Author: CoinSpectator

Chilean banks shut down crypto exchange accounts

Three Chilean-based cryptocurrency exchanges – CryptoMarket, Buda and Orionx –are seeking new banking partners after having their accounts shut down.

With little to no explanation, Banco del Estado de Chile, Itau Corpbanca and Bank of Nova Scotia have ceased providing their banking services for the exchanges, with some pointing the finger at the government secretly forcing the banks to do so. But as yet this is unclear.

South Americans are concerned that the ban is mimicking the cryptocurrency bans of other countries, such as China and the UK, whose banks have notoriously formed a cartel to block any cryptocurrency businesses gaining access to a bank account.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Guillermo Torrealba, Buda’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said: “They’re killing an entire industry. It won’t be possible to buy and sell crypto in a safe business in Chile. We’ll have to go back five years and trade in person. It seems very arbitrary.”

Chile’s cryptocurrency market is small but burgeoning. Entrepreneurs created digital coins Chaucha and Luka, whose names play off local slang used for money, while locally-based exchanges like Buda and CryptoMarket operate across Latin America. Buda traded about $1 million per day before losing its bank account, compared with about $2 billion for the world’s biggest exchanges.

Chile’s cryptocurrency industry is still small but rapidly growing with the Buda exchange trading around $1 million per day in digital assets.

The shutdown exchanges have said they follow stringent know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering practices by running checks with authorities and agencies.

Thousands of Chileans and crypto supporters around the world have taken to social media to support the exchanges with the tag #ChileQuiereCryptos.

The exchanges have formed a joint case at the appeals court, which has already agreed to hear their case; but the bank accounts remain shut until further notice.

UnicornoGo – The Next Level of Cryptogaming

While the cryptocurrency market takes a bearish turn and most tokens go through record plunges, the blockchain technology does not stand still and continues to develop in all directions very rapidly. The gaming industry is also moving forward. After the success of PokemonGo and CryptoKitties, meet UnicornGo, a blockchain based online game with elements of augmented reality created by a solid team of developers in collaboration with genetic engineers.

Just imagine, a beautiful fantasy world where you can become an owner of mythical creatures, the unicorns, buy plots of land, grow candy trees and participate in tournaments. Each unicorn is unique and has its own colour, character and abilities. This is achieved through gene crossing and inheritance of various traits by the next generation of unicorns. Unicorn owners will be able to predict offspring traits by selecting a partner with genetic attributes of interest, resulting in unique unicorns that can bring significant profits to their owners. Unicorns with higher attributes are very desirable on a marketplace as breeding partners, allowing its owner to set a higher price for siring.

Users can buy unicorns using Ethereum or its own in-game currency, CandyCoin, which is already being traded on the ForkDelta exchange and will be listed on other exchanges in the near future. The tokens are based on Ethereum smart contracts, with a limited release of 12,000,000 tokens. But in nearest future, UnicornGo plans to move the game to the Universa blockchain, for higher speeds and almost zero transaction fees. CandyCoin is used on the in-game marketplace to buy/sell/exchange unicorns, plots of land, candy tree seeds to grow food for unicorns and other fairy tale accessories.

At the moment, users can buy the first generation GEN-0 unicorns on the game’s website play.unicorngo.io/. Sales of GEN-0 will last until 30,000 unicorns are sold, after which no new GEN-0 unicorns will ever be created again. All subsequent generations of unicorns will come from the GEN-0 generation. Furthermore, every purchaser of GEN-0 unicorn has a 30 percent higher chance than in later generations to receive a Legendary unicorn, which will have unique traits. All the lucky users who will randomly get the Legendary unicorn will also receive a special gift from UnicornGo team worth the amount of 10,000 USD!

On 8 April of 2018 the marketplace has been released, where all created unicorns can be traded. Users also can find partners for breeding, put their unicorns for sale and evaluate future opponents for tournaments. The presale of land plots has begun as well. It should be noted that land is a very important asset because it acts as a means of resource production in the game. Users can play around in sandbox mode and construct potential unicorns by visiting the page: http://demo.unicorngo.io/

The next stage is the integration of the UnicornGO interface with augmented reality in conjunction with IZETEX, as well as the introduction of mind control technology. The neural interface has already been developed by the BasisNeuro startup. In the next 2 to 4 months UnicornGo specialists in cooperation with a team of creative designers will develop a new gadget which will allow users to control unicorns with the power of thought, providing an incredible experience for everyone and great opportunities for disabled people. And this is only the beginning. Considering the strong support of the community and innovative development, the project has a great future.

