Bakkt makes it possible; Starbucks soon accepts bitcoin.

Starbucks received a significant stake in Bakkt in exchange for a pledge to allow bitcoin payments in 2019. This is according to an anonymous source familiar with the deal between Bakkt and his partners. Bakkt is the upcoming cryptocurrency trading platform for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

When it was announced in August 2018 that Starbucks and Microsoft would become major partners of Bakkt, many have already hoped that the cooperation would soon allow you to pay for your coffee with Bitcoin. Shortly after, however, Starbucks denied that bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are allowed as a means of payment. Now it will soon be possible, thanks to Bakkt.

'It is important to clarify that we are not accepting digital assets at Starbucks. Rather the exchange will convert digital assets like Bitcoin into US dollars, which can be used at Starbucks,” a spokesperson told Vice.

That agreement now appears to be becoming a reality, with Starbucks set to receive a "disproportionately high" equity reward in return for its adoption pledge. The news is a boon for Bakkt's followers. Several delays caused by regulatory bottlenecks have prevented the launch of the Bakkt platform so far. As Bitcoinist reports, Bakkt could come online in the first half of 2019. Originally, the launch was scheduled for late last year, then for the end of January. Bakkt's first product will be physically delivered bitcoin future contracts.

What do you think about the Bakkt deal with Starbucks? Write below in the comments or discuss with us in our Telegram group.

Coinbase Now Supports PayPal Withdrawals in Europe

Today (05.02.2019) the crypto exchange Coinbase announced that it would now also support PayPal payouts in Europe.

According to a blog post by Allen Osgood, a project manager at Coinbase, U.S. customers needed up to the 14th. December either an ACH or Fedwire account (formerly known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network) to withdraw Fiat (USD) from their Coinbase account. That had the downside that the payouts lasted up to two business days. Since today, European customers have also been able to use PayPal for withdrawals. As a result, the money is immediately in the PayPal account without the 1.49% fees that would normally be due.

To use this new service, you need to log in to Coinbase and then link your PayPal account to the Coinbase account. One is then forwarded to the PayPal page to confirm the link with Coinbase.

In the end, you can see the PayPal added as a new option. Now you can pay off your Coinbase balance directly and spend it somewhere else:-).

What do you think of that? Discuss with us on our Telegram Channel or Twitter.

New York: Buy Bitcoins at ATM

New Yorkers can now buy Bitcoin with their debit cards at traditional ATMs. With the newly granted license of the New York regulator, LibertyX is the first licensee to be allowed to offer this service to New York residents.

LibertyX is a provider of bitcoin payment services and launched its first Bitcoin ATM in 2014. Since then, thousands of local stores have been equipped with bitcoin payment options. The startup partnered with Genmega in 2018 to offer the first conventional ATM in the US where you can also buy Bitcoin. The Bitcoin purchase option is to be expanded to over 100,000 ATMs across the country.

According to this announcement, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) is aiming for a leading position in fintech innovation.

DFS continues to rapidly and responsibly respond to financial services market by licensing technology-based money transmitters under New York's money transmitter law; Online lenders under New York's banking law; and virtual currency exchanges under New York's financial services law. To date, DFS has approved sixteen charters or licenses for companies in the virtual currency marketplace.

To use a debit card you need a LibertyX account and the mobile app. Account holders can then buy up to $3,000 worth of bitcoin a day.

The license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) provides LibertyX regulatory certainty to operate in New York, a luxury for many developers and blockchain-based companies.

Developers and investors in many other countries do not have this regulatory certainty. There is also confusion and a lack of regulation in Europe, which is holding back the growth of an entire crypto industry. There is a great danger here of missing out to more progressive states.

A complete overview of all Bitcoin ATMs can be found here.

Write your opinion to us in the comments or discuss it with us in our Telegram Channel.

What is a "Dust Attack"?

