Bitcoins and Pieces: Super Tuesday Edition

PayPal, an Online payments giant, canceled an account by a domain registrar called Epik, purportedly due to suspicions of money laundering concerning its digital currency Masterbucks, reported Mashable, citing “a source close to the situation.” This source reportedly said that the group failed to go through the appropriate legal steps to run Masterbucks and that it was encouraging tax evasion. PayPal purportedly denied that the account was terminated because of Epik’s political ideology, as they claim. Epik is home to far-right websites, whose CEO allegedly defended the white supremacist and a former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, a California-based blockchain startup focusing on the banking sector, rejected the recently much-debated apolitical stance of major crypto exchange Coinbase, which was announced by its CEO, Brian Armstrong. In an interview with CNBC, Garlinghouse said he thinks tech companies have an “obligation” to work toward solving societal issues. “The sad reality is — and I say this as a long-time veteran of Silicon Valley — some of these (societal) problems are, at a minimum, exacerbated by the tech platforms themselves,” Garlinghouse is quoted as saying.

Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith’s lawyer, Brian Klein, has filed a motion to drop the US government’s charges per which Griffith violated sanctions law by speaking at a North Korean cryptocurrency conference, multiple news outlets announced. The movement claims that the government’s indictment doesn’t “specify any alleged overt facts,” and contains no actual allegation of fact.

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has explained who needs to answer in the affirmative to a question about cryptoasset activity included in the draft 1040 federal income tax form for 2020. Per the instructions, a person answers ‘yes’ if they sold cryptoasset, exchanged it for goods or services, exchanged it for the property including other cryptoasset, and received any cryptoasset or free, including via airdrops or hard forks – but not if they just held any crypto, or moved it from one to another wallet they own.

The Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 deposit contract will not be cleared in October as earlier considered, and not for a few more weeks at least, as claimed by the Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan, conversing on the Bankless podcast. Ryan stated that it would go live once it transfers an audit of a critical crypto library, BLST, conducted by cryptography audit firm NCC Group. This could occur in early to mid-November.

Billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma scrutinised global regulation for smothering innovation, urged China to seek a system that contained development, and stated that digital currencies could perform a role in a new worldwide financial system, announced Bloomberg. “Digital currency could create value and we should think about how to establish a new type of financial system through digital currency,” Ma was quoted as saying.
A society of leading Japanese crypto firm CEOs has requested for more crypto legislation and clarity from regulators at a virtual meetup. Per Coin Post, Yuzo Kano, the CEO of bitFlyer, also advised that the cost of self-regulation was on the rise and could be lead to mounting costs for customers. He also believed that some organizations could seek to operate in a legal “grey area” if self-regulatory adherence were not made obligatory for the crypto sector.

The major Venezuelan supermarket chain Excelsior Gama said it would take payments in bitcoin (BTC) and several altcoins, per an official Instagram post. The supermarket said that it had struck a partnership deal with domestic crypto exchange Cryptobuyer. The sale will enable cashiers at 24 branches in and near the capital Caracas to start accepting BTC, ETH, Binance coin (BNB), dash (DASH), litecoin (LTC), stablecoins DAI (DAI) and tether (USDT), and XPT, a Cryptobuyer-developed ERC-20 protocol token. Excelsior Gama will also let customers pay in crypto for online and delivery payments via its website.

Bithumb has launched an automated ordering service, reported ENews Today. The function automatically executes buy and sell orders when a cryptoasset reaches a specified price (selected by a customer). The exchange stated that up to 25 orders could be placed simultaneously, but the service is currently only open to PC version users. However, Bithumb added that a dedicated mobile app is now in the pipelines.
Bitfinex Derivatives, a derivatives platform accessible through crypto exchange Bitfinex, has launched a perpetual contract for silver. The agreement will offer users up to 100x leverage and will be settled in USDT, said the platform.