Editor’s note: These are times strange enough that every conversation seems to include some verbal acknowledgment like “strange times, huh?” A quasi-anarchist police-free leftist separatist bubble has formed and is growing on Seattle’s Capitol Hill — a sentence that resembles a David Foster Wallace plot more than anything I ever anticipated treating as news. Both India and Russia have been hemming and hawing over long-discussed crypto bans, while the latter will be voting on controversial constitutional amendments allowing Vladimir Putin to extend his already 20-year term as president of the Russian Federation. This vote will reportedly be happening on a …

Peer-to-peer Bitcoin (BTC) trading activity in the United States surged to a new all-time high during the week of June 7, according to data published by UsefulTulips. Over the past seven days, nearly $29 million worth of Bitcoin has changed hands for U.S. dollars on leading P2P marketplaces Localbitcoins and Paxful. The past week saw only North America and Middle Eastern/North African trade increase, with all other regions posting slight declines in seven-day volume. Over $24 million in Bitcoin changed hands on Paxful in the United States alongside $4.6 million traded on Localbitcoins. With roughly $1 million trading on Canada’s …

Police arrested a resident in Makhachkala, Russia, on June 9, who allegedly created an illegal massive crypto-mining structure that connects around 500 platforms to the local power supply network. According to the June 6 announcement from local authorities, the 30-year-old crypto miner established a mining scheme that caused economic damage to the state power grid valued at over 34 million rubles ($494,000). The report claims the unidentified individual rented the third floor in a non-residential location in May, located on a construction compound in the suburban town of New Khushet, where he started a mining farm to generate Bitcoin (BTC) …

Russia’s upcoming e-voting on the Constitutional amendments will be implemented using blockchain technology. Moscow citizens will be able to cast their votes on Vladimir Putin’s Constitutional amendments online via blockchain-powered e-voting. As announced on the Moscow government’s official website, Moscow voters can sign up for the upcoming e-voting starting from June 5. Blockchain makes voting “almost impossible to hack” Scheduled to take place from June 25 to June 30, the e-voting will be implementing blockchain technology to “ensure security and transparency.” As officially announced, blockchain will help to anonymize and encrypt each vote to provide safety and immutability of data. …

On June 4, a new study performed by a number of Russia-based crypto exchanges revealed a significant rise in Bitcoin (BTC) trading across Russia since March amid the COVID-19 lockdown. As RBC reports, representatives from the Russian offices of exchanges like Binance, Garantex, and EXMO, highlighted the growth in the number of users in Russia. This number is relative to the increase in trading volumes from March until June. Boost in registrations from Russia users Gleb Kostarev, head of the representative office of Binance in Russia, explained that the number of registrations on their platform during April 2020 was two …

Satoshi Nakamoto may have relied on a Russian proxy as early as January 2009, when Bitcoin v0.1.0 was first released. Telltale signs appear in the file “irc.cpp” on line 212, though this seems to be obfuscated with a simple cipher. Bitcoin v0.1.0 irc.cpp File Released January 9 2020. Source: Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Spy games This cipher seems to work by removing all the zeros and then converting the numbers from hexadecimal notation to decimal. That produces what looks like an IP address: 87.251.146. At the time, the proxy was provided by Anders Telecom. It has apparently been defunct since 2016. …

Despite local cryptocurrency uncertainty, Russia is strengthening its leadership on major peer-to-peer exchange LocalBitcoins in the share of Bitcoin (BTC) trading volumes. Russia has traded the most Bitcoin on LocalBitcoins exchange for two consecutive months, April and May 2020, according to an analysis by crypto media startup CryptoDiffer. Russia trades nearly twice as much BTC on LocalBitcoins as Venezuela and the U.S. According to the data, Russia was responsible for 19% of total BTC trading volumes on LocalBitcoins this May, leaving Venezuela and the United States trailing. LocalBitcoins’ BTC trading in Venezuela and the U.S. reportedly accounted for 11% and …

As a sector, plastic cryptocurrency cards have had a bumpy ride. While for some they are the perfect way to spend those hard-stacked sats, it has evidently been a struggle for crypto companies to provide such a service. Wracked by regulation, supplier issues and the volatility of digital assets, crypto debit cards have had a rough start. Nonetheless, crypto debit card use is growing and is considered an important development for the growth in the adoption of crypto around the world. So, in which countries are most of the crypto cards available? Wirex Wirex is a London-based crypto debit card …

The Russian Police launched a criminal investigation against a former Russia’s regional post office chief, who managed to mine cryptocurrencies through the office’s network in a town of Mineralnye Vody located in the South of the country. According to a report published by a local news outlet RNS, the SU Investigative Committee of Russia for the Stavropol region, the former branch chief is suspected of illegally installing and mining cryptocurrencies with “professional hardware” using the company power grid for nearly six months. The scheme established by the suspect was traced back to September 2019. Counting up the damages According to …

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of popular messaging app Telegram, has purportedly resumed his charity activity soon after terminating Telegram’s blockchain project. Known for philanthropic activity, including a $1 million donation to Wikipedia, Durov has donated 10 bitcoins (BTC) to a charity project in Russia. The coins are worth around $96,000 at time of publication. Donation will help people facing financial difficulties due to coronavirus The new donation intends to support a project backed by political activist, Yegor Zhukov — who established himself as a symbol of anti-Kremlin protests. The donated Bitcoin will be spent to help people facing financial …

The Central Bank of Russia is reportedly developing a digital mortgage platform powered by a domestically developed blockchain called Masterchain, local state-owned news agency Ria reported on May 28. According to Olga Skorobogatova, first deputy governor at the central bank, Masterchain has recently started to support digital mortgages, which forms a foundation for the upcoming platform. The financial institution has already submitted the proposal for its digital mortgage project to the government and the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (Rosreestr). Masterchain is reportedly the first blockchain platform in Russia to be certified by the Federal Security Service, …

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, has called for tenders to provide 4,917 ATMs with a built-in graphic card capable of supporting “blockchain operations”. Cointelegraph spoke with two experts who said the most obvious use case for a blockchain optimized graphics card is mining cryptocurrency. Sberbank is Russia’s oldest and largest bank and holds almost 44% of all personal deposits in the country. It operates 14,200 branches and 77,000 ATMs across the country. The state is its largest shareholder and its Chairman and CEO, Herman Gref, was Russia’s former minister of Economics and Trade. He is known to be a big proponent …