Moonday Mornings: New York condo sells for $15M in Bitcoin

Welcome to another Moonday Mornings, Hard Fork’s wrap-up of the weekend’s cryptocurrency and blockchain headlines.

Take a look at what went down.

1. Blockchain inspired dapp platform EOS is reportedly congested, according to cryptocurrency exchange desk Coinbase. In a blog article posted over the weekend, Coinbase says it has been seeing “degraded performance for EOS transactions.” That said, Coinbase’s experience is a result of the fact that it didn’t stake enough CPU resources for its transactions to be processed. Coinbase addressed the issue by staking more CPU power. The cryptocurrency exchange believes issue arose as a result of increased network activity spurred on by a recent token airdrop.

2. The Internal Revenue Service has reportedly identified “dozens” of new cryptocurrency-using cybercriminals, Bloomberg reports. The findings come after tax authorities from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and The Netherlands collaborated by sharing data, tools, and strategies to find potential tax evaders. A senior special agent in the IRS’s Los Angeles said it the authority has developed expertise in “who is moving money and where it’s going… we have tools in place that we didn’t have six months or a year ago.”

3. Tunisia looks like it will be one of the first nations to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Russian news agency TASS reported last week that the Central Bank of Tunisia launched a test version of its “E-dinar.” As you might expect, one E-dinar is said to be worth one fiat dinar. Industry bigwigs have speculated that CBDCs are on their way, whether they’re a good thing is another question.

After this article was published, the central Bank of Tunisia issued a statement to say the news of it launching an E-dinar was based on false information. “All these allegations and unfounded information,” it said in the statement. Read the full story here.

4. It wouldn’t be another week in crypto without some high-ranking banker bashing Bitcoin, this time it’s European Central Bank’s former president Jean-Claude Trichet. Speaking on Bitcoin at a conference in Beijing the ex-banker said; “The cryptocurrency itself is not real,” South China Morning Post reports. He is reportedly also doubtful that cryptocurrencies can ever become the future of money. “I am strongly against Bitcoin, and I think we are a little complacent,” he said.

And finally…

5. A real estate mogul in the US has sold a condominium in New York for $15.3 million in Bitcoin, according to industry magazine The Real Deal. The buyer is reportedly a Taiwanese entity known as Affluent Silver International LLC, according to sources close to the deal. The funds were exchanged using Bitcoin payment processors Bitpay and Starr, and allegedly went without a hitch.

Well, there you have it. Another Moonday Morning done and dusted, now go get on with your week.

Update Tuesday, November 12, 1725UTC: The third point referencing Tunisia’s E-dinar has been updated to highlight that the Central Bank of Tunisia has denied the claims that it launched an E-dinar.