BlackRock Has Begun Trading Bitcoin Futures

Investments giant BlackRock has indeed “started to dabble” in the bitcoin market, according to regulatory filings published Wednesday.

A source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk the asset manager held $6.5 million in CME bitcoin futures contracts earlier this year. Those contracts had appreciated $360,457 on reporting day, according to documents reviewed by CoinDesk.

The holdings represented 0.03% of BlackRock’s massive Global Allocation Fund on reporting day Jan. 31 – “very small,” the source said. (The gains represent just 0.0014%.) BlackRock’s original 37 contracts expired on March 26.

Samsung Cloud is closing down – so migrate your photos and files now

Samsung Cloud will no longer support Gallery Sync, Samsung Cloud Drive or Premium Storage

Samsung Cloud is a cloud storage service that allows owners of Samsung devices to create copies of their data or free up local storage space for apps, music and other files.

However, Samsung is about to begin the process of cutting back this service, withdrawing the ability to store photos and files off-device. Soon, Samsung Cloud will only allow users to store lightweight items, such as contacts, calendars and notes.

According to a notice on the website, the automatic photo and file sync features will be supported by Microsoft OneDrive instead, but only if users take the necessary action before the deadline.

Check out our list of the best micro SD cards on the market
Here’s our rundown of the best USB flash drives out there
We’ve built a list of the best rugged hard drives around.

Samsung Cloud will no longer support Gallery Sync, Samsung Cloud Drive or Premium Storage

Samsung Cloud is a cloud storage service that allows owners of Samsung devices to create copies of their data or free up local storage space for apps, music and other files.

However, Samsung is about to begin the process of cutting back this service, withdrawing the ability to store photos and files off-device. Soon, Samsung Cloud will only allow users to store lightweight items, such as contacts, calendars and notes.

According to a notice on the website, the automatic photo and file sync features will be supported by Microsoft OneDrive instead, but only if users take the necessary action before the deadline.

Check out our list of the best micro SD cards on the market
Here’s our rundown of the best USB flash drives out there
We’ve built a list of the best rugged hard drives around

Samsung Cloud deadlines
The pace of the Samsung Cloud shutdown will depend on the region in which you are located. The deadlines for Group 1, which consists of the UK, US, Australia and many European countries, differ from the deadlines for Group 2, which covers much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Members of Group 1 will need to migrate their Samsung Cloud data to OneDrive by the end of tomorrow, March 31. Affected smartphone owners should receive a notification that prompts them to activate the migration process, which is made easy thanks to a OneDrive integration.

If this deadline is missed, Group 1 users will have until June 30 to download their Samsung Cloud data to their device or a computer. On July 1, all photos and files held in Samsung Cloud will be deleted outright and will no longer be recoverable.

Group 2 has been given a little more time to make the necessary arrangements. These users have until May 31 to migrate their data to OneDrive and until August 31 to perform a manual download. On September 1, Samsung Cloud will no longer store the photos or files of any user, in any territory.

Anyone that holds a Premium Storage subscription can expect their plan to be cancelled on either April 1 (Group 1) or June 1 (Group 2) and may receive a refund.

OneDrive storage capacity
Although free Microsoft OneDrive accounts are usually allocated only 5GB of storage, anyone migrating from Samsung Cloud will be given 15GB of storage free of charge, the same capacity as the free Samsung account.

However, the expanded OneDrive storage offer will expire after one year. After that, users will either have to pay to increase their OneDrive storage capacity or transfer their data to an external hard drive, portable SSD or another cloud backup service.

Working from home is the future, yet VMware just extended vSphere 6.5 support for a year because remote upgrades are too hard

VMware has extended support for vSphere 6.5 and vCenter 6.5 by a year, and says it needs to do so because customers are struggling to upgrade while their teams work from home/live in their offices.

News of the extension emerged in a Friday post by Paul Turner, veep for product management at VMware’s Cloud Platform Business Unit.

“This month marks a full year that many businesses transitioned to a work from home model with the onset of the global pandemic,” Turner wrote. “That’s created challenges for some of our customers with regards to IT operations and strategic planning. It has also led to uncertainty as to when your business operations will return to normal.”

“We can help address some of your challenges by offering you both flexibility and continued support as we all work together to get to the other side of this pandemic.”

The change means that vSphere 6.5 will reach end of general support(EoGS) on November 15th, 2022. A year later VMware will also stop offering technical guidance.

The new end of support dates now mirror those for vSphere 6.7.

