It seems that the drama with the PBOC and regulations in China is becoming less and less significant, as these news dont seem to have as much impact on the price. In fact, the price is on the way to recovered to pre-crackdown prices as Bitcoin is trading at $1035 on Bitstamp. On Feb. 9th, the PBOC released quite a threatening statement which tanked Bitcoins price 10%, on the bright side it looks like the worst is behind and Bitcoin is setting a new price floor at $1000.

While Bitcoin is receiving scurrility in the East, the Western markets are showing massive support for the cryptocurrency. We can see that the Chinese markets are loosing dominance becausethere is now a premium of $40-50 for the Western markets, while the value per Bitcoin on the Chinese exchanges is lower than average. This chart from Tradeblock shows the price difference best:

Its only expected that Bitcoins price would be cheaper in China as many users refuse to convert their Yuan into Bitcoin for the fear that they wouldnt be able to withdraw the coins later. However, some more opportunistic traders are also doing just the opposite which is buying up those cheap coins in the hopes of the price stabilizing again once cryptocurrencywithdrawals turn back on.

People were doing the same thing when MtGox was going under, they bought coins on MtGox much under market price, since they bet on the exchange to returning to normal. Unfortunately for them we all know how that situation turned out MtGox filed for bankruptcy and every investor took a loss.

Other relevant news include the fact that Investing.com, one of the most popular investment resources has labeled Bitcoin as a strong buy. According to their technical summary chart for the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is worth buying at the moment:

It seems that traders are optimistic about Bitcoins support. However, in such a volatile free market any hint of drama can send the chart sideways. With the Bitcoin ETF decision coming March 11th, tensions will only increaseas traders bet on the outcome.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

Read the rest here:

Bitcoin Price on the Rise Again After Regulatory Crackdown in China - The Merkle

Satoshi Nakamotos creation is often seen as something it is not, as there are a lot of misconceptions that simply dont want to go away. Sometimes, because some want to smear bitcoin, and often because others fail to do their homework properly. Here are a few common misconceptions about bitcoin that the average joe keeps on believing:

Ponzi schemes usually involve a central entity trying to persuade possible investors, telling them they will make a huge profit. In these schemes, the only way those on top can make money is at the expense of others. Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer currency, there is no central entity. It does not require a constant flow of money to sustain itself, not does it require new adopters to survive.

Moreover, it is important to note that, if it was all a Ponzi scheme, we would assume Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoins creator, would live an extravagant lifestyle. He owns roughly 1 million bitcoins a little over US$1 billion at the time of press. Yet, these coins havent been moved in years.

It is true that Silk Road, an infamous dark web marketplace, helped bitcoin grow in 2011. In 2013, the FBI took down the Silk Road, but that did not stop bitcoin from growing. Recently, bitcoins market caphit $15 billion, as the ecosystem of legitimate businesses who accept bitcoin keeps on growing. In some cases, businesses can even get a special license that allows them to legally accept bitcoin as a form of payment.

Nevertheless, bitcoin is used by criminals, just like fiat currencies, commodities, app store gift cards, gym membership vouchers and pretty much anything with value.

In the early days, it was very hard to use bitcoin as almost no one was accepting the cryptocurrency. Nowadays, however, there are thousands of businesses accepting bitcoin throughout the world, and one can not only buy food, but also get a haircut, hire a lawyer, and even get a lightsaber. Theres a useful app out there, called Bitcoin Map, that lets users know which brick-and-mortar businesses around them accept bitcoin.

Heres a video of a transaction at Subway:

Hackers have been successful at stealing large amounts of bitcoin in the past, but that doesnt mean the cryptocurrency isnt safe. Most bitcoin thefts were a result of inadequate wallet security, and since then risk-mitigating measures have been taken. Yet, these high-profile bitcoin heists can make the currency look unsafe.

Users need to properly secure their wallets , and that means backing them up and encrypting them. Offline wallets are the safest way one can store their bitcoins, and even these should be backed up.

Although you dont need a bank account or a social security number to pay with bitcoin, transactions arent completely anonymous. Every transaction is publicly recorded on the blockchain in order to prevent certain actions, such as spending the same bitcoin twice.

Granted, its hard to use bitcoin transactions to uncover someones real identity, but it is possible. If someones transactions are tracked down to an exchange, for example, it is possible authorities uncover the persons identity through a subpoena. To protect ones privacy, a bitcoin address should only be used once.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

View post:

5 Common Misconceptions About Bitcoin - The Merkle

The bitcoin price rose on Thursday after Chinese digital-currency exchange BTCC said it would temporarily halt withdrawals while it upgrades its anti-money laundering systems, becoming the third major exchange to do so. Last week, OKCoin and Huobi, which, along with BTCC, comprise China's "big three" bitcoin exchanges, made similar announcements, saying the necessary upgrades should take a month, if not less. One bitcoin cost $1,019 in recent trade, according to Coin Market Cap. In the past, the bitcoin price has fallen following reports of Chinese regulators stepping up pressure on the exchanges. Instead, the price reaction on Thursday suggests that investors are less worried about interference from Chinese authorities, who have sought to tighten oversight over the country's exchanges in recent months. "The market is kind of numb," said Chris Burniske, blockchain analyst and products lead at ARK Invest. "It's priced in this information and it's not concerned." Earlier in the week, a former governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on local television that bitcoin will continue to exist in China.

See the original post:

Bitcoin price rises as third Chinese exchange halts withdrawals - MarketWatch

Finanzen.net, Germanys most popular and largest financial news network and platform, is listing bitcoin amongst other major reserve currencies such as US Dollar, Japanese Yen and Chinese yuan on the companys most important exchange rates section.

The list contains rates of 7 major reserve currencies which Finanzen.net consider operate as the basis of the global economy. Listing of bitcoin on the exchange rates section implies that Finanzen.net, a key player within the German financial and media industries, considers bitcoin as one of the most important currencies in the world.

In its widely-utilized currency converter and rates ticker platform, Finanzen.net also provides native support for bitcoin, demonstrating year-long charts of bitcoin price and listing the digital currency among all of the reserve currencies listed by the company.

