Coinbase Card Launches And Bitcoin SV Delisted
April 16, 2019 Weekly Crypto Round Up
Coinbase, It’s Everywhere You Want To Be
Coinbase and financial services juggernaut Visa have teamed up to launch the Coinbase Card. Coinbase, the popular San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, hopes the new financial product will enable users to “spend crypto as effortlessly as the money in their bank.” The new card will be issued by Paysafe Financial Services Limited and promises customers they can use it worldwide and with world-class security features.
The Visa debit card will support bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin balances on Coinbase. Merchants will receive traditional fiat currency after the cryptocurrency is converted during the transaction. A new app will help users pick which cryptocurrency they want to use and provide other tools like instant receipts and spending categories.
While the new card removes the unnecessary step of loading funds required by existing crypto cards, the fine print proves the card is still far from perfect. Initially it will only be made available to UK customers and currently there are no plans to roll out the card beyond Europe. The £4.95 plastic card issuance fee is nominal, but any amount of cash withdrawn above £200 per month will incur a 1% fee for domestic withdrawals and 2% fee for foreign withdrawals. Likewise, domestic point-of-sale purchases will incur a 0.2% fee and foreign point-of-sale purchases will face a whopping fee equivalent to 3.0% of the transaction value.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Wright
Craig Wright, Australian computer scientist and businessman, has intensified his claims that he is behind the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. The pseudonym was used by the group or individual who authored the original Bitcoin whitepaper and developed and deployed the network. Wright is perhaps most well-known for his involvement with the November 2018 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork. During the fork, a group led by Wright campaigned to increase the BCH blocksize to 128mb and eventually forked the BCH blockchain from the Bitcoin ABC group to form Bitcoin SV, or Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision.
While the list of possible identities behind Satoshi Nakamoto is extensive, none have tried as hard to convince the public of their connection with the name as Craig Wright. He has even gone so far as to threaten lawsuits against those who deny his self-proclaimed identity. However, many believe Wright’s claim is nothing more than an elaborate hoax and any evidence offered to support the claim has yet to prove anything.
In response to Wright’s aggressive tactics, a portion of the community has rallied against him and called for exchanges to delist BSV. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, quickly became one of the faces of the movement. After tweeting “Craig Wright is not Satoshi. Anymore of this sh!t, we delist!” and “this is going to far”, Binance announced it would delist the coin on April 22nd. ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees demonstrated his support of the decision and said ShapeShift would also cease trading support of BSV within 48 hours. Others are pushing for a May 1st organized delisting of Bitcoin SV across multiple exchanges, but based on the history, the Craig Wright story is far from over.
- China’s National Development and Reform Commission is looking to phase out cryptocurrency mining across the country due to the negative environmental consequences
- The LA Times website is now a Brave Browser verified publisher and can begin accepting tips in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT)
- Augur (REP) launches version 2 of their much discussed prediction market platform
93million subscribers of YouTube’s PewDiePie channel will now need to watch the Swedish streamer on DLive after he signed an exclusive livestreaming partnership with the blockchain powered platform
“The blockchain is real, its technology, a lot of people use and attest to it today and we think it will work over time.”
— JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon testifying before the House Financial Services Committee of the United States Congress
