Category Archives: Bitcoin
Bitcoin soars above $1,400 to all-time high | Reuters
LONDON Bitcoin surged to an all-time high above $1,400 on Tuesday, after more than tripling in value over the past year, with its most recent rise attributed to strong demand in Japan, where the digital currency has been deemed a legal means of payment.
Cryptocompare, a data website that analyses bitcoin trading across dozens of exchanges globally, said around 50 percent of trading volume over the past 24 hours had been on the bitcoin/Japanese yen exchange rate.
"The Japanese have recently warmed their approach towards bitcoin by treating it legally as a form of payment - a ratification and bringing into the regulatory fold," said Charles Hayter, the website's founder.
"China's clampdown on exchanges can also be seen as a positive move for the industry too," he added.
Chinese authorities have increased scrutiny of exchanges this year and have forced them to start charging trading fees, after becoming concerned about bitcoin speculation and its potential use in money laundering.
Bitcoin surged as much as 3 percent on Tuesday on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, where trading is dollar-denominated, to hit $1,437 BTC=BTSP, its highest since its 2008 launch. That marked a more than 200 percent increase from its price in early May last year.
Its current levels put the total value of all bitcoins in circulation - the so-called "market cap" - close to $25 billion, putting its worth on a par with a large-cap company.
Bitcoin analysts said the price had also been boosted by a request by the BATS exchange that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission review its March decision not to approve a bitcoin-tracking ETF set up by the Winklevoss brothers.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly, editing by Nigel Stephenson)
SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft Corp's announcement of a suite of new education products on Tuesday shows the company's determination to reverse a major shift that has taken place in U.S. classrooms in recent years: for most educators and school districts, Google's Chromebook is now the computer of choice.
WASHINGTON The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer.
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Bitcoin soars above $1,400 to all-time high | Reuters
Bitcoin Breaks $1,400 | PYMNTS.com – PYMNTS.com
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On Monday, and for the first time ever, bitcoin was worth over $1,400.
While the days high was $1,422.22 according to CoinDesk, trading at the time of writing was closer $1,413, up 4.88 percent for the day, up 42 percent from the start of 2017 and up a whopping 215 percent from this time last year.
If theres any probable cause for the rise, its likely that the SEC recently announced plans to review last months rejection of the proposed Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF.
At the time, the SEC nixed listing the twins ETF on the Bats BZX Exchange due to lack of oversight, regulation and the potential for fraud in the broader bitcoin space.
The SEC looks to address the Bats petition for review and has opened up for comment for or against before May 15. Though, since not much has changed for bitcoin in the way of regulatory overhaul in the past few months, it doesnt seem likely that the SECs previous decision will be overturned.
The rise in price comes at a point in bitcoins story when exchanges are experiencing service disruptions due to banks pulling out of high-risk areas the case with Bitfinex, BTC-e and OKCoin International.
The situation at Bitfinex led to a notable widening of exchange spread. This has held pace alongside the value spike. At the time of writing, BTC traded at over $1,520 on the Hong Kong-based exchange.
For now, traders can rest at least somewhat assured that this isnt going to turn into another Mt. Gox. By the numbers, Mt. Gox traded between 10 to 26 percent higher than its competitorsin its final days. Though the potential for arbitrage at Bitfinex is still a concern.
Elsewhere in the ecosystem, a number of Chinese exchanges are still halted a month and a half after they were due to unfreeze digital currency withdrawals, as talks continue with the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC).
While service upgrades have been completed, exchange officials and the PBoC are still at odds over the know-your-customer rules to be enforced on reopening.
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Bitcoin Breaks $1,400 | PYMNTS.com - PYMNTS.com
Bitcoin Is Soaring Above $1400 to Another All-Time High – Fortune
Bitcoin surged to an all-time high above $1,400 on Tuesday, after more than tripling in value over the past year, with its most recent rise attributed to strong demand in Japan, where the digital currency has been deemed a legal means of payment.
Cryptocompare, a data website that analyzes bitcoin trading across dozens of exchanges globally, said around 50% of trading volume over the past 24 hours had been on the bitcoin/Japanese yen exchange rate.
"The Japanese have recently warmed their approach towards bitcoin by treating it legally as a form of payment - a ratification and bringing into the regulatory fold," said Charles Hayter, the website's founder.
"China's clampdown on exchanges can also be seen as a positive move for the industry too," he added.
Chinese authorities have increased scrutiny of exchanges this year and have forced them to start charging trading fees, after becoming concerned about bitcoin speculation and its potential use in money laundering.
Bitcoin surged as much as 3% on Tuesday on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, where trading is dollar-denominated, to hit $1,437, its highest since its 2008 launch. That marked a more than 200 percent increase from its price in early May last year.
