Canadian crypto-currency exchange firm Arbitrade bought four casts from South African businessman Malcolm Duncan.

The firm said it planned to launch a global “Golden Hands of Nelson Mandela” tour to educate young people about the anti-apartheid icon’s life.

This is the first time artefacts of Mr Mandela have been sold in bitcoin.

Mr Mandela was jailed for 27 years for fighting white minority rule in South Africa.

He was released in 1990, and served as president from 1994 to 1999.

Mr Mandela died in 2013 at the age of 95. He had turned into a global brand, with businessmen and artists cashing in on his name.

Mr Duncan, who now lives in Canada, bought the casts from mining group Harmony Gold in 2002 for about $31,000.

Half of the money paid to Harmony Gold was meant to go to charity, but it remains unclear as to whether that happened, Bloomberg news agency reports.

Harmony said it had “supplied Mr Duncan with the necessary paperwork verifying the provenance as requested by his attorneys,” but declined to comment on what happened to the donation, Bloomberg reports.

The casts, which weigh around 20lb (9kg), include Mr Mandela’s hand, palm and fist. They are part of a collection meant to mark the years the former president spent in prison on Robben Island.

The artefacts are believed to be the only ones left in the world.

The other sets of the collection were ordered to be destroyed by Mr Mandela, Mr Duncan told Bloomberg.

It was part of the former president’s attempt to control his copyright after a number of scandals, including forgery allegations, arose around the sale of art bearing his image and name.

Arbitrade has paid Mr Duncan a bitcoin deposit that has been converted to $50,000, and the rest is expected to be paid in quarterly instalments of at least $2m, Bloomberg reports.

“They take possession when I have the dollar amount in the bank, At two-and-a-quarter million at a time, they take one hand at a time,” Mr Duncan was quoted as saying.

Arbitrade is due to launch an initial coin offering and plans to mine its own crypto-currencies and trade others, Bloomberg reports.

The company’s chairman, Len Schutzman, told the news agency that it will back all its virtual currency with a percentage of physical metal, such as gold.

–

Source: BBC

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The coins were taken by hackers from Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, leaving tens of thousands of customers out of pocket.

It’s not clear who is in control of the London-based firm Always Efficient LLP.

Mt Gox operator Mark Karpeles apologised to investors and said he was co-operating with the investigation.

The FBI has charged a Russian national with laundering the stolen bitcoins.

Mt Gox matched up those who wanted to buy the crypto-currency with dollars, pounds and other international denominations with those wanting to sell bitcoins, and handled an estimated 70% of the world’s Bitcoin trade.

The exchange was originally set up to trade cards from a game set in a world of wizards, spells and monsters. When it turned its focus to crypto-currencies, it appeared to be a huge success story.

Almost half of Bitcoin trading is done in Japanese yen, and there’s even a Japanese girl group, the Virtual Currency Girls, which reflects Japan’s growing craze for virtual money.

But a group of amateur investigators, WizSec, found that hackers had targeted Mt Gox.

They had systematically pilfered users’ accounts, hiding their tracks from Mt Gox operators for years.

And in 2014, the site’s chief executive, Mark Karpeles, made the horrifying discovery that hundreds of thousands of coins were missing.

When customers found themselves unable to withdraw funds, the site collapsed.

Speaking for the first time about the collapse to BBC Radio 4’s File on Fourprogramme, Mr Karpeles said: “It felt like… when you fall from a building and you see the ground getting closer, and you feel like you are about to die.”

He said the site had rapidly grown beyond his expectations.

“Mt Gox went from interesting project to being, I would say, a daily nightmare of dealing with banks, governments, people I never knew existed.”

How the coins had gone missing was initially a mystery.

But now investigators say almost half the stolen coins from Mt Gox ended up at rival exchange BTC-e.

‘Cyber-crime hub’

The FBI says BTC-e was a hub for cyber-crime and helped to launder money from hacks, including ransomware attacks of the kind that hit the NHS and other organisations last year.

