Here’s what happened this week in Bitcoin in 99 seconds.
Earn.com announced its acquisition by Coinbase. Earn.com began under the name 21.com. Their original business plan involved Bitcoin hardware projects and raised over $110 million, although their efforts did not gain traction. 21.com then rebranded as Earn.com and pivoted to paid email services. It remains to be seen whether Coinbase can make a go of this troubled company.
On Wednesday, Pavel Durov, founder of the popular instant messaging app, Telegram, revealed that he’s using Bitcoin payments to circumvent a Russian ban of his service. Durov, who also founded VKontakte, the so-called “Russian Facebook,” is paying Bitcoin rewards to network admins who provide Russian users with continued access to Telegram. Russia banned Telegram on Monday, for refusal to share its keys for message decryption with the government.
The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced that it will be ending trading services for the Japanese market. Kraken’s decision results from greatly tightened regulation of all Japanese crypto exchanges, following the half-billion Dollar hack of Japanese exchange Coincheck in February.
On Friday, Polish Bitcoiners organized a protest against the draconian Bitcoin tax laws recently passed by Poland’s tax ministry. The protestors met in front of the tax ministry to oppose the tax of 1% levied on all Bitcoin trades. The way these taxes are structured, those who make many small transactions would be taxed excessively, to the point of debt.
That’s what happened this week in Bitcoin. See you next week.
