As part of their 2016–2017 budget, the Republic of Mauritius, which is an island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa, included regulatory sandbox legislation that can be used by blockchain technology companies to develop and commercialize their applications in the country with access to the African and Indian markets.

In an effort to learn more about the opportunities for blockchain startups in Mauritius, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to James Duchenne, who is the co-founder of Volt Markets and an honorary representative of the Republic of Mauritius’s Board of Investment, the national investment promotion agency.

Former Bitcoin Foundation director Jon Matonis doesn’t waste any time asserting that his new employer is seeking to disrupt bitcoin’s established development process.

Matonis, who joined the secretive startup nChain today, is quick to state that this is the ambition of the London and Vancouver-based operation he now claims has 60 full-time employees, including infamous developer Craig Wright.

The token world is getting crazy, but last week’s Gnosis ICO pushed us over the edge. Gnosis investors bought up approximately 4.2% of the total GNO token supply for $12.5 million (250,000 ETH), giving the project a market capitalization of $298 million (as of April 24).
To be clear: this means ICO investors valued Gnosis — an unproven platform that is yet to be launched — at about $300 million. Moreover, the GNO token does not have any actual purpose except to exchange for WIZ tokens at some point in the future.

The Indian government is currently in the process of determining the fate of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and, with it, the very fate of the future of blockchain technology in India.

A new test version of the Lightning Network is launching in the coming days, marking its latest step toward a long-awaited live debut.

But, what’s most notable about the news isn’t that it’s occurring (the idea has, after all, been in the works since 2015), it’s where the technology will be deployed.

TOKYO – More than 10 Japanese companies are launching exchanges for bitcoin and other virtual currencies, with an eye to tap growing demand after legal changes that make such trades cheaper and easier in the country.

When first contacting CoinDesk, the team behind a movie called “Braid” had big news to share.

Unlike your traditional crowdfunding model, used by the likes of Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the goal of the project was to let a global pool of buyers both crowdfund and profit from the movie. Among the tools at their disposal were ethereum, a global blockchain platform, and WeiFund, a new crowdfunding platform built on top of this emerging technology.

Mitzi Peirone, the director of Braid, heralded the solution as one that would make crowdfunded movies – by the fans, for the fans – more democratic.

“A Kickstarter movie could go on to make millions of dollars and the people that gave money in the first place wouldn’t see a return,” she said.

Further, there were implications for the blockchain sector and its practices.

According to producer Logan Steinhardt, the token was to be unique – not only in that it represented a stake in a movie, but that it was to be the first one issued by a US company in “full legal compliance with applicable regulations”.

At a time when regulations surrounding popular blockchain platforms like bitcoin and ethereum are still murky, the claim was big news. US law firm Perkins Coie, the team said, had even worked on the structure.

Steinhardt said:

“We think that this may open the floodgates for similar structures for all types of crowdsales.”

And then came the regulatory hurdles.

Word in China is out about blockchain technology, as the government made clear in an Informatization Strategy published in December of 2016. The strategy states, “The internet, cloud computing, large data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain … will drive the evolution of everything — digital, network and intelligent services will be everywhere.”

It was an official endorsement for the new digital age and a big boost for blockchain technology.

In a country with $5.5 trillion in digital payments last year (50 times that of the U.S.), “blockchain” is now a buzzword among the titans of industry. And in the race to participate, Chinese banks, builders, suppliers and retailers are pumping out blockchain solutions.

ATLANTA — MAY 2, 2017 — Today bitcoin payments leader BitPay announced that it has entered into a multi-million dollar development agreement with Bitmain Technologies, the foremost provider of the “mining” hardware used to secure blockchains. Over the course of its multi-year agreement with new customer Bitmain, BitPay will create advanced open source software for the miners, mining pools and full node operators which maintain and secure blockchain transactions.

There’s a story going around that Sean Spicer didn’t tweet out his password, that it was some Bitcoin transaction and he wanted people to know it was him. I’m here to examine the claims of the post and try to understand exactly what exactly happened.