Hong Kong-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange BTCC is reportedly launching services in South Korea this month. In addition to a cryptocurrency exchange, the company will offer a wallet service, a mining pool, and a consumer payments service, according to its Korean website.

BTCC, formerly known as BTC China, is launching services in South Korea on Oct. 31, according to the Investor. The beta service will start this month and the exchange “will make its official debut in November,” the publication added.

https://news.bitcoin.com/btcc-cryptocurrency-exchange-south-korea/

The virtuous circle that saw buyers of ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens drive ether's price above $1,400 mid-January has morphed into its diametric opposite.

The initial coin offering boom has fizzled and the price has sunk to just above $200.

This new phase, a vicious cycle downturn that has exposed the ether market's intrinsic connection to the ICO boom and bust, is of course painful for anyone who bought ether in the last 12 months.

But in the spirit of encouraging the crypto community to embrace failure as a real-world source of learning and growth, the experience is also incredibly informative for understanding how value is formed and lost in crypto assets attached to blockchain platforms.

https://www.coindesk.com/gas-aint-gold-why-ethers-price-could-tank-even-if-ethereum-succeeds/

Is the contract fully open?

Computing giant IBM has launched a blockchain-based financial solution that it says has the potential to completely upend the existing status quo in global payments and remittances.

The new solution called ‘IBM Blockchain World Wire‘ combines the Stellar blockchain with digital assets to make instant money transfers possible of a guaranteed value possible.

In July, CCN reported that IBM backed a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Stronghold on the Stellar network. In the same month, IBM announced that it was involved in an environmentally friendly crypto project also built on Stellar.

https://www.ccn.com/world-wire-ibm-launches-stellar-based-blockchain-payments-platform/

 Yonhap News Agency reported on August 23, the Korea Financial Supervisory Authority Electronic Information Disclosure System (DART) released the first half of Vidente's financial report. According to the report, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb's net profit for the first half of this year was 39.34 billion won; sales were 33.06 billion won, and operating profit was about 218.633 billion won. Bithumb's net profit fell sharply this year as the virtual currency market shrank and the market price fell.

It has been three months since UPbit, South Korea’s biggest crypto exchange, was raided by local authorities. Yet, the government has not released a public statement on the investigation.

Did the Investigation Find Nothing?
Earlier this year, UPbit was raided by local financial authorities under the suspicion of manipulating and inflating its balance sheet. The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KFIU) confiscated the company’s hard drives, servers, and computers to evaluate their existing financial data.

https://www.ccn.com/3-months-since-koreas-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchange-raid-what-happened/

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to use blockchain technology to verify North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) certificates

According to American Shipper, the new trial will enable the agency to begin a “real-time fire test” blockchain platform to validate imports from exporting countries and verify that suppliers are “consistent with their US importers”.

https://www.ccn.com/us-border-officials-to-use-blockchain-to-certify-imports-certificates/

Chinese police arrested three suspects suspected of cryptocurrency theft. The hackers allegedly stole bitcoin and other digital assets, estimated at $87 million. The authorities said that so far this is the largest type of robbery of this type in the People’s Republic so far.

https://news.bitcoin.com/three-hackers-held-in-china-over-87-million-crypto-theft/

The short-term station stood at $6,500 and is now reported at $6521.44.