Hackers and scammers are always developing new methods to get to the bitcoins of their victims. Here we introduce you to a relatively new method, the Dusting or Dust attack. This attack is about finding out more about the victims and carrying out a well-planned attack later.

What is "Dust"?

Dust is the smallest amount of cryptocurrencies. Take Bitcoin as an example, where is the smallest unit 1 Sathoshi, which equates to 0.00000001 BTC. Even a few hundred Satoshis can still be described as Dust because the value is usually lower than the transaction costs. Since the value is so low, it is usually ignored by users or does not receive much attention. This is where the scammers start and send the smallest amounts of cryptocurrencies to various wallet addresses to collect information.

Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous but pseudonymous.

Many Bitcoin users assume that their Bitcoin transactions are anonymous as they are not directly linked to names or addresses. Nevertheless, you can track transactions down to the last detail because the blockchain is a public "cash register." But what brings many advantages also has disadvantages. If you can assign a person's wallet address, you can track all their transactions in Blockchain Explorer. If you want to try this out for yourself, you can use a wallet address, e.g. Our Bitcoin Donations Address 37CB51EbJb72m3SncofWDdMZ8HhbdfkSeG enter in the blockchain Explorer.

Now you can see every transaction and what address it comes from. Now you can simply click on the next address and see what transactions were made there. So you can see step by step where the Bitcoin comes from.

How do the scammers proceed?

The scammers have found that it is not attracting much attention or even noticed by the victims when small amounts are received on their wallets. This is what the scammers exploit and send a small amount of Satoshis to thousands of addresses. In the next step, they now analyze each wallet of a successful transaction. They try to track and link the transactions to eventually identify the person or company behind them. It is enough to have your Bitcoin address made public in a forum or anywhere else. From then on you can be linked to the address and see where and where the bitcoins are sent and whether the person might have any more addresses. The scammers use all technical tools to analyze and link the Internet and blockchain with people. We can probably expect something similar from the tax office in the future:-).

The scammers are now exploiting this knowledge for targeted phishing attacks or cyber extortion.

I know who you are, pay me and I will not reveal your identity

How to protect yourself?

We always recommend generating a new wallet address when you execute a transaction. The hardware wallets, such as The Ledger Nano S (Amazon Link) do this automatically without you getting to know anything about it. So you can only assign one transaction to each address and that makes tracking much harder. In addition, you should not disclose your wallet address anywhere enough to infer your own identity.

The wallet provider Samourai has now integrated a function into its wallet, which is supposed to warn against such a Dust attack. If a Dust Attack is detected, the wallet addresses are marked and the users inform that they should no longer use the affected address.

How do you protect yourself from scammers and what experiences have you had? Write us in the comments or in our Telegram Channel!!!

Venezuela gets its first Bitcoin ATM

Venezuela, the country that records new bitcoin trading volume records almost weekly, is to get its first bitcoin ATM (ATM).

The equipment is already installed in Venezuela in Caracas. It's in the final testing phase and we'll then make an announcement on social networks.

Jorge Farias CEO of Panama-based Cryptobuyer

Cryptobuyer: ATM already in Caracas

In an interview with local radio and news media network Union Radio, Jorge Farias, CEO of Cryptobuyer of Panama, said the ATMs had already arrived in the state capital, Caracas.

We will install the first cryptocurrency ATM in Venezuela in the next two weeks.

Cryptobuyer is primarily a merchant acceptance platform for Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Dash (DASH) and currently only runs a modest network of five crypto ATMs in Panama City. Cryptobuyer ATMs are designed for all three cryptocurrencies. However, the current problems in Venezuela make the chances of success for the new ATMs look very good.

IMF expects inflation of 10 million percent in Venezuela in 2019.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is virtually certifying the economy of Venezuela is losing total purchasing power. The price increase was 1.37 million percent at the end of last year, according to the fund's World Economic Report, which was presented in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, in October. For this year, the IMF even forecasts price increases of ten million percent. The country's own cryptocurrency "Petro" was supposed to counteract this, but developed into a flop.

