Weiss Ratings: Tether can destroy the ecosystem

Shop in the Olympic village in Pyeongchang, where you can pay with cryptocurrency.

Now passes ICO Saifu-crypto-Fiat payment service with a license of the Czech Bank for operations and storage of funds and protection of the banking level, developed by a team of Kaspersky lab. For more details, see the official website.

The LitePal payment system was officially registered by the Australian regulator.

One of the payment services announced by Charlie Lee, LitePal, completed registration with the Australian securities and investment Commission and received a number from the Australian state business register (ABN). On the official blog, the team posted a photo of the document and reported that this step was taken to "increase the trust of future customers". LitePal reports that payment infrastructure is being tested and website design is being developed. The launch of the platform is expected in April−June 2018. LitePal promises to make the use of litecoin " established, simple and less complicated process." Tweet of the proposal States that payments will be maintained for bitcoin, litecoin, PayPal and Western Union. The system will use the Protocol Lightning Network.

Weiss Ratings is warning investors about the risks of Tether.

Weiss Ratings, an independent us Agency that recently rated cryptocurrencies and put the "three" bitcoin, published an analysis of the "cryptocurrency dollar" Tether. "The audit has never been conducted, and the people behind the project, answer the questions quite vaguely. They constantly claim that their tokens are absolutely backed up by the dollar, but do not provide any evidence in favor of this theory. Social media has formed a belief that Tether runs a partial reservation system, meaning they don't have dollars to back up all tokens. I'm inclined to agree. It's too suspicious," says the analyst Weiss Juan M. Villaverde. The Agency notes that the significance of Tether for the ecosystem is so great that major exchanges, including Binance and OKEx, use it as a substitute for the Fiat dollar. "The consequences of irresponsible behavior can be far-reaching," said Villaverde, noting not only the best proof of fraud, but a government ban in that case, if the regulators recognize that USDT is used as a way to circumvent the law.

Stolen from Coincheck tokens nem transferred to the Russian stock exchange.

On Wednesday, February 14, the Japanese edition of Mainichi Shimbun reported that 1.2 billion yen ($10 million) of the stolen at the end of January 58 billion yen ($534 million) transferred to the exchange Yobit. Japanese law enforcement is currently checking this information. The financial services Agency of Japan (FSA) has already taken administrative action against crypto currency exchange robbed, ordered to investigate the vulnerabilities that led to the attack and find those responsible. Although at the end of January it was reported about attempts to withdraw part of the funds for the six exchanges, the representative of the NEM Europe Paul Rieger then denied this information. Chief operating officer Coincheck Yusuke Otsuka said that the company will indemnify all holders of NEM 260,000 at the rate of $0,81 for the token.

Online edition Salon offers readers to mine cryptocurrency instead of viewing ads.

On Monday, Salon wrote on their blog that traditional advertising is not enough to keep the magazine free. Alternatively, the site asks users to provide a "small percentage of free computing power", thereby contributing to "technological discovery, evolution and innovation". It is reported that Salon uses mining software Coinhive, which has been repeatedly used by hidden mining programs monero. However, unlike malware that seeks to take as much power as possible, the edition site promises to "automatically detect the current consumption of computing power" on the user's computer and take only "unnecessary energy": "If you start doing something that requires more energy, we will automatically reduce our share of capacity."

United Bitcoin is the most controversial hard fork.

United fork Bitcoin (UBTC) was carried out on 498,777 block of the Bitcoin network on 12 December. The project team — Bitcoin Core developer Jeff garzik's, his partner in the blockchain startup Bloq Matthew Rozak and founder of the platform crypto-investment BitBank, Sensu Hua promises to create a "credit monetary system tied to Vietnam currencies" and your own smart contracts. Garzik says that the main idea of UBTC is to unite the entire ecosystem. So far, the network does not have developed infrastructure and large community support. Currently, only two miners produce UBTC blocks, and only one of them is known — the pool BW.com, which owns more than 70% of the hashing power. While the network is very small of users: on one block you have 20-100 transaction, a fork supported only three purse and largely unknown Asian markets. Of the major trading platforms UBTC supports exchange OKEx. It is said that all active users of bitcoin can get UBTC in relation to 1:1, however, this is the most controversial side of the project. Active user who moved their money between 494,000 and 498,777 blocks. In addition, in order to request new tokens, the bitcoin holder is obliged to undergo the identification procedure by providing a valid e-mail address and mobile phone number. With regard to inactive addresses, the project States that after a period of inactivity they will be used for further development. In particular, the team claims to "unused" addresses Satoshi Nakamoto and other whales of the industry.

The father of one of the first bitcoin miners can not inherit the state after the death of his son.

Matthew Moody died 5 years ago, while in a double plane, which fell during the observation flight over the canyon in Chico, California. His father Michael Moody knows that his son has mined bitcoins, which during this time have grown in price 100 times. "He used his home computer to mine bitcoin when it was really possible. And we think he also kept a few bitcoins," says Moody, who himself is a retired programmer. He doesn't know how much my son had bitcoins and no key can not access the wallet blockchain.info. The company of the popular wallet did not comment on this story. "There is no authority to which to appeal to resolve this issue," said Nolan Bauerle, Director of cryptocurrency analysis CoinDesk, noting that the bitcoin-as do becomes unavailable after the owner's death. Moody believes that the younger generation should be more formed in the issue of cryptocurrencies, in particular, with regard to the safe storage of funds — both for themselves and for the heirs.