Category Archives: Cryptocurrency

Berkshire Hathaway CEO and Chairman Warren Buffett on Monday reaffirmed his aversion to cryptocurrencies.

"Cryptocurrencies basically have no value and they don't produce anything," he told CNBC's Becky Quick in a "Squawk Box" interview. "In terms of value: zero."

"I don't have any cryptocurrency and I never will," added Buffett, who was interviewed two days after he released his annual shareholder letter.

Buffett has been a long-time critic of the world's largest digital coin. He called bitcoin "probably rat poison squared," ahead of the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting. A "mirage," "not a currency," and "tulips" are among the descriptors Buffett has used for bitcoin, according to CNBC's Warren Buffett Archive.

Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger has called it a "turd," and said that trading cryptocurrencies is "just dementia."

Last year, in an attempt to change Buffett's mind, Justin Sun, founder of cryptocurrency TRON and CEO of file-sharing company BitTorrent, bid $4.57 million in a charity auction to have a meal with the bitcoin skeptic.

"When Justin and four friends came, they behaved perfectly and we had a very friendly 3-hour dinner and the whole thing was a very friendly exchange of ideas," Buffett said. He added that neither he nor Sun changed their stance on bitcoin.

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Warren Buffett: Cryptocurrency 'has no value' 'I don't own any and never will' - CNBC

One of the VeChain investors cryptoVegeta tweeted: If those billion-dollar partners believe in #Vechain, who are you to doubt it? Keep accumulating as much as you can; keep constructing your future.

Sunny Lu, CEO of VeChain, was impressed for having VeChain highlighted as the leader and frontrunner in the blockchain industry.

Sunny Lu stated Good Job, Master Shifu, in response to a tweet that reported an improvement that read: After months of work, VeChain/Thor v1.3.0 is ready. It brings many dramatic improvements, especially in terms of performance and efficiency.

Sydney Ifergan, the Crypto Expert, tweeted: VeChain recently published the first preprint on PoA 2.0 Surface. Real Items an Enterprise & Consumer applications built on VeChain Blockchain anti-counterfeit & Consumer Loyalty generates NFT.

Vechain Stats recently tweeted about introducing Manager from VeChainStats Stated that it was the Swiss Army Knife for managing #VeChain assets and node tokens. The CEO felt that it was neat.

There is an increase in the community extensions with the coming of the Manager. The major use for the Manager is to facilitate complete solutions for managing the assets on the VeChainThor blockchain. Best practices in the industry are used in private key management. The wallet, however, will not have access to the private key.

The price checker version of Vechain is out.

The VeChain Price Checker v.3.0.3 is available on Chrome and Firefox. More than 1400+ pairs added from #Binance #Oceanex and #Huobi

VeChain has been highly interactive with the community in the past month. The social response has been high. There were more than normal numbers of comments, replies, shares, quotes, retweets, and other social media metrics. A lot of interesting stuff is happening on the blockchain.

Real Items are providing a demo. Users can try their demo. User can use their stock camera to scan. They will need a PIN to unlock and claim the NFT. The sooner 50 likes are hit, the pin will be released, and the first person to register will get the asset to keep! They are also planning a pop-up store.

The Official VeChain101 merchandise comes with true items on the NFT on the VeChain.blockchain. It is about verifiable authenticity, and real items will be available on the VeChain! The transactions are increasing with the coming of new users, and more of real items are getting added on the Vechain. Early Adopters have an advantage in the process.

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VeChain (VET) Billion Dollars Partners Believe in the Cryptocurrency - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

If you are a follower of the many popular crypto accounts on Twitter you would be hard-pushed to have not seen posts about Tezos.

While many cryptocurrencies Bitcoin included have been performing well since the start of the year, Tezos is likely to be the one you hear about the most.

Is there a particular reason for the recent bullishness for Tezos or is this part of a wider trend in the cryptocurrency industry? Lets start with the basics

Tezos completed its ICO in the boom of the cycle raising $232 million in the summer of 2017. Created by husband-and-wife team Arthur and Kathleen Breitman.

Tezos shares similarities to smart contract platform Ethereum. The key difference between the two lays in Arthur Breitmans belief that Ethereum was beholding to the core developers an argument that was prescient during the DAO hardfork and therefore Tezos bases itself upon a self amending nature.

Holders of Tezos can vote for changes to the cryptocurrency and, should the community reach a majority decision, the changes are processed.

