Today on Bitcoin This Week we discuss the recent announcement from WikiLeaks informing users about Coinbase decision to suspend their account, we comment on the recent offer Roger Ver made to Reddit, we analyze Bitcoin Prices and much more.
Russian Supreme Court Revises Bitcoin Ruling
Back in 2016, a St. Petersburg court ruled against a Bitcoin-related website by the name of BitcoinInfo.ru. The ruling blocked the website because the site was providing info about the virtual currency. A lot has changed since then and now the country seems to be stepping forward to accept virtual currencies. The Supreme Court decided to appeal the previous ruling on the grounds of not having had the owner of the website in question appear at the original hearings, which violated his rights. Russia has changed the political and economic views in regards to cryptocurrencies, with President Putin even sitting together with developer Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, to discuss future crypto-related plans for the country.
Although the pending ruling from the Supreme Court doesn’t mean that they’ll automatically start accepting Bitcoin everywhere, it will show indications of a more positive landscape for the crypto community, making it more attractive for potential investors to start developing businesses in the area.
Roger Ver Offers $100,000 To Reddit
Roger Ver, a strong supporter of Bitcoin Cash, recently tweeted offering Reddit to pay $100,000 USD if they were to appoint a moderator “who supported free speech” in the Bitcoin Forum of the website. Ver commented on a Medium post that explained how the website has been systematically shutting down comments from certain users. The post showcased a few examples of how certain comments were consistently deleted, particularly when users asked moderators why they were blocking content if Bitcoin was supposed to not be controlled by anyone.
Ver, who was recently involved in another “free speech” battle with Twitter, is a strong promoter of this subject. Just last week, Twitter banned the @Bitcoin account from their platform. @Bitcoin is an account promoting Bitcoin Cash (BTH) and not Bitcoin (BTC) itself. Although Ver is not the owner of the account, he did comment on the subject, tweeting an explanation of what had happened and putting the blame squarely on @jack, an investor from Lighting Network, for the whole episode.
Belgium Shows Support Towards Blockchain Industry
The World Food Programme (WFP) just announced that the Belgian government will be making a contribution of €2 million Euros to promote blockchain technology. The technology is being used by the WFP to transform humanitarian assistance and promote innovative projects. The money is planned for the agency to further develop research and trial into the use of drones and blockchain solutions to fight hunger around the world.
The WFP has placed a pilot project for refugee camps in Jordan that’s already making cash transfers to 100,000 vulnerable Syrians more efficiently and transparently. Thanks to this particular pilot project, the project is delivering more for less and offering donors a better value for their money.
Additionally, Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Development Cooperation, Alexander De Croo, commented on the announcement saying that “Innovation saves Lives”. He stressed that the world needs more assistance and protection and that better ways of delivering aid must be implemented to ensure this happens.
WikiLeaks Coinbase Account Suspended
WikiLeaks, the international anonymous publishing and non-profit website, recently announced that their Coinbase account was suspended for violating the terms of service. The announcement, made via Twitter, contained an image of the message displayed by Coinbase as proof that the account had engaged in prohibited use, resulting in its being blocked.
WikiLeaks provided users with a secondary Bitcoin account for people to continue making contributions. In a second tweet from WikiLeaks, they called for a global blockade of Coinbase for being an unfit member of the crypto community. It appears to be that the decision made by Coinbase was influenced by other parties.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, a Bitcoin (BTC) promoter, tweeted how Coinbase had repeated history with the extra judicial embargo made by VISA, MC, PayPal and bans against WikiLeaks. He commented that, even though the embargo was “purely symbolic” since there are other exchanges and wallets, the “symbolism is a pretty poignant reminder of what centralization and banking regulations mean”.
Just last October, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, thanked the US government for the aforementioned embargo, which ended up giving the non-profit over a 50,000% return. As of today, WikiLeaks takes donations in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero and ZCash.
A Week Of Improvement For Bitcoin
Over the past week Bitcoin (BTC) has shown its first week of continuous growth for a while. After opening the week at the $8,300 mark, Bitcoin went down to $7,900 on Wednesday and then continued to show growth as the hours went by. By Thursday, it was back to $8,300 and kept on climbing through the following days. It reached the $8,900 mark on Saturday and closed on Sunday just below $9,000. There are a few possible reasons behind the sudden market prices, but mainly the community is focusing on tax season. Once this period is closed and people have declared, they start trading again, bringing more money into the market and driving prices up. Additionally, there has been other Altcoin-related news that could have driven the prices up, such as Santander Bank starting to use Ripple for faster online transactions.
