BitcoinIRA, which offers retirement accounts backed by bitcoin and ether, is planning to add two more currencies to its roster in the next few months. The BitcoinIRA, which did not specify which currencies it planned to include, offers similar tax-saving features as an IRA retirement account but with the return of the high-risk cryptocurrency. Chris Kline, chief operating officer, said BitcoinIRA’s business is thriving, with an average of about $1 million per month in inflows. Duke University professor Campbell Harvey said he is worried about investors allotting too big a portion of their retirement savings to a swiftly changing asset like bitcoin. “It’s a very small piece of the market right now and extremely volatile,” Campbell said. “To put this into your savings, you need to be able to lose everything. CNBC
More financiers are leaving their high-paying careers to try to tap into the hot market of initial coin offerings. For example, Richard Liu abandoned a seven-figure salary to back cryptocoin-related sales that have raised millions in seconds. He is now a partner at FBG Capital, a $50-million hedge fund that has backed roughly 20 initial coin offerings like Tezos, a contracts platform that raised $200 million last year. “Unlike the traditional financial sector, there are no ceilings or barriers,” he said. Wall Street trader Ron Chernesky is in the process of replacing U.S. equities trading with digital currency trading, saying he sees it as “the new gateway to the millennial way of investing and where everything is going from here.” BLOOMBERG
North Korea has reportedly begun a mining operation for bitcoin. Recorded Future, an intelligence company, said the country had virtually no bitcoin mining activity, but suddenly had a significant activity. It is unclear who is running the operations, but Recorded Future suggests that it is probably the North Korean government. “Given the relatively small number of computers in North Korea coupled with the limited IP space, it is not likely this computationally intensive activity is occurring outside of state control,” Recorded Future’s website said. Most people in North Korea cannot access an internet connection. BITCOIN.COM