Tibanne, according to Christopher Dore, an Edelson attorney who represents U.S. customers of the bitcoin exchange.

The judge’s order did not apply to the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox KK, which was shielded from litigation after it filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and the United States.

Mt. Gox suspended withdrawals on February 7, leaving customers unable to recover their funds.

In a bankruptcy hearing on Monday, parties suing Mt. Gox said there are growing concerns that Karpeles moved millions of dollars of bitcoins in recent days based on information gleaned from the Internet.

Dore represents Gregory Greene, an Illinois resident, who brought a proposed class action over what he claims is a massive fraud. Mt. Gox blamed the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoins on a flaw in the software algorithm that underlies the digital currency.

“The main thing we hope to achieve is to finally see what the web of things that Karpeles has put together over the last few years and to start unwinding it as to where things are and what happened,” said Dore.

Bitcoin is bought and sold on a peer-to-peer network independent of central control. Its value soared last year, and the total worth of bitcoins minted is now about $7 billion.

Investors were warned on Tuesday that the lure of a quick profit trading the volatile currency should not blind them to bitcoin’s risk of theft, fraud and significant losses, according to an alert by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Dore said the judge’s order freezing Karpeles’ assets will expire in 14 days, when the parties return to court to decide if it should be extended.

John Murphy, a Baker McKenzie attorney for Mt. Gox KK, the bankrupt company, declined to comment. Dore said the U.S. affiliate, Karpeles and Tibanne were not represented at the hearing.

The case is Gregory Greene v Mt. Gox Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 14-01437

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source: http://yourfreebitcoin.blogspot.cz/2014/03/us-judge-freezes-assets-of-mt-gox.html

U.S. judge freezes assets of Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange boss

Icelanders to enjoy virtual cash giveaway

very Icelandic citizen is to be given the chance to get a handful of virtual coins on 24 March.


The idea to distribute millions of the digital coins to all of Iceland’s 333,000 citizens has been dreamt up by entrepreneur Baldur Odinsson.

Mr Odinsson’s company is now creating, or “mining”, the millions of Auroracoins needed for the giveaway.

He hopes that distributing the virtual cash to everyone will help to restore some value to the Icelandic krona.

Mr Odinsson said the project was possible thanks to an earlier government initiative that assigned a national ID number to every citizen. The ID numbers can be queried via a public database that would help the Auroracoin project to verify that people are getting only their fair share of coins.

About 10.5 million Auroracoins will be needed to give all those people 31.8 each, he told the BBC in an email.

Like many other virtual currencies, Auroracoins are based on the more well-known Bitcoin system, in which each coin is represented by a unique registration number.

‘Immune to centralised meddling’

Mr Odinsson said that Iceland kept very tight control on currency flows in and out of the country.

“Auroracoin will be immune to centralised meddling of any sort,” he said.

Work was already under way to “pre-mine” or produce the unique identifiers that represent the coins. More details about how Icelanders can claim their coins would be given nearer the launch date, Mr Odinsson said. People would have up to a year to claim their share.

Stories about Auroracoin in Iceland point out that Baldur Odinsson is a pseudonym and the company behind the project is based in Panama.

One story also pointed out that Iceland’s controls on virtual currencies could stop people converting Auroracoins into a more valuable form of digital cash.

The Auroracoin project is starting as the value of Bitcoins suffers another sharp drop. The currency lost about 20% of its value in a day as its main exchange briefly halted withdrawals as it tackled some technical issues.

After Bitcoin trading at around $850 (£520) for weeks, it dropped in value to about $690.

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source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26083733

Icelanders to enjoy virtual cash giveaway

Auroracoin Already Third-Biggest Cryptocoin

Before they crashed an entire economy six years ago and became poster children for banker excesses in the pre-Lehman era, a brash young clique of Icelandic financiers thrust their tiny country into the big leagues of global finance.


Now, an Icelandic techie who is trying to undo the legacy of that financial disaster has achieved something similar in the digital-currency world — except in this case it’s founded on ideas antithetical to the old, too-big-to-fail banking model behind that 2008 crisis.

His invention, a so-called “alt.coin” known as auroracoin, has rocketed into second place among the most valuable independent digital currencies after bitcoin – albeit amid a rollercoaster ride in its price.

According to coinmarketcap.com, auroracoin – whose 10.6 million “pre-mined” coins are currently valued at $39.71 each – has a market capitalization of $381 million. Although that’s down a whopping 51% from its level on Tuesday, it’s still up by 1,100% from Thursday. Until  Wednesday afternoon, it was even ahead of litecoin, whose capitalization was last quoted $423 million and has held the title among alt.coins as the “silver to bitcoin’s gold.” Bitcoin, the grand-daddy virtual currency, weighs in at $8.3 billion.

