Bitcoin is still not dead — Facebook Payments? — Chinese Bitcoin Ebay — Russia Ban Again – Video

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Bitcoin is still not dead -- Facebook Payments? -- Chinese Bitcoin Ebay -- Russia Ban Again
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Bitcoin is still not dead -- Facebook Payments? -- Chinese Bitcoin Ebay -- Russia Ban Again - Video

Bitcoin prices drop nearly 50 percent in 3 months

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In the past three months, the price of the cryptocurrency bitcoin has fallen nearly 50 percent going from about $630 per bitcoin to $320 per bitcoin, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index, which averages the prices on major exchanges.

That's obviously an extreme shift, though bitcoin trading prices are notoriously volatile, sometimes making similar percentage drops in a matter of hours or days.

The difference here is that it appears to be a slow, measured pattern of decline.

There has been major regulatory news in the past few months, including New York's proposed rules for virtual currencies and Russia's proposal to punish their use. But that doesn't seem to have produced the same type of seismic shifts as when China ordered local payment processors to stop transactions involving digital currencies such as bitcoin.

Instead, Jerry Brito, the executive director of industry-backed think tank Coin Center, said he believes the downward trend in bitcoin may actually be related to its rising popularity among merchants in recent months.

In September, Overstock.com became the first major online retailer to accept the cryptocurrency globally.

"It's hard to tell what exactly causes these price movements, but what I think makes most sense is that as bitcoin merchant adoption grows, there is increasing sell pressure in the market," Brito says. "Because there are not yet very good hedging instruments for bitcoin, merchants that accept bitcoin for payment will immediately sell, so as to not be exposed to any volatility."

Basically, merchants don't want to hold on to the bitcoins they accept as payment. Thus, Brito says, there's a constant sell pressure, which he said he believes may have snowballed into the downward trend.

Brito is optimistic, however, about the future of the market, saying that "needed hedging instruments are coming along very shortly" and that long-term investors may actually buy in the current low.

The $320 exchange rate that the cryptocurrency is floating around is a substantial drop from the highs of last year, when bitcoins reached more than $1,100 on some markets near the end of the year after dramatic surges.

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Bitcoin prices drop nearly 50 percent in 3 months

Bye-bye, bitcoin? The crypto-currency's price agonies intensify

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Remember bitcoins?

The digital currency swam into the average person's attention last December, when the price of a single bitcoin reached about $1,150. The Winklevoss twins, who gained fame from their connection with the founding of Facebook, announced plans for a bitcoin investment fund. The airwaves and news columns loaded up with declarations about how bitcoins were the biggest threat to the banking system since bankers were invented. The bitcoin creed was about defeating evil central bankers with freedom and libertarianism.

Since then thousands of businesses announced they would accept bitcoins for goods and services. That level of interest should have kept the price of bitcoins stable, because theoretically their value is tied to their acceptance.

What's happened instead is that the price of bitcoins has plummeted, especially over this past weekend. The coins were quoted late Monday at $333.88 by CoinDesk, a bitcoin information service, up a bit after bottoming out at about $290. Many of the bitcoin faithful are in paroxysms of grief over the price collapse.

The main problem is that no one in the bitcoin community can adequate explain the price action. Accordingly, rumors and speculation abound. Some think it's the advent of new regulations on "virtual currencies" coming from New York State banking regulators.

Another theory is that Chinese computer programmers have sharply stepped up their "mining" of bitcoins. (The bitcoin supply can be increased only when programmers solve an increasingly complex algorithm, which requires ever-more-powerful computers.) Some even think that bitcoin's success in the marketplace is its own enemy, on the theory that merchants accepting bitcoins rapidly convert them to dollars or other hard currencies, which drives down the price. And then there are bitcoin believers who dismiss the plunge as merely an artifact of bitcoins' natural volatility.

What's hard to dispute is that the long-term price decline underscores the dangers of bitcoins as an investment. As we observed last year, bitcoin fans can be divided roughly into two categories: investment enthusiasts and transactional users.

Investment enthusiasts see bitcoins as the next best thing to gold--a currency/commodity that will retain intrinsic value, or even gain value, as the world goes to hell. Just as gold never loses its glitter, the argument is that bitcoins are immune from manipulation from the gnomes of international finance in central banks and central governments.