Its current levels put the total value of all bitcoins in circulation - the so-called "market cap" - close to $25 billion, putting its worth on a par with a large-cap company.
Bitcoin analysts said the price had also been boosted by a request by the BATS exchange that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission review its March decision not to approve a bitcoin-tracking ETF set up by the Winklevoss brothers.
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Bitcoin Is Soaring Above $1400 to Another All-Time High - Fortune
Bitcoin Prices Have Tripled in a Year and Just Hit a New All-Time High – Money Magazine
A collection of bitcoin tokens.BloombergBloomberg via Getty Images
Bitcoin prices have hit a record high, just a few days after breaking the previous all-time high a few days before.
The value of the alternative virtual "cryptocurrency" climbed above $1,400 for the first time ever on Sunday according to the Coindesk.com index, which takes into account several different independent exchanges.
One year ago, a unit of Bitcoin was worth only around $400 . The currency has been on a steep climb ever since, hitting $750 in early December and $1,100 by February 2017. It hit a record-high of $1,330 last Thursday, and has stayed on a tear since then.
Some observers predicted that Bitcoin's value would skyrocket after the election of Donald Trump, because of the strength of the American dollar and the urge to invest in alternative currencies. Recent Bitcoin gains have come as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was considering a Bitcoin ETF created by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
But there are also concerns in the Bitcoin world about some exchanges facing issues from corresponding banks about processing transactions, Coindesk reports . Mind you, most investing pros warn that it is unwise to invest in Bitcoin because it is still an unstable and relatively untested currency.
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Bitcoin Prices Have Tripled in a Year and Just Hit a New All-Time High - Money Magazine
Biostar’s newest Ryzen motherboards are built for Bitcoin miners – PC Gamer
We have to presume that Biostar's latest AM4 motherboards are affordable solutions because the company did not reveal pricing information. But what Biostar did make clear is that its TA320-BTC and TB350-BTC are both aimed at Bitcoin miners who haven't yet moved on to ASIC-based mining machines.
Both motherboards have a single PCI-Express x16 3.0 slot plus five additional PCI-Express x1 slots, giving miners the ability to cram up to six graphics cards for mining Bitcoins.
Other than the chipset, the TA320-BTC and TB350-BTC are essentially the same. They're both full-size ATX motherboards that draw power from a combination of 24-pin and 8-pin power connectors. Each board also comes with two optional 4-pin Molex power connectors to keep things stable when installing multiple graphics cards.
There are four SATA 6Gbps connectors, though no M.2 slots. The boards also offer four USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, DVI-D output, GbE LAN, audio connectors, and PS/2 connectivity.
No word yet on when these will be available.
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Biostar's newest Ryzen motherboards are built for Bitcoin miners - PC Gamer
Gavin Andresen Celebrates Competing Bitcoin Implementations – CryptoCoinsNews
Gavin Andresen urges Bitcoin developers toknow your customer. And no, he is not talking about regulation.
Mr. Andresen admits he did not always make the right choice during the two years he spent as Bitcoins first, and only, developer.
He remembers once asking himself whether or not Bitcoin should be used as a store of value or a means of exchange. In hindsight, I should have spent more time working on the secure store of value problem; maybe Core would have great support for creating paper wallets and sweeping funds from them if Id chosen differently. He has called Bitcoin in the past cash for the internet.
The Bitcoin ecosystem is incredibly rich and robust these days, Andresen, who first programmed 3D images, celebrates. I cant keep track of all the development that is being done, and Im excited to see multiple implementations of the Bitcoin protocol slowly starting to gain acceptance, he wrote on his blog. It will be a long process, but moving away from One True Implementation will be very good for Bitcoin in the long run.
Andresen, who was appointed by Satoshi as Bitcoin Core lead developer, even lends advice for those making implementations of Bitcoin: keep it simple as possible and know your customer. Mr. Andresen went further on Twitter and defined user as non-paying customer.
Andresen, a Princeton graduate in the class of 1988, says one particular implementation should not do it all. [F]igure out who your customer is and then build exactly what they need that they cant already get from somewhere else.
Andresen, who conceived the Bitcoin Foundation, says that if ones customer is big mining pools and miners, they should talk to them to learn what it is they desire.
Find out what theyre running and figure out what they need, Mr. Andresen writes. If your software will be running on Internet-facing machines then it shouldnt be storing private keys at all it is really bad security practice to keep private keys on the same machine that is talking to the rest of the world. If your customer is techno-weenies who love to tinker with stuff, then distribute a Docker image with some geek-friendly (non-GUI) interface.