To learn more about the project or buy unicorns visit the official website: https://play.unicorngo.io/

Discover the Easiest, Cheapest, and Safest way to File Taxes on your Cryptocurrency Gains

No matter what you may think, the IRS knows about your trading and expects you to pay tax on earnings or face hefty penalties.

In previous years, cryptocurrency traders managed to stay under the radar with fewer than 900 people reporting capital gains on Bitcoin to the IRS from 2013 to 2015.  It is likely that many believed they could avoid paying taxes because of the perception that their trades would not be traceable. For example, AlphaBay, the successor to the illicit online market “Silk Road,” was still recommending using Bitcoin as a privacy coin in 2016.

But the assumption that Bitcoin is anonymous or untraceable is unfounded. The FBI was able to trace $13.4 million in Bitcoin from the Silk Road to its apparently anonymous founder, Ross Ulbricht, by tracing public transactions on the blockchain – and that was back in 2014. The next year, the IRS partnered with Chainanalysis to identify suspicious activity among owners of digital wallets. The Daily Beast published a copy of their contract that explicitly states it intends to “trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy” in order to “identify and obtain evidence of individuals using bitcoin … [to] conceal income as part of tax fraud”.

It is easy to imagine how anxious the IRS is to receive the unreported earnings, especially given the huge growth in cryptocurrency investments last year. For example, only 804 Americans declared taxes on Bitcoin gains in 2015—despite an estimated 500,000 to 1.2 million people owning Bitcoin that year. In 2017, the crypto market grew 30 fold from $18 billion in January to $573 billion by year end. And in November 2017, a federal judge ordered the exchange Coinbase to release data on 14,355 account holders who had traded in over $20,000 USD.

Many don’t even realize that they need to declare their cryptocurrency earnings. Most exchanges do not send users a 1099 form like stock trading websites do (Coinbase does only if the user has traded over $20,000). And tax filing websites like TurboTax and H&R Block don’t ask if you sold cryptocurrency in the previous year. It is up to individuals to stay proactive and inform themselves of new tax laws.

If the IRS catches you not paying taxes, common fees include a “substantial understatement” penalty and “negligence or disregard of the rules” penalty, which are an additional 20 percent of the net understatement of tax. And if the IRS thinks you knowingly and intentionally did not pay your tax, it will charge you an additional 75 percent for committing fraud.

Now that you’ve decided to file your cryptocurrency taxes, how do you do it?

In the US, cryptocurrencies are treated by the IRS as property, similar to stocks. This means that you must pay capital gains on your investments that you have sold and basic income tax if mining or earning cryptocurrency for work.

Most people will have income from buying Bitcoin or an altcoin and selling it at a higher price; these sales need to be reported on Schedule D, an attachment to Form 1040. If the period between the purchase and sale is less than a year, it is taxed as ordinary income. If it is longer than a year, it is taxed as a long-term capital gain between 0 to 20 percent. If you are in the top three highest income brackets, you must also pay 3.8 percent tax on net investment income. Mining and sales receipts in cryptocurrency is also taxed as ordinary income between 10 to 39.6 percent depending on your tax brackets. The coins are valued at the historical price on the date the action occurred, so you must look up the spot price on a site like CoinMarketCap.com.

This sounds very complicated. Aren’t there tools to make this easier?

If you have made more than a handful of trades, and especially if you have used multiple exchanges, it can be a nightmare trying to calculate the capital gains, even for an experienced accountant. Fortunately there are a handful of websites that can import your trade data, look up the historical prices, and calculate the gains on each trade.

GetCryptoTax.com

Our recommendation is to use GetCryptoTax.com because it is cheap, user-friendly, and almost anonymous.

This app has one of the slickest user interfaces out there and provides a hand-holding, informative tutorial to help you extract your trade data from exchanges. It uses spreadsheet imports instead of API connections because, if you set up your API access incorrectly, the app could potentially trade with your money! They don’t have a large list of exchanges yet, but they are adding new ones almost every day; you can email them with recommendations.

