world

Shaun Bridges, a former Secret Service agent previously sentenced to six years in jail for stealing bitcoins from a Silk Road dealer, has allegedly attempted to flee from the United States to avoid serving the term.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives voted down the bill HR522 which had implied that the state could collect taxes and fees in bitcoins.

The government of Belgium has tasked the country’s tax authorities to investigate possible fraud and money-laundering schemes involving bitcoin. According to local publication De Morgen, the authorities are especially interested in retail stores accepting cryptocurrency. “The tax department is considering the bitcoin. There will be a battle plan to combat fraud,” reads the publication. There […]

Minouche Shafik, Deputy Governor, Markets & Banking Bank Of England, stated the bank considers using the distributed ledger technology in its new infrastructure. Speaking at the Bank of England on Wednesday, she said that legacy payment and settlement systems have “changed dramatically”. Indeed, when it comes to settlement, the current solutions cannot face the growing […]

According to Reuters, the EU intends to continue monitoring virtual currencies rather than regulating them right away. The intent is said to be justified by little knowledge of virtual money’s regulatory risks deemed inherent, like being prone to money-laundering. The other reason is that cryptocurrency market in general is incomparably smaller than that of fiat […]

Tunisia will become the world’s first country to operate its national currency via blockchain. The blockchain in question, however, is an advanced version of the bitcoin’s one developed by Monetas. With population of about 11 million, Tunisia has more than 3 million people unbanked. However, 600,000 of them using eDinar, a digital version of the […]

In accordance with an order by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the country’s citizens will not be able to use their plastic cards abroad. The prohibition will become effective as of January 1, 2016. It covers not only regular card transactions, but also purchasing any goods or services from foreign retailers on the internet. The […]

Kyrgyzstan’s subdivision of international news agency Sputnik is willing to join the bitcoin community and pay bitcoin wages to its employees. Recently the agency published a long form piece describing advantages of bitcoin transactions over those traditional in detail. This is a burning issue for Kyrgyzstan citizens as many of them have to work abroad […]