Monthly Archives: May 2017

A closely-watched fight between the Internal Revenue Service and a popular bitcoin exchange took a new twist last week, as senior Republicans in Congress sent a sharply-worded letter that suggests the tax agency is overstepping its powers.

The letter concerns an IRS investigation into possible tax evasion by customers who use Coinbase, a San Francisco-based company that many people use to buy digital currencies. As part of the investigation, which began last year, officials demanded that Coinbase turn over information for every one of its accounts.

Coinbase and its customers are currently in court trying to block the demand, saying it's too broad, and now the letter from the Republicans is likely to give them extra ammunition.

"The summons is estimated to affect 500,000 active Coinbase customers and would result in the production of millions of pages of associated records, many of which contain personally identifiable information ... Based on the information before us, this summons seems overly broad, extremely burdensome, and highly intrusive to a large population of individuals ," says the letter, which is signed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and by Vern Buchanan and Kevin Brady, who head the House Committee on Ways and Means. (my emphasis)

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The Republicans' concerns echo those of Coinbase and its customers, who argue the IRS does not need every single Coinbase account to carry out its audit, and that the investigation sweeps in people who have clearly done nothing wrong.

The tax agency, for its part, has pointed out that only 802 Coinbase users filed a tax form related to bitcoin in 2015, which suggests large number of people have failed to declare capital gains related to bitcoin.

The IRS investigation also comes at a time when the price of bitcoin has been on an incredible tear, climbing from $13 in 2013 to a new high of over $2,000 last week. Those who profited from the higher priceseither by selling bitcoin for dollars or exchanging it for merchandiseare required to pay taxes on the gain.

Some Coinbase customers, however, have not sold any bitcoin at all while many others hold only a minimal amount, raising questions of why the IRS demanded information about every account.

One theory, according to a lawyer who spoke with Fortune late last year, is that the IRS's sweeping demand is a negotiating tactic to make Coinbase more cooperative, and that the two sides will reach an agreement to allow the agency to inspect some, but not all, of the accounts.

The letter from the Republicans, which asks the IRS to explain its strategy for enforcing tax payments on digital currency by June 7, is likely to put pressure on the agency to come to a deal with Coinbase.

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IRS Probe of Bitcoin Goes Too Far, GOP Warns - Fortune

Photograph by Getty Images

The digital currency bitcoin is on another remarkable run, soaring nearly 65% in the last month, and smashing the symbolic $2,000 mark for the first time ever this week. Bitcoin has gone on tears in the past, but never quite like this.

So what's behind the latest bull run? It's hard to say for sure, since bitcoin is so unpredictable, but here are three factors that are contributing to bitcoin's boom:

The $2,000 bitcoin milestone comes amid a larger trend of investors clamoring for crypto-currency of all sorts. While digital money was once seen as the province of cranks and computers geeks, it's now so mainstream that investors see it as a new asset class and are creating hundred million dollar hedge funds to acquire it.

Meanwhile, others see digital currencies as an asset like gold, which can hold its value amid times of government instability. Recent political upheaval in Brazil and the United States, which led to drops in the dollar and the real, may have contributed to the recent uptick in bitcoin buying.

Finally, bitcoin may be benefiting indirectly from a recent explosion in the value of other digital currencies like Lumens, Ethereum and Litecoin . While it's possible to buy these currencies with dollars or other traditional currencies, it's often simpler to use bitcoins (which is the easiest digital currency to acquire) to buy them. In other words, more people may be buying bitcoin as a vehicle to invest in more exotic currencies.

At the start of April, regulators in Japan introduced new rules that treated bitcoin less like an outlaw currency and more as a part of the banking system. That change led to a burst of trading activity in the country investors rushed to swap yen for bitcoin. The effect on price has been predicable.

And in China, where the authorities have long had a love-hate relation with bitcoin, it appears the country is growing more tolerant once again. As CNBC reported, analysts are pointing to a big drop in the difference in bitcoin prices between U.S. and Chinese exchanges. This suggests bitcoin-related investments in China are less risky:

In other words, a whole lot of Asian investment is causing bitcoin to soar.

