Xcel Token

In the United States, President Trump announced new travel restrictions today in response to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The Commander in Chief signed a Presidential Proclamation suspending the entry of most foreign nationals who have been in certain European countries during the 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the U.S. These countries include Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The United Kingdom is exempt. Meanwhile, India announced it would suspend visas for most foreign visitors arriving between March 13 to April 15, and close the country’s land border with Myanmar. Air India has already cancelled flights to Italy and South Korea, the two countries outside China most affected by the outbreak. Other countries, from Australia to...

After experiencing a major outage last week, major stock and cryptocurrency trading app Robinhood is troubled again. Robinhood encountered another technical outage on Monday, causing its platform to halt trading services, according to a March 9 tweet by Robinhood’s support team. The firm announced earlier on the day: “Trading is currently down on Robinhood and we’re investigating the issue. We’re focused on getting back up and running as soon as possible and we’ll update the status page with the latest.” Subsequently, Robinhood has partially restored trading, noting that they are working to get the platform back up and running fully. According to online reports , the platform was partly functional after just an hour of downtime. As of press time, Robinhood app is still experiencing issues with equities, options and cryptocurrency trading, according to Robinhood’s status page . According to the website, Robinhood has already identified the issue and impleme...

There has been a rapid escalation of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak worldwide . Two major crypto conferences in the US have been affected by the epidemic so far. “ Bitcoin 2020 ”, originally scheduled for March 27 and 28 in San Francisco, has moved to Q3 of 2020 . The Chamber of Digital Commerce also postponed next week’s “ DC Blockchain Summit 2020 ” conference. The rescheduled dates are not yet confirmed, according to the announcements on March 6. Bitcoin 2020 has assured all attendees that their tickets for the conference will automatically be valid for the rescheduled event. They have also asked all registered participants to wait until updated details are announced before requesting a refund. With the Bitcoin halving in May fast approaching, Bitcoin 2020’s goal was to gather the top Bitcoin community speakers and supporters together in one place. They hoped to learn and discuss Blockchain technology’s upcoming milestones, and determine whether the technolo...

ICE Reveals Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has revealed the existence of a Cryptocurrency Intelligence Program (CIP) in the agency’s 2021 budget proposal. The proposal states that the CIP seeks to identify unlicensed capital flows taking place across peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces, online forums, and darknet markets. The CIP was developed by ICE’s Bulk Cash Smuggling Center (BCSC). Lloyd’s New Insurance Offering Covers Crypto Held in Hot Wallets Insurance giant Lloyd’s of London now provides a new type of liability insurance policy to protect cryptocurrency in hot wallets that is lost by theft. Lloyd’s new offering was developed by Lloyd’s syndicate Atrium together with crypto will-focused firm Coincover, with limits from as little as £1,000 ($1,275), Lloyd’s announced on March 2. The policy is also backed by an array of other Lloyd’s insurers, including TMK and Markel, all of whom are members of...

This week an Iranian general called for a unique way to bypass the sanctions on his country enforced by the United States. Saeed Muhammad, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, called for Iran to use cryptocurrencies to evade the economic sanctions. According to the Telegram channel of Coinit.ir, a crypto news organization based in Iran, the general addressed a crowd on Feb. 26 (translated from Farsi): “We are demanding the creation of a more sophisticated mechanism to bypass sanctions. To circumvent sanctions, we must develop solutions such as the exchange of products and the use of cryptocurrencies with our partnerships [in other countries].” The people of Iran have seen the value of their currency drop significantly in the wake of the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, following the withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. Sanctions have effectively isolated Iran from foreign trade and investment ...

Confidential Transactions keep the amount and type of assets transferred visible only to participants in the transaction (and those they choose to reveal the blinding key to), while still cryptographically guaranteeing that no more coins can be spent than are available. This goes a step beyond the usual privacy offered by Bitcoin’s blockchain, which relies purely on pseudonymous (but public) identities. This matters, because insufficient financial privacy can have serious security and privacy implications for both commercial and personal transactions. Without adequate protection, thieves can focus their efforts on high-value targets, competitors can learn business details, and negotiating positions can be undermined. Confidential Transactions (CTs, the general idea of which was proposed by Adam Back on BitcoinTalk in 2013) aims to make the content of a transaction private — as Greg Maxwell explains in a 2017 talk , the amounts transacted are often more valuable to spi...

One of the newest episode of “ The Simpsons ” aired has just featured Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory as a guest star to explain cryptocurrencies and how a blockchain works. In the song and dance predicts cryptocurrency to be the future money, the animated ledger states: “Each day I’m closer, to being the cash of the future. Not in your wallet, I’m in your computer! At the end of Jim’s talk, there is a subliminal message on screen. It further explains how cryptocurrencies work, part of which says: “Using the word “cryptocurrency” repeatedly while defining cryptocurrency makes it seem like we have a novice’s understanding of cryptocurrency. Well that is a total pile of cryptocurrency. In this system, rules are defined for the creation of additional units of cryptocurrency. They can be generated by fiat like traditional currency or just thrown around randomly or all given to LeBron.” The crypto community welcomed the episode. Altcoin Daily account has com...