The petro is not accepted by the people, as there are currently no shops or institutions that accept the Petro. Instead, for many of the bitcoin, the first choice to bring its values to safety is.

Tell us your opinion below in the comments or discuss with us in our Telegram Channel.

USA: Bitcoin soon at the supermarket

Over 20,000 Coinstar ATM´s worldwide could soon offer the purchase of bitcoins.

In the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland, the Coinstar ATM´s are widely used in grocery stores, drugstores and other retail outlets. They are used to convert small money, residual amounts of vouchers and fuel cards into a usable currency. Soon, these vending machines are also expected to offer bitcoins. Coinstar has teamed up with Coinme, a startup company that operates a network of Bitcoin ATM's in the United States.

"Coinstar is always looking for new ways to add value to its customers. Coinme's innovative ATM and flexible platform allow consumers to easily acquire bitcoin with cash, "said Jim Gaherity, CEO of Coinstar such as GeekWire reported.

With 20,000 ATM's, Coinstar has a fairly large network with the digital currency that can be spent. The company's announcement said, "There are thousands of opportunities in the U.S. market that can offer bitcoin transactions, although we expect it still takes some time to reach those numbers."

Coinme has digital ATMs in 11 states, including several locations in Texas, Washington and California. While at first it is not clear how many vending machines will be bitcoin-ready, Coinme's website states that the partnership will result in "thousands of locations selling bitcoin."

After putting your small money into one of the ATM´s, you´ll get a Bitcoin redemption code, which then leads you to Coinme. The limit is $2500 and you have to link a phone number to the transaction. However, it is not clear whether you can come up with a phone number to get around that requirement. First started at Safeway and Albertson stores in California, Texas and Washington. Many more will follow.

Again, an important step towards the mass adaptation of Bitcoin.

You can find an overview of all Bitcoin ATM and here.

BitTube - the new YouTube competition?

What is BitTube?

BitTube is a new, decentralized video streaming platform that gives back control to publishers and viewers.

It is a blockchain-based platform that already integrates a payment solution with BitTube (TUBE), which allows video creators to make money from their content without advertising. And the payments are not only decentralized by the cryptocurrency TUBE, but the underlying database uses the IPFS Protocol, a decentralized and distributed ledger technology based on the Bitcoin blockchain. For this reason, there are no centralized servers that host your video data. As a result, the video content is absolutely resistant to censorship.

Earn Tube´s while watching

Video creators and viewers will receive the cryptocurrency TUBE based on playback time. The currency Tube is created by a proof-of-work blockchain, a private cryptocurrency network operated by miners. Anyone can also mine TUBE from home.

The instructions on how to build a mining rig yourself can be found in our tutorials. The Config files can be found on our GitLab account.

Media mining; A 30% share of the miner block premium is reserved for the airtime revenue model, allowing BitTube to completely forgo advertising. When content is consumed, payouts are distributed to creators (70% share) and viewers (30% share) based on playtime ("airtime"), proportional to the platform-wide total of airtime per block.

How does BitTube work

BitTube uses the IPFS protocol as a data store. As a result, all data stored or retrieved via BitTube will no longer be stored in large data centers, but will be distributed worldwide on the IPFS network. No country, government or company is in control of this data. Once uploaded, the data cannot be deleted or changed and is available to any Internet user, via any IPFS gateway, with a unique hash worldwide. There is no censorship in the IPFS network. BitTube offers users the ability to use this worldwide network for free, while copyright holders can monetize their media content through media mining.

Fully integrated payment system

In the BitTube interface, a wallet is integrated for receiving and sending TUBE. All profiles on BitTube come with automatically generated wallet addresses. The developers are currently working to ensure that you can buy and sell the TUBE directly on the platform for fiat currency without the need to register on other exchange exchanges. If you want to buy TUBE now, you still have to resort to an exchange exchange exchange, such as: Bittrex or Upbit.