(This ranking excludes the digital currency Ripple, whose market cap of $1.6 billion does not make for a fair comparison. Most ripple coins are retained by the issuing entity under a centrally managed model that’s very different from the decentralized networks employed by other alt.coins.)

How did little Iceland achieve this? One factor: auroracoin has an instant mass market. Its creator, who goes under the pseudonym of Baldur Friggjar Odinsson, plans to make a virtual “airdrop” on March 25, granting 31.8 auroracoins to each and every one of the 330,000 people listed in a national ID database. Already, Icelanders represent one of the most wired and technologically literate populations in the world.

So, the bet among investors is that this fledgling currency is ripe for mass adoption. It also sets the country up as kind of laboratory for the use of cryptocurrencies generally.

The project is a direct response to Iceland’s strict capital controls, which the government initially vowed would be a temporary measure during the turmoil of 2008 but which are still in place more than five years later. They severely restrict Icelanders’ ability to get money in and out of their country. Meanwhile, the government has struggled to protect the value of its currency, the krona, a failure that auroracoin’s web site illustrates with an image of the new 10,000-kronur note morphing into a one-hundred-trillion-dollar Zimbabwean note.  Auroracoin is presented as a way for Icelanders to escape this currency trap.

“The whole point of auroracoin is to provide Icelanders with an alternative to the króna, a currency they are forced by pain of imprisonment to use,” said the pseudonymous Mr. Odinsson in an email exchange. “Icelanders will be free to sell auroracoins anywhere they like and buy anything they like, be it dollars or other foreign currency on offshore currency exchanges. They won’t need permission from the Central Bank or politicians.”

As for the pseudonym – a tactic reminiscent of that of Bitcoin’s mysterious, unidentified creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, auroracoin’s founder says, “The agents of the state will attack anyone challenging their power, so I chose a name from Norse mythology to shield myself from such attacks.”  He notes that Icelandic central bank officials have spoken out against cryptocurrencies and the government has adopted a hostile posture toward bitcoin.

In Norse mythology, Baldur was the son of Odin, chief of the Gods, and Frigg, a benevolent sorceress. He described on norse-mythology.org as “one of the most beloved of all the gods… a generous, joyful and courageous character” who was killed by the “wily and disloyal” god of Loki.

Whether any of that contains relevance for auroracoin, Mr. Odinsson isn’t entirely happy with how speculators have driven his currency up 2400% and then halved it, all in the space of six days. On the one hand, the price gain could encourage some people to adopt and use the currency. On the other, sharp declines and price swings could scare others off.

“Personally, I would have wanted to see a more gradual rise in the value of auroracoin,” the creator said in the email.

UPDATE: This article was updated in the headline and text to reflect the fact that the fall in auroracoin’s price Wednesday had pushed it back into third place among digital currency market capitalizations behind bitcoin and litecoin.

source:http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/05/auroracoin-already-second-biggest-virtual-currency-and-its-not-even-out-yet/

Auroracoin Already Third-Biggest Cryptocoin

Iceland’s Auroracoin Passes Litecoin, Becomes Third Largest Altcoin by Market Cap

Auroracoin, the digital currency launched this February for use by the citizens of Iceland, has now passed litecoin to become the third-largest digital currency by market capitalization.


At press time, auroracoin had a total market capitalization of $515m, roughly $162m more than litecoin’s $353m, according to data from Coinmarketcap. The price of auroracoin (AUR) currently stands at $47.08 on the company’s website.

The quick spike in interest from investors has surprised even its creator Baldur Friggjar Óðinsson who has mixed sentiments about his coin’s meteoric rise.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Óðinsson indicated that he believes the high value could be key to convincing more Icelanders to claim and use the 31.8 auroracoins his team will disperse to citizens later this month.

Explained Óðinsson:

“What I did not expect was the sheer volume of speculation that would go on. I thought a market cap of $20m would be a huge success and enough to get Icelanders excited.”

The news of auroracoin’s ascent on the market cap leaderboard is particularly noteworthy given that digital currency is based on litecoin.

Fifty per cent of all auroracoins have been pre-mined, and will be given out via an ‘Airdrop’ to citizens on 25th March. Claimants will be required to use state-issued ID numbers in order to receive the coins.

Speculation threatens community

Though undeniably excited about the interest his project has generated, Óðinsson says that this increase in value is not without its drawbacks.

First and foremost, he worries of the effects excessive speculation could have on the success of this month’s launch.

This focus on speculation, Óðinsson reasons, may detract from the building of necessary infrastructure, as most current trading is being conducted by speculators, not involved community members.

However, Óðinsson acknowledges that given the digital currency’s decentralized nature, there’s only so much he can do to ensure its ultimate success.

