Walle Wei, a Chinese trader based in Guangxi in southern China, said he was trading futures in bitcoin and a cryptocurrency called litecoin on OKCoin.com on July 10, 2015. Betting that the litecoin price, then about $4, would rise, he bought contracts for long positions using borrowed money. This meant that he only had to put down 10 percent to trade. Trading with that much leverage meant that a small move in the price could either wipe out his positions or greatly magnify his gains.
In the wake of the deadly clash at a white-nationalist rally last weekend in Virginia, major companies such as Google, Facebook and PayPal are banishing a growing cadre of extremist groups and individuals for violating service terms.
In a written response, OKCoin said it had invested heavily in guarding against attacks and there was no precedent for multinational corporations to compensate users for service interruptions. "All trading's profit or loss should be solely borne by the users," OKCoin said. To open an account, customers must agree to terms of service that absolve the company of liability for losses from "hacker attacks" and "computer virus intrusion or attack."
The spokesman for BTCChina said "the Chinese government's scrutiny into bitcoin exchanges earlier this year was because of a dramatic increase in bitcoin's price." China's central bank declined to answer questions.
Dealing with the banks "is a constant and ongoing challenge," said Bitfinex Chief Executive Jean Louis van der Velde. "Citizens and businesses being treated like criminals when they are not, including myself." He declined to say which banks Bitfinex is now using.
In part, banks say they are concerned about the due diligence cryptocurrency exchanges do on their customers to guard against money laundering, criminal activity and sanctions violations. While regulators require banks to verify who their customers are, some cryptocurrency trading platforms have performed minimal checks, Reuters found.
Four former employees at BTCChina, including one of its co-founders, said the exchange had also engaged in faking its trading volumes. A spokesman for the exchange said it "has never faked its trading volumes."
Not surprisingly, many banks are leery of cryptocurrency exchanges and some have refused to deal with them. At a bank investor conference this month in New York, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, called bitcoin "a fraud" and predicted it will "blow up."
The Chinese exchanges' sky-high volumes appear to have caught the attention of the People's Bank of China. After a series of inspections by the central bank, Chinese exchanges in January began charging trading fees - as exchanges elsewhere typically do - and volumes in China plummeted.
The exchange distributed IOUs in the form of digital tokens, which could be traded on Bitfinex. Some customers converted the tokens into equity in the company that operates the exchange. Although the exchange later redeemed the tokens in full, some customers had already sold them at a loss.
Huge sums are at stake. As the prices of bitcoin and other virtual currencies have soared this year - bitcoin has quadrupled - legions of investors and speculators have turned to online exchanges. Billions of dollars' worth of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies - which aren't backed by any governments or central banks - are now traded on exchanges every day.
In the past 15 months, Bitfinex, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was fined by a U.S. regulator, lost $72 million worth of bitcoins to hackers and was cut off by Wells Fargo, one of America's biggest banks.
In its online February newsletter, the hedge fund's manager called the incident "clear market manipulation." He said he questioned OKCoin about it: "They confirmed to us that there were no position limits whatsoever and that people were free to do whatever they wanted in their 'happy trading environment' (yes, they used those actual words)."
In June, a former U.S. federal prosecutor testified before Congress that criminals - including distributors of malicious code called ransomware, "large drug kingpins and serial fraudsters" - were increasingly using unregulated foreign exchanges that don't verify their customers.
Despite its numerous challenges, van der Velde said Bitfinex is now handling about $12 billion in trades a month and is "very profitable." Last year, the exchange said it expected to make a $20 million profit in 2017. Despite all the Wild West problems besetting cryptocurrencies, van der Velde predicted the final amount will turn out to be even higher. (Steve Stecklow reported from London and Helsinki; Alexandra Harney from Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong; Anna Irrera from New York; and Jemima Kelly from London).
Bitfinex was set up four years ago. Its hundreds of thousands of clients include banks, investment funds and other cryptocurrency exchanges, according to van der Velde, its CEO and co-founder, and its lawyer.Zane Tackett, who held several positions at OKCoin from 2014 to 2015 including international operations manager, said he resigned partly out of concern about its fake volumes. "The motivation is to seem larger than their competition," he said.
And he berated his critics who, with increasingly sharper language, have denounced his initially slow and then ultimately combative comments on the racial violence at a white supremacist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Some of that high volume occurred because traders were attracted by the fact that these exchanges at that time charged no transaction fees. But some of the volume was fake, six former employees at two Chinese exchanges told Reuters. Artificially pumped-up volumes in China could have affected the often volatile price of bitcoin, because investors elsewhere monitor and respond to the activity.