Over the past few months, Finanzen.net consistently broadcasted and reported bitcoin-related news to its nationwide audience and readers in Germany. Earlier this year, Finanzen.net published an article entitled Digital Currency Bitcoin Outperforms Every Currency in 2016, which attracted interests and likes of the general population of Germay.

Earlier this month, Finanzen.net also released a collaborative piece entitled HSH Nordbank: Focus on Bitcoin, partnering with the multi-billion bank to provide an in-depth article on the infrastructure of bitcoin, user base of the digital currency, trading activity in different regions and most importantly, the potential of bitcoin.

Besides the German mainstream media, other mainstream media outlets in Europe including Switzerlands largest news network Neue Zrcher Zeitung have been providing accurate report and coverage on bitcoin as well, introducing the digital currency to the general population that most likely have not come across bitcoin in the past.

Consistent coverage and accurate portrayal of bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency and a legitimate store of value by mainstream media outlets including Finanzen.net and Neue Zrcher Zeitung will significantly increase mainstream adoption of bitcoin and allow the digital currency to embraced by millions of users that are yet to discover and understand an alternative financial system to that of conventional banking and finance.

Image from Shutterstock.

See the article here:

Germany's Largest Financial News Platform Lists Bitcoin as Major Currency - CryptoCoinsNews

Mining centralization is probably one of the biggest challenges digital currencies face.

Many of Bitcoins properties, such as censorship resistance and double-spend protection, rely to a large extent on a decentralized mining landscape. But over the years, the Bitcoin mining system has increasingly centralized into fewer hands and fewer geographical regions. There are several explanations for this trend. But one of them is the emergence of specialized mining hardware: ASIC chips and miners.

In an attempt to solve this issue, scientists at the University of Luxembourgs Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) have developed a mathematical algorithm called Equihash. Equihash is the brainchild of Prof. Alex Biryukov, head of SnT research group CryptoLUX focused on research and technology transfer in cryptology and CryptoLUX researcher Dr. Dmitry Khovratovich. The algorithm was first unveiled at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2016 in San Diego.

Probably its most significant success to date, Zcash, the new decentralized and open-source digital currency that aims to set a new standard for privacy and anonymity through the use of groundbreaking cryptography, announced the integration of Equihash in April 2016. In a post titled Why Equihash?, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox and engineer Jack Grigg noted that Equihash has very efficient verification which could enable light clients on constrained devices and Zcash clients inside Ethereum. But the main reason for the enthusiasm of the Zcash tech is, indeed, Equihashs resistance to ASIC mining.

Equihash is a memory-oriented Proof-of-Work, which means how much mining you can do is mostly determined by how much RAM you have, said Wilcox and Grigg. We think it is unlikely that anyone will be able to build cost-effective custom hardware (ASICs) for mining in the foreseeable future. Wilcox and Grigg added that it is unlikely that major optimizations of Equihash could give the miners who know the optimization an advantage.

Equihash is a memory-hard problem, more suited to general-purpose computers with lots of memory than to special hardware chips. If 10,000 miners with a single PC were active, in Zcash the investment to compete with them would be 10,000 times the price of a PC, while with Bitcoin, the investment would be significantly smaller, said Khovratovich. The strength of a cryptocurrency comes from the fact that the ledger is globally distributed. Our Equihash algorithm reverses the situation back to this more ideal world.

According to the CryptoLUX scientists, the algorithm permits avoiding centralization of the mining process in the hands of a few first-class miners with specialized mining hardware, thus contributing to the democratization of digital currencies based on Equihash.

Since Equihash is based on a fundamental computer science problem, advances in Equihash mining algorithms will benefit computer science in general, added Biryukov. Equihash is so far unique among all the mining algorithms: it is memory-hard on the one hand and very easy to verify on the other.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Equihash inventor Biryukov also emphasized that Equihash is a portable algorithm, not limited to specific digital currencies.

We don't have any formal relation with the Zcash project, he said. Equihash is not limited to Zcash, it can be used in any cryptocurrency. That said, Biryukov did sound cautiously enthusiastic about Zcash. Compared to many other cryptocurrencies Zcash definitely brings in new features based on state-of-the-art academic crypto. Whether it will scale well or not the future will show.

Given the portability of Equihash, its interesting to speculate about its possible integration in Bitcoin itself. I am not aware of such attempts, but it would be technically easy to do, noted Biryukov.

For more details on Equihash, see the research paper Equihash: asymmetric proof-of-work based on the Generalized Birthday problem.

Original post:

How the Equihash Algorithm Could Democratize Zcash Mining - Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin is now pushing its way through arc resistance in several timeframes. I think it is reasonable to assume that it will soon get through the arcs to close on the sunny side, giving us buy signals once again.

Here is a 4-hour chart:

As you can see, in this setup it was the top of the 4th square that knocked price for a loop several days ago. But the chart found support at the 3rd arc, retraced back to the 4th arc, faltered for a bit, but is now pushing through.

Of course, it is possible that the 2nd arc of the pair will knock it back down, but that seems a bit unlikely. Far more likely, imho, is that price will get through and target the 5th arc at ~ $1087.

It seems that the 2/19-2/21 timeframe will see price hit the 5th arc. What will likely happen then? Of course, I cant say for sure. However, Chris Carolyns epic work, The Spiral Calendar has called out this time frame as a time window to watch as an energy point in time, so to speak. Truthfully, for several weeks now I had assumed that the 2/21 time frame was going to see a major low, leading to a wonderful time for the bulls. It now appears that it may in fact be a top.

Time will tell if that is true or not. But for now, it seems that a buy signal on the 4-hour chart is likely imminent.

Here is the 2-hour BTCCNY chart (BTCCHINA):Here we can see that price fell after reaching the end of the 2nd square in time, but has since crossed the 3rd arc pair. While price is still looking a bit weak here, the 4th arc is a long way up, when/if price decides to turn up.

Happy trading!

Remember: The author is a trader who is subject to all manner of error in judgement. Do your own research, and be prepared to take full responsibility for your own trades.

Image from Shutterstock.