For those who bought into this argument and collected bitcoins as the price rose to $1,000 and beyond, the decline is nauseating. One investor's post on reddit.com's r/bitcoin forum was headlined "Desperate: How long to hold out / What would you do in my situation." The poster said he or she already had lost more than $100,000 this year, on an investment at an average cost of $623 per coin. "So far i am down a lot." (No kidding.)

For those who use bitcoins as transactional instruments--that is, to move money in and out of currencies or across national borders without financial authorities interfering--the price might be irrelevant. That's the view of Stanford University economist Susan Athey, an expert in crypto-currencies. Athey told us last year that if you're selling goods in bitcoins and exchanging them for dollars, or trying to transfer your wealth from yuan in Beijing to euros in Frankfort, "inprinciple, you need to only worry about the exchange rate for 10 minutes.... The point is that we have a new technology that allows any individual in the world to send value from one place to another instantly, in a way that's secure and verifiable."

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Bye-bye, bitcoin? The crypto-currency's price agonies intensify

Bitcoin: Are investors losing faith?

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"The view is that some early adopters are making moves at the moment and you can see that in all of the publicly available exchange trade data," he added.

Bitcoin was the center of a media frenzy last year after it rose 8,000 percent from January to early December. Prices halved soon after amid regulatory concerns.

The cryptocurrency has since fallen out of the spotlight, save for a brief flash crash in August, when prices fell 12 percent during one day, due to concerns about state-specific regulation in in New York. Prices are down 73 percent their all-time high of $1,147 hit on December 4, 2013.

Read MoreBitcoin company Coinbase to launch eurozone consumer service

Interest to remain

Price declines over the weekend are unlikely to deter investors, said David Moskowitz, director at Singapore-based bitcoin trading firm Coin Republic.

"I think the price is really irrelevant to the technology. Obviously it hurts investors when the price goes down but most people who are buyers are in it as long term investors and can withstand the short term gyrations," he said.

"Adoption has continued to increase there has been a tremendous amount of good news over the past year especially with more well-known merchants taking it on," he said.

Read MorePanic or real risk: Could bitcoin cause a crash?

Sharp price swings could be positive for bitcoin ANX's Madden said: "It creates headlines and as a result people start to read about it and [attracting] a lot of interest."

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Bitcoin: Are investors losing faith?

Bitcoin Price Rises After 21% Five-Day Decline Amid Volatility

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The price of bitcoin rose as much as 12 percent today after falling by 21 percent in the previous five days to the lowest level in 11 months.

The virtual currency was up 10 percent at $340 as of 4:40 p.m. in London, according to Bitstamp data compiled by Bloomberg. The currency fell 14 percent during the weekend.

Bitcoin users must grapple with volatility in the unregulated currency even as it wins wider acceptance from mainstream businesses such as online travel-booking service Expedia Inc. and satellite-television company Dish Network Corp. Recent price declines were reinforced by the unique way in which new bitcoins are added, said Gil Luria, an analyst with Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.

Miners, who authenticate transactions using the currency and record them in bitcoins public ledger, receive new bitcoins for their services. Because their work requires fixed investments in expensive hardware, the lower the price of the coins they generate, the more they have to sell to cover their costs.

All this describes a negative, self-reinforcing cycle, Luria said in an e-mail. And bitcoin does not have liquidation value to set a bottom - not cash on the balance sheet, no hard assets.

Unlike traditional currencies, virtual currencies such as bitcoin often have a fixed supply and cant respond to changes in demand, making them prone to greater volatility, the Bank of England said in a report last month. By July 9, there were 41 million bitcoin wallets registered, the Bank of England said.

Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at New York-based ConvergEx, said the murky and sometimes illicit uses to which bitcoin is put on the so-called dark Web may also play a role in sudden price declines.

My best guess -- and it is only a guess -- is that a dark Web drug site or other very illegal site got taken down, and demand took a dip, Colas said in an e-mail.

To contact the reporters on this story: Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net; Carter Dougherty in Washington at cdougherty6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net Kenneth Wong, Cecile Daurat

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Bitcoin Price Rises After 21% Five-Day Decline Amid Volatility

Bitcoin prices have dropped nearly 50% in three months

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Over the past three months, the price of the cryptocurrency bitcoin has fallennearly 50 percent going from $630 per bitcoin to $320 per bitcoin, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index, which averages the prices on major exchanges.

That's obviously an extreme shift but bitcoin trading prices are notoriously volatile, sometimes making similar percentage drops in a matter of hours or days.

