Luxury automobile retailer Post Oak Motor Cars is reportedly the first Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Bugatti dealership in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as payment, according to an official press release published September 5. The luxury auto retailer, owned by American businessman Tilman Fertitta, has integrated crypto payment service provider BitPay to let clients purchase cars with crypto. According to the press release, the Texas-based firm will accept purchases in crypto from customers worldwide. Fertitta commented that the company decided to provide the new payment option in order to offer their customers “the very best buying …

Thursday, September 6: crypto markets are blisteringly red, with virtually all of the top 100 coins posting hefty losses on the 24-hour charts, as Coin360 data shows. Market visualizat ion from Coin360 Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at around $6,492 at press time, down almost 6.32 percent on the day, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin Price Index. Having broken through the $7,000 threshold August 31, Bitcoin saw a solid uptrend until its sudden plummet yesterday, September 5. The top coin is now around 8 percent down on its weekly chart. On the month, however, Bitcoin remains up by around the same figure …

The crypto automated trading machine (ATM) market will grow to $114.5 million by 2023, according a report published Sept. 4 on ResearchandMarkets.com. Researchers expect the cryptocurrency ATM market to grow from $16.3 million in 2018 to $144.5 million by 2023, citing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54.7 percent from 2018 to 2023. According to the study, significant growth during the forecast period will be from two-way ATMs, which let customers change digital currency into fiat and vise-versa using a single machine. The study says that the machines’ functionality is the key driver of two-way crypto ATMs’ popularity among …

Germany’s joint stock company Deutsche Boerse (DB) has established a dedicated unit for blockchain and crypto assets, Finextra reported September 3. The newly established “DLT, Crypto Assets and New Market Structures” unit will comprise a 24-person team led by Jens Hachmeister, and will explore the disruptive potential the technology could have for financial markets infrastructure, as well as the new products DB could develop to enhance its existing offerings. As Hachmeister outlined: "Deutsche Boerse has been active with the technology in a first phase of ideation and exploration [...] However, these explorative steps have not been coordinated on a group-wide …

Germany’s joint stock company Deutsche Boerse (DB) has furthered its partnership with blockchain-based liquidity provider HQLAx, making a million euro investment to become a minority shareholder, a press release announces Tuesday, August 28. Deutsche Boerse AG is a German marketplace organizer and transaction services provider which had as much as €3.695 billion ($4.327 billion) in total equity as of 2015. The two parties, which originally partnered in March to produce a blockchain-based securities lending platform using R3 Consortium’s Corda technology, said the move allowed them to expand their activities in the field. “This partnership gives us the opportunity to develop …

Stockholm IT Ventures AB (SITV), a Swedish company specializing in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, has announced its subsidiary has finalized a software license agreement with Valens Bank, according to the official August 22 press release. The agreement between Blocktrade Technology Ltd. (BTT), a subsidiary of SITV, and the German Valens Bank will allow the “multi-currency financial services startup” to “use the BTT Crypto Trading Toolbox exclusively for Crypto Fund Trading.” The press release notes that this is the second agreement between BTT and Valens Bank connection with digital financial services. In exchange for a 1.5 percent yearly license fee for …

The IOTA Foundation released a public statement August 8 in order to quell fears of a major disagreement among senior management after a transcript of a discussion between the founders and the Board of Directors was leaked. A statement seen by Cointelegraph explains that following a period of uncertainty over IOTA founders Serguei Popov and Sergey Ivancheglo’s access to the Foundation’s Board of Directors, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would now allow them access. As a German-registered non-profit, the IOTA Foundation needed to act within the law, meaning changing its statute is possible “only by a supervisory board resolution,” the …

Cryptocurrencies — what are they? Money? Commodities? Securities? Utility tokens? Or something else? Few national governments seem to be in any kind of agreement on this question, and for now, at least, their divisions have given such currencies as Bitcoin and Ethereum a floating, indeterminate status on the global stage. As a result, cryptocurrencies lack a single, definite existence, with some nations treating them as money (e.g., Japan, Germany) and others treating them as an unregulated, speculative asset (e.g., Mexico, Denmark), making them the financial equivalent of Schrödinger's cat. However, as this review of classifications of crypto throughout the world …

Germany’s second largest stock exchange, the Stuttgart Börse, has revealed plans to develop a new platform for Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) as well as a multilateral crypto trading venue, Finextra reported August 2. The German bourse, which had a trading volume of EUR 81 billion (about $95 billion) across all asset classes in 2017, had already this May unveiled a prototype of its zero-fee crypto trading app for the public, dubbed “Bison,” slated to be released in September. Now the bourse is setting its sights on the primary and secondary markets by developing both an ICO platform and a multilateral, …

Cryptocurrency exchange BitBay has partnered with a Berlin-based blockchain-powered equity fundraising platform Neufund, according to an August 2 press release. The partnership will reportedly enable investors to buy and sell equity tokens with fiat currencies. According to the press release, Neufund is aiming to become the first end-to-end primary issuance platform for security tokens, specializing in equity tokens. The company backs up its objective with a study conducted by Toronto-based firm Polymath, which says that by 2020 the security token market will hit a value of $10 trillion. Neufund believes that tokenized securities will provide necessary liquidity to traditional investment …

A new blockchain-driven company has bold plans to establish a global network of health centers designed to help people lead active and longer lives. Although life expectancies around the world are soaring, BitVit argues that many of these extra years are dominated by sickness for too many years. Research cited in its white paper suggests German women can currently expect to live until they are 83, but only 72 of those years will be in good health. For men the average lifespan is 78 years, with nine of them blighted by sickness. BitVit hopes to offer a “holistic solution” which …

Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin referred to Berlin as “the most important city in the blockchain cosmos”, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported July 25. Lubin said that, "Berlin has the infrastructure, Berlin has the talent, the really good programmers are here." Lubin added that, if Berlin wanted to maintain its status as a blockchain hub, "the government needs to set up more programs to promote blockchain." According to Lubin, blockchain is still in its infancy. The Ethereum co-founder, who now is concentrating on app development on the Ethereum blockchain with his company ConsenSys, said: "We've seen a lot of bubbles bursting, and …