If you've followed bitcoin for a while, you know the currency is prone to spectacular crashes. The crashes followed flurries of press reports about the value of bitcoin, which created a hype cycle, and in turn drew the attention of mainstream investors who helped inflate the price.

It sure feels like we're in the midst of a hype cycle now. Social media is buzzing about the incredible surge in the value of crypto-currency assets. And this year's edition of Consensus , a three-day trade show in New York, promises to be the splashiest yet with big names like IBM and Microsoft appearing alongside a long list of venture capital firms.

There a lot of good reasons for the hypenot least because digital currency and blockchain technology (an online ledger system that relies on multiple computers) has gone mainstreambut also reasons for caution. As with past hype cycles, there are far more people cheering for bitcoin than against it. This is partly because there are few people who truly understand digital currency, and most of those who do own a large amount of it, so skeptics are in short supply.

As of Sunday afternoon, the value of a bitcoin was $2,020, according to Coinbase.

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3 Reasons Why Bitcoin Broke $2000 - Fortune

Are you a Bitcoin miner or trader, butfind yourself lacking the compulsive need to checkexchange rates like thedrug-fuelled daytraders of Wall Street? Fear not you too canadorn your home or office with aBitcoin Price Ticker! The post is in Italian but you can read a translated version here.

Its a straightforward enough build an Arduinocompatible board with an onboard ESP8266 is hooked up with an HD44780-compatible LCD.Its then a simple matter of scraping the Bitcoin price from the web anddisplaying it on the LCD. Its a combination of all the maker staples, tied together with some off-the-shelf libraries its quick, and it works.

What makes the build extra nice is the use of custom characters on the LCD. The HD44780 is a character based display, and this project appears to use a screen with twolines of sixteencharacters each. However, a custom character set has beenimplemented in the display which uses several characters on the screen to createa single number. Its a great wayto make the display more legible from a distance, as the numbers are much larger, and the Bitcoin logo has been faithfully recreated as well. Its small touches like this that can really set a project apart.Wed love to see this expanded to display other financial market information and finished off in a nice case.

If youre wondering what you can actuallydo with Bitcoin, check out the exploits of this robotic darknet shopper.Oh, and Microsoft will take them, too.

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Bitcoin Price Ticker - Hackaday

NEW YORK: It is worth more than an ounce of gold right now, it is completely digital and it is the currency of choice for the cyberattackers who crippled computer networks around the world in recent days. When the attackers ransomware sprang into action, it held victims hostage by encrypting their data and demanding they send payments in bitcoins to regain access to their computers. Bitcoin has a fuzzy history, but it is a type of currency that allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties. Here is a brief look at bitcoin: How bitcoins work Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. The coins are created by users who mine them by lending computing power to verify other users transactions. They receive bitcoins in exchange. The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with US dollars and other currencies. How much is it worth?One bitcoin recently traded for $1,734.65, according to Coinbase, a company that helps users exchange bitcoins. That makes it more valuable than an ounce of gold, which trades at less than $1,230. The value of bitcoins can swing sharply, though. A year ago, one was worth $457.04, which means that it is nearly quadrupled in the last 12 months. But its price doesn't always go up. A bitcoins value plunged by 23 percent against the dollar in just a week this past January. It fell by the same amount again in 10 days during March. Why bitcoins are popular Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Transactions can be made anonymously, making the currency popular with libertarians as well as tech enthusiasts, speculators and criminals. Who is using bitcoin? Some businesses have jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon amid a flurry of media coverage. Overstock.com accepts payments in bitcoin, for example. The currency has become popular enough that more than 300,000 daily transactions have been occurring recently, according to bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info. A year ago, activity was closer to 230,000 transactions per day. Still, its popularity is low compared with cash and cards, and many individuals and businesses will not accept bitcoins for payments. How bitcoins are kept secureThe bitcoin network works by harnessing individuals greed for the collective good. A network of tech-savvy users called miners keep the system honest by pouring their computing power into a blockchain, a global running tally of every bitcoin transaction. The blockchain prevents rogues from spending the same bitcoin twice, and the miners are rewarded for their efforts by being gifted with the occasional bitcoin. As long as miners keep the blockchain secure, counterfeiting shouldn't be an issue. How bitcoin came to beIt is a mystery. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was then adopted by a small clutch of enthusiasts. Nakamoto dropped off the map as bitcoin began to attract widespread attention. But proponents say that does not matter: The currency obeys its own internal logic. An Australian entrepreneur last year stepped forward and claimed to be the founder of bitcoin, only to say days later that he did not have the courage to publish proof that he is.