The difference here is that it appears to be a slow, measured pattern of decline. There have been bits of major regulatory news in the past few months, including New York's proposed rules for virtual currencies and Russia's proposal to punish their use. But that doesn't seem to haveproduced the same type ofseismic shifts as when China ordered local payment processors to stop transactions involving digital currencies such as bitcoin.

Instead, Jerry Brito, the executive director of industry-backed think tank Coin Center, believes the downward trend may actually be related to the increased popularity of bitcoin among merchants in recent months. In September, Overstock.com became the first major online retailer to accept thecryptocurrency globally.

"It's hard to tell what exactly causes these price movements, but what I think makes most sense is that as Bitcoin merchant adoption grows, there is increasing sell pressure in the market," Brito says. "Because there are not yet very good hedging instruments for bitcoin, merchants that accept bitcoin for payment will immediately sell so as to not be exposed to any volatility." Basically, merchants don't want to hold on to the bitcoins they accept as payment.

Thus, he says, there's a constant sell pressure, which he believes may have snowballed into the current downward trend. However, Brito is an optimist about the future of the market, saying that "needed hedging instruments are coming along very shortly" and that long-term investors may actually buy in the current low.

The $320 exchange rate the cryptocurrency is currently floating around is a substantial drop from the highs of last year when bitcoins reached more than $1,100 on some markets near the end of the year after dramatic surges.

Looking even further back shows just how turbulent 2013 and 2014 were for the overall currency and payment system experiencing major booms and busts at much more significant dollar levels than in its earlier year.

Bitcoin received intense media coverage as it experienced some growing pains, including regulatory turmoil, a bankruptcy scandal involving one of the most popular exchanges, and various attempts to unmask the cryptocurrency's mysterious creator.

But given all the hype the currency has received, it can be easy to forget that the system was launched only in 2009 and that the price stayed well below the current levels until the latter half of 2013.

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Bitcoin prices have dropped nearly 50% in three months

Ireland record emphatic victory against the ACT Comets in one-day cricket match at Manuka Oval in Canberra

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Nial O'Brien of Ireland plays a sweep shot against the ACT Comets at Manuka Oval. Photo: Jay Cronan

Irish eyes smiled on Canberra as the men from the Emerald Isle enjoyed the first victory of their World Cup familiarisation tour of Australia.

After back-to-back losses in Queensland last week, Ireland bounced back to form with an emphatic 124-run win against the ACT Comets at Manuka Oval on Tuesday night.

Ireland posted an imposing total of 8-302, thanks largely to Niall O'Brien's 88 from 79 balls, before its bowlers restricted the Comets to 178 in reply with Craig Young (3-36) and Peter Chase (3-39) picking up three wickets each.

O'Brien said it was an encouraging all-round performance as Ireland continues its preparations for next year's World Cup, which includes a match against South Africa at Manuka Oval on March 3.

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"We've got a game here in the World Cup, so hopefully we get another win on Thursday and come back with fond memories and have a good match," O'Brien said.

"We probably got more than we thought we might get at one stage 260, 270 would have given us a good chance, then some good batting at the end from Andrew Poynter and John Mooney got us over 300.

"We've got a very young bowling attack, so it's pretty good to get 10 wickets and to restrict them to under 200."

O'Brien held the innings together, the 32-year-old showing all the experience of his 60 one-day internationals and 21 T20's for his country.

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Ireland record emphatic victory against the ACT Comets in one-day cricket match at Manuka Oval in Canberra

Do Comets Rain Down on White Dwarf Stars?

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When astronomers observe some white dwarf stars, there can sometimes be small amounts of hydrogen trapped in the stars upper layers. The traditional view is that these tiny stellar husks suck up diffuse interstellar hydrogen gas, but now a team of researchers suggest something else is going on: comets are likely raining down into the white dwarfs ancient atmospheres from exo-Oort clouds, seeding them with hydrogen.

ANALYSIS: White Dwarfs Are Eating Earth-like Planets for Dinner

White dwarfs form after sun-like stars extinguish the majority of hydrogen fuel in their fusion cores. This causes heavier and heavier elements to fuse, turning the star from a once-quiescent state into a violent, churning red giant. Eventually, through powerful stellar convulsions, the bloated red giant is ripped apart, leaving a small, dense white dwarf in its wake.