The launch of Tezos didnt go very smoothly though. Issues surrounding lawsuits between members of the Tezos foundation and the Breitmans created headlines. Tezos also had to deal with the issue of whether the cryptocurrency should be classed as a security. This is a common issue with many including Siacoin and EOS which have both recently settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US. For now, Tezos seems to be safe in this regard.

One of the key selling points for Tezos holders is the passive profits that can be achieved by baking a process similar to staking. In essence, this is equivalent to earning interest in a traditional bank account.

With Tezos being based on a proof of stake protocol it allows for users with more than 8,000 Tezos to bake Tezos and earn more in return. This process can be achieved by setting up your own node.

Alternatively, Tezos holders can delegate their baking rights with big cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase and Ledger offering the service. Ledger is offering an approximate 6% annual yield for baking Tezos through its system.

For many Tezos enthusiasts the ability to bake on some of the largest cryptocurrency platforms is one of the key reasons that they see a positive future for the cryptocurrency.

Tezos has been making waves recently as the cryptocurrency has proven strong in the tumultuous market. Many of the popular traders on Twitter have shown their support for the cryptocurrency and suggested the price is only just beginning to show its true nature.

Since the start of the year Tezos has more than doubled and even got close to the lofty heights of $4 before struggling this week much the same as the rest of the markets. Unlike many ICOs though, Tezos is intriguing because the price hasnt struggled comparatively with the other failed projects.

Members of the community believe the option of baking on sites such as Coinbase could prove to be key if new members arrive into the cryptocurrency market, much like they did in 2017. The offer to make passive income, particularly at a time when banks are increasingly offering low interest rates, is an attractive alternative.

As supporters of Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others continue to bicker with each other online proclaiming their chosen cryptocurrency is going to change the world, Tezos has quietly gone about its own business. Whether it can detach fully from other cryptocurrencies and rise when the market is falling permanently is unlikely though. Bitcoin still plays the leading role as the price signal for the rest of the cryptocurrency market.

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Why has the Tezos price made significant gains? - Coin Rivet

27 February 2020

Rahman Ravelli Solicitors

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Cryptocurrency exchanges are under pressure from regulators tocreate a secure messaging system to exchange information aboutfinancial transactions and comply with money-laundering rules. Readthe guide: Cryptocurrency Reducing The Risks.

Last year, the money laundering watchdog Financial Action TaskForce (FATF) advised its 37 member jurisdictions around the worldto impose a rule on what it termed "virtual asset serviceproviders". The rule required exchanges to share informationabout the identities of the sender and receiver of transfers over acertain threshold.

This was criticised both because it expected the industry tocreate a new information-sharing infrastructure and becauseexchanges cannot necessarily always tell when a customer is sendingmoney to another exchange. But regardless of the critics, thecrypto industry must devise a system; which could be along similarlines to the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank FinancialTelecommunication) system used by the world's major financialinstitutions.

At this stage, certain questions still need answers; the mainone being precisely what method should exchanges use to transmitinformation to each other? But there is also the issue ofcompliance with data privacy laws, such as the European Union'sGDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

This requirement that has been laid on crypto exchanges defeatsthe purpose of why cryptocurrencies were created in the firstinstance. But, despite that, there is a clear and unarguable needfor regulation. Exchanges should have know-your-customer checks inplace for those who use them. The tricky issue that really needs tobe addressed is determining at exactly what point they should theybe allowed to reveal any information about their customers to thirdparties if and when they are required to do so.

The content of this article is intended to provide a generalguide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be soughtabout your specific circumstances.

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Cryptocurrency Exchanges Now Have To Devise A Method For The Secure Transfer Of Information - Technology - UK - Mondaq News Alerts

Could this be a sign that the mainstream media is warming up to bitcoin again like they did before the 2017 rally? The Simpsons featured an almost two-minute segment explaining how cryptocurrency and blockchain work with the actor who played Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.

Also Read: 12.6M Viewers Will Hear About Bitcoin Watching The Big Bang Theory

The animated family sitcom show that first aired in 1989 has featured an explanation on the nature of cryptocurrency in its latest episode. The Simpsons is now in its 31st season, and for the 13th episode of the season it brought in Jim Parsons, best known for Sheldon Cooper in the The Big Bang Theory, to explain the concept of cryptocurrency.

In the segment, the animated Parsons tries to prove that he is not a nerd and actually super cool by the fact that he is talking about the subject of cryptocurrency. He also fakes jumping over a few buses in a motorcycle and is filmed with piles of cash stacked behind him. The segment also features a singing ledger that seems to really enjoy it when transactions are recorded on him. The sketch is somewhat informative to anyone who havent heard about the topic before and it avoids mentioning anti-crypto tropes like that it is only used by hackers or criminals, which it could have done.