But trying to find out who operates BTC-e isn’t easy. The exchange claimed to be operated by a British company called Always Efficient LLP.

Always Efficient’s registered office is in east London, but the address is shared by several other firms, some of which are thought to be involved in money laundering.

Duncan Hames, of anti-corruption group Transparency International, said it’s likely to be a shell company.

“People laundering money will set up a network of companies to create layers between the original crime and their attempts to then integrate the proceeds of their crime into the economy,” he said.

“They simply enable a series of transactions to take place to create this distance and to obscure the trail of the proceeds of crime.”

In an attempt to regulate these so-called shell companies, new rules introduced in June 2016 now stipulate that companies must publish a list of “persons with significant control” (PWSC).

Always Efficient doesn’t currently have a PWSC. The person most recently listed, Alexander Buyanov, is a DJ in a Moscow nightclub.

According to Andrei Zakharov, a Russian journalist who tracked him down, Mr Buyanov claims he “knew nothing” of the business.

Companies House told the BBC it had a dedicated team dealing with PWSCs, and took action when irregularities were identified.

‘Real risk’ to UK

The FBI says the man behind BTC-e is another Russian national, Alexander Vinnik.

Documents seen by the BBC detail how the stolen Mt Gox money was laundered through various accounts, usernames and email addresses allegedly controlled by Mr Vinnik.

Mr Vinnik was arrested while on holiday in Greece in July 2017, and is currently being detained in Thessaloniki.

The US Department of Justice now wants to extradite him to face 21 counts of money laundering and other financial crimes in the US.

Mr Zakharov said: “They were on the beach and his wife was swimming, and when she turned back she saw a lot of people with sunglasses near her husband, and that’s how he was arrested.”

Russia has also filed an extradition request for Mr Vinnik on lesser, unrelated charges.

The Greek government is now in the process of deciding between the two requests.

Via his lawyer, Mr Vinnick told the BBC he denies having any connection to Always Efficient.

He added: “BTC-e is just a web platform for buying and selling Bitcoin – not an exchange. As such it cannot be held responsible for the source of money used to buy Bitcoin, no more than a bureau du change can be held responsible for exchanging a stolen $100 note into pounds sterling.”

A National Crime Agency (NCA) spokesman said it didn’t “routinely confirm or deny investigations” but recognised “the very real risks to the UK and the UK’s financial sector from large-scale, complex money laundering.”

He added: “Tackling money laundering is a high priority for the NCA, and we have a number of national and international operations running against the criminals involved, working in close partnership with partners in law enforcement and financial regulation.”

Mark Karpeles was arrested and charged with embezzlement related to payments worth £1.7m. He says these were legitimate loans signed off by an accountant.

He’s also charged with manipulation of data. He denies all the charges – none of which relates to the loss of the 650,000 bitcoins.

He told the BBC he was doing all he could to return funds to customers and added: “I am very sorry that when I was in charge things happened the way they did.”

‘Unprecedented’ rise

Mt Gox is not the only Bitcoin currency exchange to be hacked. Even the Virtual Currency Girls have lost money following another recent Bitcoin exchange theft.

Under Japanese bankruptcy law, the remaining 200,000 Mt Gox bitcoins are valued at £300 each, the price they held when the exchange collapsed in 2014.

Since then, the value has increased to around £7,000 each.

Many investors are now pushing to see their Mt Gox bitcoins refunded at the current price, and a decision is expected within the next few months.

So regardless of the outcome in Mr Vinnik’s case, Mt Gox creditors who lost out might still turn a profit, thanks to Bitcoin’s unprecedented rise.

–

Source: BBC

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He was referring to the way digital currencies like Bitcoin are used to buy drugs like synthetic opioid fentanyl.

In an “ask me anything” session on news website Reddit, he said that the anonymity of digital currencies meant they were linked to terrorist funding and money laundering.