A white dwarfs structure is not maintained by the outward pressure supplied by fusion reactions to counter gravity, like our sun. The quantum pressure supplied by electron degeneracy is what prevents its gravity from causing it to collapse in on itself. This balance between forces creates a very dense stellar object that may have a mass comparable to the sun, but collapsed into a diameter comparable to the Earth. As such, white dwarfs can continue to shine for many billions of years.

When observing white dwarf spectra (i.e. the different wavelengths of light), astronomers have noted that many examples possess atmospheres that are metal rich. In astronomy terms this means there are elements trapped in the upper layers of the white dwarf heavier than helium. Depending on the elements present, astronomers have interpreted these spectroscopic signatures as being asteroids or even planets that have survived the death of their sun-like stars, only to later become shredded by the white dwarfs intense tides. This shredded, dusty material rains down on the white dwarfs, leaving a spectroscopic signature of the ultimate death of planetary systems.

ANALYSIS: Sifting Through the Ashes For Shredded Planets

This area of white dwarf study has led to some fascinating observations of star systems that may resemble our solar system after the sun has run out of fuel in a few billion years time and turned into a white dwarf; the planets and asteroids near to our suns corpse become ripped apart, enriching our suns white dwarf with metals.

In new research accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astrophysicist Dimitri Veras of the University of Warwick and colleagues have now found a possible mechanism that could be lacing white dwarf atmospheres, not with metals, but with hydrogen.

Here we explore the possibility that the gradual accretion of exo-Oort cloud comets, which are a rich source of hydrogen, contributes to the apparent increase of trace hydrogen with white dwarf cooling age, writes Veras.

The build-up of hydrogen in white dwarf atmospheres has been attributed to interstellar hydrogen being collected by white dwarfs as they age, but to account for the quantities being observed, there must be another source, argues Veras.

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Do Comets Rain Down on White Dwarf Stars?

UV-therapy allows the effective treatment of psoriasis, eczema and vitiligo in all skin areas – Video

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UV-therapy allows the effective treatment of psoriasis, eczema and vitiligo in all skin areas
The compact and very inexpensive UV-therapy device medisun 250 allows the effective treatment of psoriasis, eczema and vitiligo in all skin areas. Thanks to ...

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UV-therapy allows the effective treatment of psoriasis, eczema and vitiligo in all skin areas - Video

Effects of psoriasis are not confined to the skin

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DEAR DOCTOR K: My doctor thinks my arthritis and heart disease are connected to my psoriasis. Is this possible? I thought psoriasis was a skin condition.

DEAR READER: Psoriasis (pronounced so-RYE-uh-sis) is named for an ancient Greek word meaning an itchy or scaly condition. It is classified as a skin disease, but psoriasis is the result of an immune system abnormality that can cause problems throughout the body.

With psoriasis, white blood cells of the immune system become overactive. They produce excess amounts of chemicals that trigger inflammation. The inflammation leads to abnormally rapid growth of cells in the skins outer layer. This causes plaques: raised, red patches covered with silvery scales on the elbows and knees the classic sign of psoriasis. (Ive put a photo of psoriasis plaques on my website, AskDoctorK.com.)

But the effects of psoriasis are not always confined to the skin. The disease also can cause inflammation throughout the body. This probably is the reason that people with psoriasis have higher rates of various diseases that also are associated with a constant state of inflammation. These include diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and several types of cancer.

Nearly one-third of people with psoriasis develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes stiff, painful joints and other symptoms.

Several eye problems are more common with psoriasis, including conjunctivitis, blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelids) and damage to the cornea.

When psoriasis involves only the skin, it often can be treated just by medicines applied to the skin. Very mild cases of psoriasis may improve with moisturizers and some sunlight. But most people need other treatments:

OINTMENTS, GELS OR LOTIONS. The most common are corticosteroids, which come in varying strengths. They quickly reduce inflammation and control itching. Long-term use of strong steroids can thin and damage skin.

PHOTOTHERAPY. This treatment uses carefully controlled exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light, which helps slow the growth of skin cells. UV light combined with medicines called psoralens often are more potent than just UV light (a treatment called PUVA).

SYSTEMIC THERAPY. If your psoriasis has caused more than skin problems, this can have implications for the kind of treatment your doctor may recommend. Treatments that fight inflammation in multiple parts of the body may be required. Medicines that do this include methotrexate, retinoids and cyclosporine.

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Effects of psoriasis are not confined to the skin