GetCryptoTax.com just launched in April 2018, so if you sign up early enough, you can download your reports for free while they are beta testing – they only ask that you give feedback on any bugs you may find or features you would like to see. They plan to eventually price it around $10.

Bitcoin.tax

Bitcoin.tax has been in operation since 2013, so they have worked out the kinks by now and have a lot of options.

You can connect all of your exchanges to it via their API keys and it will import your trades and calculate the data for you to give to your accountant. You can even choose which cost basis you want to use and they will recommend which is cheapest; we don’t recommend using anything other than FIFO, though, as the other methods may raise red flags with the IRS. If you do not want to give them access to your exchanges via API, you can still upload spreadsheets like GetCryptoTax, but it only accepts one spreadsheet format and each exchange has its own unique format so we found this feature to be quite impractical to actually use.

Bitcoin.tax starts at $29.95 per year for 10,000 transactions and goes up to around $100 for higher volume traders.

Cointracking.info

Cointracking.info has also been around since April 2013 and has built a lot of features by now. Although we do not recommend it to the average user due to its overwhelming complexity, it can be a real boon to hardcore traders or accountants who are willing to invest the time to learn their way around it.

The cheapest option for tax preparation costs 0.012 BTC ($84 with Bitcoin currently at $7,000 USD) for up to 3,500 transactions. You can get unlimited transactions for 1 year for 0.019 BTC ($133) or unlimited lifetime for 0.289 BTC ($2,000 USD). This could be a great option for serious traders, although as more competitors enter the market and develop new features, we expect prices to come down.

Cointracker.io

Cointracker.io is another relatively new site that launched in August 2017. Like Get Crypto Tax, it has a pretty nice user interface. It does not seem to offer spreadsheet uploads but it can do API access like the other sites and even has a feature to read trades from your public wallet addresses.

Cointracker.io starts at $49 for 100 transactions, $149 for 1,000 and $999 for 15,000.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be tax or legal advice. Please consult your own professionals.

Coinzilla – The Crypto Advertising Network of the moment?

If you own a crypto-related website, you probably have looked into various methods to promote your work. However, if you want high-quality traffic on your platforms, you need to pay for such services. As everyone knows by now, qualitative traffic is vital for the reputation and exposure of a website. You can easily earn enough money to live off from your website if it has high-quality traffic, but, usually such thing is pretty hard to find. A majority of the ad networks available out there offer junk or sponsored advertising.

Many webmasters spent over the time a large amount of money trying to find a network that provides much-needed quality traffic services. If you’ve invested a lot of time and money analyzing and testing a long list of existing ad networks, but have yet to find one that provides the desired services, then you should try Coinzilla.

Founded in 2016, the Coinzilla Ad Network became one of the top 3 crypto advertising networks in a short amount of time. So far, the company only has favorable reviews on the Internet, which might make some people suspicious. No bad reputation or shady operations are associated with this network,  and with good reason.

The network offers high-quality floating and standard IAB banners that have been designed in a way to instantly attract the attention of visitors, guaranteeing a high CTR. The banners have strategic placement on the websites, which have been proven by statistics and user behavior.

The platform is very user-friendly and intuitive, so any new user can create an account and understand the use all its functions. The team behind Coinzilla is fast and ready to help its clients with anything they might need.

Coinzilla employs a S.M.A.R.T. bidding system, which was created by studying customers’ behavior, with the purpose of supplying qualitative marketing services at the lowest prices. Behind this simple interface are complex algorithms that basically do all the hard work for you, showing you the results in detailed statistic charts.

The traffic you will receive will come from top referrers websites like coinmarketcap.com, themerkle.com, 99bitcoins.com, coinranking.com and other relevant crypto-related sites. This quality traffic will make your site more visible to Google, and increase your rank daily until your website is at the top!

Coinzilla’s employees are very fast, have great technical expertise, and a unique account manager is assigned to all users.

To sum up, if you own a crypto-related business or an ICO, Coinzilla is the best advertising provider for you. Their quality services and professionalism will ensure that you will be a faithful and satisfied customer, and you’ll never need to go through the hassle of finding a different ad network ever again!