In a graphic shown near the end of the segment, the TV shows creators seem to acknowledge that they know that the presentation makes them look like they have only a novices understanding of crypto but they dispute that and let us now that they even know who the real Satoshi is. That might be true as The Simpsons featured Bitcoin twice before 2016 and crypto was also included in a Simpsons video game in 2018.

This isnt the first time a TV sitcom involving Jim Parsons has tackled the topic of cryptocurrency. The Big Bang Theory aired an entire episode based on a digital assets storyline in November 2017. The episode, called The Bitcoin Entanglement, showed the cast of geeks and nerds learning about the price rally, suddenly remembering they mined some bitcoin a few years before and dreaming about all the stuff they can buy when BTC hits $5,000.

While dedicating a whole episode to bitcoin was exceptional for a fictional show, the topic of cryptocurrency has appeared on other series before, such as Mr. Robot, Startup, CSI Cyber, The Good Wife, Jeopardy, Almost Human, Person Of Interest, House Of Cards, Parks and Recreation, HBOs Silicon Valley, Supernatural, and Marry Me. Recently even MTV aired an episode of a new show called True Life Crime with a crypto expert (Rachel Siegel) that talked about SIM swap hacks.

What do you think about cryptocurrency appearing on the latest episode of The Simpsons? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

Avi Mizrahi is an economist and entrepreneur who has been covering Bitcoin as a journalist since 2013. He has spoken about the promise of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology at numerous financial conferences around the world, from London to Hong-Kong.

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Cryptocurrency Explained on the Latest Episode of The Simpsons - Bitcoin News

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The evolution of Bitcoin, and subsequently blockchain technology, since the major cryptocurrency topped out at $20,000 has been fascinating to watch. The price may not even be halfway back to that mark some two-and-a-bit years on, but the growth of the entire industry has been exponential.

The 2017 price boom was purely off the back of individual speculative investors who flocked to Bitcoin, not even sure what it was, with the hopes of making money quick. However, the 2020 market, and its place in the greater industry, paints a picture of strong enterprise and institutional interest and adoption. It could be said that we are sitting on the precipice of another massive move for Bitcoin if we can achieve similar interest and adoption from enterprises and institutions as we saw in December 2017.

So, what do we need to get right to ensure that enterprises and institutions will flood enough money and interest into the entire industry - not just Bitcoin - for there to be critical mass adoption? Again, using Bitcoins market price as a metric of the health and interest in crypto and blockchain, we have seen thatindividual interest aloneis not enough anymore.

I spoke with Iqbal Gandham, the managing Director at crypto-friendly trading platform eToro, about what is needed for the cryptocurrency industry to take off in 2020.

There are four components that we need to make crypto work, he said. First is regulation, and that is happening. We are not running scared of regulation any more, we are embracing it.

Second, we need custody solutions. The likes of Fidelity are looking at custody, and third-party custody solutions are being developed. In Germany, thebanks can sell crypto, so the regulation is there and the custody.

Gandham goes on to mention two more components structured products, such as a Bitcoin ETF and utilization which he feels is wallet adoption. However, it feels as if these other aspects will only be realized if custody is dealt with sufficiently first.

The first aspect of getting this adoption right is well underway. Regulation is coming, but it is just a matter of time. However, the second aspect sits on the edge. Custody services are around, and available, but they are still niche and the same level of importance has not been put on this aspect in the crypto space, even though it is vital in the institutional space.

More so, custody is a vast aspect as it also extends to the security of coins kept in cryptocurrency exchanges which are hotbeds of reputation-damaging hacks and scams. Thus, this aspect appears to be the next one that needs to be addressed. The cryptocurrency industry needs to prove it can safeguard these assets for institutions and enterprises, as well as for individuals who are using exchanges.

Understanding the importance of secure and trustworthy custody is the beginning of understanding why institutions have not jumped into the industry entirely. We have seen individuals flock to crypto weighing up not only the risks of a volatile market, but also one prone to hacks and scams.

Recently, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange called FCoin shut its doorsowing $125 millionto its users which it is promising to payback, but without much qualification as to how.. This exchange was labelled as a little suspicious from the outset, when its business model appeared to be producingfalsified trading volume numbers.

