You won’t be able to spend your cryptocurrency in Starbucks anytime soon

No, you won’t be able to spend your cryptocurrency at Starbucks.

Last Friday, Starbucks announced that it would be joining and supporting a project known as Bakkt. If successful, Bakkt will leverage Microsoft’s cloud solutions – probably their blockchain based Azure platform – to create an infrastructure for managing and using digital assets. And get this, they say it will be regulated! Regulated digital assets, whatever next!

Where blockchain and cryptocurrency are mentioned, the hype train is never far behind. Naturally, when the words “digital assets” are used, people immediately assumed this would mean we could spend our cryptocurrency on coffee.

But it turns out this won’t be the case, according to Motherboard .

Bakkt won’t actually enable Starbucks customers to spend their cryptocurrency at one of the coffee giant’s more than 28,000 international locations. Rather, it will function more like an on demand exchange. It provides an enabler for Bitcoin owners to spend their coins in the real world by easily converting the digital currency to fiat.

“It is important to clarify that we are not accepting digital assets at Starbucks. Rather the exchange will convert digital assets like Bitcoin into US dollars, which can be used at Starbucks,” a Starbucks spokesperson told Motherboard. “At the current time, we are announcing the launch of trading and conversion of Bitcoin. However, we will continue to talk with customers and regulators as the space evolves.”

Yet again, it might not be the crypto-utpoia we were promised or are hoping for, but hey: at least nobody is using your device to mine cryptocurrency with the Starbucks Wi-Fi this time around.

Aussie ‘E-Crime Squad’ arrests crypto exchange owner, seizing his Bitcoin ATM

Australian detectives have arrested a 38-year-old man as part of an investigation into an unregistered cryptocurrency exchange.

The man , a resident in Cairnlea — a Melbourne suburb — was arrested at home , where police seized “a substantial amount of cash and false identification documents.”

Authorities also seized a cryptocurrency ATM from a shopping mall in nearby Braybrook, which according to Google Maps is approximately 8 kilometres away from Cairnlea.

The investigation began in June after the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), a government financial intelligence agency tasked with monitoring transactions, provided intelligence regarding reports of scam activity linked to the ATM .

It seems the man had been using the ATM to provide an unregistered cryptocurrency exchange service and continued to do so even after the AUSTRAC handed him with a cease and desist notice on November 1, 2018.

It’s likely that Australian law enforcement is well versed with cryptocurrency scams .

In fact, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in August that victims in the country lost a record  $14.76 million to cryptocurrency investment scams between January and July this year.

The same month, Australian police charged five individuals in connection with a protracted cold call cryptocurrency investment scam that tricked more than 100 victims into losing $2.7 million.

In July, an Australian couple made headlines after they reportedly lost $900,000 to an elaborate scam .

Potentially spurred on by the ongoing narrative about digital currencies and illicit behaviour, Australia is reportedly scrutinizing Facebook over its ‘ cryptocurrency ‘ plans.

Scandinavia’s largest bank just banned all its 30,000 employees from trading cryptocurrency

Scandinavia’s largest bank Nordea announced this week that it’s implementing a ban for its employees to invest and trade in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. With this measure, the bank wants to protect its employees from the risk of unknowingly getting involved in any ethical or illegal activity.

Rumors that Nordea would implement a ban were already going around in Denmark last week. Danish media asked Stine Green Paulsen, director of media at Nordea, to confirm these rumors last week, but she rejected the claim as mere rumors. A few days later, the bank announced that the ban involves only employees who handle big clients – but updated that statement Monday to apply to all 31.500 employees.

According to Paulsen, the ban will not affect employees who already have made investments in Bitcoins. It also doesn’t mean that employees have until the deadline of February 28 to go on a Bitcoin investing-craze – this has been highly discouraged.

The move to entirely ban its employees to trade in Bitcoins is a bold one. In an interview with Bloomberg , Raymond Frenken, spokesman for the European Banking Federation, says that as far as he knows, no other bank has taken measures like this one before.

Translation: So @Nordea, your employees are not allowed to trade #bitcoin but are they allowed to put money in tax-havens? #dkpol

While Nordea’s move can be regarded as necessary, some see it as going too far. Kent Petersen, chairman of the Danish Financial Federation, told the Danish public news-station Danmarks Radio , that banning employees from owning cryptocurrency is stepping way out of line.

Danmarks Radio also spoke to Niels Mosegaard, senior consultant of the DJØF union, who is also highly skeptical of Nordea’s reasoning in this matter. Mosegaard argues that obviously employees should not be speculating on anything illegal, but that this is far from being the case with Bitcoin.

Petersen and Mosegaard represent the two unions of which the majority of Nordea’s employees are members. They make clear that if any of their union members who are employees of Nordea are fired for trading Bitcoin, they will consider taking legal action. In Denmark, employees have the freedom to invest as they please if it is not deemed risky for the company that you are employed by.

Nordea is planning to implement its Bitcoin ban by February 28. How it will be received by employers and the rest of the world is yet to be seen.

According to Bloomberg, Raymond Frenken thinks this might result in other banks taking measures to restrict or regulate employers or clients usage of cryptocurrency.