Originally posted here:

Bitcoin Pushing Through Resistance Again - CryptoCoinsNews

Merely weeks after cautioning residents that bitcoin companies werent authorized or licensed to operate in the country, Indias central bank is reportedly not including bitcoin under the purview of regulations for digital payments. In essence, the cryptocurrency will not be legitimized as a legal form of payment or settlement in an economy which is the worlds largest receiver of remittances, anytime soon.

Digital payments and financial technology (Fintech) solutions have caught on rampantly amongst the Indian society in recent times, particularly after a sweeping, unprecedented cash crunch brought on by the governments demonetization drive.

In light of these new innovations, the Payments and Settlement Systems Act of 2007 [PDF], the code by which payment systems are regulated, was amended to include digital payment gateways and platforms. The amended regulations will look to deem physical cash and digital cash as equals, with developments toward interoperability and a unified payments platform as India embraces the digitization of cash.

As it transpires, bitcoin will not be included as a valid payment system under the new act, according to a report in Indian publication The Telegraph.

The prospect of digital currencies being acknowledged by authorities were dealt an early blow when Indias central (federal) government decided against creating a separate regulator for the digital payments industry. The authority to regulate was promptly awarded to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the countrys central bank. Setting up a separate regulator would have led to one too many financial regulators, according to officials. Globally, the trend is towards unified regulators and the RBI is a strong institution, hence the government chose to go with it, the officials stated according to the report.

The RBI will set up a Payments Regulatory Board, headed by its governor, to oversee and handle digital payment gateways which now fall under the amended regulations.

Digital banking and Fintech platforms are seeing massive adoption in a country with soaring smartphone penetration.

Earlier this month, the central bank issued a public notice, urging caution among bitcoin adopters and users in the country while stating that no exchanges or businesses dealing with the cryptocurrency were licensed by the authority. A week after the public notice, Indias small but growing bitcoin industry came together to form the Virtual Currency Association. The industry group, which consists of Indias biggest digital currency companies and exchanges, has since set out to lobby the government to license and recognize bitcoin trading.

However, the report suggests that attempts by bitcoin players to come under the ambit of the new body are unlikely to succeed as the government and the RBI are not in favour of legitimizing bitcoins as legal tender.

The stance is certain to prove frustrating among bitcoin exchange operators and companies in the industry, particularly when the new regulations allow licensed e-wallet platforms like widely-adopted PayTM to gain access to RBI-controlled remittance infrastructure. Fundamentally, Fintech platforms like PayTM and other e-wallets will gain payment and settlement interoperability with every bank account in a country of over a billion people.

The continuing hardline stance taken by authorities contrasts to approaches taken by other Asian countries.

In December, Philippine authorities revealed that they were considering regulating bitcoin exchange operators after a marked increase in bitcoin remittance in the country. Come January, the regulations were approved before their public release last week. Fundamentally, bitcoin is now recognized as a valid payment method in the Philippines.

In Japan, industry insiders expect to see up to 20,000 bitcoin-accepting merchants in 2017, quintupling the total from 2016, due to the upcoming regulations toward the digital currency industry, expected in June. Tokyo-based bitFlyer, Japans largest bitcoin exchange now sees investors in all three of the countrys mega-banks.Japan recognized bitcoin and virtual currencies as equivalents to fiat cash in early 2016 before proceeding to pass a bill toward the regulation of bitcoin exchanges.

By turning a blind eye toward the bitcoin industry when not shunning it completely, India is missing a trick when it comes to the next generation of simpler, more efficient and faster digital payments.

Images from Shutterstock.

More here:

Report: India's Central Bank is Against Bitcoin as Legal Tender - CryptoCoinsNews

Bitcoin prices continued to fluctuate around $1,000 today, as the global digital currency markets saw technical resistance around this figure.

Overall, bitcoin traded traded above $1,000 for roughly the first eight hours of the day, reaching as much as $1,007 during the session, CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) figures reveal.

Prices fell below $1,000 at 08:15 UTC, however, and failed to break through that level for the remainder of the day.

At the time of report, the currency was trading at $998.42, according to the BPI.

According to analysts, traders remain reluctant about placing bets in the market, as concerns linger about further actions from the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the nation's central bank.

The digital currency has experienced significant volatility in the last several weeks, as the PBOC's decision to crack down on domestic exchanges has caused these marketplaces to announce a slew of sudden policy changes.

Huobi, OKCoin and BTCC (previously called the 'Big Three' exchanges) all announced they wouldimpose consistent fees, cut margin trading and halt or slow deposits and withdrawals denominated in digital currency in recent days.

These continued developments have made some market participants reluctant to trade bitcoin, according to BTC VIX, community moderator for trading group Whale Club. He told CoinDesk:

"I wouldn't hold any position for more than a few hours because the PBOC will continue to be active and exchanges certainly have more announcements over the next 30 days," he said.

So far, there's evidence backing this theory, as traders put in a large number sell orders around the $1,000 price point. This resistance was confirmed by both order book data and the input of market analysts.

Exchanges Bitfinex and Kraken showed the number of sell orders exceeding the number of buy orders close to the $1,000 mark.

Tim Enneking, chairman of Crypto Asset Management, weighed in on this development:

"Bitcoin is definitely encountering technical resistance. $1,000 is a level that is going to take some time to break."

Petar Zivkovski, COO of leveraged bitcoin trading platform Whaleclub, offered similar input.

"The $1,000 level is indeed a strong psychological resistance. Bitcoin will need to cleanly break above $1,000 (high-volume rise and sustained price action above 1000) to transform that level into price support," he continued.

Still, he added that there are potential bullish catalysts, citing the March approval of a Bitcoin ETF or positive regulatory news from China as two possible boons.

Blocking football image via Shutterstock

ChinaPrices

View original post here:

Bitcoin's Price Battles New Resistance in Bid to Breach $1000 - CoinDesk

Despite skepticism from prominent lawyers and Wall Street analysts, bitcoin investors are increasingly confident the Securities and Exchange Commission will approve at least one of the three proposed bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds currently under consideration.