Risks like this are still high in the cryptocurrency space, especially for individual investors, who are willing to take them on. However, for institutional and enterprise investors, they are far more risk-averse and are looking for the secure custody of cryptocurrency before making a move.

The work and protections that come with trust-worthy custody ticks a lot of boxes for enterprises and institutions who are eyeing out this nascent market, as Rebecca Aspler, Director of Blockchain at Unbound Tech, explains:

Custodians safeguard assets, minimizing for the investor, the risk of theft or loss. As such should-be-trustworthy vendors, institutional investors alongside with the regulator require crypto custodians to follow up on fiat related regulations and guidelines, whether these are KYC and compliance checkups, periodic account status reports, approval of withdrawals according to the segregation of authorities guideline and at best, insurance of assets by the custodian vendor.

We have already started seeing companies either picking up the mantle to provide secure custody services to enterprise and institutional customers, such as Fidelity andAnchorage, who are part of the Libra Association.

Evidence of the need for strong custody solutions has already been demonstrated by companies like Anchorage and Fidelity with the former picked up by Facebook for its Libra Association simply for the need of such a service in the enterprise cryptocurrency game.

For Anchorage and Libra, it is about creating a framework that allows the cryptocurrency to work without any hiccups, and for that to happen, there needs to be trusted custody which is comparable to the likes of Visa and Mastercard.

We are creating the financial plumbing, same as Visa,saidDiogo Monica, Co-founder, and President of Anchorage. They created the financial plumbing for card networks to be able to process payments, so merchant adoption and card acceptance became worldwide.

Libra is going to be built on top of this new financial plumbing. Libra requires custody services, every single member of the association will require custody services to store Libra and so will any other company that will want to interact with this new digital currency.

But, in the greater scheme of things, the importance of custody is paramount for the next step in cryptocurrency adoption, as Aspler adds:

As risk-averse institutions, and certainly as custodians of institutional money, leading banks must invest in software solutions that include advanced security and platform management capabilities, integra-table within institutions service infrastructure and systems, flexible to tailor to the institutions needs. They also need to deploy on any infrastructure and offer maximum control over security and key management.

The demand is indeed there for trusted custody as many enterprises and institutions are not prepared to risk it on cryptocurrency exchanges and are rather looking to the likes of Fidelity and others, even the German banks who have been imbued with digital currency asset powers. On the other side of things, the offering of such a service from banks and financial institutions also positions them in a good place for the evolution of this new asset.

It would be safe to assume that banks are looking at the growing market of digital assets and wanting to take a portion of it on one hand, while wanting to not lose market share to the Fintech new players that are becoming regulated experts of digital asset custody, Aspler said.

Of course, custody is one thing, but secure custody is another thing and the fact that a company like Fidelity, or Anchorage, offer custody solutions does not immediately ensure they are entirely secure. There is a lot of complicated technology that comes in securing cryptocurrency funds, and as one might expect, it comes down to cryptography.

This is why for Aspler, at Unbound Tech, they have been working on what's been dubbed a virtual Hardware Security Module (HSM), called Crypto Asset Security Platform (CASP,) using secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) in order to better what is already being used as current institutional security measure.

Considering the popular alternatives to institutional security measures, which would usually be multi-sig, HSM, and a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), or a combination of these, one would want to consider the following security concerns, explained the Blockchain Director.

With multi-sig, the confidentiality of the key is as strong as the ability of the signers to keep their key confidential which is very hard. Additionally, multi-sig solutions are usually ledger dependent (on-chain). Thus, multi-sig capabilities require custom coding per each type of currency/token. Any other ledger requires the development of custom code.

With TEE, for example, SGX (Software Guard Extensions) and TEEs run together with other software on general-purpose processors and are therefore vulnerable to key extraction via software side-channel attacks on shared resources in the hardware platform.

With HSMs, one may want to consider that they were mainly designed to protect key confidentiality, not key usage. An attacker who can compromise the client connecting to the HSM, would be able to perform usage with the key without ever attempting to attack the HSM itself.

Aspler hopes that the use of MPC would lead to higher custody security as this technology distributes private keys and transaction approval, validation, and signing, among multiple approvers - including offline participation and bots. This allows custodians and exchanges to predefine transaction approval policies, and to improve their operational efficiency.

If the growth of secure cryptocurrency custody can grow and expand to a place where enterprises and institutions have a myriad of security options that they can rely upon without having to be hesitant, the next few steps as expressed by Gandham can come to fruition.

