May 15, 2015- In This Issue:

   

Bitcoin Is Drawing Interest From Nasdaq and NYSE, but Are Investors Ready?

NEW YORK (The Street) -- The two biggest stock exchanges in the United States have taken an interest in Bitcoin, and it may be time investors start paying attention.

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On Monday, Nasdaq ( NDAQ - Get Report ) announced plans to leverage Bitcoin's blockchain technology in a trial with its pre-IPO private market platform. This comes just months after Intercontinental Exchange ( ICE - Get Report ) revealed that its subsidiary, the New York Stock Exchange, had invested in Bitcoin wallet and platform Coinbase . NYSE is expected to make a related announcement soon regarding advancements in the arena.

Bitcoin is a digital currency that was created in 2009. Unlike government-issued currencies, it is operated by a decentralized authority, and no physical bitcoins exist. Balances of the currency are kept using public and private keys (long strings of numbers and letters), and all transactions are stored on public ledgers called blockchains.


Five takeaways from "Digital Gold," Nathaniel Popper's new book about bitcoin

Bitcoin is a tricky subject. The concept behind the digital currency can be difficult to explain to someone for the first time, and its history-barely six years old-is already fraught with controversy, starting with the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, author of the first bitcoin code.

 

That's why Digital Gold, the new book from journalist Nathaniel Popper, is an impressive accomplishment. No, it doesn't clear up the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto, though Popper clearly has a favorite candidate for the role. But the book (you can find an excerpt from it here) is a lucid guide to the heady mix of innovation,ideology, avarice, and accident behind the burgeoning world of bitcoin, depicting the key players as they encounter and evangelize the new technology. And it does all this without getting drawn into the hyper-optimism or deep cynicism that seems endemic to commentary on bitcoin.

 

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Bitcoin gains mainstream support with NYSE index launching today

The New York Stock Exchange has announced that it plans to make available a Bitcoin index on the NYSE, giving further legitimacy to the crypto-currency.

 

From today the NYSE will feature the Bitcoin index in the NYSE Global Index. It will also be temporarily available publicly on the NYSE's website.

 

The index is calculated once a day, to four decimals and will be published within 2 hours of 4PM U.K. time (11am Eastern).

 

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With robust U.S. economy, remittances to Latin America hit all-time high

The volume of remittances received in Latin America last year topped the previous high of $65 billion reached in 2008, the Inter-American Development Bank said Tuesday, crediting an improving U.S. economy.

 

Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2014 totaled $65.38 billion, according to figures compiled by the IDB.

 

The economic crisis continues to affect European countries like Spain, a situation that has seriously affected the sending of remittances to South America, the principal source of immigration to the Iberian nation.

 

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Coincove Uses Bitcoin to Make Remittance Easier in Latin America

Money remittance can be expensive, difficult and time consuming. However, currency market Coincove hopes to change this for its Latin American customers.

 

Using the Localbitcoins platform, Coincove allows its customers to take their fiat money to a local bitcoin dealer in-person.

 

From there, Coincove translates their currency into a USD value on its website so that customers can move money to different countries around the world.


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Bitcoin just reached another milestone in its road to legitimacy

Bitcoin is inching closer to legitimacy.

 

The digital currency reached an important milestone Monday as the first regulated bitcoin-based security began trading in Stockholm.

 

Bitcoin Tracker One, the name of the security, rose in its first trading session, finishing at 9.73 krona, compared with an opening value of 9.69, according to data on Nasdaq OMX Nordic's website. The security is listed on Nasdaq's Stockholm-based exchange.


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