Pricing in futures contracts traded on BitMEX, a popular exchange that is incorporated in the Republic of Seychelles, as well as the rapidly declining premium for shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust traded on the secondary market suggest that some market participants are bracing for approval, said Spencer Bogart, an analyst at Needham & Co. Bogart is one of the few Wall Street analysts who cover Bitcoin.

The trusts premium over bitcoins net asset value has shrunk from about 42.21% in early January to about 13% in recent trade, according to data provided by Grayscale.

The shrinking premium suggests investors are less willing to pay for shares of the trust because they expect one of the ETFs to be approved in the near future, Bogart said. Shares of a bitcoin ETF would likely trade much closer to the cryptocurrencys net asset value, bitcoin watchers said.

The trading activity is at odds with the likelihood of approval tabulated by Bogart, who places it at less than 25%. Last month, a former lawyer for Gemini Trading, the bitcoin exchange operated by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, said he believed the SEC wouldn't approve the creation of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The SEC has said it would issue a ruling on the Winklevosss proposed bitcoin ETF, known as the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, by March 11.

Read: Final rule on proposed bitcoin ETF to come in March

Read: And 2016s best-performing commodity is ... bitcoin?

Plus: Bitcoin price falls as Chinese authorities meet with exchanges

BitMEX recently launched a futures contract that allows investors to bet on the odds that the Winklevoss ETF will be approved. It is presently trading around 33.3, indicating that the thinly traded market is pricing in about a 33% chance of approval, which is higher than what Bogart expects. BitMEX couldn't be reached for immediate comment.

A few weeks ago, Grayscale, which launched the Bitcoin Investment Trust in 2013, filed for an initial public offering that would allow its trust to trade as an ETF on the New York Stock Exchange. The Grayscale bitcoin trust is presently one of the few registered investment vehicles available to financial institutions. A company known as SolidX has also filed for a bitcoin ETF.

Bogart believes that if an ETF is approved, more than $300 million of new institutional capital would flood the bitcoin ecosystem during the first week alone. Such an influx would likely cause the price of a single coin to skyrocket. Typically, trading volume in the global bitcoin market measures less than $100 million a day.

Read: Path to Bitcoin ETF still uncertain but may be easier under Trump

Dont miss: Bitcoin could soar if the Winklevoss ETF is approved

Chris Burniske, blockchain products lead at ARK Invest, believes that the decline in the Grayscale bitcoin trusts premium may suggest that investors are taking a wait-and-see approach ahead of the SECs decision. ARK holds shares in the trust.

The Grayscale trust, which is a taxable registered security, may appeal to institutions as well as individuals who want to add bitcoin to their retirement accounts, Burniske said. The fund was first launched in 2013. Only accredited investors can invest directly in the trust; for others, shares are traded on the secondary market. The trusts market capitalization was $205.6 million as of last week, according to company data.

Grayscale, which filed for the funds IPO on Jan. 20, declined to comment further, citing restrictions imposed by federal securities laws.

The price of a single bitcoin US:BTCUSD fell 1% on Monday to $991, in January it briefly traded at $1,100its highest level in more than three years. By comparison, one share of the Grayscale trust GBTC, +0.05% , meanwhile, traded at $105.50.

Read more from the original source:

Bitcoin investors bet the SEC will approve cryptocurrency ETF a view at odds with analysts - MarketWatch

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Twelveofour

Jeffrey Tarrant is a Wall Street guy. He spent the last thirty years investing in new hedge funds. As the founder and CEO of a firm called Protege Partners, he compares himself to Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator. What Altman does for Silicon Valley tech startups, Tarrant does for hedge funds. I help seed them and incubate them, he says.

The analogy has never been more true than right now. Tarrant is beginning to explore hedge funds built on ideas that have sparked so many companies and created so much wealth in Silicon Valleyideas that span artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing, and digital currencies. He believes the hedge fund world is on the verge of a new revolution, a revolution he calls the Third Wave.

Hedge funds are moving beyond the quants.

The 1970s saw the rise of discretionary funds, where iconic investors like George Soros used their very human judgments to find new opportunities in the market. Then came the quants at funds like Renaissance Technologies, who found even greater opportunities through statistics and computer algorithms. Now, Tarrant says hedge funds are moving beyond the quants.

As a prime example, he cites Numerai, a San Francisco hedge fund that makes trades using machine learning models built by thousands of anonymous data scientists paid in bitcoin. Funds such as Quantopian and Quantiacs are tapping the wisdom of the masses in other ways. And then theres Polychain, a fund that invests exclusively in bitcoin and other digital tokens housed on a blockchain, the distributed online ledger that makes cryptocurrencies possible. As its name suggests, Polychain isnt just investing in digital coinsits investing in a radically new breed of businesses owned, funded, and operated entirely by decentralized networks of anonymous online investors.

Such funds arent always easy to wrap your head around. But as Wall Street tries to make sense of them, these new tech-driven approaches to investing are proliferating. In the late `90s, Tarrant helped build an online directory of hedge funds called AltVest. Now, hes building a directory for this new wave of funds. It includes roughly fifty players, many of whom have yet to publicly announce themselvesthough Tarrant admits that only about half have demonstrated real promise so far.

Not surprisingly, some financial vets question how effective Tarrants new wave will be. In a recent Bloomberg story, several fund managers said that recent enthusiasm for machine learning is overblown. In some cases, even the founders of these Third Wave funds urge caution.

Regardless of what method you use in quantitative financebe it machine learning or traditional quant methodsthere are an infinite number of ways to fail, says Martin Froehler, a former quant with Superfund Asset Management GmbH in Switzerland who went on to found Quantiacs. Machine learning models are no superweapon, he says. In his experience, ninety percent of live machine learning tests fail.

But Froehlers fund benefits from machine learning, too. Based in Silicon Valley, Quantiacs attempts to crowdsource the quant model, and many of the quants feeding the fund are using machine learning technologies. Among other things, theyre making use of deep neural networks, complex mathematical systems for recognizing patterns in vast amounts of data. In other words, the Third Wave is not just about using one new technique. Its about combining techniques, from machine learning to crowdsourcing to the blockchain.