Suddenly, if there is an influx of enterprises in the cryptocurrency space, the push for structured products will skyrocket as these businesses will know that their funds are safe and secure. More so, it will also lead to the additional retail interest which can push for an increase in wallets and the betterment of that side of things.

Link:
How Big Is The Role Of Digital Asset Custodians In Enterprise Adoption? - Forbes

Early in January, One Click Miner 1.0 Beta 6 was released with fixes for all the issues to Beta 5. Users were then advised to try it. And, they can were further requested to report anything wrong on Github in a way facilitating improved final release.

Recently, Vertcoin tweeted about the release of One Click Miner 1.0 RC1 Improved and added more extensive reporting to the output of the GPU detection step so its easier to see what went wrong. If no more bugs are found this code will be recompiled into the v1.0 final release.

Sydney Ifergan, Crypto Expert tweeted: Since Poloniex disabled Vertcoin, the withdrawals have been disabled from February 27, 2020. Further, Vertcoin have requested investors to move $VTC to the wallet of their choice. Vertcoin-Core is the wallet recommended by the parent site.

The Vertcoin is 6 years old and they are beginning to rock the cryptocurrency world already. We just recollect that Vertcoin was created as a graphics card mined version of Bitcoin in Jan 2014 as response to Litecoin succumbing to ASIC control. It is important that everyday people with desktop computers can mine the network so that network hashrate is as decentralized as possible. Something nice about them is that there is no premine, no ICO and No Airdrop.

Vertcoin believes in that cryptocurrencies are supposed to belong to people. When anything less than this happens it is a failure to the goal for which cryptocurrency was treated in the first place. Vertcoin focuses on keeping the cryptocurrency ecosystem as decentralized as possible.

Alex Turek, MTS Systems Debug Engineer at AMD during his spare-time fights for Asic Resistance in the cryptocurrency space as a Dev Team Member at Vertcoin. He has contributed in terms of Own end-to-end validation of ARMv8 SMMUs for Datacenter Products, testplans, multi-core / multi-IO exercisers, execution, and debug / triage, when he was working for Qualcomm.

Bienvenido Rodriguez, Instructor at The Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack is a volunteer developer at Vertcoin. Currently, he is working on creating a mobile and desktop wallet to interface our second layer solution Lit. Lit is our version of the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

Valentin Anghel is in to the process of mining at Vertcoin. It is evident that the user base at Vertcoin is not only diverse, but it is filled with rich technical expertise. People with commitment make it happen and there are lot of them at Vertcoin.

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VertCoin (VTC) One Click Miner Beginning To Rock the Cryptocurrency World Already - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

Feb 27, 2020 at 12:32 // News

Almost half of the country's retailers forecast that Sweden will completely stop handling physical cash before 2025. The Riksbank is currently piloting a digital currency known as e-krona. Could it be that the reduced fiat currency handling in the nation results in a rampant cryptocurrency market?

The cashless culture could become a breeding ground for the cryptocurrency market in Sweden. Banks and companies and individuals have already begun to prepare for a completely cashless world.

The government, too, is well aware that the cash is vanishing in society and that the trend cannot be reversed. The lack of efficiency of cash has caused the majority of the firm's companies and individuals to switch to digital alternatives. A few thousand individuals have gone so far as implanting microchips into their hands to pay for food and transportation through a gesture.

The reduced use of cash in Sweden represents a positive trend that the government has for many years encouraged. However, it had not been expected that the population would generally move away from cash in favor of more practical alternatives at such a brisk pace.

Several countries in Asia, including China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are undergoing a similar transition. The reduced use of cash in Japan and Korea has unsought led to increased love decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Bitcoin, Tether, and many others. As cognizance and time enough even embrace cryptocurrencies take hold in Sweden, the country may become a significant digital currency market.

Recently, the central bank of Sweden revealed that it started its first test for its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). It wants people to be using digital money since we are in a digital era. The country is trying to follow the bandwagon of stablecoin. Sweden is part of over 16 great nations which includes Japan, Canada, England, Switzerland, etc. - that are busy developing their private stablecoins known as CBDC.

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Sweden Could be the Next Major Cryptocurrency Market - Coin Idol

Facebooks Libra is again gaining heat as yet another firm has joined the independent consortium of Libra, the Libra Association. Per the latest report, a digital asset company, Tagomi is yet another name in a list of members of Facebooks Libra Association,

With the joining intent in place, Tagomi aims to invest about $10 million for the development of yet to launch Libra stablecoin. Noticeably, Tagomis report of joining the Libra Association comes in the wake of Shopifys inclusion in the Libra Association. Interestingly, Tagomi will be the 22nd member of Facebooks Libra Association.

