Daily Archives: May 7, 2017

Global stock indexes are not the only asset class making new highs on a daily basis. Cryptocurrencies specifically bitcoin are soaring to fresh levels as well.

Despite two major setbacks for bitcoin in 2017, it has soared nearly 55 percent from its year-to-date lows as Asian investors flock to the new-age currency.

Bitcoin prices are now trading at previously uncharted levels as the value of the cryptocurrency reached a high of $1,588 on CoinDesk on Friday morning.

In January the Peoples Bank of China, the countrys central bank, launched a crackdown on bitcoin, believing that citizens were using it to move wealth out of the country. Prices fell as low as $750 on Jan. 12 before recovering.

In March the cryptocurrency had a run-up on anticipation that the Securites and Exchange Commission would decide in favor of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund driven by the Winklevoss brothers. Bitcoin prices reached a high of $1,350 before the feds nixed the proposal, sending prices to a low of $891 soon afterward.

Prices began to recover as Japan officially acknowledged the use of cryptocurrencies and passed legislation allowing retailers to accept payment in digital form.

Russia and India have also loosened restrictions on cryptocurrencies, leading to wider acceptance within their borders as both countries India especially struggle with their own internal currency crises.

The SEC announced in April that it would take a second look at a bitcoin ETF by reviewing its ruling in the Winklevoss brothers application. No timetable has been released on when that may happen.

Bitcoins market cap is now north of $23 billion, which is chump change for any asset class. But with more acceptance and wider appeal, the digital currency can be divided into smaller units such as decibits, millibits and centibits to make smaller transactions possible.

Ethereum, which is the second-most prominent cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, struck a new all-time high Tuesday as well, trading at $85.

It now has a market cap of $7 billion on the strength of its acceptance in gaming circles in Asian countries.

Go here to read the rest:
Bitcoin's appeal is at an all-time high | New York Post - New York Post

CHENNAI: Bitcoin surged into an all-time high territory last week as investors bet the digital currency will gain greater acceptance globally as an investment vehicle. The cryptocurrency crossed the $1,500 mark on Thursday and, besides a slip to $1,491 on Friday , it has remained above this mark till Sunday. To give context, gold price as on Sunday was about $1,230 per ounce (around $39 per gram).The price of the yellow metal has not touched the $1,500 range in the last four years. Since 2013, when gold was in the $1,500-1,600 range, its price has been hovering around $1,200. The crypto currency , on the other hand, has been growing ever since it crossed the $1,000 mark in January this year. "Today , one bitcoin is worth almost Rs 1 lakh. Last month, we saw some stagna tion, which is the result of demand and supply pull. There is some amount of speculation involved as well," said Benson Samuel, CTO and co-founder, Coinsecure, a bitcoin exchange in India. The virtual currency exchange has over 1,50,000 users who trade on average 200 bitcoins daily . In the last month alone, they have seen 100 new users sign up. The demonetisation drive by the government saw a lot of users looking at alternate modes of investment, with bitcoins being sought after. "Two years ago, I had to explain what a bitcoin is. Now, there is more adoption as a commodity," said Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder, Unocoin, backed by the likes of Blume Ventures, Boost VC and other international investors. The acceptance of the cryptocurrency's legality by the Chinese and Japanese governments has come as a big boost.

Read the original here:
'E-gold' bitcoin shines past $1500 - Times of India

Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 as an alternative network to the global financial system monopolized by centralized institutions and strictly regulated financial service providers. By providing a peer to peer protocol wherein users can send and receive transactions with the absence of intermediaries, Bitcoin essentially became the first decentralized financial platform.

Replicating or being inspired by Bitcoins structure, alternative cryptocurrencies or altcoins emerged. One of the most successful cryptocurrencies that has maintained its market cap and client base over a relatively long period of time is Ripple. It consistently has ranked in the top three altcoin, falling behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ripples vision was to provide a more efficient infrastructure for the centralized institutions and the conventional finance industry.

Ripple is significantly different to Bitcoin philosophically and structurally. If bitcoin is described as a decentralized peer to peer network developed to operate as an alternative financial network to that of the existing global financial system, Ripple can be explained as a protocol structured to serve and enhance the existing global financial system. It has partnered with leading banks and major financial institutions to settle cross-border and cross-bank transactions transparently, with strong security measures in real time.

The current global financial system operates on top of an outdated and inefficient IT infrastructure and system. For a transaction to become fully verified and settled, it could take days to weeks with a substantial fee, usually in the range of $30 to $50 per transaction. Often times, transactions initiated by banks through an international financial network such as SWIFT get lost within the system, requiring manual confirmation and a period of weeks for the transaction to be recovered and settled.

Essentially, Ripple utilizes blockchain technology and the concept of digital tokens to simplify global banking. Major banks and financial institutions are in agreement with Ripples vision and strategy and have adopted Ripples system. Most recently, CryptoCoinsNews reported that Spanish banking giant BBVA began to utilize Ripple blockchain for Spain-Mexico money transfers.

