- Australia regulates Crypto Taxation with Law!
- Supermarket Chain Pick n Pay tests Bitcoin Payments!
- New at A & O Hotels: Pay your Room with Bitcoin!
- Russian Elite Universities offer Crypto Currency Courses!
- Bank for International Settlements supports the use of DLT!
Until now, a double tax had to be paid for the purchase and sale of crypto currencies in Australia. In the course of a draft law by the Australian government, this obstacle to crypto trading is now to be abolished.
Already in May it was reported that the Australian government plans to lower the tax hurdle. Now activity seems to come in this attempt. In a statement with the promising title of "Removing the double taxation of digital currency", the Turnbull government promises to honor the promises made for the 2017/18 budget. With this action, it is promised a further step in the direction of making Australia the global FinTech center.
The elementary part of the new law is that Australians will only have to pay a tax on the trade in crypto currencies. Value added tax, which had to be paid at the time of the purchase of a digital currency, will therefore be omitted from now on.
This means that crypto currencies are now taxed in the same way as physical money. The new system of taxation is retroactive from 1 July 2017 onwards and is thus in line with the government's announcements in budget 2017/18.
The purpose of the new law is to make it easier for citizens to acquire new innovative digital currencies. Similarly, the crypto business in Australia is to be revived, in which the government sees the possibility of creating jobs and wages.
The Turnbull government would continue to cooperate closely with Australia's FinTech industry to create a work environment that is both internationally competitive and will play a central role in the long-term transformation of the national economy.
Pick n Pay, one of South Africa's largest supermarket chains, has chosen to test Bitcoin payments at its main business. The retailer is supported by the companies Electrum and Luno. While Electrum offers the platform for payments, Luno has developed the infrastructure for this.
Pick n Pay and Bitcoin payments
Pick n Pay is the second largest supermarket chain in South Africa. Now customers can also pay in Bitcoin. Electrum, a payment service provider, wrote: "This is possibly the first food retailer and Electrum has supported Pick n Pay so that Bitcoin payments are possible in the store."
It is also the first time that Electrum offers payment services for Bitcoin transactions.
Pick n Pay was founded in 1967 and employs more than 80,000 people. Food, clothing and other general merchandise are being sold in there stores. Overall, the chain has over 1560 stores. These are located not only in South Africa, but also in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Swaziland and Lesotho. However, bitcoin payments will initially only be possible in the Cape Town branch.
Jason Peisl, manager at Pick n Pay, explained:
Customers wishing to pay with Bitcoin must download a wallet app and scan a QR code for payment. The infrastructure behind this system was developed by the Lunco Bitcoin exchange. Luno is strongly represented in Southeast Asia and Africa.
Rising Bitcoin Acceptance in South Africa
"Bitcoin's interest and acceptance are growing strongly in South Africa," Luno said in April. Nevertheless, around 90% of the payments are made in cash.
Currently, South Africa is in fourth place for search queries on bitcoin in Google Trends. Only in Nigeria, Bolivia and Ghana are even more people looking for crypto currencies. The most commonly used search query is: Bitcoin payment system.
Already in November of the last year, Luno published a list of South African shops where you can pay with Bitcoin.
The Luno wrote at that time:
A & O, the largest hotel chain in Europe, recently introduced the option of paying the room by Bitcoin. This makes it even easier to travel without the Euros.
With 34 houses in 22 cities, A & O is the largest privately run hostel chain in Europe. The concept of combining the hotel and the hostel in one house, so that the guests can book a hotel room or a bed in a hostel room according to their wishes, seems to go up for the company founded in Berlin in 2000.
There are now A & O hotels in Aachen, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Graz, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Copenhagen, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg, Prague, Salzburg, Stuttgart, Venice, Weimar and Vienna. Each year some new cities are added.
Since September 12th, A & O has also accepted Bitcoins for bookings directly on the website.
CEO Oliver Winter said:
To process the payments, A & O uses the BitPay payment provider. Whether or not A & O makes use of BitPay's offer to keep parts of the revenues in Bitcoins, or to change everything in euros, was not said on the press release. For travel, the novelty means, however, that in some European and all major German cities also without Euro to his hotel room comes.
As every year, Russia's elite universities have decided to adapt their curricula for the new semester. What is so special this year is, however, that they offer courses on the topics crypto currencies, bitcoin and blockchain technology due to the particularly high demand.
Lectures on Crypto Currencies
From this semester, a number of different Russian elite universities will hold lectures on topics around crypto currencies. These courses are to be integrated into existing master studies.
Five educational institutions were ready to comment on their new curricula. The State University of Russia is the largest university in the country. From this semester on wards, the university will offer a course on crypto currencies for the Master's degree in Financial Analysis. Sergey Studnikov, a member of the Board of the Faculty of Economics, said: "We are going to offer the course for different Master programs. We invite representatives from the industry."
The Higher School of Economics (HSE), one of the elite universities with a focus on economics and social sciences, has decided to focus on the topic of financial technology during a course on financial technologies. This is done by students of the Master's degree program "Financial Technologies and Data Analysis". The course is also supported by the Sberbank.
A similar change in the curriculum has also been decided by the Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance. There, a lecture series, which so far consisted of banking, financial markets and finance, was extended with the topics crypto currencies and blockchain. According to the extraordinary professor of the Faculty of Economics, Denis Gorulev, "the introduction of a separate course requires the fulfillment of many formalities, which must be discussed early and precisely with the Ministry of Education".
Rising demand for exchange rates of Crypto Currencies
The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which is also known as Phystech, is one of the leading technical universities in Russia. The institute promotes on its homepage, one of the "5 best Russian universities, which is highly regarded among scientists, students and engineers". The MIPT wants to adapt courses of information technology to the blockchain.
Andrey Raigorodsky, head of the School of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, said that there was a growing demand among students as well as employers in this field.
Andrey Raigorodsky also said:
The Technical University for Steel and Alloys (Misis) has also decided to expand its educational offer. The state university is the leading university for steel and mining. This summer Misis announced its cooperation with the state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB). The collaboration will create a research center with a focus on novel materials and breakthrough technologies. Likewise, students will examine the blockchain technology there.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has reaffirmed the idea of the application of Distributed Ledger Technology to central banks. This could replace the currently used payment systems.
The BIS is an international organization of global finance, which is mainly responsible for the world's central banks. It is also the oldest financial organization in the world (founded in 1930). However, the great tradition of the BIS does not prevent them from looking far sighted in the future of the central banking system.
The BIS has now issued a report detailing the use of Distributed Ledger Technology as well as crypto currencies and examining how these can also be applied to central banks.
The BIS concludes that DLT is particularly suited to central banks wishing to improve their existing payment systems. Most currently used systems are outdated and no longer meet the latest demands on a central bank payment system. They use obsolete data systems and are also very expensive to keep running.
In the last few weeks, the central banks had been taking various initiatives to use an implementation of the Distributed Ledger Technology or even of crypto currencies. For example, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Japanese central bank Bank of Japan (BoJ) initially considered the introduction of DLT in their systems as unlikely, as the new technology would not replace the current real-time gross settlement system (RTGS). The Federal Reserve, on the other hand, believes that the integration of DLT is possible, since this ensures safe and efficient payment transactions. The Indian central bank in turn brings a digital rupee into play as a national crypto currency.
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