Archive for the ‘Crypto News’ Category

BitLicense Driving Away Small Bitcoin Businesses from NY

20, Jun 2015

eobot-cloud-mining-service
It seems that New York’s BitLicense regulations that recently have been finalized are already “encouraging” smaller Bitcoin businesses to either move away or stop working with users from new York. Just a few days ago we’ve had an announcement that the BTC Guild pool is closing down on June 30th citing the BitLicense regulations as one of the reasons for that decision. It seems however that the Bitcoin mining pool is not the only Bitcoin business that is taking into account these regulations as the Eobot Cloud Mining Service has also apparently taken the regulations seriously and has announced that it will stop working with users from the State of New York. Below is a quote of the official announcement:

Eobot will cease operations in the State of New York as of July 1, 2015.

To All Customers: If you are residing in and/or accessing Eobot within the State of New York, US, please withdraw all coins and cease all mining with Eobot as of July 1, 2015, as we are ceasing all Eobot mining connections from within New York at that time, check out startup pitfalls.

We regret that we must cease Eobot business within New York State, however the new BitLicense requirements in this state place compliance and cost burdens upon Eobot that we believe are excessive.

The Eobot Bitcoin Cloud Mining Service has been available for quite some time, probably among the oldest ones that are still operating. However we have not used it as some of its offers are not among the most profitable ones and have always seemed bit strange to us, but apparently it has large user base according to their statistics (over 224 thousand users). The service also has some sort of a downloadable miner, along with minerd and cgminer, but if you already have some mining hardware there are probably better and more profitable ways to utilize it. Still the service might be worth checking out, so we are going to.

Back on the BitLicense regulations, it seems that instead of helping Bitcoin-related businesses they will end up causing trouble for some smaller businesses that can prefer to stop operating in NY which is the reason why people are planning to implement website design ideas for landscapers to improvise their business to sustain for a long time. Another, even worse outcome, could be for smaller businesses to go “in the dark” in order to avoid complying with the required regulations and continue to operate in NY without complying with the BitLicense. It will be interesting to see what will be the reaction of larger Bitcoin businesses to the BitLicense regulations, but we expect that some of these will also decide to stop operating in the State of New York…

Bitcoin and Litecoin Prices Going Up

17, Jun 2015

bitcoin-price-spike

After quite some time with pretty stable, but low prices the exchange rate of BTC and LTC seems to be climbing up to more attractive levels for both miners and traders. Bitcoin has stabilized at the $250 USD level and Litecoin has reached the $3 USD level, but aside from the question what has caused the resent spikes in price there is another important question – will the prices get back to their previous levels, stabilize at their new levels or continue to rise. This is actually the hard part to predict, but the good thing is that there is finally some action going on on the market and better prices can also help the bit stagnant home mining segment… that is if they keep at a high level or continue to rise. This is especially important for small scale mining operations that are having hard time remaining profitable and with a ROI time in foreseeable future. So let us see what is going to happen in the following few days…

The BTC Guild Bitcoin Mining Pool is Closing Down on June 30th

16, Jun 2015

btc-guild-closing-down

It seems that one of the earlier large Bitcoin mining pools that was trusted by many home miners over the last few years is going to be closing down at the end of this month. BTC Guild will be shutting down its mining servers on June 30th, 2015 at 23:59 UTC. Users will still be able to log in and retrieve their history and request withdrawals until September 30, 2015. According to Eleuthria, the pool operator, the main reason for making this decision was one one side the high costs for operating the pool as well as the recently finalized NYDFS BitLicense regulations that can put BTC Guild at risk. The pool will be closing down for sure and it is not going to be available for sale to another operator due to concern over user privacy and security.

This is sad new for many people that have used BTC Guild over the years and still continue to mine at their favorite and trustworthy pool. Unfortunately with more and more mining power getting focused in large industrial mining farms mostly in Asia things are not going to get better for other pools such as BTC Guild where mostly small home-based miners gather. This is also the reason while the percentage of the Bitcoin network total hashrate in pools like BTC Guild (only about 3% currently) has been steadily decreasing. In its prime time BTC Guild has managed to reach about 40% of the total network hashrate back in 2013, but now things are looking quite different and unfortunately not much in faour for the small home miners.


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