This pioneer initiative is a clear demonstration of how payment processes can be vastly improved through the implementation of emerging technologies. These improvements will benefit our clients transnationality, head of digital transformation in investment banking at BBVA stated.

However, an ambiguous component of Ripples services is the necessity of intermediaries. In an email, Ripple representative told CryptoCoinsNews that Ripple executives believe banks arent going away and that bitcoin is getting it wrong. Yet, by growth, bitcoin has evidently appealed to a wider range of users, businesses and investors as it is valued at $23.7 billion at the time of reporting. Ripples market cap is below 10 percent of bitcoins.

`An intermediary such as BBVA utilizing the Ripple network for a customer can be understood as an intermediary using another intermediary to process transactions. Thus, in the long run, one of the two intermediaries could be rendered ineffective. Either users will solely rely on the Ripple network and utilize XRP to make transactions with each other or banks will develop their own blockchain network similar to SWIFT and simply discard its partnership with Ripple.

The issue with banks developing their independent blockchain networks is the necessity of cooperation and collaboration. Hence, by relying on an existing blockchain network structured to serve financial institutions, banks can cut development costs.

Three advantages Ripple offers to its banks is speed, certainty and cost. By utilizing a decentralized blockchain in Ripple, banks can potentially see a reduction of billions of dollars in operating costs. Whether banks will remain with Ripple and work on the development of a cross-bank network or form their own blockchain network like JP Morgan is still difficult to speculate.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

Advertisement:

Visit link:
How Ripple is Targeting an Entirely Different Market to Bitcoin - CryptoCoinsNews

Vinny Lingham

The bitcoin scaling debate has driven many people in the bitcoin community to assume a cult-like viewpoint, an observation Vinny Lingham makes with despair. In a blog titled, Satoshis Choice, Lingham observed that the bitcoin community has failed to maintain a level attitude aimed at achieving the greater good for the community. Hence, he doesnt see a resolution to the current impasse on bitcoin scaling in the short term.

Without a reasonable resolution to the current impasse, it will be difficult to avoid exogenous pricing pressure or another external catalyst for change.

Lingham noted that the replies to his tweets have been emotive and insulting. When emotions get the upper hand and people cant communicate with decorum, they suffer from impaired judgment.

Most bitcoiners care about bitcoins price, he noted. Emotionally, they are invested in bitcoin as a digital currency and a store of value.

Lingham once believed a bitcoin price under $875 would push parties to reach an agreement. He did not expect the price to stay above $1,000 for an extended period since the incentive to go beyond this did not exist. But he was wrong about this, and market forces are affecting the price, which he believes is not necessarily a negative development in the near term.

While he believes there are pros and cons to all sides of the scaling debate, one path that Lingham says should be avoided at all costs is a contentious hard fork resulting in a minority chain.

Bitcoin is still viewed by the public at large as a negative entity, thanks to Silk Road and other misadventures. One indication is the current set of issues dealing with getting fiat in and out of bitcoin exchanges.

Satoshi made a choice, Lingham noted, to leave the bitcoin community to its own devices. He did this to give the community a gift, but one that came with a curse. The more the community loves bitcoin, the more greed emerged within the community and outside of it.

Linghams question now is: why does the community need a leader if bitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer currency? The answer is that bitcoin is not yet a decentralized, peer-to-peer currency.

For bitcoin to be immune tomanipulation, it must be decentralized at every layer. The bitcoin community, however, has focused on the price, scaling and other issues to the degree that bitcoin is the most secure but least innovative cryptocurrency.

Lingham would agree that immutability gives bitcoin its strength if the immutability was by distributed choice, not by default since decisions are centralized.

But instead of decentralized mining and decentralized exchanges with hefty volumes, the community has a few exchanges at the mercy of the banking system, as well as large mining pools controlled by a few operators, manufacturing controlled by two firms, and development that is run by one group of individuals.

Where capital formation has become decentralized, bitcoin is not making progress in removing monopolies.

Also read: Vinny Lingham says bitcoin hard fork should be avoided, Buterin argues

Diversification is what leads to positive outcomes, Lingham claims.

He wants a world with multiple chip manufacturing and mining hardware providers competing for business from thousands of miners if not millions distributed worldwide. He wants to have a choice of dozens of mining pools with different bitcoin philosophies focused on the greater good butacting on their own accord.

He wants to see the market choose the best clients and BIPs, where dissenting voices find groups to join and not feel ostracized.

He wants to see each layer of decentralization working to make it more accessible to others as opposed to trying to fork bitcoin contentiously.

In the short term, people could start being more respectful of each other.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

Advertisement:

Read the original post:
Vinny Lingham: The Curse Of 'Satoshi's Choice' - A Bitcoin Community Mired In insult And Emotion - CryptoCoinsNews