Nor is this just a battle of the old guard and the new. The founder of Renaissance has invested in Numerai, and Point72 Asset Management, the fund founded by billionaire Stephen Cohen, has put money into Quantopian. These people who I considered old school really understood what I was getting at, says Numerai founder Richard Craib. And I thought I was going to be ahead of my time.

Even the apparent skeptics are embracing the trend. Im concerned that people may have unrealistic expectations of what is possible with the current state of the art, David Siegel, co-founder of storied quant fund Two Sigma Investments, said last fall. But more recently, his fund ran an online contest through Silicon Valley data scientist marketplace Kaggle, offering a $100,000 prize for the best machine learning model. One company director indicated the contest was more of a recruitment tool than a full embrace of crowdsourcing or machine learning. But whatever the intention, it was yet another example of Silicon Valley and Wall Street drawing closer than ever before.

Read more:

AI and Bitcoin Are Driving the Next Big Hedge Fund Wave - WIRED

By Nate Raymond | NEW YORK

NEW YORK A Florida software engineer and a New Jersey pastor are expected on Monday to face trial in a case stemming from an investigation into a bitcoin exchange and a data breach at JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N).

Jury selection is set to begin in Manhattan federal court in the case of Yuri Lebedev, who authorities call the architect of bitcoin exchange Coin.mx's electronic platform, and Trevon Gross, a pastor and ex-chairman of a now-defunct credit union.

Prosecutors contend Lebedev schemed to deceive financial institutions into processing transactions for the unlicensed Coin.mx. They say he also participated in bribing Gross to gain control over the credit union to facilitate the virtual currency business.

Both men have pleaded not guilty. Eric Creizman, Lebedev's lawyer, said he was "looking forward to his day in court." Gross' attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

They are among nine people who have faced charges following an investigation connected to a breach JPMorgan disclosed in 2014 that exposed more than 83 million accounts.

Gross, 52, and Lebedev, 39, were not accused of hacking.

But they came under scrutiny in connection with Coin.mx, which authorities said was operated by Anthony Murgio, who attended Florida State University with Lebedev, and was owned by an Israeli behind the JPMorgan breach, Gery Shalon.

Prosecutors say Shalon, together with Maryland-born Joshua Samuel Aaron, orchestrated cyber attacks that resulted in the theft of over 100 million peoples' information.

Prosecutors said they carried out the cyber crimes to further other schemes with another Israeli, Ziv Orenstein, including pumping up stock prices with promotional emails. Shalon, Aaron and Orenstein have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors said Coin.mx operated through a front called "Collectables Club" to trick financial institutions into believing it was a memorabilia club while it converted, with no license, millions of dollars into bitcoin.

To further evade scrutiny, in 2014, Murgio, with Lebedev's help, tried to take over Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union of Jackson, New Jersey, which was linked to HOPE Cathedral.

To do so, they and others paid $150,000 in bribes via the church to Gross, its pastor, in exchange for facilitating Murgio's takeover and arranging for Lebedev and others to be put on the credit union's board, prosecutors said.

Gross' lawyers deny he was lining his pockets with what they call a church donation and say Collectables Club victimized the board.

Federal regulators took the credit union into conservatorship in 2015. Murgio pleaded guilty in January.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)

NEW YORK The American Bankers Association, a trade group for U.S. banks, has endorsed Chicago-based startup Akouba as a technology provider to enable its members offer small business lending online.

ROME Facebook must do much more to stamp out hate speech on its site, the president of Italy's lower house of parliament said, warning that rising abuse on various social media was being fueled by fake news.

Trump-branded consumer products have suffered new blows, with U.S. retailers Sears Holdings Corp and Kmart Corp discontinuing online sales of 31 Trump Home items, while new details emerged showing sales of Ivanka Trump's brand fell in the weeks before Nordstrom Inc stopped carrying her products.

View original post here:

US trial set over bitcoin exchange linked to JPMorgan hack probe - Reuters

The gambling industry is actually one of the main facilitators of bitcoins growth. Traditionally, people have been looking down at online gambling and such a situation certainly leaves many bitcoin enthusiasts quite perplexed.This article will cover some advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoin gambling.

When the whole hype about bitcoin got started, most of the early adopters were the true believers of the digital currency. Others were the investors and the speculators that decided to make profits. Bitcoin, and the whole blockchain technology, have been disrupting not only the global monetary system, but also quite a few other industries. When banks started looking into the blockchain, most of the bitcoin enthusiasts were happy, and once the insurance sector started adopting the blockchain technology, it meant an even greater future for cryptocurrencies.

Whether you are pro or against online gambling, one fact is for certain the industry brings lots of money and it is here to stay. As reported by Norskecasino.casino, currently the growth of the bitcoin casinos is tremendous, their gaming volumes seem to triple, or even quadruple, on the year-to-year basis. Apart from attracting bitcoin users, such casinos are actually making regular online casino players adopt to using bitcoin.

Hence, we can clearly see that even though the activity does not provide advantages to humanity, it does motivate people to adopt bitcoin, in one way or another. Furthermore, as this industry is quite profitable, it is expected that some of the profits will be shared with other bitcoin-related sites and services: miners, exchanges, bitcoin media sites and so on. Hence, a share of the money from bitcoin gambling is partially used to promote the idea of the bitcoin.

Perhaps, the most obvious disadvantage is the reputation of the cryptocurrency. Everyone remembers the times when BTCs were mostly used to buy illegal items on the Silk Road. This drove many individuals and organizations to think that bitcoin is something dangerous rather than useful. If bitcoin gambling overtakes regular online casinos, it is probable that all of the evils of gambling will be blamed on bitcoin.

Apart from the impact on reputation, an obvious disadvantage here is that almost every casino operator is not a bitcoin supporter. Hence, the BTC earnings are very likely to be exchanged for fiat currencies.

Bitcoin gambling certainly comes with quite a few disadvantages, but the recent regulatory changes do show that it is useful for the whole BTC community. Apart from that, currently bitcoin gambling contributes towards a large share of the whole transactions. As a result, it is possible to forecast the that bitcoins reputation may suffer a little, but such a decay may beworth greater adoption rates.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

See the rest here:

Will Bitcoin's Reputation Suffer due to Online Gambling? - The Merkle

As Iran moves away from using the US dollar, bitcoin has emerged as a potential replacement. The cryptocurrency could thrive in a country where more than 50 million people are connected to the internet, financial experts claim.

