Right-Wing Reps want more control over Bitcoin, and Factom will be integrated with Microsoft Azure. Here are the cryptocurrency highlights of week 52:
- The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently ruled Bitcoin had to be treated as a currency for tax purposes, herewith exempting Bitcoin from Value Added Tax (VAT). Three Right-Wing French European Parliament representatives are now looking for an alternate way to control the digital currency, and have filed a motion to allow member states to regulate or even ban cryptocurrencies. The representatives argue that this is required because terrorist may use Bitcoins to finance their activities, plus digital currencies are said to possess “certain similarities with a Ponzi scheme”. Following the events in Paris, the French Finance Minister Michel Sapin had also stated that he would push for greater oversight of bitcoin transactions.
- The Bitcoin Foundation, formed in 2012 with the aim of promoting Bitcoin, is trying to recover from the mess it is in. After the dismissal of recently elected members Jim Harper and Oliver Jansen, many found that the Foundation had lost its last source of legitimacy. The Foundation will, however, continue its operations. It has also appointed three new members with the creation of three new seats, and drafted a new mission statement that reads:
To help advance Bitcoin and related technology through education advocacy and outreach across the globe by focusing on three primary areas:
1) Fostering Core Development
2) Furthering education & adoption
3) Working to limit harmful regulations and encourage technical rather than regulatory solutions
- Microsoft is quickly expanding its “Blockchains-as-a-Service” on Azure. After the cloud service recently acquired Ethereum and Ripple capabilities, the platform will now embrace Factom. Ethereum and Ripple both experienced a rally after Microsoft announced their integration with Azura, and for Factom things weren’t any different. The price rallied by 600 percent mid-week, and is still trading more than 400 percent higher than the week before.
- Bitcoin exchange BTCC, formerly known as BTC China, has donated and deployed 100 full nodes to support the Bitcoin network. The nodes have been deployed across five continents, and have been deployed as a result of the recent decrease in the total number of full nodes. Full nodes are of crucial importance to the network, as they hold full copies of the Bitcoin blockchain unlike light (SPV) wallets.
- Instead of a Christmas rally, Bitcoin experienced a pullback this week ending its winning streak that lasted for four weeks. The price dropped by almost eight percent per coin compared to the previous week, or roughly $36. One Bitcoin can current be exchanged at a rate of about $425 per coin.