NEW YORK: It is worth more than an ounce of gold right now, it is completely digital and it is the currency of choice for the cyberattackers who crippled computer networks around the world in recent days. When the attackers ransomware sprang into action, it held victims hostage by encrypting their data and demanding they send payments in bitcoins to regain access to their computers. Bitcoin has a fuzzy history, but it is a type of currency that allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties. Here is a brief look at bitcoin: How bitcoins work Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. The coins are created by users who mine them by lending computing power to verify other users transactions. They receive bitcoins in exchange. The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with US dollars and other currencies. How much is it worth?One bitcoin recently traded for $1,734.65, according to Coinbase, a company that helps users exchange bitcoins. That makes it more valuable than an ounce of gold, which trades at less than $1,230. The value of bitcoins can swing sharply, though. A year ago, one was worth $457.04, which means that it is nearly quadrupled in the last 12 months. But its price doesn't always go up. A bitcoins value plunged by 23 percent against the dollar in just a week this past January. It fell by the same amount again in 10 days during March. Why bitcoins are popular Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Transactions can be made anonymously, making the currency popular with libertarians as well as tech enthusiasts, speculators and criminals. Who is using bitcoin? Some businesses have jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon amid a flurry of media coverage. Overstock.com accepts payments in bitcoin, for example. The currency has become popular enough that more than 300,000 daily transactions have been occurring recently, according to bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info. A year ago, activity was closer to 230,000 transactions per day. Still, its popularity is low compared with cash and cards, and many individuals and businesses will not accept bitcoins for payments. How bitcoins are kept secureThe bitcoin network works by harnessing individuals greed for the collective good. A network of tech-savvy users called miners keep the system honest by pouring their computing power into a blockchain, a global running tally of every bitcoin transaction. The blockchain prevents rogues from spending the same bitcoin twice, and the miners are rewarded for their efforts by being gifted with the occasional bitcoin. As long as miners keep the blockchain secure, counterfeiting shouldn't be an issue. How bitcoin came to beIt is a mystery. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was then adopted by a small clutch of enthusiasts. Nakamoto dropped off the map as bitcoin began to attract widespread attention. But proponents say that does not matter: The currency obeys its own internal logic. An Australian entrepreneur last year stepped forward and claimed to be the founder of bitcoin, only to say days later that he did not have the courage to publish proof that he is.

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What is bitcoin? A look at the digital currency - Arab News

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

Bitcoin price might need to make a correction before sustaining its climb past the $2000 mark.

Technical Indicators Signals

The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA so the path of least resistance is to the upside. This short-term moving average is also close to the rising trend line thats been holding since the start of May, adding to its strength as support.

In addition, applying the Fibonacci retracement tool on the latest swing low and high shows that the 38.2% to 50% levels line up with the trend line and a former resistance area that might now hold as support. If so, bitcoin price could resume its climb past the swing high around $2070 and climb to $2100 next.

RSI is turning lower from the overbought zone to show a return in selling pressure. A bit of divergence can be seen as this oscillator made lower highs since May 10 while price had higher highs then.

Stochastic is also heading south from the overbought zone to show that sellers are taking control of bitcoin price action. Once the oscillator hits the oversold region, buyers could get back in the game.

Market Factors

Rising volumes in Japan are still seen to be the major drivers of the bitcoin price gains, but the increase in geopolitical risk is also sustaining the climb. Last week, the focus has been on the uncertainty generated from the ongoing investigation on Trumps intelligence information leak to Russian officials.

Apart from spurring demand for non-traditional assets like bitcoin, it has also led to lower demand for the dollar on weakening Fed rate hike expectations for next month and declining US bond yields. Even if the Fed does tighten, the lack of progress on fiscal reform could weigh on the odds of future rate hikes for the year.

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Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 05/22/2017 Can It Go Past $2000? - newsBTC