Some criticised him, saying he was ill-informed about the technology.

Asked by one user for his opinion on the technology, Mr Gates replied: “The main feature of crypto-currencies is their anonymity. I don’t think this is a good thing. The government’s ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing.

“Right now, crypto-currencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way. I think the speculative wave around ICOs [initial coin offerings] and crypto-currencies is super risky for those who go long.”

Veteran investor Warren Buffet has previously said that the speculative crypto-currency craze “will come to a bad end”.

Mr Gates has not always been so cynical about Bitcoin. In 2014, in an interview on Bloomberg TV, he said that Bitcoin “was better than currency”.

His less than enthusiastic response on Reddit did not go down well with all those participating in the debate, with some reproaching him for what they felt was an attempt to influence the market. Others suggested that he needed to look again at the Bitcoin white paper.

Charitable donations

In the wide-ranging Reddit chat, Mr Gates told the audience that his top three goals were “reducing both childhood death and malnutrition and ending polio”.

Mr Gates is co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which spends billions each year on education and health projects.

The foundation has also sponsored the development of blockchain – the technology that underpins crypto-currenices – for merchants in Kenya.

Microsoft is also looking to integrate blockchain-based technology for verifying digital identity.

The rise in value of crypto-currency has prompted governments around the world to look more closely at its impact on economies and citizens.

While the technology underlying it is often praised, there are concerns about how it could disrupt the economy as well as its links to cyber-crime and money laundering.

The UK’s Treasury Committee is currently investigating the impact of such currencies.

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Source: BBC

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The price fell to $5,947.40 (£4,256.44) on Tuesday, according to a price index run by news website Coindesk.

Bitcoin reached its peak in November, when it hit $19,000, and then began to fall steadily from mid-December.

The latest fall comes a day after several major US and UK banks banned customers from using credit cards to purchase the digital currency.

Tightening legislation in several countries appears to have shaken confidence in crypto-currencies.

As of Tuesday:

• The price of Ethereum, which at its height on 9 January was $1,255.89, fell as low as $574.42
• Bitcoin Cash, which hit a peak $4,091.70 on 20 December 2017, slipped to $766.03
• Litecoin, which reached $366.01 on 19 December 2017, dropped to $106.94

The assets later stage a partial recovery, with Bitcoin rising to about $7,418 before falling back again.

–

Source: BBC

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The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a financial regulator, is understood to be investigating the Bitfinex digital currency exchange.

Bitcoin, the most popular and widely traded of about 1,500 digital currencies, rose to a high of $19,666 in mid-December.

Last night bitcoin was trading at $8,965.54, a fall of 11.7 per cent for the day and 54 per cent since its December peak. Bitcoin fell by 26 per cent in January.

The commission sent subpoenas to Bitfinex and Tether, the digital currency developer, in December, Bloomberg said.

Bitfinex and Tether said: “We routinely receive legal process from regulators conducting investigations. It is our policy not to comment.”

–

Source: Times UK

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On Friday the price fell below $7,910 on the Bitstamp exchange, a 12% fall on the day before, but recovered slightly.

But although it is far short of the $19,000 it reached in November 2017, it is still way above the $1,000 level at which it started trading last year.

The fall comes amid a number of recent incidents that appear to have shaken faith in cryptocurrencies.

On Friday, Japan’s financial regulator carried out a surprise check on major Japanese exchange, Coincheck, which last week was subject to a security hack.

The regulator said it had asked the exchange to fix flaws in its computer networks well before last week’s theft by hackers of $530m of digital money.

Also this week, Facebook said it would ban adverts for digital currencies.

Other countries have already expressed concerns about such entities. China and South Korea have banned any new virtual currency launches and have been shutting down exchanges on which they are traded.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority warned investors in September they could lose all their money if they buy digital currencies issued by firms, known as “initial coin offerings”.

Bitcoins are created through a complex process known as “mining”, and then monitored by a network of computers across the world.