Changpeng Zhao, a former chief technical officer at OKCoin, stated on the website reddit.com in May 2015 that OKCoin used bots that "are designed to pump up volumes." In a response to the post, OKCoin said: "OKCoin does not need to have any fake volume."
On Thursday, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said for the first time that the American military will help contractors and other officials locate unexploded bombs dropped by the coalition. U.S. Embassy officials have asked the coalition to declassify grid coordinates for bombs dropped in Iraq to help clear the explosives.
So-called "flash crashes" - when cryptocurrencies suddenly plummet in value - are also a threat. Unlike regulated U.S. stock exchanges, cryptocurrency exchanges aren't required to have circuit breakers in place to halt trading during wild price swings. Digital coin exchanges are also frequently under assault by hackers, resulting in down times that can sideline traders at critical moments.
Inaccessible websites aren't the only way investors can lose money on exchanges. In February, a hedge fund called GABI, based in Jersey, bought a futures contract on OKCoin's Hong Kong exchange, betting the price of bitcoin would rise. But the contract was liquidated soon afterwards when another investor placed a giant bet the other way that dwarfed it.
BOSTON (AP) - The Boston Red Sox will ask the city to rename Yawkey Way, the street alongside Fenway Park, to erase what owner John Henry called a haunting reminder of the ballclub's history of racial intolerance.
"Criminals can open anonymous accounts, or accounts with phony names to fly under the radar of law enforcement," Kathryn Haun, a former assistant U.S. attorney, said at a congressional hearing. "Thus, we have received 'Mickey Mouse' who resides at '123 Main Street' in subpoena returns."
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - The white nationalists behind last weekend's violent rally found an appealing target in the historic town where Thomas Jefferson founded a university and an outspoken, progressive mayor declared his city the "capital of the resistance" to President Donald Trump.
Trump was much quicker Thursday to condemn violence in Barcelona, where more than a dozen people were killed when a van veered onto a sidewalk and sped down a busy pedestrian zone in what authorities called a terror attack.
Under Yawkey, who owned the club for four decades, the Red Sox were the last team in the major leagues to cross the color barrier while choosing not to sign black players including Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays.
One exchange, OKCoin, inflated volumes through so-called wash trades, repeatedly trading nominal amounts of bitcoin back and forth between accounts, two former executives said. The transactions were logged on the exchanges but not recorded on the blockchain, according to a former employee.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - A van veered onto a promenade Thursday and barreled down the busy walkway in central Barcelona, swerving back and forth as it mowed pedestrians down and turned a picturesque tourist destination into a bloody killing zone. Thirteen people were killed and 100 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in what authorities called a terror attack.
Resendiz, who is not a legal U.S. resident, recently turned over control of the business in Florida City to her daughter, a citizen. The once-proud shop owner is so afraid of deportation these days that on a recent morning she was keeping out of sight of customers while her husband was not there at all.
Henry told the Boston Herald on Thursday that he welcomes changing the name of the street that honors his predecessor Tom Yawkey, an inductee in the baseball Hall of Fame, and is the mailing address for the ballpark and team offices.
He then added to his expression of support a tweet reviving a debunked legend about a U.S. general subduing Muslim rebels a century ago in the Philippines by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig blood.
"It's a continuation of John's strong feelings about tolerance and inclusion and making sure that everyone in Boston and New England feels welcome at Fenway Park," Red Sox president Sam Kennedy told The Associated Press. "This is just the beginning of a process that will involve the community."MIAMI (AP) - Maribel Resendiz and her husband came to the U.S. from Mexico, sold cool drinks to workers in the tomato fields of South Florida and eventually opened a bustling shop in a strip mall offering fruit smoothies and tacos. Now she is preparing for the possibility she'll have to leave it all behind.
The areas of fintech attracting media and investor attention are changing. Insurtech, robo-advisors, and digital-only banks are only a few of the segments making waves. B2B fintechs are also playing an increasingly prominent role in the ecosystem.
NEW YORK (AP) - It took bloodshed in Charlottesville to get tech companies to do what civil rights groups have been calling for for years: take a firmer stand against accounts used to promote hate and violence.
