Ripple Labs Inc., the company behind the Ripple settlement system, has lost its opportunity to hold the court hearing over a contested contract with its rival R3 in its home state, California, Bloomberg reported March 13.
In September 2017, the R3 consortium filed a lawsuit in Delaware and New York against Ripple, claiming that the latter had violated a prior agreement between the two companies about the purchase of XRP digital currency. The contract included an option allowing R3 to buy up to 5 bln XRP tokens at a price of $0.0085 each at any time before the end of 2019.
Ripple further filed a counterclaim in California, accusing its former partner of infringing on a number of commitments associated with the agreement.
When the two companies began suing each other, the value of the contract in dispute was a little over $1 mln. However, after several months of court proceedings the price of XRP surged in value, significantly increasing the stakes as the 5 billion XRP in question are now worth about $3.85 bln.
A San Francisco state appeals court denied Ripple’s petition to appeal the order that dismissed its lawsuit against R3.
The procedure in San Francisco followed a verbal ruling made by a Delaware judge to dismiss R3’s own case in October 2017. The outcome of this legal battle now depends solely on the future decision of a New York court.
As the San Francisco-based Ripple claimed, having to bring the case before a New York court would cause the company "irreparable injury."

The price of bitcoin is down to start the day, dropping below $8,000 during early-hours trading on Thursday according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
At press time, the price of bitcoin is roughly $7,811.22 across global exchanges, a figure that represents a decline of over $300 from the day's open, and the lowest price observed on the index since Feb. 11, when the BPI hit a low of $7,845.13.
The market development highlights the continued market weakness seen this week, as evidenced by bitcoin's slide toward $8,000 over the course of Wednesday's session.
Still, other major cryptocurrencies are also seeing losses as well, including ethereum and its ether token, which slid below $600 for the first time since mid-February. According to CoinDesk data, the price of ether is trading at $588.32, a decline of about 4 percent since the open.
Ripple's XRP token is down today as well, hitting $0.65 as of press time after trading above $0.70 for much of the day.
Data from OnChainFX reveals that all of the top-20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization have fallen in excess of 10 percent in the past 24 hours, with many seeing declines of 15 percent or more. Among those, cardano, vechain, iota, XEM, lisk, NEO gas and icon are all down over 20 percent within that period.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, the collective market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is at its lowest point since February 6.

Cryptocurrency startup Coinbase has launched a new gain/loss calculating tool as part of an effort to help its user base keep up with U.S. tax requirements.

In a blog post published on Tuesday, the firm explained that the calculator can be used to generate a report which outlines their capital gains (or losses) on its platform, using a first-in-first-out (FIFO) accounting method.

The tool comes with a few caveats, however, namely that it's primarily aimed at users who have bought and sold on Coinbase exclusively - and isn't recommended for those who have purchased digital assets elsewhere or participated in an initial coin offering, per the blog.

"This tool provides a preliminary gain/loss calculation to assist our customers, but should not be used as official tax documentation without validating the results with your tax professional," the startup also cautioned.

Its release follows an earlier step by Coinbase on the tax front, when, in January, the startup reminded its users that they are liable for U.S. capital gains, even going as far as posting a consistent banner about the issue.

The issue of taxation and cryptocurrencies has always been someone of a contentious topic, ever since the U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced in 2014 that it would treat such assets as a taxable form of property rather than, say, a currency.

Concerns over the ambiguity of the IRS guidance - in its new blog, Coinbase itself writes that "we understand taxes for digital currency can be complicated" - have fueled complaints from professional circles.

The topic also carries an added degree of weight for Coinbase specifically, which was the target of a lawsuit by the IRS as it sought information on U.S.-based users in an effort to sniff out potential tax avoiders.

Ultimately, the startup would send information on about 13,000 users who had transacted on the platform between 2013 and 2015 after being ordered to by a U.S. district judge in November 2017.

  The Binance cryptocurrency exchange is offering a $250,000 equivalent bounty on the arrest of the hackers involved in the March 7th incident, Binance stated in an announcement March 11.
  According to the announcement, the first person to supply the information that results in a legal arrest, in any jurisdiction, will receive the bounty in Binance Coin (BNB), which is traded and used on the Binance exchange. If there are multiple sources of information that lead to the final arrests, the bounty may be split between sources.
  In the statement, Binance stresses the importance of an concerted effort to address crime and unethical behavior in the crypto community:
   “To ensure a safe crypto community, we can’t simply play defense. We need to actively prevent any instances of hacking before they occur, as well as follow through after-the-fact. Even though the hacking attempt against Binance on March 7th was not successful, it was clear it was a large-scale, organized effort. This needs to be addressed.”
  In addition to the current bounty, Binance has allotted $10 mln in crypto reserves for future bounty awards against any hacking attempts on Binance. Per Binance’s statement, the exchange has also invited other exchanges globally to follow suit. “Protecting your funds is and has always been our highest priority!,” they added.
  Users alerted Binance to the breach in the security after observing irregular and unauthorized transaction behavior in their accounts. The exact method the hackers employed remains unclear, though some users have posited that a possible compromise of users’ API keys could explain how the hackers sidestepped Binance’s two-factor authentication system. Binance resumed trading activities the next day, March 8.