VMware says faster growth will come once customers get back inside data centres

But even with an extra year, vCenter 6.5 have work to do because the client to drive it requires Adobe Flash. And Flash was put to rest in January 2021. If you can keep old Flash-enabled browsers enabled in your environment, cross your fingers, and feel free to stick with vCenter 6.5. Otherwise, VMware recommends an upgrade to vCenter 6.7 and its shiny new HTML5 client

Users of VMWare’s virtual storage array, VSAN, have also been given some extra time. Versions 6.5 and 6.6 were slated to go EoGS in November 2021. Support will now end in October 2022. End of technical guidance remains at November 2023 for both versions.

This isn’t the first time VMware has pointed out the negative effects of working from home: on in its Q3 2021 results call then-VMware-CEO Pat Gelsinger attributed slow signoff of major deals to customers who couldn’t get their teams back into the office to work on major projects.

PayPal launches crypto checkout service

PayPal Holdings Inc will announce later on Tuesday that it has started allowing U.S. consumers to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay at millions of its online merchants globally, a move that could significantly boost use of digital assets in everyday commerce.

Customers who hold bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin in PayPal digital wallets will now be able to convert their holdings into fiat currencies at checkouts to make purchases, the company said.

The service, which PayPal revealed it was working on late last year, will be available at all of its 29 million merchants in the coming months, the company said.

“This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” President and CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters ahead of a formal announcement.

Checkout with Crypto builds on the ability for PayPal users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies, which the San Jose, California-based payments company launched in October.

The offering made PayPal one of the largest mainstream financial companies to open its network to cryptocurrencies and helped fuel a rally in virtual coin prices.

Bitcoin has nearly doubled in value since the start of this year, boosted by increased interest from larger financial firms that are betting on greater adoption and see it as a hedge against inflation.

PayPal’s launch comes less than a week after Tesla Inc said it would start accepting bitcoin payments for its cars. Unlike PayPal transactions where merchants will be receiving fiat currency, Tesla said it will hold the bitcoin used as payment.

Still, while the nascent asset is gaining traction among mainstream investors, it has yet to become a widespread form of payment, due in part to its continued volatility.

PayPal hopes its service can change that, as by settling the transaction in fiat currency, merchants will not take on the volatility risk.

“We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants,” Schulman said.

The company will charge no transaction fee to checkout with crypto and only one type of coin can be used for each purchase, it said.

Market movers and shakers

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,782.94 0.69%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 21,550.02 0.53%