In the wake of US President Donald Trumps travel restrictions on seven countries including Iran, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran announced last month that the US dollar will be replaced with a stable reserve currency more frequently used in foreign trades.

READ MORE: Iran to dump the US dollar in response to Trump's travel ban

Two possible replacements are being explored such as using one currency, potentially the euro, or allowing Iranians to select from multiple currencies, reported the Coin Telegraph.

The announcement has caught the attention of the countrys first bitcoin exchange, BTXCapital, which sees Iran as a market with potential to grow. The market is massive. A large population with a high proportion connected to the internet means there is a lot of completely untapped market potential, Ganesh Jung, CEO of Draglet who develop an exchange platform used by BTXCapital, told IBTimes UK.

India recently saw a surge in bitcoin usage following the countrys demonetization of high-value paper notes, pushing people towards cashless transactions.

However, last week the Reserve Bank of India issued a warning to bitcoin users saying it is not licensed in the country.

Any user, holder, investor, trader, etc. dealing with virtual currencies will be doing so at their own risk, they said in a statement.

The cryptocurrency faces similar challenges in Iran where, according to the central bank, Article 2 of the states Money and Banking Act states that The Currency of Iran shall be in the form of money and coins, which were either in circulation at the time the legislation was passed or which are issued under the Act.

However, the restriction does not prevent bitcoin being used for other purposes including money transfers overseas.

READ MORE:Bitcoin keeps popping with prices at 2016 highs

Jung claims Iran will be supportive of bitcoin and use it as a way to signal that the country is hoping to reintegrate with the West and bitcoin is one way to do this."

Bitcoin more than doubled its value in 2016, becoming the years best-performing currency. It rallied at 126 percent on the back of strong demand in China, where the yuan saw its worst year on record, weakening 6.5 percent.

Originally posted here:

'Untapped potential': Bitcoin poised to profit from Iran's ban on US ... - RT

Markets for bitcoin and other digital cryptocurrencies dipped by more than 7% on February 9 th , following news that the Peoples Bank of China, the countrys central bank, was tightening regulatory pressure. The PBoC met Wednesday with the countrys major Bitcoin exchanges to push for full compliance with anti-money laundering rules. As detailed by CoinDesk , the price of Bitcoin dropped from around $1,063 dollars to around $988, before recovering slightly to around $1,000 by Sunday.

Following the meetings, two of Chinas largest bitcoin exchanges temporarily halted the withdrawal of bitcoin and another currency, litecoin. The move did not affect the withdrawal of yuan, and the companies said the halt would last one month while they improved protections against money laundering and other illegal activity.

Get Data Sheet , Fortune s technology newsletter.

A half-dozen Chinese bitcoin exchanges have also said they will institute new trading fees . Thats a continuation of a PBoC push in January to end the practice of no-fee trading, which is seen as artificially inflating trading volumes. The fee increases already implemented have driven trading volumes on Chinese exchanges down sharply .

Chinese exchanges have long made up a large portion of the overall market for cryptocurrency, and their influence has been a consistent source of anxiety in the market. Previous dips in the price of bitcoin have been driven by Chinese regulation, including a 2013 decision banning banks from handling bitcoin as a currency. Significant price surges, meanwhile, have been caused by domestic Chinese trends, such as a 2015 craze for a bitcoin-fueled Russian pyramid scheme .

While increased PBoC oversight may briefly dampen the cryptocurrency market, then, it could also signal greater long-term stability.

According to Bloomberg, the recent regulatory pressure on Bitcoin from the PBoC is likely driven by the Chinese governments desire to control capital outflows from the country.

Link:

Bitcoin Markets Slide as China Steps up Regulatory Scrutiny - Fortune

Tatiana Moroz, a singer-songwriter and a bitcoin enthusiast, announced a new beta launch of Tatianacoin, a token created on the bitcoin blockchain, as well as a new album and an upcoming crowdfunded tour of her advocacy and music at The Blockchain Event in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Tatiana Moroz

Moroz launched Tatianacoin last year. She raised funds in June of 2014, and, with the help of Adam B. Levine from Lets Talk Bitcoin, Moroz executed the idea. Tatianacoin used Counterparty for the coin and organized an initial crowdsale through CoinPowers.

Tatianacoin is designed to bring musicians and fans closer together through blockchain technology.

Tatianacoin tokens have a fixed value of 5 cents (USD), and can be redeemed through Tatianas goods and services. It is supported by anupcoming media ownership platform, token.fm.

As of Feb. 11, there were 240 Tatianacoin asset holders, according to Counterparty Block Explorers blockscan.com.

Tatianacoin owners will be able to lend, collect, sell or trade tokens, and have access to VIP experiences on Tatianas upcoming world tour.Fans will be able to chat directly with Tatiana and other fans, and access multimedia content, VIP experiences, recording studio sessions, private concerts and personalized fan gear.

Tatianacoin allows someone to give me whatever form of money they want and get back basically a gift certificate with extra features, Moroz told CCN. Tokenly is my merchant services provider. They allow anyone to sell physical, digital or token goods in exchange for dollars, bitcoin, cryptocurrency and also allows you to accept any token you create yourself, or that someone else created on the Counterparty platform.

Token.fm is getting ready to launch its public alpha and is in discussions with early access musicians now, she said.

Tokens can be traded outside of Tokenlys tools as well, she said. There is a distributed exchange built into Counterparty that allows for tokens to be swapped entirely on the blockchain, although its easier to use Tokenlys tools.

Tatianacoin is the first instance of what we call an ArtistCoin: a digital currency that removes the middle man and smooths contracts, payments and communications, she said. ArtistCoins will enable songwriters, record labels, and publishers to seamlessly register their work, view tamper-proof payment contracts, and distribute songs with all the splits built in. This will streamline the licensing process and ensure all the parties are fairly compensated.