Steve Chen , the mastermind behind the $147 million Gemcoin cryptocurrency scheme, has admitted to wire fraud and tax evasion in a plea agreement. The 62-year-old Southern California resident agreed that he and other co-conspirators fraudulently promoted a cryptocurrency called Gemcoin (or Gem Coins) that helped fleece $147 million from 70,000 victims. Chen, also known as “Boss,” reported an income of $138,000 in 2014 which is a far cry from the $4.8 million he now admits to pocketing that year. Chen used the proceeds to buy homes and pay for a gambling habit, authorities said. Between July 2013 and September 2015, Chen ran a multi level marketing scheme to promote U.S. Fine Investment Arts, Inc. (USFIA) which rewarded investors first with points, and then with Gemcoins. These virtual coins were supposedly backed by gems mined by the company and could be traded on the USFIA platform . While the value of the coins supposedly increased based on the company...

To mark Black History Month, Coinbase has launched an advertising campaign with the pitch that cryptocurrencies can help tackle racial injustice in the financial sector. As part of the campaign, the exchange published a blog post on Feb. 13 with the results of a survey it conducted in the United States and United Kingdom. The crux of Coinbase’s survey centers on the notion that blockchain and cryptocurrencies, as trustless technologies with pseudonymous functionality, would be more color-blind than traditional financial services. Based on a sample of 5,126 respondents, Coinbase’s data appears to indicate that just one in three Black Americans perceive the financial system as equally accessible to people of all ethnicities. Moreover, twice as many Black Americans reported that they had been negatively impacted by their race or gender within the traditional financial system — 48% as compared with 24% of White Americans. This negative experience ostensibly transla...

Ukrainian Regulations States That Mining Does Not Require Governmental Oversight Ukrainian’s powers stated that crypto mining does not require regulatory activity from governmental oversight bodies or other third-party protocols. In its legal article on virtual assets published on Feb. 7, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine specified that mining does not necessitate directives by state authorities as this activity is measured by the protocol itself and network members. Internet Surges 300% In North Korea Over The Past 3 Years North Korea’s internet use saw a 300% surge over the past three years, as the country’s regime has continued to rely on cryptocurrencies for various activities. Misuse of crypto and blockchain technology is among the primary tactics for the country to generate revenue as well as transfer and use illicitly obtained funds, a new study says. Blog U.S. Think Tank Contradicts Need For Federal Digital Currency ...

Conservative United States think tank the Heritage Foundation argues that instead of launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the government should ensure that the public can use the currencies they prefer, including private ones. In a commentary piece published on Feb. 12, the Heritage Foundation notes that Facebook’s Libra global stablecoin project “is just the latest reminder that providing money does not have to be a centralized function of government.” The report answers to the idea that the public sector must ensure that sovereign currencies stay at the centre of each nation’s financial system. The report argues that the principle of monetary sovereignty that member of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors Lael Brainard spoke about in February should be replaced with the concept of consumer sovereignty. The Heritage Foundation cites the popular concerns that stablecoins and cryptocurrencies heighten the risk of crime and fraud, and notes tha...

The underlying theory behind the Elliott wave principle is based around how price moves, which typically is not in a straight line, but in a series of waves. A great analogy would be one that compares an ocean tide coming in as the water rises, and flowing out as the water recedes into the sand below. Within any financial market (including cryptocurrency), every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. When price movement moves up, a contrary downward movement must follow. Price action within any financial marketplace is often divided into trends and corrections (sideways movement). Upward or downward price action will showcase the direction of a trend, while corrections will always move against the trend. These repeating patterns have been shown to occur within all financial marketplaces since the dawn of time. A man by the name of Ralph Nelson Elliott, first discovered these repeating patterns, known as impulsive and corrective waves. He noticed that these impulsi...

A blockchain is roughly composed of four modules in terms of its hierarchy: Consensus engine Scripting and virtual execution environment Transactions, block and chain logics Peer-to-peer network Most research on associated topics has engrossed on the consensus engine (to improve transaction throughput) and the scripting language (to make blockchains more useful), leaving the properties of peer-to-peer network largely unexplored. The security properties of a blockchain actually hinges on the peer-to-peer network. Research on eclipse attack was started by Ethan Heilman, Alison Kendler, Aviv Zohar, and Sharon Goldberg in 2015. Their research illustrated the first attack against Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network by controlling hundreds of nodes, which is modeled as an unstructured random graph in their research paper. Another interesting research paper titled “Low-Resource Eclipse Attacks on Ethereum’s Peer-to-Peer Network” demonstrated the feasibility of launching eclipse attac...

Zermatt Switzerland Accepts Tax Payments In Bitcoin Source: https://cointelegraph.com/ According to an announcement by Bitcoin Suisse, Zermatt started accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment for local taxes and transactions on Jan. 28, 2020. By partnering with Bitcoin Suisse, the authorities of Zermatt are now able to convert taxpayers’ Bitcoin into Swiss francs through Bitcoin Suisse which then transfers the amount in fiat curren cy to the municipality’s bank account. Bank of Japan Must Be Prepared To Release Digital Currency Source: https://www.coindesk.com/ The deputy governor of the Bank of Japan has said the institution must be ready to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC) should public demand surge in response to technical developments. In a strong statement of a future-oriented vision for the bank, Masayoshi Amamiya told attendees at a seminar — as per a Reuters report on Jan. 30 Bittrex Secures UDS 300 Million Insurance For Cryptocurrencies In ...