Crypto News Weekly 06.07.18: Malta Crypto Island, Bitcoin Chinese Floods and IBM blockchain win
IBM wins a massive Australian blockchain contract, Bitcoin miners flooded in China, India and Iran wage crypto war and Malta vies to be crypto No1
Malta brings in crypto legal framework
Malta, which is rapidly positioning itself as one of the top places for crypto business, has signed in three pieces of legislation to give a full legal framework for crypto related business and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
The country’s Prime Minister has proudly tweeted that his country would be a market leader in this new sector. The efforts to attract the new digital economy seem to be paying off, with two major crypto exchanges, Binance and Okex, opening operations there.
“Operators fear that one day a government in that particular legislation will tell them they aren’t within the law - even though there are currently very few laws in place. This is creating legal uncertainty and we wanted to change this,” Junior Finance Minister Silvio Schembri has stated.
PirateBay starts browser cryptomining in secret
Almost a year after Cryptovest first caught the torrent site PirateBay trying out the secret mining of cryptocurrencies through visitors’ browsers, it seems they have chosen this route as a new business model.
As one of the most famous download sites, it has only ever received approximately $1,750 in donations and struggle to monetize the operation, so it is now injecting a script in the webpage that mines cryptocurrencies for the time the user is on the page.
India and Iran clamp down on cryptocurrencies
After India’s Central Bank effectively banned cryptocurrency-related business recently, a high court appeal to challenge the ruling has been defeated. The bank’s action, started in April, aimed to make it impossible within 3 months, by July 5, for crypto exchanges to operate. The court appeal was the last attempt to avert it, and now the country’s largest exchange Zebpay has suspended all rupee to crypto trades. Customers can still trade virtual currency to virtual currency.
Iran was reported this week to be actively trying to block internet access to international cryptocurrency exchange sites in its ongoing actions to effectively ban digital currencies, which have surged in popularity, as the economy collapses with spiralling inflation.
Sichuan flooding slows Bitcoin network
The Chinese province of Sichuan, along with many other regions, has been suffering major floods and the accompanying havoc seems to have wiped out many rural Bitcoin mining operations, rendering the equipment useless.
Chinese agency Golden Finance has reported that tens of thousands of machines have been lost that had been located in houses and simple buildings in rural areas. The first sign of the damage was noticed on the Bitcoin network as a large drop in the hash rate around the end of June, which was analyzed by Golden Finance as the effect of the machines dropping out of action.
IBM wins A$740 million contract for blockchain
US IT giant IBM has won a five-year contract from the Australian government for A$740 million to implement blockchain technologies in government departments and in relation to storing citizens’ data. The deal is predicted to save A$100 million a year once implemented.
IBM will be watching their performance carefully as the last similar contract in Australia lead to them settling contractual arguments that they have failed to deliver properly with A$30 million in compensation.
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