Luke Parker

The Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia has announced a plan to raise a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency via an ICO. The breakaway state has long vied for international legitimacy and has struggled to attract investment to fund its internal development projects — a situation it hopes to turn around by creating a state-sponsored cryptocurrency.   

On Wednesday morning, the Bitcoin Core development team released a rare statement concerning the safety of Bitcoin users’ coins during the potential hard fork for Segwit2x, which is scheduled to occur in November. The developers state that the hard fork is not supported by the majority of the Bitcoin users and developers, which makes it contentious, and therefore puts many user's bitcoins at risk if they store them with the wrong services.

Earlier this week, Vanuatu became the first sovereign nation to accept bitcoins in return for granting citizenship through its DSP Citizenship Program.

The Chairman of the Vanuatu Information Center (VIC) – which oversees Vanuatu citizenship applications -  Geoffrey Bond, had sent an official request earlier this month seeking permission to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. Andrew Solomon Napuat MP, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Vanuatu, affirmed the decision last week. 

On October 25th, the Bitcoin blockchain is set to hardfork and create a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Gold (BTG). Existing private keys holding a Bitcoin balance at that time will be credited with the same amount of Bitcoin Gold on November 1st, similar to how they received Bitcoin Cash at the beginning of August.

The Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) has released a list of the first 11 companies permitted to operate exchanges that trade fiat currencies against digital currencies such as bitcoin. 

Since the Payment Services Act (which legalized digital currencies in Japan) went into effect in April this year, all companies trading fiat for cryptocurrencies were required to register as a ‘virtual currency exchange business’. The law was enacted with the provision of a 6-month grace period to give companies the opportunity to complete registration. Those operating digital currency exchanges before the introduction of the registration system were labeled ‘deemed operators’ and fell into a few different statuses. According to the Japanese financial publication Newspicks, 17 companies remain under review,12 have chosen to shut down at their own discretion and two have not applied for registration.

Korean gaming giant Nexon announced on Tuesday the acquisition of Korbit, Korea’s first ever Bitcoin Exchange, the second largest in volume behind Bithumb.

Nexon’s holding company (NXC) announced its plans on Tuesday to acquire 125,000 shares of Korbit for 91.25 billion won (approximately US $80.3 million), giving it a 65.19 percent ownership stake in Korbit. The deal is being billed by Korea’s leading financial newspaper Hankyung as “the first large-scale merger & acquisition among domestic virtual currency-related companies.”