Tatianacoin and token.fm seek to solve the problems of income potential, media distribution and fan relations within the music industry, Moroz noted in a recent press announcement. Artists earn on average much less than a penny per stream and are presented with overwhelming options for social sharing with limited means of retaining fan relationships.

After experiencing firsthand the troubles artists face trying to make a name for themselves, I sought a revolutionary way for artists and fans to help each other through incentivized financial support and social connectivity, Moroz said. The only way to achieve this is through the power of the blockchain: a technology that presents countless opportunities for artists and musicians.

I was fortunate to be an early adopter of this technology, which could completely revamp and re-empower the music industry. My upcoming tour will be about more than my passion for music; I want to enlighten artists and musicians on a transformative technology that allows for true artistic freedom and creates a fair, transparent economy. At the same time, I want to create greater access to and rewards for fans who believe in the work of artists.

Also read: Blockchain technology could help bring about a music revolution

While launching the full band version of the single, Bitcoin Jungle at the recent Blockchain Event, Moroz announced the drop date of March 31 for Keep The Faith, her first studio album in five years, and an upcoming crowdfunded tour of advocacy and music. The new album features a full band performing her 11 original songs, plus a cover of Elton Johns Skyline Pigeon. Her music is a fresh take on the folk style of the revolutionary 1960s and 1970s, and is an original blend of pop, rock, blues and country.

Proceeds from the crowdfunding will go directly to the global distribution and exposure of Keep The Faith, while kickstarting an international tour across Europe and North America.

As of Feb. 11, $2,641 was raised against a goal of $15,000. The campaign ends on March 11.

This tour and album will be the most significant of my journey as an artist, Moroz said. The overall goal is to digress from the financial and social pitfalls prevalent in todays music industry by giving the power and the rewards back to the artist and fans. Equally important to me is educating and inspiring up-and-coming artists to use this technology and the voice of the crowd to their advantage.

Moroz claims on her website that Ross Ulbricht was wrongly convicted and unfairly punished for allegedly committing nonviolent crimes.

I stand with Ross, and I am lucky to have Ross stand with me; the beautiful album cover for my album Keep The Faith was originally drawn by him as a birthday present to me, and I am now really excited to be able to sue it as my album cover, she stated on her website.

Go here to see the original:

Musician & Bitcoin Enthusiast Tatiana Moroz Reintroduces Tatianacoin - CryptoCoinsNews

Genesis Mining is one of the leading cloudmining companies and a trustworthy partner of ours. It's good to see that they are an honest cloudmining service which shows their farms openly to the public.

Genesis Mining is one of our biggest clients and proven to be a reliable and trustworthy business partner. Their transparent mining sites and high quality software infrastructure together with our high end mining hardware result in a great and unique product and experience for everybody interested in mining!

As the world first 28nm BTC and LTC chip maker, Innosilicon selects Genesis Ming as partner in cloud mining industry business for its integrity, excellent customer oriented service and great user interface design. Genesis Mining is the best in class mining service that is supported by our technologically superior mining hardware. This unique synergy produces the best experience for those interested in mining and we look forward to having a long and prosperous relationship.

MinerEU is very happy to have Genesis Mining as our trustworthy partner. We have already recommended Genesis-Mining to thousands of our existing customers who are happy and satisfied with their excellent services and products.

See original here:

Genesis Mining - Cloud Bitcoin Mining Contracts

Forbes

After Bitcoin Dropped 10%, How Likely Is An ETF Now? - Forbes Forbes It's never a dull day in bitcoin. Here's how events in the past week affect the odds of SEC approval of a bitcoin ETF. Analysts: Be Ready For Trading Frenzy If SEC Approves A Bitcoin ...CryptoCoinsNews Needham's Insights Into Factors Affecting SEC's Decision on Bitcoin ...Nigeria Today all 3 news articles »

Follow this link:

After Bitcoin Dropped 10%, How Likely Is An ETF Now? - Forbes - Forbes

Novice cryptocurrency users are often worried about how they can best store their bitcoin balance moving forward. Keeping money on an exchange wallet needs to be avoided at all costs. Using a desktop bitcoin wallet makes a lot more sense, as the user is in full control of their funds at all times. Below are some of the most convenient desktop bitcoin wallets for novice users, all of which are well worth checking out.

One of the oldest desktop bitcoin wallet solutions available today goes by the name of Armory. On paper, the desktop wallet is rather easy to set up, as most of the world is done through the installation procedure. Do keep in mind Armory requires the users to download the entire blockchain on their computer. This process will take a few hours or longer, as the blockchain is roughly 100GB in size right now.

What makes Armory so appealing are some of its more extensive features, even though they may not necessarily appeal to novice cryptocurrency users right away. Taking security seriously is of the utmost importance when it comes to bitcoin. Armory offers multi-signature and cold storage support, which will provide for more security to both novice and experienced users. Armory is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, and is certainly worth checking out. It also provides a bit more privacy, as the wallet does not reveal the IP address linked to your bitcoin wallet.

It may seem surprising to see the Bitcoin-QT wallet ranked number 3 on this list, but there is a good reason for that. Not only does the QT client require users to download the entire blockchain, it is also one of the more bland wallets for novice users.At the same time, Bitcoin-QT works quite well and receives regular updates, which make it worth checking out. Users will need to encrypt their wallet themselves, though, which may be considered a daunting task for novice users. In the end, Bitcoin-QT is a bit of a hit-and-miss among novice cryptocurrency users, thus your mileage may vary.

Multibit has always advertised itself as the go-to wallet for desktop bitcoin users. It takes mere seconds to set up a bitcoin wallet, as everything is done through a Setup Wizard. Moreover, the wallet is available in several dozen languages, which makes it more appealing to non-English speakers as well. The only downside is how Multibit is only available on Windows right now, which leaves Linux and MacOS users out in the cold. Then again, most novice cryptocurrency users seem to be using a Windows computer, which makes Multibit a more than solid pick.

From a convenience point of view, Electrum is the best desktop Bitcoin wallet client hands down. It is very lightweight, easy to set up, and does not require the whole bitcoin blockchain to be downloaded. Electrum has been around since 2011 and still receives regular updates to improve stability and add a few new features as time progresses. Users can also choose between various user interfaces, tweaking the Electrum wallet look and feel to their liking.