If you are an internationally located person, and do not qualify to have a USA-based bank account, or wish to accept credit cards you must register your PayPal account to accept credit card payments. Only business and merchant accounts are allowed to have credit card authorization and the subsequent service fees charged for each transaction are significantly higher than the personal account. Here in Japan for my business there is a 3.9% transaction service fee as well as a JPY 40 per transaction flat fee to accept payment from basically everyone.
I cannot do business using this "amazing tool" at a 20% profit margin (which is not an unreasonable percentage in ordinary business), because PayPal would put me out of business with their very high total service fees. Unless you try the system, and look at the actual costs involved, it is very difficult to see this is happening.
The allure of PayPal is that it does not require the seller to
have a bank merchant account through which to process credit
cards. Anyone with a verifiable email address and bank account
can use PayPal and the service can be implemented almost
immediately after registering. When someone places an order
on a website that uses PayPal for online payments, that customer
is directed to PayPal.com to complete the payment process using
a credit card or electronic check. The merchant can transfer
the money collected in his PayPal account to his checking account
any time he likes. Since many larger merchants make this transfer
just once a week or so, their PayPal accounts are ripe for the
picking from those who have the cunning and lack of ethics
required to gain access.
In July, U.S. authorities shut down the website of the BTC-e exchange, one of the world's largest, and ordered it to pay a $110 million fine. The Treasury Department said it had "facilitated transactions involving ransomware, computer hacking, identity theft, tax refund fraud schemes, public corruption, and drug trafficking."
There's a good chance that dumpster has, at various times,
contained scraps of paper with your social security number,
driver's license number, credit card number, old ATM cards,
telephone calling cards, and other pieces of vital business
information like bank statements, invoices, and purchase orders.
A dumpster-diving thief could literally rob your business blind
in a matter of hours.
Adm. William Moran, the vice chief of naval operations, told reporters that the top three leaders aboard the USS Fitzgerald, which was badly damaged in the collision off the coast of Japan, will be removed from duty aboard the ship. They are the commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson; the executive officer, Cmrd. Sean Babbitt; and Master Chief Petty Officer Brice Baldwin, who as the ship's command master chief is its most senior enlisted sailor.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The captain of a Navy warship that lost seven sailors in a collision with a commercial container ship in June will be relieved of command and nearly a dozen others face punishment, the Navy's second-ranking admiral said Thursday.
Bitcoin, the first digital currency to gain widespread acceptance, sprang up during the financial crisis about nine years ago. Its attraction, early proponents maintained, was that it offered a way to bypass banks and governments, and to conduct financial transactions more cheaply. Every transaction is validated and recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain that is maintained by a network of computers. While anonymous, the individual transactions are available for all to see on the internet. They are secured by cryptography, the computerized encoding and decoding of data.
But the Charlottesville rally seemed to have a sobering effect. It showed how easily technology can be used to organize and finance such events, and how extreme views online can translate into violence offline.
HONOLULU (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday it was now searching up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) off Hawaii for five soldiers missing after their Black Hawk helicopter crashed during nighttime training.
Reuters was unable to contact BTC-e, whose base of operations was unclear, though it continues to have a website using a New Zealand domain name. It now forwards to a new exchange called WEX, which didn't respond to a request for comment.The couple, who came to the United States in 1992 and have not become legal residents, are among a growing number of business owners with the same status who are scrambling to get their affairs in order amid a crackdown on illegal immigration under President Donald Trump.
On Google, searching for terms such as "Hurricane Maria" will let you donate directly in the search results. Just scroll down and you'll find an option to give $5, $25 or $50 to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy .
PayPal is an online bank and if you want to work online then you must have a PayPal account, you can send and receive cash immediately from anybody in the world in your PayPal account. If you are making money on the web, most online organizations want to send your payment in your PayPal account and in the event that you have an online business and you need to offer your items on the web, at that point you can effortlessly get installment from your clients who need to pay with debit/credit card or their PayPal account. There are many payment processors but PayPal is most simple and secure way to send or receive funds online.
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He declined to discuss how the hack happened, citing an ongoing police investigation. "We took responsibility. How many financial institutions in the past can you find that say within a very short time, 'We are good for that loss, and we issue an IOU for that'? Please find me one."
Now keep in mind that PayPal is taking this service fee from the total invoice sum which includes product PLUS SHIPPING. Usually companies do not overcharge on shipping (I only charge the cost). Using PayPal, my cost to send a product becomes 9% HIGHER than the actual cost, which means I am LOSING even more money from my profit margin.