“People need to be able to do something with their coins other than just immediately sell them. This aspect of the coin can’t be centrally planned, it has to grow from the community.”

Struggling to keep up

As evidence of auroracoin’s rise, major altcoin exchanges are rushing to add the hot listing to their offerings.

In just the last week alone, auroracoin has been added to Cryptsy: http://cryptsy.com/.

Pool

http://www.guugll.eu:12347/static/ Aurora coin p2pool

source: http://www.coindesk.com/icelands-auroracoin-passes-litecoin-becomes-third-largest-altcoin-market-cap/

Iceland’s Auroracoin Passes Litecoin, Becomes Third Largest Altcoin by Market Cap

A nation breaks the shackles of a fiat currency

Icelanders will be awarded f 31.8 each from March 25th 2014


Five years ago, the government of Iceland imposed capital controls, following the collapse of a Ponzi inspired financial system that had issued far more Icelandic kronas than the nation could ever back up through its real economy. These controls were supposed to be “temporary”, but as with so many government actions, they remain in place to this day.

This means that the people of Iceland have, for the past five years, been forced to turn over all foreign currency earned to the Central Bank of Iceland. This means that the people are not entirely free to engage in international trade. They are not free to invest in businesses abroad. The arbitrary use of power this entails and the unsustainable debt of the Icelandic government has created uncertainty and risk in all aspects of commerce. This has had a crippling effect on foreign investment, as foreigners in general avoid investing in Icelandic enterprises, because of the risk of not being able to convert their investment back into dollars or euros.

This means lack of investment and stifled economic growth in Iceland. The Central Bank finances consumption imports with the currencies it confiscates from export companies, in addition to expensive FX loans from the IMF, private bondholders and other countries.

This means that the Icelandic economy is slowly bleeding. The people of Iceland are being sacrificed at the altar of a flawed financial system, controlled by an elite that made astronomical bets supported by the government on behalf of the people and ultimately at the expense of the people.

Picture: The Icelandic krona has dropped greatly for the past 50 years. The line is only flat after the mid-eighties as it is close to zero. A closer inspection would show that the currency continued to lose value relative to the U.S. dollar.

The devaluation of the Icelandic krona, or the ISK, is not just a temporary phenomenon. The entire history of the currency is one of inflation and devaluation. Since 1960, in just over half a century, the Icelandic krona has lost over 99.5% of its value in U.S. dollars – at a time when the dollar lost 98% of its value relative to gold! At one time during this period two zeros were taken off the currency and new bills printed to replace the stock of bills. Now, the highest denomination is back up to 10,000 ISK, which would have been a million krona bill had the two zeros not been removed.

The M3 money supply in Iceland is in the order of 14 billion dollars. The population is only around 330,000 people, about the population of Santa Ana, California.

Of course, the Icelandic financial system was and is fundamentally no different from the financial system in other western countries. The basic premise of the banking system of the world is the unethical marriage of governments and banks. This unholy alliance is in control of the fiat currencies that people are forced to use in their daily lives. The banks, in effect nothing more than an extension of the government, issue money to fund themselves. If the debt becomes unbearable for the banks, the government bails them out. They are too big to fail, and a domino effect would be triggered if one of them were to collapse.

Picture: A proud central bank governor of Iceland hands the first new 10,000 ISK bill to the Minister of Finance. The krona has devalued by 99.99% relative to gold in about half a century.

In recent years, governments have resorted to outright money printing, by allowing its central banks to purchase government bonds, thereby preventing the yield on those bonds from rising to an unsustainable level and threatening the solvency of states.

In essence, the government prints itself out of debt. In Iceland, this was not entirely possible, since the debt was nominated in foreign currency and no external bailout took place.

By printing more of the currency that people are forced to use in their daily transactions, the government is directly attacking the welfare of the very people the politicians claim to be fighting for; the poor. The poor are not in a position to protect themselves, by investing in assets that rise in value (measured in the fiat currency). Their income rises eventually, but the new money is printed into the hands of the select few who have the greatest access to the financial system, not the poor. The only thing they can do is watch their paychecks shrink and their purchasing power decrease with every trillion dollar that is being printed into the hands of the elite.

Picture: The new 10,000 ISK bill, introduced in 2013. It is supposedly worth about $85, according to the Central Bank.

The power must be taken away from the politicians and given back to the people. Cryptocurrencies are a very important milestone in this fight for liberty. They bring the hope of a new era of free currencies, immune to the meddling of politicians and their cronies.

So, let me introduce to you the new cryptocurrency of Iceland, Auroracoin.

