the bitcoin of weed posted:

we have not meaningfully recovered from the recession in any metric and we can't lower interest rates to soften the blow this time since they're still at zero

quote:

Bitcoin-enabled fintech platform Coins.ph announced it has been granted an Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) license by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), making it the first blockchain startup in Asia to win such a license from monetary regulators, it said in a statement issued Nov. 17.

“The new license allows Coins to accept and hold customer funds, and extend the functionality of its online and offline payment services,” it explained. “The company already has a very active customer base using its existing payments, remittance, air-time and bill-pay services.”

The move represents a sharp policy turnaround for the Philippine banking regulator. Many central banks are wary of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because these were not created by monetary authorities, and the BSP is no exception. In 2014, it issued a circular warning the public how exchanges using cryptocurrencies are unregulated and “may be used for money laundering and other illicit activities.”

The BSP started to soften its cautious attitude towards Bitcoin and other digital currencies early this year when it issued Circular No. 944, which recognized their benefits for easing payments and money transfers. It outlined broad regulations for businesses that want to operate as virtual currency exchanges.

The BSP has long been issuing EMI licenses to banks and other financial institutions subject to its regulatory authority. It also granted EMI licenses to fintech platforms linked to telecommunications operators such as G-Xchange Inc. and PayMaya as well as to payments systems such as Alipay, Infoserve and TrueMoney.

The EMI license issued to Coins.ph is the first to be granted to a Bitcoin-enabled fintech platform. It is expected to boost customer trust as they can use the platform not just for payments or remittances but also to store funds.

“This license reflects our ongoing commitment to ensure Coins’ customers can store their funds in a safe and secure e-wallet that they can trust,” Coins CEO Ron Hose said in a statement.

The central bank issued guidelines on the issuance of electronic money way back in February 2009. The guidelines, outlined in Circular No. 649, defined e-money as any monetary value represented by a claim on its issuer that meet the following requirements: a) electronically stored in an instrument or device; b) issued against a receipt of fund of an amount not lesser than the monetary value issue; c) accepted as means of payment by persons or entities other than the issuer; d) withdrawable in cash or cash equivalent; and e) issued in accordance with BSP regulations. The electronic instruments or devices refer to cash cards, e-wallets accessible via mobile phones or other similar devices, stored value cards and other similar products.

As electronic money, funds stored with EMI license holders are not considered deposits and do not earn interest. Neither are they covered by deposit insurance. The BSP has also set a monthly aggregate load limit of Php100,000 per account holder being served by each EMI.

Founded in 2014, Coins gives its users access to a wide array of financial services like remittances, bill payments and online shopping through a mobile application. Like most fintech startups, its users would have to set up an e-money account, which may be loaded up in different accessible payment centers like convenience stores, pawnshops and even banks.

But what makes it stand out from the rest is all of its services are powered by Bitcoin, making it one of the first startups in Southeast Asia to use blockchain technology. The startup now has over two million users and has since expanded to Thailand.

“Coins wants to make financial services easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, via their mobile phone. Receiving this license is an important milestone towards extending the ecosystem of services available to our customers,” Coins Head of Business Operations Justin Leow said in a statement.

Coins has received fresh funding worth $9.5 million from investment firms Quona Capital and Naspers Ventures in the first half of the year. According to a study by global consulting firm Accenture, investment in fintech players in the Asia Pacific region has risen from $103 million in 2010 to $4.3 billion in 2015.

quote:

Bitcoin trading is "hard to cheat" and trading of digital currencies have not been hacked in the last decade since it was founded, a cryptocurrency pioneer in the Philippines said Friday.

Blockchain, which tracks bitcoin transactions, functions like a public ledger, said Satoshi Citadel Industries founder Miguel Antonio Cuneta. The company is building the Blockchain ecosystem in the country.

"It's really hard to cheat. If you try to make fake bitcoin transaction, everyone will see it and they will not approve it," Cuneta told ANC's Early Edition.

logikv9 posted:

Either that, or going straight to the library and doing an extended loan on the library's only copy a few days before classes started

Cinnamon Bear posted:

sure wish there was a way to discharge student loan debt outside suicide, now thats really playing chicken

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

lol bitcoin bubble is going to actually gently caress the global economy

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

How do bitcoin people expect to actually make money from it? Do they expect to buy cars or houses or rent with bitcoin?

Rex-Goliath posted:

so does the fbi still have all those buttcoins they seized way back when or were they already liquidated?

The Unlife Aquatic posted:

e: also capitalism would be a lot scarier if there was a dragon who was basically hunger incarnate as the ceo of a fortune 500 company

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

https://twitter.com/jessefelder/status/941328758505603072

quote:

An economy that distributes the national income based solely on the marginal productivity of each unit of capital and labor is an economy that will still feature massive levels of inequality and poverty. This is so for three reasons:

1. Around half of the population neither works nor owns a considerable amount of capital. Their true factor income is around $0.

2. There are considerable productivity differences between different kinds of jobs, and so wage differences would also remain very high even in the absence of rent.

3. Capital is distributed extremely unevenly and so capital payments would remain very unequal even without rents.

No amount of increasing competition, trimming intellectual property rights, or lowering barriers to entry would solve these problems. More specifically, eradicating rent-seeking would not solve these problems because these problems are not caused by rents. Instead, we need a big welfare state to fix problem one, strong (“rent-seeking”) labor organizations to fix problem two, and the redistribution and socialization of capital to fix problem three.

To put it in the simplest terms: the libertarian populist says that rigged capitalism creates huge inequality, but the truth is that unrigged capitalism does the same thing. Libertarian populist arguments correctly point out that policies that inflate the factor payments collected by the rich are bad. But factor payments are bad at distributing income period.

LegoPirateNinja posted:

eisenhower republicanism is the american far left

SKULL.GIF posted:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/943522030015668224

Crowsbeak posted:

You know, what would happen if someone campaigned on bombing the poo poo out the Caymens and Bermuda?

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

so i don't really understand bitcoin.

but what i know is that as there are more bitcoin, it costs more to mine new ones due to the cost of electricity?

and it takes a long time to sell a bitcoin? and everyone is trying to cash out at once? and people went into debt to buy bitcoin?

how is this not a ponzi?

Alpha Mayo posted:

Aliquid posted:

gently caress these people, gently caress "non-sterilized water", gently caress their outcomes

i've had cholera, i've had typhoid, and i wish nothing more than to rid the world of water-borne diseases as well as profit-borne diseases

Reality Loser posted:

I mean, I guess we dont work 16 hours a day 6 days a week in salt mines any more

quote:

The fourth episode of Discovery, Captain Lorca is very upset that Lieutenant Stamets can’t figure out how to make the USS Discovery’s experimental “spore drive” — which would enable the ship to essentially teleport itself to anywhere in the universe, of course — work properly. The clock is ticking and the Discovery needs to insta-warp to a human colony under attack by the Klingons. Lorca uses this moment to motivate Stamets into thinking about the big picture, telling Stamets:

quote:

How do you want to be remembered in history? Alongside the Wright Brothers? Elon Musk? Zefram Cochrane? Or as a failed fungus expert?

THE AWESOME GHOST posted:

loving ew

I can't explain what bothers me so much about this but something about the crossover with the "I loving love science" crowd and the deification of a businessman because he is doing business that is related to new technologies (but still a business lets be real)