PROS:

 

 CONS:
·       Quality traffic

·       Highly competitive rates

·       Personal account managers

·       99% Fill rate

·       Top referrers (coinmarketcap.com, coinranking.com, 99bitcoins.com)

·       Because this is a bitcoin advertising network, they accept payments made through Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Euro bank transfers

·       Highly converting HTML banners designed by them

 ·       Your website must have crypto-related content

·       Your website must look professional (it’s a problem if you are inexperienced)

·       Your website should be live for at least a couple of months

·       Your website must not be an adult content website

You can contact Coinzilla’s staff anytime on:

Useful links:

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adsbycoinzilla/

Mayor of Bogotá announces workshop for teachers interested in Blockchain tech

The Mayor of Bogotá has announced a workshop for teachers interested in Blockchain technology in partnership with the High District ICT Counseling who will be hosting the workshop on Thursday 12th April called: ‘Technology blockchain: an experiment for the schools of the District’.

The workshop is aimed at teachers of public institutions who are interested in learning more about the uses and applications of blockchain technology that serves to authenticate and verify data and transactions.

The results of a blockchain prototype and its impact on the application of student representatives of the
Rafael Bernal Jiménez and El Rodeo schools will be announced, as well as reflection on democracy held at Colegio Unión Colombia .

Attendees will also learn about financial, medicine and notary uses of the Blockchain and will be asked to input ideas on how this exciting technology can be applied in the education sector.

Sergio Martínez, High ICT Adviser, said “The Mayor of Bogotá wants to demonstrate to teachers that the application and use of blockchain technology for pedagogical processes is feasible. “We take as an example the elections of the student representatives that took place in the schools, since it is the first step towards exercising the right to vote and a healthy democracy through state-of-the-art technologies,” he said.

COSS.IO LAUNCHES TRADE OF MARK.SPACE PLATFORM’S MRK-TOKEN

APRIL 11, 2018 – COSS.IO, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency trading platform today announced that it has included the MARK (MRK) coin into its list of digital currencies. The listing is symbolically confined to the date April 12th, which is celebrated internationally as the Day of Human Space Flight.

Since 1962, April 12 has been celebrated in Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) as Cosmonautics Day and since 2011 internationally as the International Day of Human Space Flight (or Yuri’s Night). The event is held to increase public interest in space exploration and to inspire a new generation of pioneers. Driven by space-inspired artistic expression and culminating in a worldwide network of annual celebrations and educational events, Yuri’s Night creates a global community of young people committed to shaping the future of space exploration while developing responsible leaders and innovators with a global perspective. These global events are a showcase for elements of culture that embrace space including music, dance, fashion, and art.

To commemorate and celebrate this great historical event, COSS.IO has chosen April 12 as the day to launch the MRK, which is the internal digital currency of MARK.SPACE, world’s first open-source, platform-agnostic social VR and AR-compatible ecosystem. MARK.SPACE, as the name suggests, symbolizes a framework of different possibilities, that not only allow for creation of so-called “spaces”, but also give the opportunity to virtually go into space and beyond. The latter is the reason for choice of date.

MARK.SPACE is an open-source platform for creation of 3D, VR and AR-compatible websites, available on any browser, on any device, and without pre-installation or pre-registration. Users don’t need to know even the basics of programming to create VR-compatible web-spaces and headgear is optional. HTML5 frontend development allows to connect any top-level domain to any space in the virtual universe of MARK.SPACE. Website: http://mark.space

COSS stands for Crypto One-Stop Solution and represents a cryptocurrency exchange platform, which encompasses all features of a digital economic system based on crypto.  The COSS platform serves as a one-stop shop for multiple cryptocurrency-related services bringing cryptocurrencies to the masses. COSS is happy to partner the Next Generation FinTech Solution with MARK.SPACE, which, in turn, is the Next Generation of Internet. Website: http://coss.io

Contact: Vladislav Utushkin, CMO MARK.SPACE

Website: http://mark.space/

Email: [email protected]

Three Korean banks will face inspection over cryptocurrency exchange compliance

According to a statement released on Monday by South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), three local banks will face a compliance inspection this month to check whether they are following new regulations put in place for dealing with cryptocurrency exchanges.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in conjunction with the FSS will carry out on-site inspections of Nonghyup Bank, Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank between 19 and 25 April.

