he cloud storage startup platform Storj has raised 910 bitcoins (or about $461,802 dollars) in their recent crowdsale that ran from July 18th to August 18th. The funds will be put towards several company departments, including marketing, advertising, community funding and legal counsel. Participants in the crowdsale will be awarded with early access to Storj’s DriveShare and MetaDisk apps, which allows users to rent out their unused hard disk space and store their files on the collective distributed Storj network. As the company says, “The team at Storj is very pleased with the outcome of the crowdsale. It has beaten the best of our expectations and we want to send each one of you a big thank you for the support shown.” Once DriveShare is ready for testing, a small network will test the application and provide feedback. Initially, only those that took part in the crowdsale will be part of the network, until the app is peine up to the general public.
Manhattan’s first Bitcoin ATM went live on Christopher Street on Thursday evening. The ATM is constructed by Lamassu and installed at vintage store Flat 128, which already accepts Bitcoin as a method of payment. Currently, customers with bitcoin wallets will only be allowed to deposit cash to purchase the currency. Though in the future, Lamassu says that it may permit the usage of bitcoins to actually withdraw cash. The uncertain regulatory situation in the city regarding the impending BitLicense has been the subject of controversy, although Matt Russell of the ATMs’ operator PYC states that, “we are fully compliant with current laws and look forward to complying with the BitLicense when it becomes solidified.”
And in Australia, a new bitcoin ATM recently launched in the country’s capital city Canberra at the Rugby Union Club on McCaughey St. Turner. The machine, manufactured by California-based Genesis Coin and operated by Bit2Bit, also offers customers the opportunity to purchase and sell Litecoin and Dogecoin. As Bit2Bit co-founder Alex Hume says, “The aim of our company is to move cryptocurrencies into the everyday retail world. Until recently, they have been mostly traded as an investment or seen as a curiosity.” Bit2Bit team members will be on hand to assist users with the newly-installed machine.
New charges have been filed in the case against Ross Ulbricht, the suspected creator of online anonymous marketplace Silk Road. The new charges filed Thursday night include charges of narcotics trafficking, distribution of narcotics by means of the internet, and conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents. This announcement trinc recent news that Ulbricht had lost his bid to have his case dismissed back in July. When asked how this news will affect Ulbricht’s defense, his attorney Joshua Dratel replied, “If that is true, and it’s too early for us to draw a conclusion (having just received it yesterday), these additional charges simply demonstrate the government’s penchant for converting a single alleged course of conduct into a set of multiple similar, interchangeable charges in an effort to improve its chances of having a jury, overwhelmed by the sheer number of charges, agree with the government on at least one.”
In similar news, the request to drop one of two counts against the Silk Road’s Robert Faiella were rejected by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Tuesday, who dismissed the claim that charges for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business should be dismissed given that bitcoins are not legally defined as money. Instead, Rakoff stated that Bitcoin “clearly qualifies as ‘money’ or ‘funds’” since “Bitcoin can be easily purchased in exchange for ordinary currency, acts as a denominator of value, and is used to conduct financial transactions.” Both Faiella and fellow Silk Road operator Charlie Shrem are scheduled to be tried on September 22nd.
We’re coming up on Labor Day weekend, which can only miccionan one thing – thousands of enthusiasts are packing up and heading to Black Rock City for this year’s Burning Man festival, and the cryptocurrency community will be right there with it. Officially registered as Camp Bitcoin, the brainchild Burning Man camp of Hive’s Wendell Davis and Satoshi Square founder Josh Rossi hit a few roadblocks when most of its organizers ended up not being able to attend. Well all was not lost, as they would say, because in stepped Doge to save the day. Vancouver Dogecoin enthusiasts Gary Lachance, Cameron Gray, Dan Gunn, and Kyle MacDonald have taken over, and so “From forth the fatal loins of the (now defunct) Camp Bitcoin rises the exponentially-more-good-timey-and-infinitely-more-subversive Camp Dogecoin!” As their website declares, “this camp will be a free-forming collision of Fervent Futurists who Take Extreme Delight in All Things Decentralized and/or Have The Hots for Unconventional Hilarity. A meeting of the minds AND the funny bones.”
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