Lloyds Banking Group, Virgin Money Ban Cryptocurrency Purchases on Credit Cards

Customers cannot buy cryptocurrencies on Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA credit cards.
Lloyds Banking Group and Virgin Money joined major US banks in banning purchases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via credit card amid debt and security concerns. An LBG spokesman said the ban was across its Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA branded credit cards.
In a brief statement, he said LBG does "not accept credit card transactions involving the purchase of cryptocurrencies".

Virgin Money has also banned purchases of cryptocurrencies on its credit cards. A spokesman said, "Following a review of our policies, I can confirm customers will no longer be able to use their Virgin Money credit card to purchase cryptocurrencies. This only applies to our credit cards and not our debit card."

Over the past few days, US lenders Bank of American, Citigroup and JPMorgan each introduced the same ban.

There is a concern that customers who bought Bitcoin late last year when cryptocurrencies in general surged in value have been left with big losses following massive declines in recent weeks.
On Monday, the price of Bitcoin tumbled below $7,000, two months after breaking through the $20,000 mark.

It comes as China plans to stamp out all remaining cryptocurrency trading in the country by blocking access to overseas-based websites and removing related applications from app stores.

The international value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have plunged this year amid fears of a crackdown in Asia and concerns that many currencies' rapid rise in value last year could reflect a bubble.

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As Bitcoin Plunges, US Senate Again Focuses on Virtual Currencies

Digital currencies such as Bitcoin will be in the spotlight again on Tuesday as lawmakers in the US Senate question top markets watchdogs over how to better regulate the highly volatile and risky emerging asset class.

Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), will give testimony to the Senate Banking Committee amid growing global unease about the risks virtual currencies pose to investors and the financial system.

The hearing follows a rout in the price of Bitcoin, which plunged more than 15 percent to near a three-month low on Monday on concerns ranging from a global regulatory clampdown to a ban by some banks on using credit cards to buy Bitcoin.

On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, Bitcoin fell as low as $6,853.53 in early afternoon trading in New York. That marked a fall of more than half from a peak of almost $20,000 in December. The currency surged more than 1,300 percent last year.

Lawmakers on Tuesday are set to probe Giancarlo and Clayton on the powers of the SEC and CFTC to oversee cryptocurrency exchanges, how the watchdogs can protect investors from extreme volatility and fraud, and the risks posed by cybercriminals intent on stealing digital tokens.

Giancarlo and Clayton will use the hearing to showcase the efforts their agencies have made to police the market and to highlight limitations in the regulatory structure, according to their testimony published on Monday.

The sharp drop in Bitcoin on Monday coincided with a broader sell-off in US stock markets, which plummeted to their lowest levels in 2018.

© Thomson Reuters 2018

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Nvidia, Continental Join Hands to Develop Self-Driving Car System

Software maker Nvidia and German auto parts supplier Continental are teaming to build a self-driving vehicle system that will hit the market in 2021. It's the latest in a long string of tech-automaker partnerships in the race to get autonomous vehicles on the road.

The companies said Monday that their system will be used for driver-assist safety features all the way up to cars with no steering wheel or pedals. Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, makes computer processing units and artificial intelligence software that reads sensors and makes decisions for autonomous vehicles. Continental makes auto parts including software and cameras, radar and laser sensors.

Financial terms of the partnership were not announced.
Dedicated engineering teams from both companies will work together to develop self-driving solutions based on the Nvidia Drive platform, which includes Nvidia Drive Xavier system-on-a-chip, the Nvidia Drive OS, and Drive AV (autonomous vehicle) software stacks. In a statement, the companies said the solutions will make use of Continental's experience in system and software engineering for ASIL D rated safety - the highest rating level - and integrate a range of Continental sensors technologies, including radar, camera and high-resolution 3D LiDAR.

"The vehicle of the future will be a sensing, planning and acting computer on wheels. The complexity of autonomous driving require nothing less than the full computational horsepower of an AI supercomputer," said Continental CEO Dr. Elmar Degenhart. "Together with the performance and flexibility of NVIDIA's AI self-driving solution, from the cloud to the car we will achieve new levels of safety, comfort and personalisation for future vehicles."

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said, "Our newly arrived Drive Xavier processor, extensive Nvidia Drive software, and cloud-to-car approach for testing, validation and functional safety, combined with Continental's expertise and global reach, will bring autonomous cars to the world."

Nvidia says its system Drive Xavier system can deliver 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second) for deep learning, while consuming only 30W of energy. This performance is necessary to handle the massive amount of data processing that self-driving vehicles must perform, it claims. These processes include running deep neural nets to sense surroundings, understanding the environment, localising the vehicle on an HD map, predicting the behaviour and position of other objects, as well as computing vehicle dynamics and a safe path forward.

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