Auroracoin is based on Litecoin, a descendant of the Bitcoin protocol, the foremost cryptocurrency in the world. However, it is started by an “Airdrop” of auroracoins to the Icelandic nation, designed to reach almost every Icelander. This one-time event will create the conditions for Icelanders to start using the currency, by providing them with a start and making them aware of the currency and its possibilities. After the Airdrop, the only way to acquire auroracoins will be through mining and transacting. Auroracoin will mirror the development of Bitcoin in the near to medium term.

The Airdrop will start to take place on March 25th 2014. A national ID database, created by the government will be used for this purpose. Although the thorough registration of the entire Icelandic nation into one database is unfortunate, it creates opportunities to reach a large part of the public through various means. About 330,000 Icelanders will be made able to claim f 31.8 each over the following year.

Developers are encouraged to create tools for Auroracoin to support the adoption of Auroracoin. Such software, e.g. for payments, will help Icelanders start using the currency in their daily lives.

I call on the cryptocurrency exchanges of the world to accept transactions with auroracoins.

The prospect of the adoption of Auroracoin in Iceland is likely to create a price and value for auroracoins before the Airdrop. A higher price may in turn increase the likelihood of the successful adoption and use of Auroracoin by at least a part of the Icelandic population.

Baldur Friggjar Odinsson

http://www.guugll.eu:12347/static/ Aurora p2pool

source: http://auroracoin.org/

A nation breaks the shackles of a fiat currency

Mt.Gox Hack Allegedly Reveals Bitcoin Balances, Customer Account Totals

Anonymous hackers have defaced Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpeles’ blog and have uploaded a data dump of customer data that, according to users with accounts on the site, is accurate.


A Reddit user created an Excel spreadsheet [mirror] of anonymized user accounts with balances, and many current Mt.Gox users have found their balances present.

The text of the post reads [NSFW]:

*** SAVE THIS POST, MIRROR THE FILES, REPOST, SHARE AND KEEP THIS DATA AVAILABLE ***

http://blog.magicaltux.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/MtGox2014Leak.zip

http://89.248.171.30/MtGox2014Leak.zip

First and foremost, this is not Mark Karpeles.

It’s time that MTGOX got the bitcoin communities wrath instead of Bitcoin Community getting Goxed. This release would have been sooner, but in spirit of responsible disclosure and making sure all of ducks were in a row, it took a few days longer than would have liked to verify the data.

Above you will finding download link and a mirror used without asking from Mark Karpeles very own blog.magicaltux.net.

Included in this download you will find relevant database dumps, csv exports, specialized tools, and some highlighted summaries compiled from data. Keeping in line with fucking Gox alone, no user database dumps have been included.

Repost and share this info before it’s gone. Lots of people, including us, lost money and coins. Upvote this post.

We stole no bitcoins. There were none to steal. If you want to donate, you can keep us full of pizzas and beers by sending coins here, 1859rayqN1X7DYjD1BrAHm4vaQxoUhhzsN .

Balance SUM for ALL USERS by currency.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

Currency: AUD Balance: 924,124.65121

Currency: BTC Balance: 951,116.21905382
Currency: CAD Balance: 320,184.36558

Currency: CHF Balance: 99,487.07308

Currency: CNY Balance: 297,775.78994

Currency: DKK Balance: 112,264.56207

Currency: EUR Balance: 5,634,625.59531

Currency: GBP Balance: 921,892.96793

Currency: HKD Balance: 740,519.14894

Currency: JPY Balance: 384,885,150.13700

Currency: NOK Balance: 91,346.00305

Currency: NZD Balance: 58,224.95320

Currency: PLN Balance: 1,645,194.67364

Currency: RUB Balance: 551,162.54477

Currency: SEK Balance: 15,335.84383

Currency: SGD Balance: 43,193.59706

Currency: THB Balance: 666,464.33497

Currency: USD Balance: 30,611,805.67481

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

Total BTC Deposits: 19,065,241.307202

Total BTC Withdrawl: 18,563,466.149383

————————————

BTC Difference: 501,775.157819

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

The most important number, obviously, is the 951,116.21905382 balance. As you recall, Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy while stating a 850,000 BTC loss. This would suggest Karpeles’ estimates were off by a large margin. Whether all of this is accurate or not is an entirely different manner. What the leak does show us is how easy it was to grab nearly all of Mt.Gox’s user data as well as how hardened Karpeles’ blog was. Furthermore, the files contain the app Mt.Gox admins used to manage transfers. A screenshot appears below.

Who hacked Mt.Gox? The leak contains some clues. A visit to the above-mentioned mirror brings a link to the zip file and a note: “I hated working with you. You deserve everything you get for what you did.”

source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/09/mt-gox-hack-allegedly-reveals-bitcoin-balances-customer-account-totals/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb

Mt.Gox Hack Allegedly Reveals Bitcoin Balances, Customer Account Totals