San Francisco News

Poker Site Buys $100 Million of Bitcoin Every Month to Pay Players in BTC A major online poker website has been buying millions of dollars of bitcoin every day to meet demand from players wanting to cash out in bitcoin. This amounts to $100 million in bitcoin a month as about 95% of players now demand payouts in the cryptocurrency . Poker Site Buys $100 Million of Bitcoin Demand for bitcoin payouts has been rising, particularly after the recent price rally. One of the largest online poker websites, Winning Poker Network (WPN), has been buying millions of dollars worth of bitcoin in recent weeks from OTC desks to meet players’ cashout demand, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing WPN CEO Phil Nagy. Nagy explained that bitcoin is in so much demand that brokers are charging up to a 1.5% premium. He clarified that Winning Poker Network ( WPN ) does not hold onto bitcoin, adding that the cryptocurrency is converted into fiat currency as soon as possible. Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/pok

On November 25, the asset manager Vaneck announced the launch of an exchange-traded product (ETP) called the “ Vaneck Vector Bitcoin ETN .” The exchange-traded note is physically-backed by bitcoin and listed on the trading exchange Deutsche Böerse Xetra. The newly listed Vaneck bitcoin ETN provides investors with the opportunity to buy and sell the ETN, and participate directly in the performance of bitcoin without actually purchasing the crypto asset . There’s a new bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded note available on the exchange Deutsche Böerse Xetra, a marketplace for the trading of shares and other securities. The novel ETN is issued by the asset manager Vaneck, an investment management firm with an estimated U.S. $49 billion assets under management (AUM). On Twitter, the digital asset strategist and director at Vaneck/MVIS, Gabor Gurbacs announced the new bitcoin ETN on Wednesday. “Today Vaneck launched a bitcoin ETN,” Gurbacs tweeted. “The ETN is physically-backed by bitcoin and list

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Explains US Crypto Regulation, Calls Bitcoin a Store of Value The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) has explained how the U.S. government is regulating cryptocurrency . He calls bitcoin a store of value, noting that its rise is driven by the inefficiencies of the current payment system. How Bitcoin Is Regulated in the US SEC Chairman Jay Clayton explained how the U.S. government is regulating bitcoin during an interview with CNBC Squawk Box on Thursday. He began by responding to a comment made by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regarding bitcoin regulation . Dimon said that he was not a supporter of bitcoin because in his experience, the government “can regulate whatever they want when they feel like it.” Given the current bitcoin market capitalization of about $340 billion, Dimon asserted that “If it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it will be regulated.” Clayton described that at the SEC: We determined that bitcoin was not a securi

On its surface, the premise of Proposition 24 is simple: to protect California’s existing consumer privacy laws by preventing companies from being able to collect and share your personal data without prior consent or knowledge. It also guarantees the implementation of a state agency costing $10 million a year that will enforce privacy protection laws, and creates new classifications of sensitive information such as race and sexual orientation, explicitly barring companies from accessing such data. Voters passed the measure in this year’s general election with a 56.2% majority vote. However, critics aren’t so sure it will fulfill its promise. Prop. 24 began as the California Consumer Privacy Act, a ballot initiative introduced by Alastair Mactaggart, who is a real estate developer based in San Francisco. He was inspired to write the initiative in 2017 after a conversation he had with a Google engineer at a cocktail party in the Oakland Hills. The engineer disclosed that the online adver

 The state-mandated nightly curfew looming for most of the Bay Area on Saturday prompted shrugs, groans of despair and cries for help Friday. With most of the Bay Area’s businesses, including restaurants and bars, already shut down by 10 p.m. during the pandemic, most don’t expect much of an impact. And few folks are decrying the loss of nightlife, which has largely been in hibernation since March. “It won’t affect me,” said Alisha Ponce, 27, a medical assistant who works at UC Berkeley student health service and lives in Antioch. “I’ll just go home and do nothing after work — as usual.” The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew starts Saturday night in every Bay Area county but San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo, which so far are exempt. San Francisco officials, however, said Friday they expect they will have to join the curfew within days. The curfew, for counties that fall into the purple tier, the state’s most-restrictive category for counties during the coronavirus , is expected to last a mon

 San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Monday the city is falling back to the red tier in California's reopening plan. With cases surging, S.F. is temporarily rolling back the reopening of all non-essential offices, which had opened at 25% capacity on Oct. 27. It's also reducing the capacity of fitness centers and gyms to 10%, down from 25%. “We need to make these hard choices now so that we can save lives and keep our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed,” Breed said in a statement. “In addition to these rollbacks, we need everyone to do their part to get COVID-19 under control, especially as we go into the holiday season. I know that people want to spend time with their family and friends this Thanksgiving, but this year we need to all stay home as much as possible, avoid unnecessary travel, and avoid gathering with people who don’t live with us.” With its new red status, the city fell back two tiers, as it was previously in the least-restrictive yellow tier and

 A computer model using cellphone data to map the places people frequent every day in large cities may indicate that most COVID-19 infections occur at “superspreader” sites such as full-service restaurants, gyms and cafes. The report, published Tuesday in the journal Nature, examined the data of 98 million Americans collected at 10 large U.S. cities, including San Francisco, for two months beginning in March. The data was then fed into an epidemiological model developed by a Stanford University-led team. Jure Leskovec, the Stanford computer scientist who led the study, told Stanford News that the model analyzed how people of different demographic backgrounds and neighborhoods visited establishments that are more or less crowded. “Based on all of this, we could predict the likelihood of new infections occurring at any given place or time,” he said. Those predictions would later prove accurate based on the number of infections officially recorded by the cities. The scientists used data

 When Residential Builders Association President Sean Keighran first heard about San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s proposal to ban natural gas in new construction, he was against it. The idea of a new building with all-electric heating and cooking appliances seemed far-fetched and costly. Plus it was far from clear that food-centric Bay Area consumers would be willing to give up the fiery satisfaction of a gas range for the cool efficiency of an electric induction stovetop. But the more he learned about technological advances in both all-electric heating systems and induction stoves — and the more he studied the environmental benefits of turning off the natural gas — he realized his initial reaction was wrong. He said he now believes that the future for residential development is all-electric. “The world is changing,” Keighran said. “I came to see that buyers will want this. Buyers will expect this. The mind-set of the younger demographic is to want and demand this. “This is

 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in San Francisco along with spiking cases and hospitalizations statewide and across the U.S. has prompted the city to roll back a number of reopenings, including indoor dining and indoor instruction at high schools not already reopened. Starting at 11:59 p.m. Friday, the city would temporarily halt all indoor dining, reduce the capacity of fitness centers and movie theaters, and pause the reopening of indoor instruction at high schools that have not already opened, although the Department of Public Health said it would work with high schools that want to reopen in an outdoor setting. Middle and elementary schools will remain open for in-class instruction. San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city’s Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax announced the changes Tuesday afternoon amid a 250% increase in COVID-19 cases in the city since the beginning of October. “I know this is not the news our residents and businesses wanted to hear,

   A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee. Richard Hopkins's  claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen.  Lindsey Graham , R-S.C., in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General  William Barr  subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud before results are certified, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy. But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service's Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recant