Following the contribution of $10 million to Facebooks Libra, Tagomi can also be able to have a node that gives it authority to validate the transactions of Libra stablecoin.

While the official announcement from Tagomi is yet to be announced this week, the president of Tagomi Marc Bhargava acknowledged the news and stated that;

Were excited to become a member of@Libra_, sharing a common mission to expand financial inclusion. We believe the Libra project is poised to create a simple, inclusive, and global payment system that will empower billions of people left out of the global economy.

Its worth noting that, Tagomi is a two years old entity that establishes itself as a premier broker in crypto and provides users with trading, margin, custody, lending, financing, and more in a single account. The entity focuses on bridging institutional capital to digital assets and supports their democratization.

By becoming the part of Libra Association, Tagomi will spend at least $10 million in developing a cryptocurrency, and this investment will help gather dividends from interest earned on Libra Reserves money.

Tagomi and Shopifys interest in Libra Association is quite surprising to many as many well-known entities such as Visa, Vodafone, Mastercard, PayPal, and Strip rejected the project due to increasing regulatory concerns.

On the other side, Shopify emphasized the importance of Libra Association and stated that they decided to join the group as to make commerce better for everybody:

Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone and to do that, we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to make commerce better in parts of the world where money and banking could be far better. Thats why we decided to become a member of the Libra Association. This is one step, but not the only step well be taking to be a part of the solution to this global problem.

Moving forward, the Libra Association is aiming to increase the number of members. At the moment, the Association has more than 1,400 companies in its waiting list. To join the Libra Association, a two-thirds majority of existing members have to agree to accept a new member.

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Tagomi Becomes the Part of Facebooks Libra Association to Develop a Cryptocurrency - TWJ News

Updated February 26, 2020 11:59:14

Right from the start, something did not seem right about this.

Was it the shed in rural Wales that was supposedly the office of the London Football Exchange (LFE), or the pantomime LFE "founder" Jim Aylward and his obscure video messages about his group's takeover of Perth Glory?

"We are building a football group that is leading to a tokenised ecosystem, so there is going to be utility for the token," he explained on Twitter after the news broke.

It could have been the push by those involved with LFE urging Glory supporters to buy into this cryptocurrency token, even though the group did not yet own the Perth club.

Whatever it was, even Glory owner Tony Sage seemed to be caught unaware.

At first, he said he was on his way to the Europe to finalise a deal to sell 80 per cent of the club to the cryptocurrency group.

He would retain 20 per cent of the Glory and become chairman of the LFE's football group.

That didn't really add up either.

The proposed new owner of the Glory had ambitious goals to buy clubs in France and the English Premier League, but it was unclear how exactly the group would pay for it.

Would it be in cryptocurrency? Would it be cash? Would it be debt?

They were all questions that couldn't be answered probably because there were no answers, as those involved in the proposed sale did not know themselves.

Things turned even more bizarre over the next few days with mixed messages and contradictions adding to the confusion.

The Glory and LFE released a joint statement saying they had reached an agreement for the club to be acquired by LFE.

Sage was quoted in it saying: "The LFE is designed and manned by fans for fans [and it] makes me proud to say I am part of the team and that PGFC is the cornerstone of this wonderful project."

Two days later though, the club released another statement saying no deal he had been done, with Sage saying: "Don't believe fake news. Your club has not been sold and I have not even sent anything to Football Federation Australia (FFA) for approval."

He said he was continuing to do due diligence on the organisation of which he was supposed to be chairman, something that raised even more questions among the club's fans.

The supporters knew something was up.

The subsequent investigative work by some of the club's passionate fans and their backgrounding of journalists helped get to the core of the story.

Less than two weeks after news of the proposed deal came out, it was all off.

The FFA stayed quiet for much of the process, but released a statement saying the sale would not go ahead, putting an end to what had become a saga.

Sage's love for the Glory has been well documented.

His passion is admirable and the amount of money he has poured into the loss-making club is eye-watering.

But this process has damaged the Glory and had many within it questioning its future direction.

For an experienced and astute businessman, Sage should have seen the red flags the supporters so clearly identified from the outset.

Topics:a-league,soccer,sport,perth-6000,wa

First posted February 26, 2020 08:09:33

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A plan to sell Perth Glory to the LFE cryptocurrency firm is over, but the deal never added up - ABC News