The Tokyo metropolitan police is reportedly charging former MtGox CEO Mark Karpelès on suspicions of fraud; the long-awaited decentralized app network Ethereum has finally launched, and more top stories for July 31.
Mark Karpelès Faces Fraud Charges in Japan
The Tokyo metropolitan police is reportedly charging former MtGox CEO Mark Karpelès on suspicions of fraudulent system manipulation. As reported by Japanese new service Nikkei, and roughly translated here, Karpelès might have faked trades on his now defunct bitcoin exchange, and possibly inflated the bitcoin balance of fake accounts. This means that a portion of the bitcoins previously considered missing might have been fake.
Ethereum Launches Long-Awaited Decentralized App Network
One of the most – if not the most – ambitious blockchain 2.0 projects to date, Ethereum, has finally launched. Ethereum is aiming to create a new universe of programmable contracts, powered and secured by its own blockchain. Having raised US$18 million in its initial token sale a year ago, the project has now released its “Frontier,” a complex technical initial implementation of the software.
Ethereum's CCO Tual warned that the Frontier release is not for the faint of heart:
“Don't put a lot of value at risk unless you really, really are sure you know what you are doing, and you're confident about your risk assessment of the network.”
Buenos Aires Municipality to Host Bitcoin Forum
The municipality of Buenos Aires together with two Argentinean Bitcoin NGOs are set to organize a Bitcoin forum in the country’s capital today. The event will last all day long and will cover eight of the possibilities offered by Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. The announcement does not go into detail as to which eight aspects this are exactly.
Accenture: Blockchain Has Great Potential, Currency Needs to Go
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, technology consulting firm Accenture directors Owen Jelf and Sigrid Seibold argue that blockchain technology will reshape the financial sector. As seems to be an ever growing trend, however, the two contend that blockchain technology should be stripped from its internal currencies.
They write:
“To be used by financial institutions, including capital markets firms and insurers, blockchains must supplant the costly methods introduced by bitcoin with a mechanism that guarantees security, privacy and speed without paying for anonymous consensus.”
BTC China's Bobby Lee at Rise Conference: 6 years Until Bitcoin is Mainstream
BTC China CEO Bobby Lee and OKCoin Head of International Jack Jiu took to the stage at the Rise Conference in Hong Kong to discuss where Bitcoin was and what’s ahead for the popular cryptocurrency. The two explained to be confident that Bitcoin will go mainstream, although they said it might take a few years.
Taking the stage, Lee explained:
“Bitcoin can mean different things to different people. For traders that can mean that Bitcoin is a speculative tool, but as Bitcoin becomes more mainstream that can mean transfers, that don’t necessarily use Bitcoin itself but the blockchain ledger it runs off. Bitcoin has come a long way in 6 years, but it will take another 6 years until it truly enters the mainstream.”
Bitcoiners Gather in Bretton Woods to Assess the Future of Bitcoin
To address why Bitcoin is still a confusing concept to most people, a small group of bitcoiners gathered in the New Hampshire hills with the goal of producing a comprehensive assessment of where bitcoin is, where it may go, and what might prevent it from getting there.
Organized by Washington DC-based trade group Consumers Research, the group of 20 included ChangeTip’s vice president of community development Victoria van Eyk, the Digital Currency Council's Jinyoung Lee Englund, and senior adviser at the MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative Michael Casey.
Bitcoin Exchange Igot Counters Scam Allegations
Bitcoin exchange Igot came under fire recently, with many of its users complaining about delays to their withdrawals, branding the company as “untrustworthy” and claiming they'd been robbed. Igot's founder Rick Day has now come out to explain that the delays particularly affected fiat withdrawals, attributing them to a number of factors.
Day:
“[The issues] are as not as big as they appear from the outside [...] one of the biggest issues that we have with delays is banking relationships.”
Boozy Brit Buys £300 worth of Pizza in Bitcoin Blunder
A British Reddit user wishing to thank a fellow-user in the US got drunk and mistakenly bought £300 worth of pizza for strangers in the States using bitcoin. He wanted to reward the US user who had gained his startup some exposure, using bitcoin to buy Papa John's vouchers. Unaware of the exchange rate, he bought two bitcoins worth some US$550. He then decided to give away over 100 pizzas to random strangers as far afield as Chicago and Hawaii.
Microsoft and IBM Partner with Indian Bitcoin Hackathon
Over 100 developers will gather at the Bombay Stock Exchange building this weekend for a two-day hackathon organized by Zone Startups India, BitStreet and Block Chain University. Microsoft and IBM are some of the partners of the event, named Hack-Coin, and will be posing the problem statements to solve, as well as choosing winners.
Raunaq Vaisoha, partner of HackCoin, said:
“This event is very important for the blockchain ecosystem. If you look at 2014, there was US$400 million VC funding in the blockchain. Citibank, Barclays and IBM are looking at it.”