Mr. Andresen, who believes there should exist a hair on fire emoji according to tweets, wonders what it would be like if he were a lead developer for Bitcoin Core. I dont know what Id do. I dont think there would be consensus for who is the Bitcoin Core customer.
He adds: [A]nd any proposal for major changes like get rid of the wallet code, it is a terrible idea to keep private keys protecting potentially millions of dollars on a machine that is accepting connections from the Internet or drop support for Windows and OSX, all the active developers are Linux geeks would be painfully controversial.
Mr. Andresen doesnt regularly post to his blog, but when he does, the Bitcoin developer community pays attention. Satoshis entrusted developer, who caused controversy early in Bitcoins existence by visiting the CIA to discuss the digital currency, had his commit access to the Bitcoin code repository stripped by Wladimir Van der Lann amid the Craig Wright-as-Satoshi controversy, when Mr. Andresen shocked the Bitcoin world by confirming Mr. Wrights identity. Mr. Wright never cryptographically proved that, indeed, he is Satoshi Nakamoto. (but, perhaps, he lost his password) Mr. Andresen later retracted his statement.
Since his removal from the Bitcoin Core repository, Mr. Andresen has remained active and never vengeful. He advocates for open-source developers to pay attention to the governance aspects of their prospect a design aspect Bitcoin has seemingly lacked.
On social media, Mr. Andresen has called attempts to paint hard forks as too risky paternalistic, and has even suggested Bitcoin Core developers use a more neutral language in discussion about Bitcoin implementations and proposals.
I think a neutral statement from Core like IF there is a hard fork over the block size, Core software is able to follow either branch along with a trivial patch/option that, again, simply skips the validation checks for max base block size / max block sigops / max segwit block size if the option is set would be a really good way of extricating the Core project from the insanity of the debate.
Featured image from Flickr.
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Gavin Andresen Celebrates Competing Bitcoin Implementations - CryptoCoinsNews
Who Is Jihan Wu, and Does He Basically Control Bitcoin Today? – Investopedia
Investopedia | Who Is Jihan Wu, and Does He Basically Control Bitcoin Today? Investopedia Jihan Wu is the co-founder of BITMAIN, one of most recognized and valuable bitcoin companies, and has come into limelight as a supporter of Bitcoin Unlimited, a solution to solve Bitcoin's scalability issue. Jihan Wu founded Bitmain maintains AntPool ... |
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Who Is Jihan Wu, and Does He Basically Control Bitcoin Today? - Investopedia
Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer Tweets Out a Bitcoin String – CryptoCoinsNews
Sean Spicer, Trumps press secretary, tweeted out a bitcoin hash back in January 2017. The tweet was quickly deleted, but it led to a rumor mill speculating he had just let everyone know his password. That wasnt the case, it appears the apparently random string n9y25ah7 was a bitcoin blockchain based verification code.
Sean Spicer, Trumps Press Secretary tweets out a bitcoin string
The address only received pennies or less, by another address which received pennies or less. Some quick blockchain analysis suggests there are three or four hoops until we get to an address with a respectable amount of bitcoins, but how any of this moved is somewhat puzzling considering bitcoin fees are at a dollar or more.
What might be less puzzling is why Spicer might have used the bitcoin blockchain as a means of authentication because this was just days after Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, used the blockchain as proof of life by revealing the hash of a timely address in a much-publicized event.
That most probably raised bitcoins profile by revealing a somewhat unique use proof of identity in a very hard to forge manner, not much different than a PGP key. It may well be the case Spicer thought to use the same functionality for whatever reason, but that he did so is fairly significant.
Firstly, it shows bitcoin is now very much mainstream in America. It further indicates many within Trumps administration are not only aware of bitcoin, but actually use it. Something we speculated before and after the election, with many guessing the new administration would be much more friendly to this space.
Whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen because, undoubtedly, the Republicans had far more pressing issues to deal with in their 100 days, including North Korea, Syria, the battles over immigration, and so on.
It is unlikely they have gotten to this space yet, but it is very telling that a highly senior member of Trumps administration has used bitcoin, probably for authentication, suggesting he is aware of its functionalities and uses.
Many will ask whether it is a very subtle stunt or whether he actually did just use cutting-edge technology to perform a useful function, namely timely proof of identity? Who knows. What we can say is that hopefully, he was aware of the potential privacy implications because that address may now receive much scrutiny, including how funds came to it, how it could move with such low amounts when fees are so high, where did funds go, and so on.
Regardless, this is the highest ranking American official to show awareness of bitcoin and its use. A very first for this space.
