February 19, 2016 - In This Issue:

 

   

Sony Corporation Opens To Bitcoin
On March 17th 2016, Sony Corporation will finish judging all the projects presented at the Fintech Innovation Challenge 2016, organized by the Japan-based company itself alongside Matchi. The challenge aims to bring the best minds in banking and the world's brilliant innovators together.

It was only a few days ago, in fact, that Sony Corporation announced the Fintech Innovation Challenge, a competition open to PoC (Proof of Concept) projects.

Sony will choose the winner that will continue their PoC project within the company.
Bitcoin Price - Another Day, Another High
The indicators are diverged at every timeframe from 5mins to 1day, but frankly, it has become futile to try and call a top for this wave. It cannot continue indefinitely without correcting, but so far it has defied reason, and may continue above the envelope

There have been some entry opportunities into this trend, but its over-stretched upside distance perhaps leaves traders taking profit and then having to enter again. Hopefully this has been profitable for many, and good luck if you're still in the trend. To this analyst the relentless advance seems incredulous.

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New Australian Political Party Claims Bitcoin Will Bring 'Democracy 2.0'
A new political party in Australia wants to replace the existing political system with a system that allows people to vote using bitcoin, according to Reuters. The Flux Party believes that voters can use bitcoin to grant votes on legislative proposals. It believes bitcoin will enable representative democracy in the information age.

The party's goal is to elect six senators who will not propose policies but will vote on legislation at the direction of their members, who will deliver votes on every bill online.

"If they didn't have to be senators, if they could just be software or robots they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do," Flux Party co-founder Max Kaye told Reuters.
Opinion: Here's why you have to start taking bitcoin seriously
Bitcoins have just gotten serious, and people are going to have to start paying attention to this digital currency. That means investors, governments, and those trying to fight crime as well.

This was already true even before the news out of California that criminals just used bitcoins to extort $17,000 in blackmail from a hospital and make, so far, a clean getaway.

Bitcoins are booming. They have doubled in price in the last six months. Indeed bitcoins were actually the best performing currency in the world last year. I ran an exhaustive screen on FactSet, making sure to include everything from the Afghanistan afghani (down 16% against the U.S. dollar DXY, -0.19% ) to the Zambian kwacha (down 42%). Bitcoin trounced them all. The dollar value of each bitcoin jumped 40% during 2015, from $310 to $434. (The currency in second place, the Gambian dalasi of all things, was nowhere near: It rose just 9% against the U.S. dollar.).

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IBM Bets Big On Blockchain, The Bitcoin Technology That Could Revolutionize Business
IBM will announce its plans for developing blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underpinning bitcoin, on Tuesday, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, as the company seeks to take a lead on what could become a revolutionary technology.

IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty will reportedly announce details of the company's plans to advance blockchain technology at a conference Tuesday, including plans to test its own version of the blockchain software during 2016 and its ongoing collaboration with the Hyperledger project.

IBM is among a number of companies that have contributed code to the Hyperledger project, which is run by the Linux Foundation, and seeks to build an open source repository of blockchain code that will address current gaps in technology.

"The Hyperledger Project is a collaborative effort to focus on an open platform that will satisfy a variety of use cases across multiple industries to streamline business processes," the foundation said in a statement. "Peer-to-peer in nature, distributed ledger technology is shared, transparent and decentralized, making it ideal for application in finance and countless other areas such as manufacturing, banking, insurance and the Internet of Things."

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