Investigators will check whether the banks are following recently introduced anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rules, which were recently introduced to prevent anonymous accounts being set up virtually.

Some banks have taken the initiative to introduce internal compliance checks, notably Nonghyup Bank, which has been providing automatic verification checks for two of the largest Korean exchanges, Coinone and Bithumb. Other financial providers have been urged to carry out their own checks to comply with the new rules.

South Korea’s banking institutions have welcomed cryptocurrency exchanges and related businesses with open arms, unlike most of the banks located in the UK, which have formed what has been likened to a cartel to block any crypto-related business accessing traditional banking services. Only this year, Barclays was the first to provide its banking services to CoinBase, allowing customers to deposit and withdraw fiat under the Faster Payments Service (FPS), which is more or less real-time.

Many cryptocurrency exchanges are working with Polish-based banks, which have so far been more open to working with such firms.

Tech giants face class action lawsuit over targeted crypto ad ban

More Blockchain and cryptocurrency organisations have joined the anti-crypto advertising ban enforced by tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

According to Russia’s RNS, three more countries that now include Kazakhstan, Armenia and Switzerland have joined Russia, South Korea and China in a joint class action lawsuit that will be filed in New York this May. Legal costs will be crowd-sourced from donations made to a fund registered in Luxembourg.

Facebook, Google and Twitter as said to be displaying cartel-like behaviour when enforcing a restrictive ban on cryptocurrency ads, which appears to be aimed at curbing enthusiasm and hindering the adoption of new and possibly game-changing technologies. This blanket ban is penalising legitimate companies who wish to utilize advertising platforms to gain investors and users and spread the word about their projects, which subsequently affects the amount of funds raised.

The Chinese Association of Cryptocurrency Investors (LBTC), Russian Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Association (RACIB) and the Korea Venture Business Association (KOVA) came to an agreement to take the matter to court, and have been joined by many more organisations since.

Facebook banned crypto ads on the social network back in January citing complaints about advertisements from its user base.

Google restricted cryptocurrency ads and related content last month – this included ICO promotions, wallets and crypto exchanges, although a quick Google search for “ICO” returns multiple advertisements.

Russian search engines Yandex and Runet have also joined in and have started banning crypto ads.

The joint lawsuit is set to be filed in May 2018.

Wall Street heavy weights are going into Bitcoin

Have Wall Street legends turned the market?

Ethereum, Bitcoin and many of the major cryptocurrencies are back in the green with the finger being pointed at Wall Street legends George Soros and John D. Rockefeller who are allegedly investing.

Although it’s still early days, 2018 has not been a great start for crypto with the price of Bitcoin plummeting from record highs.

What caused the crash? It would appear that several elements played a part but the massive tax bills American traders have racked up, estimated to be in the region of $25bn, are undoubtedly a factor, combined with regulatory uncertainty in several Asian countries and tech giants such as Facebook and Google banning adverts related to crypto.

Billionaire investment fund Soros Fund Management has been given the green light to trade in digital currencies, although the firm’s $26bn fund has not yet made a wager according to Bloomberg.

Venture capital firm Venrock, which was founded by descendants of John D. Rockefeller, recently announced it was partnering with a cryptocurrency firm from Brooklyn.

According to Hedge Fund Research, funds that invested in cryptocurrencies at the beginning of 2017 made colossal profits of around 3,000%.

It seems that April will be an interesting month for cryptocurrencies, as, at the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $7,147.92 with Ethereum at $415.72.

The Spanish taxman wants your crypto trading data

Spain’s tax regulator, commonly known as Agencia Tributaria or the Agency for Tax Administration (AEAT), has issued 60 formal requests to cryptocurrency entities seeking private customer data, such as identification documents, account ownership, trades and other information.

Cryptocurrency cash machine operators, exchanges and payment gateways were some of the companies that received the request earlier this week.

The information is apparently being used as part of an investigation across the crypto industry to decide whether new control procedures are required.

Furthermore, AEAT obtained data from the National Fraud Investigation Office (ONIF) on the whereabouts of offshore bank accounts held by 16 cryptocurrency exchanges registered in Spain.

It is not yet known if AEAT is seeking this information to clamp down on people not declaring capital gains from the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. According to Tom Lee, the head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisor, US taxpayers accrued $92 billion in taxable gains from cryptocurrencies in 2017.