Hat tip toLouise Mensch.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer Tweets Out a Bitcoin String - CryptoCoinsNews
Is Bitcoin a Great Hedge Against Struggling Debt-Based Economies? – CryptoCoinsNews
The US is known to the vast majority of the world as the global financial and economic powerhouse. Yet, the US holds the largest amount of external debt at $19.9 trillion. The UK, France and Germany fall behind the US respectively as the second, third and fourth largest debt holders in the world.
Since mid-2016, investors and traders in the largest bitcoin exchange markets including US, China and Japan began to perceive bitcoin as a safe haven asset and wealth management product (WMP). Since then, bitcoin has been the go-to asset for avoiding economic uncertainty and financial instability.
Conceptually, the debt of the US carries a low level of importance to both the country and the rest of the world due to the US government and its economys impact to the global economy and financial system. As the holder of the worlds largest reserve currency, at times of economic and financial instability, the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US, rely on its ability to print massive amounts of money to keep the countrys economy afloat.
But, such strategy is leading to the build up of perhaps the largest bubble in modern history; the bubble of the central banks and the global financial system.
Realistically, financial systems of countries are overseen, manipulated and controlled by their respective governments. Thus, similar to the attempts of Greece in 2015, central banks and regulators could impose harsh regulations or policies such as a haircut to seize funds from private investors, individuals and businesses through private banks.
Simply put, funds or money stored in bank accounts and even fiat money or cash carry no actual value that is wholly dependent on the market. Their value is completely based on the governing party and its central bank. As seen in the decline of the British pound, the value of a currency could plunge in short period of time due to political conflicts and financial disagreements.
At this rate, fiat money is approaching its decline and the emergence of a decentralized and market-based currency such as bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies that hold the philosophy of bitcoin could threaten the global financial system. The US is able to hold on to massive amounts of debt due to their leverage over the global economy and financial system. If it loses its leverage due to a complete restructuring of the financial system as a result of the popularization of bitcoin or other decentralized stores of value, the country could be placed under serious economic trouble.
For instance, the gross debt of the Australian government in 2007 was valued to be $53.25 billion. Today, the debt of Australia is $484.6 billion. Within a decade, the national debt of Australia increased by over 9x, as seen in the chart below.
Bitcoin is a practical and viable hedge against debt-based economies because its value solely depends on its market. Since bitcoin is decentralized by nature and has a fixed monetary supply, the value of bitcoin is decided by a simple concept of supply and demand. But, since the supply of bitcoin is fixed, as long the demand for bitcoin continues to increase, the value of bitcoin will proportionally surge.
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Is Bitcoin a Great Hedge Against Struggling Debt-Based Economies? - CryptoCoinsNews
Bitcoin Will Soon Gain Traction in Antigua & Barbuda As Government Proposes to Draft new Laws – newsBTC
This is another validation for Bitcoin as a new global currency.
The Caribbean has always been an interesting region for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and consorts can make a big impact in this part of the world over the coming years. The Cabinet of Antigua & Barbuda is looking to regulate Bitcoin usage in the coming months. The local Attorney General is tasked with drafting allows for the implementation of Bitcoin. An intriguing development, that much is certain.
It is refreshing to see legislators take an open-minded approach to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The Cabinet of Antigua & Barbuda wants to draft new laws pertaining to Bitcoin usage. However, it does not appear the government wants to hinder the use of cryptocurrencies in any way. Instead, they want to give Bitcoin legal recognition, which is beneficial to the status of this popular cryptocurrency on a global scale.
The decision is a result of a meeting between the Cabinet and representatives of the Antigua Leisure & Gaming Association. As a result of this meeting, Antigua & Barbuda think highly of Bitcoin as of right now. New developments are taking center stage in the region, that much is certain. Moreover, the nation wants to be a trendsetter in the Caribbean. Embracing innovative technology is an excellent way to maintain that status.
Since Bitcoin is an immutable currency, it is of keen interest to the local government. Moreover, anyone can trace Bitcoin transactions at any time without needing special software or access. In fact, the government sees Bitcoin as an ally when it comes to fighting tax evasion efforts. An intriguing train of thought, considering other countries see Bitcoin as a way to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion.
Minister of Trade and Consumer Affairs EP Chet Greene stated:
The currency benefits us in Antigua & Barbuda in respect to our Internet gaming sector. It will allow us the satisfaction needed as a jurisdiction in respect to questions that would be asked of us in the Global Environment.
This is another validation for Bitcoin as a new global currency. Japan and South Korea have been looking favorably on Bitcoin as of late. More countries giving cryptocurrency legal status are quite an intriguing development, to say the least. Things are changing in favor of Bitcoin, that much is certain.
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Bitcoin Will Soon Gain Traction in Antigua & Barbuda As Government Proposes to Draft new Laws - newsBTC