The Japanese Financial Services Agency revealed exclusively to Bitcoin News today that, under current law, stablecoins are not cryptocurrencies.

Currently there are two pieces of legislation that cryptocurrency companies must satisfy in Japan. The Fund Settlement Law and the Payment Services Act.

The Fund Settlement Law defines cryptocurrencies as means of payment, making them exempt from tax. The Payment Services Act state cryptocurrency exchanges must register with the Financial Services Agency (FSA).

By the Payment Services Act’s definition, stablecoins are not “virtual currencies.”

“In principle, stablecoins pegged by legal currencies do not fall into the category of ‘virtual currencies’ based on the Payment Services Act,” the regulator told Bitcoin News.

The regulator explained that due to the varying specific characteristics of stablecoins, there is no universal rule regarding how they should be legally registered.

Even though Japan recently granted the cryptocurrency industry the rights to regulate itself , this only grants it power to regulate cryptocurrencies. In this case, it appears stablecoins will need individual regulation.

Canadian city will kill power to $100M Bitcoin farm to keep citizens cool

Canada’s largest cryptocurrency mining operator has been effectively threatened with having its power cut off. Due to growing environmental concerns, Hut 8’s Bitcoin operation in Medicine Hat is to be one of the first to go in case of intense heat waves, CBC reports .

Hut 8’s $100 million Bitcoin mining farm, situated in southeast Alberta, reportedly uses more than 10 times the electricity of any other facility (of any kind) in Medicine Hat, a city of 60,000 people.

It employs 40 people, and back in July it claimed to be the biggest Bitcoin mining company in Canada, and the “largest publicly traded” operation of its kind in the world.

Medicine Hat residents and environmentalists have been so spooked by the energy requirements of mining Bitcoin, that the city reportedly now has provisions to cut Hut 8’s electricity, should it be required.

The threat of heat waves is no joke – in July, energy usage across Ontario peaked to the highest levels seen in years, when residents rushed to their air conditioners for relief from record humidity levels.

The environmentalists campaigning against Hut 8 argue that the intense electricity usage is frivolous, and particularly damaging due to its reliance on fossil fuels. The electricity consumed by Hut 8’s miners is not coming from renewable sources – making this a rather sensitive issue.

“[Hut 8] could have gone anywhere in the world and they chose Medicine Hat,” Medicine Hat mayor Ted Clugston told CBC .  “[Hut 8] is not here for renewable energy because it is not reliable. [Hut 8] need gas-fired generation and we have it in spades.”

Despite its enormous cost, Hut 8’s facility is really just a bunch of shipping containers on the outskirts of town. Fifty-six shipping containers house 180 servers mining Bitcoin non-stop.

The company reports that, including its secondary Canadian operations, it has mined more than 3,300 BTC (approximately $21.8M) since last December. Currently, Hut 8 claims to be generating around 20 BTC ($132,000) per day through its Medicine Hat facility.

Bitcoin energy usage misconceptions

Unfortunately, the rest of the CBC report is riddled with misconceptions, parroted by Greenpeace spokesperson, Keith Stewart. He claims the way “the bitcoin [sic] algorithm works is that it’s designed to waste as much electricity as possible. And the more popular bitcoin [sic] becomes, the more electricity it wastes.”

Not only is this wrong, but it makes my head hurt. For (hopefully) the last time, here’s Bitcoin evangelist and prolific speaker, Andreas Antonopolous on the subject of Bitcoin and electricity usage:

Still, at least in this case, we have a major mining facility relying on stable, but harmful, fossil fuels to power its lucrative Bitcoin miners.

It’s certainly hard to argue that keeping the Bitcoin network at peak performance is more important than critical, life-saving infrastructure – especially in times of natural disaster like intense heat waves.

For what it’s worth – Antonopolous believes that Bitcoin’s heavy reliance on electricity consumption can help drive green-energy innovation .

If that’s true, what better time for Hut 8 to make the switch.

Update 08:20 UTC, September 26: A spokesperson from Hut 8 has since reached out to Hard Fork to challenge the accuracy of CBC’s reporting.

In particular, it claims that it’s $100 million Medicine Hut mining facility only “makes up between 20 percent and 30 percent of the city’s load at any given time,” despite CBC’s report.

“In the event of equipment failure, the load to Hut 8 would be curtailed (not cut off), as is standard for any industrial power producer,” they clarified.

It should be noted that CBC has yet to make any correction to its piece.

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Trump’s attorney general once endorsed a ‘time travel’ cryptocurrency

Some very strange details have surfaced regarding Donald Trump’s newly appointed acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, and his involvement with a cryptocurrency for time travel.

For years, Whitaker sat on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, a marketing firm that has since been shut down by order of a federal judge, reports Mother Jones (and spotted by Cointelegraph ).

World Patent Marketing once claimed to be working closely with a cryptocurrency project described as a “theoretical time travel commodity” pegged to the price of Bitcoin, named Time Travel X .

Time Travel X sure sounds like a stablecoin for time travel. It obviously never came to fruition, because time travel isn’t real .

The firm was shut down last year, after a federal judge labelled it an outright “scam.” Authorities then fined it $26 million for duping newbie inventors out of millions of dollars, by charging exorbitant fees to promote their products.

Other insane inventions backed by World Patent Marketing during Whitaker’s reign on its board include a special MASCULINE TOILET , designed to help well-endowed men avoid unwanted contact with toilet water when relieving themselves.

There was also a Sasquatch doll , which it pitched alongside a marketing video claiming the existence of the fabled Bigfoot. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the video is still around. Take a look.

Mother Jones also reported claims of World Patent Marketing approving an idea for patenting a fried chicken and waffle sandwich, despite it being legally impossible to patent foods like chicken sandwiches.

For what it’s worth, Whitaker has already denied knowing about the firm’s alleged fraudulent practices. Although, he did appear in this video from 2015, where he can be found shilling a prototype razor blade that had been recently taken on by the firm.

At this stage, whether Whitaker was responsible for making such wild business decisions may be unclear.

While that’s being figured out, can I get me some of those time traveling cryptocoins?