However, like all currencies its value is determined by how much people are willing to buy and sell it for.

Last year, two of the world’s largest commodity exchanges, the CBOE futures exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, both allowed trading in Bitcoin futures.

Bitcoin is the most widely traded cryptocurrency, but there are scores of others, the majority of which also fell on Friday, according to the Coinmarketcap.com price tracker.

The second and third largest virtual currencies, Ethereum and Ripple, plunged more than 20%, before a slight pull-back in the price.

–

Source: BBC

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It said Bitcoin users now saw the virtual currency largely as an “asset” to be traded, rather than something to make payments with.

Fewer online merchants wanted to accept the cryptocurrency, it added.

Rising fees and longer transaction times as a result of price fluctuations also lessened its appeal, Stripe said.

‘Expensive’
Customers of the US-based payments firm pay a fee to Stripe each time it processes a payment. Clients include Lyft, Deliveroo, Grab and Target.

In 2014, it became the first major payments company to support Bitcoin payments.

At the time Stripe said it hoped Bitcoin would become a way for people in places with low credit card penetration or prohibitively high credit card fees to do transactions online.

But the virtual currency was now “better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange,” it said.

There has been a huge surge of interest in the digital currency over the past year or so, driven largely by its rapid increase in price.

But that demand has also led to huge swings in price, with Stripe saying the volatility meant the time needed to complete a sale had risen.

“By the time the transaction is confirmed, fluctuations in Bitcoin price mean that it’s for the ‘wrong’ amount,” Stripe’s product manager Tom Karlo said in his blog.

Bitcoin transaction fees had also risen “a great deal” resulting in a decrease in demand from Stripe’s customers to accept Bitcoin payments, he said.

What is Bitcoin?
“For a regular Bitcoin transaction, a fee of tens of US dollars is common, making Bitcoin transactions about as expensive as bank wires,” Mr Karlo wrote.

“Because of this, we’ve seen the desire from our customers to accept Bitcoin decrease. And of the businesses that are accepting Bitcoin on Stripe, we’ve seen their revenues from Bitcoin decline substantially.”

Giving up on cryptocurrencies?
Stripe said it would start winding down its support for Bitcoin immediately and would stop all transactions by 23 April.

But it said its decision to end support for Bitcoin payments did not mean it was giving up on cryptocurrencies all together.

“We’re interested in what’s happening with Lightning and other proposals to enable faster payments,” Mr Karlo said.

“OmiseGO is an ambitious and clever proposal; more broadly, Ethereum continues to spawn many high-potential projects.”

–

Source: BBC

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The Co-Founder of Crypto Ghana, Bernard Owusu Mensah explains that the announcement will however least affect organisations like his that engage in the trading of digital currencies.

The Bank of Ghana has cautioned the public against transacting any business in digital currencies such as Bitcoin.

The Central bank argues that the use of the digital currencies have not been licensed under the country’s financial laws (Payments System Act 2003) hence their users are operating illegally.

“It is a step in the right direction in the case that this is something new and a lot of people are doing it. It does not threaten my organization at all. What it does to my organization is it is a measure. Institutes have to work more and get superior and abreast on the issue,” Mr. Bernard Owusu Mensah stated.

Mr. Owusu Mensah further insisted that Bitcoin is not a scam and urged the public to be open-minded about the currency.

“And the public also who transact business in cryptocurrency have not committed any criminal offence as our law stipulates. Because now we don’t have any legislation in Ghana that tells me that dealing in Bitcoin is a crime. The law doesn’t stipulate that so if I have Bitcoin, BoG cannot cause my arrest” he argued.

Meanwhile the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison has disclosed some progress made by his outfit regarding regulating digital currencies.

“We are looking at the new payments systems bill that will deal with the issue of digital and electronic money and that new bill will be passed by Parliament in the next few months. And then we hope that after the bill comes out, more modern forms of payments that are issued by banks and non banks that would be registered by the Bank of Ghana would be covered by the laws and the regulatory purview of the bank.”

