India’s top court upholds central bank ban against cryptocurrencies-Computerfanfield

The Supreme Court of India has shut down appeals for a temporary stay on a ruling that would force financial institutions to cease all cryptocurrency related operations, declared in April .

The move sees any entity regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) be prohibited from engaging in all services related to cryptocurrencies – such as the buying and selling of virtual currencies. Facilitating transfers of virtual coins is also to be included in the restrictions, as reported by Times of India.

The news confirms the fate of cryptocurrency businesses across the country for the foreseeable future: that by July 5, all financial institutions in the country will withdraw from their operations.

Local cryptocurrency exchanges and other businesses will now inevitably be forced into a bureaucratic limbo, awaiting a concrete regulatory framework to be decided upon and ratified.

It’s not for lack of trying, either. Within hours of the original April 6 circular being released, petitions circulated that amassed hundreds of thousands of signatures. The appeal itself was formally lodged by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a continued vanguard for the cryptocurrency effort in the country.

The meeting was even originally scheduled for later this month, but had been moved forward in an effort to keep businesses operating after this week. With the stay motion rejected, July 5 becomes the last day of financially compliant operations.

Sandeep Goenka, co-founder of leading cryptocurrency exchange Zebpay, confirmed in a tweet that an additional meeting will go ahead at the original date of July 20. Hopes are that at least some considerations can be made to allow for innovation within the Indian blockchain sector.

There may just be a chance, too. In February, Prime Minister Modi heralded the possibilities of the blockchain in a speech-via-video at the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), declaring that “disruptive technologies such as blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) will have a deep impact in the way we live and work.”

It’s not only exchanges at stake either; the ruling will also affect a significant number of companies whose primary business deals with blockchain and cryptocurrency.

It will be interesting to see what course of action affected companies will resort to. In the case of recent regulatory crackdowns in Japan, Hong Kong, and China, a slew of fledgling blockchain businesses opted to seek shelter overseas.

Hacker selling 26M stolen user records in exchange for $5,000 worth of Bitcoin

A hacker by the name of Gnosticplayers is trying to sell more than 26 million user records on the dark web in exchange for $5,000 worth of Bitcoin (1.2431 BTC).

This is the fourth data dump posted on Dream Market – an online darknet marketplace founded in late 2013 – by the hacker, who previously put up more than 840 million user records since mid-February.

The new data dump includes files from six new companies including Indonesian e-commerce unicorn Bukalapak, which as of last year had more than 50 million users and processed half a million transactions per day.

Other affected businesses include GameSalad, a game development platform; Estante Virtual, a Brazilian book store; Coubic, an online task manager, Notebook app LifeBear; and YouthManual, an Indonesian student career site.

Coubic told ZDNet it was looking into the breach. LifeBear said “most likely” its servers were hacked, but added it was still investigating.

Previously, Gnosticplayers had uploaded the data for 32 companies in three different dumps. Affected businesses included Dubsmash, MyFitnessPal, and Fotolog.

The hacker said the data was put up for sale because the breached companies had failed to adequately protect passwords with strong encryption algorithms.

“I got upset because I feel no one is learning,” Gnosticplayers told ZDNet. “I just felt upset at this particular moment, because seeing this lack of security in 2019 is making me angry.”

It’s certainly not the first time stolen data appears for sale on the dark web in exchange for Bitcoin, and although this is just one of the cryptocurrency’s many use cases, it’s likely to contribute to its widely reported branding problem while also helping to fan the “blockchain good, Bitcoin bad” rhetoric.

Want to find out more about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? Check out our Hard Fork track at TNW 2019 !

Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Bitcoin explodes to $12,750 in Argentina after foreign currency purchases restricted’

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Nietzsche used to say: To infinity, and beyond!

Bitcoin Price

We closed the day, September 09 2019, at a price of $10,334. That’s a minor 1.03 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$108.26. It was the lowest closing price in seven days.

We’re still 48 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).

Bitcoin market cap

Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $185,263,578,990. It now commands 70 percent of the total crypto market.

Bitcoin volume

Yesterday’s volume of $17,595,943,368 was the highest in two days, 14 percent above the year’s average, and 60 percent below the year’s high.

Bitcoin transactions

A total of 316,706 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 5 percent below the year’s average and 30 percent below the year’s high.

Bitcoin transaction fee

Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.39. That’s $3.32 below the year’s high of $3.71.

Bitcoin distribution by address

As of now, there are 17,328 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.6 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.6 percent, and the top 1000 34.4 percent.

Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin

With a market capitalization of $183 Billion, Anheuser-Busch InBev has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.

Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million

On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.

He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 89.5 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $98,941 by now, according to dickline.info.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption

Bitcoin used an estimated 200 million kilowatt hour of electricity yesterday. On a yearly basis that would amount to 73 terawatt hour. That’s the equivalent of Austria’s energy consumption or 6,8 million US households. Bitcoin’s energy consumption now represents 0.3% of the whole world’s electricity use.

Bitcoin on Twitter

Yesterday 17,004 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 10.7 percent below the year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day this year about Bitcoin was 41,687.