Daily Archives: November 25, 2014

To the point: no speculative positions.

New bitcoin derivatives might enter the U.S. market. Bitcoin binary options will be offered by Nadex conditional on the success of the companys filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), we read on PRWeb:

The North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex), a regulated online binary options exchange, today announced it plans to launch bitcoin binary options contracts in early December, subject to filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Nadex will list the daily and weekly bitcoin binary options contracts with prices based on TeraExchanges Tera Bitcoin Price Index (TeraBit Indexsm), the global benchmark for USD/XBT contracts.

Nadex has seen strong consumer demand from retail traders looking for new ways to trade bitcoin. Similar to other binary options contracts on Nadex, investors can trade based on where they think the bitcoin binary contract is heading using daily or weekly contracts. A binary contract is one in which the payoff can take only two possible outcomes: a fixed amount or nothing at all.

Well see how the CFTC responds to the filing, but it is definitely good to see that new bitcoin-related products are being offered. While binary options are not the typical product one would choose to hedge a Bitcoin position, they might prove useful in making leveraged bets on the cryptocurrency and, as such, a vehicle for relatively experienced traders.

We would now expect other exchanges to follow suit and offer Bitcoin derivatives in the U.S. on a larger scale, just as derivatives for commodities (including precious metals) are offered. If this is the case, Bitcoin trading will become easier, particularly since derivatives might enable you to take short positions relatively easy.

For now, lets focus on the charts.

On BitStamp, yesterday was a continuation of what we had seen over a weekend. Yesterday, we wrote:

The move up we saw on Saturday and Sunday was a partial confirmation of these words as Bitcoin failed to move lower and pretty much remained in the tense area between $350 (dashed red line) and $400. Quite importantly, the volume on Saturday and Sunday was visibly lower than on Friday and the days before. This suggests that the move up might not be the beginning of a new rally, at least not now.

Follow this link:
Bitcoin: One tick closer to a decisive move

Tony Liaw and Adam Xu

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

BitFX, a mining and trading firm of the virtual currencies, launched the first bitcoin retail store in Hong Kong yesterday.

Located in Jordan, Kowloon, the store aims to provide one-stop bitcoin exchange services to users.

"When we founded BitFX we wanted to create a physical presence for bitcoin and connect the digital and physical bitcoin experience," said Gina Lesile, BitFX vice chairwoman.

Bitcoin is an open-source peer-to-peer electronic money and payment network introduced in 2009.

To improve security of the virtual currency, BitFX introduced the 3D Bitcoin wallet, which features better protection.

Bitcoinnect chief executive Jase Leung Wing-hei said it is going to launch five more bitcoin ATMs across the SAR this week.

Leung said his firm is working with regulators to improve the security of the currency, as the bitcoin industry has come under scrutiny after the MtGox scandal.

MtGox has mysteriously disappeared, after chief Mark Karpeles said 774,000 bitcoins worth US$409 million (HK$3.19 billion) were lost due to a technical glitch.

More:
First bitcoin retail store launches in Hong Kong

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

25-Nov-2014

Contact: Britta Schlter britta.schlueter@uni.lu 352-466-644-6563 University of Luxembourg

Bitcoin is the new money: minted and exchanged on the Internet. Faster and cheaper than a bank, the service is attracting attention from all over the world. But a big question remains: are the transactions really anonymous? Several research groups worldwide have shown that it is possible to find out which transactions belong together, even if the client uses different pseudonyms. However it was not clear if it is also possible to reveal the IP address behind each transaction. This has changed: researchers at the University of Luxembourg have now demonstrated how this is feasible with only a few computers and about 1500.

"It's hard to predict the future, but some people think that Bitcoin could do to finance what the Internet did to communications", says Prof. Alex Biryukov, who leads digital currency research at the University. "So I think especially for Luxembourg it is important to watch what happens with Bitcoin".

The Bitcoin system is not managed by a central authority, but relies on a peer-to-peer network on the Internet. Anyone can join the network as a user or provide computing capacity to process the transactions. In the network, the user's identity is hidden behind a cryptographic pseudonym, which can be changed as often as is wanted. Transactions are signed with this pseudonym and broadcast to the public network to verify their authenticity and attribute the Bitcoins to the new owner.

In their new study, researchers at the Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security of the University of Luxembourg have shown that Bitcoin does not protect user's IP address and that it can be linked to the user's transactions in real-time. To find this out, a hacker would need only a few computers and about 1500 per month for server and traffic costs. Moreover, the popular anonymization network "Tor" can do little to guarantee Bitcoin user's anonymity, since it can be blocked easily.

The basic idea behind these findings is that Bitcoin entry nodes, to which the user's computer connects in order to make a transaction, form a unique identifier for the duration of user's session. This unique pattern can be linked to a user's IP address. Moreover, transactions made during one session, even those made via unrelated pseudonyms, can be linked together. With this method, hackers can reveal up to 60 percent of the IP addresses behind the transactions made over the Bitcoin network.

"This Bitcoin network analysis combined with previous research on transaction flows shows that the level of anonymity in the Bitcoin network is quite low", explains Dr. Alex Biryukov. In the paper recently presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security the team also described how to prevent such an attack on user's privacy. Software patches written by the researchers are currently under discussion with the Bitcoin core developers.

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Read more from the original source:
Virtual money: User's identity can be revealed much easier than thought