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By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana

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The major currencies include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and others.

A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency, transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order, it allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically.

Speaking on the objectives of the masterclass, a Senior Consultant at Wryze Blockchain Solutions Ltd, Kwabena Okyire Appianing said:

“The masterclass is meant for those who have never heard of Blockchain/Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies or heard about it, tried it and still find it hard to understand. Our platform at the very least offers understanding of how they work and why it has the potential to be money/gold 2.0”.

He added that the next masterclass, to be held January 27 at Mobile Web Ghana in Accra, will discuss ways to start a career in Blockchain, and an overview of major cryptocurrencies.

The Senior Consultant added that the blockchain classes lined-up for Johannesburg, Nairobi, Conakry and Cairo will happen before 2018 ends.

The masterclass will answer the following questions:

• What is Bitcoin?
• How does it work?
• Why is it interesting?
• What is the blockchain?
• What are the major cryptocurrencies and how are they different?
• Why is there Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?
• How is Bitcoin going to scale to 7 billion people?
• What are new features coming out and why are they important?
• What are decentralized applications?
• How can I leverage on ICOs to raise funding for my business?

The blockchain, conceived in 2008, was the final piece needed to make a digital decentralized currency workable. Bitcoin was the first functional decentralized digital currency and the most widely known blockchain technology today. Bitcoin has since garnered publicity for its meteoric rise in valuation and its potential to redefine money.

The first edition held last year saw participants excited about the knowledge of blockchain and more importantly on how they can invest in cryptocurrencies to make more money.

Individuals interested in attending the masterclass can register at https://goo.gl/forms/buc98yQ75aYwj7r32 or email [email protected].

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Source: paakwesiforson.com

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The group hijacked the server that hosts BlackWallet, a web-based wallet application that stores lumens and stole 669,920 from users’ accounts

Stellar Lumen is thought to be the eighth most popular virtual currency in the world.

According to tech news site Bleeping Computer, BlackWallet tried to warn users about the attack via forums.

However, many continued to log in and lose money.

The hackers have moved the money to Bittrex, a virtual currency exchange, where they are likely to convert it into another digital currency to hide their tracks, Bleeping computer reported.

In a post on social website Reddit, BlackWallet’s creator said he had since disabled his hosting account and websites.

The developer, who goes by the alias of Orbit84, said: “I am sincerely sorry about this and hope that we will get the funds back.

“I am in talks with my hosting provider to get as much information about the hacker and will see what can be done with it.

“If you ever entered your key on BlackWallet, you may want to move your funds to a new wallet.”

What are crypto-currencies?

A crypto or virtual currency is a type of money that is completely digital. You can use currencies such as Bitcoin to buy products and services, but not many shops accept them yet. In many countries they are heavily regulated.

Owners typically keep their currency in digital wallets and can transfer payments to other wallets fairly anonymously, without a bank or broker being involved.

Transactions are recorded in a public list called a blockchain – a type of ledger which both records and verifies who spent or transferred which coins. The blockchain exists on computers that solve cryptographic problems as they log transactions to help combat fraud.

Stellar is an open-source payments network focused on reducing poverty in the developing world. It says its lumens – which work using blockchain technology – make monetary transactions cheaper, quicker and more reliable.

According to CoinMarketCap, a site that ranks the value of different crypto-currencies, there is $11.6bn worth of Stellar Lumen in circulation.

That is far less than the top virtual currencies Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are thought to be worth $240.3bn and $127.4bn respectively.

In 2016, the price of bitcoin fell more than 10% after the Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex said it had suffered a major hack.

The security breach led to the possible theft of bitcoin worth $65m (£49m).

And in 2017 hackers targeted the Bithumb exchange in South Korea, taking millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The personal information of 30,000 people was also stolen in the attack, which was credited to North Korea.

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Source: BBC

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