techMARK (TASX) 4,249.84 0.37%

FTSE 100 – Risers

Legal & General Group (LGEN) 282.50p 2.43%

HSBC Holdings (HSBA) 427.60p 2.27%

Land Securities Group (LAND) 708.70p 2.22%

International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 196.45p 2.21%

Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,687.50p 2.12%

British Land Company (BLND) 522.20p 2.07%

Barclays (BARC) 183.66p 1.82%

Whitbread (WTB) 3,478.00p 1.79%

Evraz (EVR) 571.60p 1.78%

Entain (ENT) 1,536.50p 1.75%

FTSE 100 – Fallers

AstraZeneca (AZN) 7,344.00p -0.68%

Bunzl (BNZL) 2,284.00p -0.61%

Rentokil Initial (RTO) 489.80p -0.53%

Severn Trent (SVT) 2,330.00p -0.51%

B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI) (BME) 530.20p -0.45%

Imperial Brands (IMB) 1,505.00p -0.43%

Experian (EXPN) 2,511.00p -0.40%

Next (NXT) 7,886.00p -0.30%

Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 1,097.00p -0.27%

Just Eat Takeaway.Com N.V. (CDI) (JET) 6,658.00p -0.21%

FTSE 250 – Risers

Hammerson (HMSO) 35.19p 5.08%

Just Group (JUST) 101.00p 3.80%

Victrex plc (VCT) 2,210.00p 3.76%

CMC Markets (CMCX) 491.00p 3.26%

Provident Financial (PFG) 216.40p 3.05%

Capital & Counties Properties (CAPC) 170.90p 2.70%

IP Group (IPO) 123.20p 2.67%

easyJet (EZJ) 962.40p 2.60%

Meggitt (MGGT) 478.70p 2.37%

Virgin Money UK (VMUK) 191.95p 2.32%

FTSE 250 – Fallers

Cineworld Group (CINE) 100.50p -5.77%

Gamesys Group (GYS) 1,910.00p -3.05%

Pennon Group (PNN) 972.40p -2.07%

Euromoney Institutional Investor (ERM) 940.00p -1.26%

XP Power Ltd. (DI) (XPP) 4,730.00p -1.05%

888 Holdings (888) 400.50p -0.99%

Jlen Environmental Assets Group Limited NPV (JLEN) 110.50p -0.90%

Bytes Technology Group (BYIT) 406.80p -0.78%

Morgan Sindall Group (MGNS) 1,752.00p -0.68%

Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust (USA) 298.00p -0.67%

Tesla now Accepts Bitcoin

Elon Musk, Tesla, and Bitcoin – it’s a match! Earlier this year, Tesla revealed its investment worth $1.5 billion in Bitcoin – the ripples of which vibrated through the entire cryptocurrency industry. During the same announcement, Tesla also revealed that it plans to accept Bitcoin as a payment method for buying its products conditioned upon the applicability of laws. This week, Tesla officially announced that it now accepts payment in Bitcoin. This service is currently reserved for its US clients.

The details – Tesla, the World’s leading automaker, which earlier announced that it plans to offer Bitcoin as a payment method, has now joined companies like Overstock and Starbucks in accepting Bitcoin for its products. Tesla will use only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly.

Tesla’s Plans to Offer Bitcoin

As per its official website, you will be able to pay Bitcoin from your wallet by scanning the QR code or copying Tesla’s Bitcoin address. To buy a Tesla with Bitcoin, you will need to pay the exact amount in a single transaction. The order will be confirmed via email within six hours.

After Tesla’s official announcement on its website, Elon Musk posted a tweet that stated: “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to Fiat currency”. Currently, Tesla will only accept Bitcoin and no other cryptocurrencies.

Looking ahead – Tesla will offer its non-US clients the ability to pay with Bitcoin this year. The fact that Tesla is not converting its Bitcoin to fiat will likely positively affect the price as it is essentially lowering the Bitcoin supply by holding.

Europe tightens Covid restrictions as ‘third wave’ takes hold.

Countries across the Continent are taking measures to prevent the further spread of coronavirus
Belgium and France have tightened restrictions in an effort to curb a surge of Covid-19 cases, as a third wave of the pandemic takes hold across Europe.

In Belgium, the government announced on Wednesday that schools, non-essential shops and hairdressers will be closed for four weeks from Saturday. In the last week confirmed cases have risen by 40 per cent and hospitalisations by 28 per cent.

“We are facing a third wave,” said Alexander De Croo, the Belgian Prime Minister, adding that B117, the variant first found in Kent, is likely taking a heavy toll.

“We have decided on a short term pain. It’s a heavy decision to take, but if we didn’t the consequences would be more serious.”

Meanwhile in France, a government spokesman warned that the coronavirus situation is worsening in every region of the country and urged people to work from home to curb the virus.

The government also looks set to widen localised Covid-19 restrictions currently in place in Paris to three other high-risk zones, including the Rhone region which houses the major city of Lyon.

And in Poland, where a record 29,978 cases were detected on Wednesday, local media has reported that the government will tighten measures imposed last week ahead of Easter-which is usually marked by packed church services and family gatherings in the deeply Catholic country.

The measures come after the European Commission unveiled new guidelines on exporting coronavirus vaccines to countries outside the block, in an effort to kick-start the continent’s stuttering vaccination campaign.

Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission President, told a press conference that while “member states are facing a third wave” and “not every company is delivering on contract”, it is right for EU states to consider “reciprocity and proportionality” when exporting jabs.

Facebook, Google CEOs suggest way to reform keys internet laws.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform a key internet law on Wednesday, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms.

In testimony prepared for a joint hearing before two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees on Thursday, Zuckerberg acknowledged the calls from lawmakers for changes to a law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives companies like Facebook immunity from liability over content posted by users.

The hearing titled ‘Disinformation Nation: Social media’s role in promoting extremism and misinformation’ is designed to address concerns Democrats have had about the spread of misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic and the presidential election.

It is also likely to discuss ways to hold tech platforms accountable by reforming the internet law. The chief executives of Google and Twitter will also testify at the hearing.

Google’s Sundar Pichai will make suggestions to reform the law but, unlike Zuckerberg, will not advocate for adoption of a set of best practices, according to his testimony. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey will lay out steps the platform has taken to tackle misinformation.

Zuckerberg and Pichai will also urge caution as Congress considers reforming the law.

“Platforms should not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades its detection — that would be impractical for platforms with billions of posts per day,” Zuckerberg wrote in his testimony.

Google’s Pichai also struck a similar note saying “without Section 230, platforms would either over-filter content or not be able to filter content at all.”

Pichai instead proposed solutions such as developing content policies that are clear and accessible, notifying people when their content is removed and giving them ways to appeal content decisions.