Legislators in California are about to vote on a proposal that will pave the way for digital currency regulation in the state.
AB1326, or the California Bitcoin License bill, was introduced by Assembly member Matt Dababneh in February 2015. Since then, it had gone through several amendments both in the assembly and in the Senate. The bill is now waiting for a second reading by the Senate.
However, opponents of the bill—mainly the digital currency community and businesses in the state—are concerned that AB1326 will reduce California’s capability of supporting local virtual currency start-ups.
Just like the New York BitLicense, the proposed California Bitcoin License will introduce regulations that will control the use and trade of digital currency, meaning bitcoin start-ups in the state—particularly in start-up hotbed San Francisco—may soon find themselves exposed to more red tape.
Colin Gallagher, chair of the Bitcoin Foundation Education Committee, previously said that if passed, the bill “would have criminalized start-ups and any users who donate virtual currency, as well as making oppressive permitting requirements standard in California for literally every use case not expressly exempted by the law.”
Apple removes malicious bitcoin wallets on iOS
Meanwhile, Apple has reportedly pulled out at least eight malicious bitcoin wallets in the App Store after an app developer discovered a fake version of its mobile wallet app in the store.
The fake apps appeared to be “aping portions of source code, icons, and graphics from legitimate apps” to trick users into thinking they were downloading and using official wallets, according to reports.
Developers of Breadwallet, who identified the suspect apps, estimate that the malicious wallets have already cost users of bitcoin thousands of dollars worth of the popular digital currency. Breadwallet co-founder Aaron Voisine told Motherboard: “We talked with one customer who claims to have lost about $10,000, and if we go and look at the coin address where those coins were deposited, last I checked there was $20,000 listed at that address.”
Current bitcoin price and transaction volume
Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin continued to slump on Wednesday, trading at $584.96 with over $15.78 million in trade volume and market cap of $9.55 billion.