You can see airtime and payouts via your own Bittube Airtime Explorer, similar to blockchain Explorer.

Bittube Add-on Redirector

Also highly recommended is the browser Add-on Bittube Redirector. With this addon you can watch Youtube videos via the Bittube Player and get rewarded with tubes.

To do this, you only need to be logged in to Bittube and have the add-on installed. By the way, the add-on works not only on Youtube, but also on the individual other websites.

Now you select a video on Youtube and click on the Bittube addon icon at the top right. Then click on watch on Bittube and the video opens in the Bittube Player. For example, you can watch your usual Youtube playlist and get paid for it :-).

Security through artificial intelligence and community

AI-based security through copyright review and community driven governance. Uploads are scanned by an AI with ContentID and potential violations are flagged for review. To ensure censorship resistance, content, copyright infringement and moderation are dealt with in a decentralised system that gives the community control and promotes fair use. The system provides participants with an incentive to play by the rules based on rewards and penalties.

Products and services for mass adapts

The developers are working on many products and services to increase the demand for TUBE. These include, but are not limited to, premium subscriptions, video-on-demand, BitTube Debit Mastercard (can already be pre-ordered), donations, self-promotion, channel-Stay, content protection (encryption), pro membership, governance (use of TUBEs as moderator), Community marketplace (offer services and merchandise), product placement marketplace, etc.

... and last but not least, there is also an adult channel from BitTube;-)

More "usecase" is not possible and we see a lot of potential in this project.

Write us your opinion below in the comments!!!

Is the big bullrun coming soon?

According to Rebecca Harding, a financial journalist and author of the book "The Weaponization of Trade: The Great Unbalancing of policy and economics," major financial institutions are just waiting to enter the crypto market.

Harding is, among other things, CEO of Coriolis Technologies, a technology company that provides services to large banks and companies in the traditional financial sector. She said in an interview with Forbes employee Billy Bambrough that the vast majority of banks had a healthy skepticism and curiosity.

It explained that banks have recognised the need to invest in the market to keep up with developments in cryptocurrency and blockchain. At present, however, they are waiting for the green light from supervisory and financial authorities.

"Banks are optimistic about cryptocurrencies and are just waiting for regulation of the crypto market to be able to invest."

"Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley on the sidelines"

As CCN reported, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, three of the largest investment banks in the U.S., have already developed a wide range of products, including a trusted custody solution for institutional investors in the cryptocurrency market.

Morgan Stanley is said to have developed the infrastructure for providing complex derivatives tied to bitcoin, with a plan to launch bitcoin swap trading once enough demand from institutions is in place.

To remain relevant in fintech, Harding said banks are working closely with newly emerging fintech companies to study the cryptocurrency market.

"Many banks are still sceptical about Bitcoin and blockchain. While they see the need to invest in this area to keep up with technological developments, they are waiting for market regulation. They are working closely with fintech companies to ensure they don't miss out on connecting to the new technology. There will be a lot of money going into blockchain and cryptocurrencies, ' she explained.

In July, Yonhap, an established media conglomerate in South Korea, reported that commercial banks in the country hold more than $2 billion in bitcoin and Ethereum. The Bank of Korea, the country's central bank, said in a report that the amount has invested banks in cryptocurrencies is relatively small compared to their investments in other stock markets. But local investors have expressed optimism given that leading banks hold a significant sum of cryptocurrencies.

"Banks are worried"

Harding stressed that the number of banks investing in cryptocurrencies is growing. Banks see the risk of their business models being replaced by blockchain technology in the coming years if they fail to meet the needs and demands of millennials and the new generation.

' Banks are at risk of becoming nothing more than big fintech companies, people in the industry are telling me. '

If a leading market like the US makes a change in crypto regulation to further legitimise the cryptocurrency market, experts believe more banks will acquire cryptocurrencies than long-term investment (exchange-traded Bitcoin ETF).