Similarly to most other wallet services, Electrum requires specific servers and nodes to maintain its connection to the bitcoin network. However, the Electrum servers and decentralized and redundant, which means users will always be able to access their bitcoin wallet without interruption. Last but not least, the wallet supports various add-ons and plugins, allowing for even more customization.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.

Excerpt from:

Top 4 Best Beginner Bitcoin Wallets for Your Desktop - The Merkle

Tech-savvy Chinese bitcoin traders may have just seen their good days come to a halt as China's central banks continue to place sharperscrutiny over the virtual currency market.

Under pressure to clamp down on capital outflow and prop up the Chinese currency, the People's Bank of China warned nine bitcoin trading exchanges at a meeting in Beijing on Wednesday that it will shut down venues that violate foreign exchange management, money laundering, and other regulatory rules. The warning is followed by some of China's biggest bitcoin exchanges announcing that they would prevent customer withdrawals of the cryptocurrency.

Three of China's biggest bitcoin exchanges OkCoin, Huobi and BTCC, which had accounted for more than 90 percent of the global bitcoin market in January, had respectively suspended withdrawals or subjected all bitcoin withdrawals to a 72-hour review. The disruption is likely to temporarily constrain volumes further after already shrinking trading volumes since the government started clamping down in January.

Analytics platform Sosobtc showed the number of bitcoins traded on the three exchanges slid from 13.6 million on Jan. 6 to just over 120,000 on Feb. 9. but as an analyst pointed out, the exchange volumes might be misleading.

"Prior to January 24 those exchanges didn't charge a trading fee and the volume was largely compared to exchanges that were charging a trading fee. Without a trading fee, I could sit there and trade 1,000 BTC back and forth with myself all day and generate massive volume but it isn't economically meaningful," said Spencer Bogart, a bitcoin analyst at Needham & Co., one of the few Wall Street investment banks that covers bitcoin.

"Exacerbating this effect was the fact that these exchanges also provided leverage for trading. Starting on January 24, in response to concerns from the PBOC, the Chinese exchanges began charging a trading fee and stopped offering leverage. In that sense it's a one-time shock that has normalized trading volumes and not an ongoing 'downward spiral'," said Bogart.

But the announcement is notable and Bogart said he expects that "volume will fall significantly until withdrawals are re-enabled and confidence in the exchanges and regulators returns."

China has been the leading venue for bitcoin trading. Bitcoin prices have soared to near-record highs since last year even as the Chinese currency maintains a sharp depreciation streak against the dollar. But bitcoin's meteoric 120% gain in 2016 is also coincided with China's ever-widening capital outflow.

According to an outlook report fromthe Institute of International Finance on Thursday,China is expected to have around $1 trillion of resident outflows, including errors and omissions, and $560 billion of net capital outflows in 2017. In the past, the Chinese government has resorted to several measures to stanch the money outflows, which includesrequiring citizens to report overseas transfers over $10,000, discouraging Chinese companies from making overseas acquisitions andbarring individuals from moving more than $50,000 out of the country each year.

However, none of these measures have managed to bring any pronounced improvements to the problem so far, which is lately evidence by China's currency reserves hitting down below the $3 trillion mark. A lot of this is said to have come from Chinese investors' resort to using bitcoin as a way to move money out of the country.

See more here:

Bitcoin Trading Comes Under Threat of Chinese Government - TheStreet.com

Bitcoin Foundation chief scientist and core developer Gavin Andresen believes engineers are losing sight of bitcoins bigger picture, according to a recently-posted blog. Hence, he has proposed what he calls a big picture definition of bitcoin.

Andresens pronouncement is bound to gain attention, given the central role he has played in bitcoins development. He became the core maintainerchief developerof the open source code that defines the rules of bitcoin and provides the software needed to make use of it, according to the MIT Technology Review.

The CIA and Washington regulators have looked to him to explain the currency. And it was Andresen who conceived of the nonprofit Bitcoin Foundation in 2012, which is the closest thing to a central authority in the world of bitcoin.

Engineers spend a lot of time to make precomputing eigenwidgets faster, Andresen noted in his recent blog. They will take a few days to make snark agitation faster rather than addressing the next performance bottleneck. Instead, they focus on a performance of a routine, decentralization, compatibility or security and ignore everything else.

Andresen proposed the following big picture definition of bitcoin:

Bitcoin is the ledger of not-previously-spent, validly signed transactions contained in the chain of blocks that begins with the genesis block (hash 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f), follows the 21-million coin creation schedule, and has the most cumulative double-SHA256-proof-of-work.

By agreeing on what is meant by the word bitcoin, Andresen believes the needless argument about the trees can be avoided.

Bitcoin continues to be accepted by majority hash rate. It is still a different arrangement of the merkle tree in the block header. It can still fix the off-by-one error in the difficulty retarget code.

Bitcoin is not a minority hash rate branch of the chain. It does not change the proof-of-work. Having the majority hash rate decide 1% inflation is not a good idea for bitcoin.

Andresen ends his blog asking if there is a better technical definition for what should and should not be considered bitcoin.

Andresen is one of the earliest known people to communicate with bitcoins eponymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto.

When Australian Craig Wright claimed to be Nakamoto last year, Andresen was quick to say he believed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Wright was Nakamoto. Andresen received a lot of backlash from bitcoiners who thought he was bamboozled.

Andresen has also weighed in on the bitcoin block size debate in favor of increasing the block size. He has noted the possibility that the bitcoin community could see exchanges, miners and merchants move to a highly centralized clearing agreement model. He believes that this will indicate an unhealthy bitcoin network that will be slower, less reliable and more vulnerable to attacks.

Andresen raised eyebrows last fall when he tweeted that Ethereum has more nodes now than bitcoin and that it will grow its lead as its block size exceeds bitcoins.

Featured image from Flickr.

See the article here:

Grab Hold Of Bitcoin's 'Bigger Picture,' Gavin Andresen Urges The Community - CryptoCoinsNews