Photo Credit: cointelegraph.com

Russian Court Decides Crypto Cannot be Seized for Debt Payment

A hearing on Feb 26, Moscow's Arbitration Court decided that Cryptocurrency holdings CAN NOT be seized as a payment to creditors.
The court was considering an application to recover funds from a Debtor, Ilya Starkov, by seizing his crypto assets. The case was requesting that the cort require Tsarkov to provide his cryptocurrency password for his crypto wallet.
The court refused this request.

“If the court had included cryptocurrency assets in the state of insolvency, that would have meant that Russian law recognized cryptocurrency assets as a type of money, which is contrary to the Central Bank’s stance, or as a property, which is not established by the law,” said Kulikov

The court system was careful not to concider cryptocurrency legal tender, which is significant. Furthermore, this means Russians may seek debt asylum in crypto and allow the banks to eat the debt. This is a very interesting precident, and I am curious to see how it will play out in future legislative actions.

Photo Credit: ichef.bbci.co.uk

Bill Gates off the hinges says crypto killing people directly

Bill Gates is claiming that Crypto-currencies are killing people in a 'fairly direct way'

in an ask me anything session on reddit, said that the anonymity of crypto funds terrorists and money laundering.

What??!?

Yes, up until cryptocurrency was formed, terrorist organizations weren't able to get any funding, right?

I'm surprised that such a calculated man would speak so brashly.

"Right now, crypto-currencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way. I think the speculative wave around ICOs [initial coin offerings] and crypto-currencies is super risky for those who go long."

Okay... And money wasn't?

This is utterly absurd. Especially after recent studies showing how cryptocurrencies are significantly less tied to illicit transactions than traditional fiat is. Fiat, residing in the 4-6% range, and crypto the 1-2% range.

Read up Bill. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Photo Credit: cointelegraph.com

Two Indian Crypto Exchanges Halt, Over Discouraging Govt stance

BTCXIndia and ETHEXIndia have sent out the closing signals to customers, citing the 'stress' posed by government activity. Any deposits received after Jan 1 will be automatically returned to the investors bank accounts. The customers have until March 4th to withdraw their BTC, XRP, and INR before a wallet maintenance fee is applied. Trading will be halted March 5th.

“As we heard in the budget speech, the Indian government is discouraging cryptocurrency trading. This has been clear also by government actions in the last year, and has put our business under a lot of stress and putting us in a position where we don't feel that we can continue our business in a professional manner any longer.
Until new rules are in place for tokens on public Blockchains, we are halting our trading (XRP/INR pair) platform and will focus 100% on our consultancy working with permissioned Blockchains.”

India's Minister of Finance also referred to Bitcoin as a "ponzi scheme"

BTCXIndia ended their email, adding they will be launching their own Blockchain Labs which they hope will show the government

"the huge benefits that India can derive from Blockchain technologies, and eventually promote progressive and clear regulation also for the public Blockchain space.”

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