Bitcoin

Bitcoin Is Getting Smoked To Start The New Year

Bitcoin Is Getting Smoked To Start The New Year


Bitcoin is under $300 for the first time since November of 2013. It's down ~16% to start 2015.

After peaking at $1,147.25 in December of 2013, it's been one long, slow descent for Bitcoin.

It's not good for Bitcoin, which had tremendous hype when its price was exploding. But, it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, either.

Fred Wilson, a startup investor who is bullish on bitcoin, said the following in a blog post about what he thinks happens in 2015:

8/ The horrible year that bitcoin had in 2014 will be a wakeup call for all stakeholders. Developers will turn their energy from creating the next bitcoin (all the alt stuff) to creating the stack on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Real decentralized applications will start to emerge as the platform matures and entrepreneurial energy is channeled in the right direction.


In theory, as the price continues to drop, it could push developers to build applications.



https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-getting-smoked-start-154151501.html

Former CEO of collapsed Mt.Gox bitcoin exchange arrested in Japan: reports

Former CEO of collapsed Mt.Gox bitcoin exchange arrested in Japan: reports


TOKYO (Reuters) - Mark Karpeles, the former head of defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was arrested on Saturday in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency, Japanese media reports said.

The French-born Karpeles, 30, is suspected of falsifying data on the outstanding balance of the exchange, at one point the world's largest hub for trading the digital currency, they added.

Police were unable to immediately confirm the reports.

When it filed for bankruptcy in February 2014, Mt. Gox said 750,000 customer bitcoins and another 100,000 belonging to the exchange were stolen due to a software security flaw.

The lost funds represented the equivalent of $480 million at the time of the bankruptcy filing. Mt. Gox also said more than $27 million was missing from its Japanese bank accounts.

Karpeles, who had blamed hackers for the loss, later said he had recovered 200,000 of the lost bitcoins.

Known as a self-proclaimed geek who said he was uncomfortable in his native France and hadn't been back in years, Karpeles became interested in bitcoin when a customer of his web-hosting services wanted to pay in the virtual currency.

Mt. Gox subsequently shot from obscurity to dominate global trade in bitcoin, but as early as 2012 employees at the Tokyo-based exchange challenged Karpeles on issues such as whether client money was being used to cover costs.


https://ca.news.yahoo.com/former-ceo-collapsed-mt-gox-bitcoin-exchange-arrested-024026385.html

Blockchain

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-blockchain-technology-dominic-frisby-2015-1

Wiki it...

The Rise & Fall of a Bitcoin Kingpin

http://rollingstoneaus.com/culture/post/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-bitcoin-kingpin/2603


The Rise & Fall of a Bitcoin Kingpin


Just after sunrise on August 1st, Tokyo Police stormed into a sleek two-storey townhouse on a quiet residential street in Japan's capital and arrested Mark Karpeles, the 30-year-old head of Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world. By the time they led the doughy, pale Frenchman away, the police could barely make their way through the throngs of reporters closing in outside. Just three months earlier, when I met Karpeles here, the scene was considerably calmer. He was baking apple quiche, a recipe passed down from his grandmother. Scruffy and chipper, his dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, he wore baggy green pants and a flour-dusted black T-shirt with the words this isn't even my final form. System of a Down played from passed down from his grandmother. Scruffy and chipper, his dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, he wore baggy green pants and a flour-dusted black T-shirt with the words this isn't even my final form. System of a Down played from his radio. Apples and bread crumbs covered the living-room table he otherwise used for his model train set. Karpeles was the accidental emperor of bitcoin, a hapless geek who, as much to his own surprise as others', became the most powerful lord of digital cash. During his reign, bitcoin, the leading form of virtual currency, rose in value from approximately 25 cents to more than $1,200. The Wall Street Journal estimated that at one point Mt. Gox was processing 80 per cent of all bitcoin transactions in the world. At its peak, the company traded more than $4 million a month. Tyler Winklevoss – one of the famed twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook for a $65 million settlement and is among the bullish investors in digital money – says Mt. Gox was "the most important and prominent property in bitcoin". But in February 2014, it was discovered that a half-billion dollars worth of bitcoins simply vanished from Karpeles' exchange, leaving customers around the world unable to withdraw their funds. It's the largest online heist in history. (Estimates vary on the exact amount. Many have reported $450 million; Karpeles says it could be as high as $650 million.) Some – including even those who worked closely with Karpeles – suspected it was an inside job. "We had an ongoing joke: ‘Take pizza to Mark when he's in jail'," Ashley Barr, the first employee at Mt. Gox, tells me. "We always assumed that was where he'd end up." The Japanese police arrested Karpeles for allegedly padding his digital accounts with $1 million worth of fake bitcoins and fleecing another $8.9 million from Mt. Gox customer deposits. He's still being investigated for what, if any, role he had in the disappearance of the half-billion in bitcoins. Karpeles, over several months of interviews, denied culpability. "A lot of people seem to think that someone at Mt. Gox was evil," he says. "I know that I didn't steal anything. I mean, if I had, like, $650 million in bitcoin, or even a fraction of this, I wouldn't be here." Karpeles never expected to be at the centre of a financial revolution. Growing up in Burgundy and Paris, the melancholic only child of a single mother (he never knew his father), Karpeles escaped into the world on the other side of his computer screen. His mother, Anne, a science teacher and amateur coder, wrote a musical keyboard for him to play on his Sinclair computer. "I created small game programs for him, and he liked it," his mother e-mailed me in French. "A lot." By 10, Karpeles had started teaching himself to code by taking apart his grandmother's alarm system. While other kids dreamed of being rock stars or athletes, Karpeles dreamed of finding fame through coding. "I wanted the software I write to be useful enough for everyone to want to use it," he says. At a young age, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school in the Champagne valley. But, socially awkward and geeky, he was bullied by his classmates and ostracised at school. "It was not so easy to adapt," he tells me one afternoon, as he browses manga in a Tokyo bookshop. Karpeles spent his days devouring Japanese comics and scribbling code in a notebook, since he didn't have access to a PC. After finishing middle school, he put his skills into practice when he moved to Paris with his mother, and began, in his early teens, hacking into shopping sites so he could get anything he wanted for free. (When I ask how he did it, he smiles and says, "It's probably not a good idea for me to tell you.") Karpeles savoured his newfound power. Stealing Gameboys and mobile phones for his classmates, he learned, was a way to make friends. "A lot of people respected me for that," he recalls. "I did feel more important, in a way. If I need something, I press a button and I get it." "People think someone at Mt. Gox was evil," says Karpeles. "I didn’t steal anything. If I had $650 million in bitcoin – or even a fraction of that – I wouldn’t be here." Karpeles' scam ran for two years, so long that his initial fear of getting caught faded. "After a while, you see nothing happening, so you forget about it," he says. Forget about it, that is, until the police showed up and carted the teenager off to jail. As a minor, he got away with only probation, but the experience marked the beginning of years of adolescent turmoil. To his mother's despair, he ran away and attempted to live on the streets of Paris for a week. Through his teens and early twenties, he sank into a suicidal depression; at his lowest point, he made a noose out of a computer cable ("It was the only thing I had around," he tells me with a shrug), though he never brought himself to use it. In 2009, he moved to Japan, a country he'd been fascinated by since getting hooked on anime as a boy. Despite being a gaijin, or foreigner, he felt at home for the first time in his life, quickly learning the language and launching his own Web hosting company. He was first introduced to bitcoin when a customer in Peru told Karpeles he was having trouble getting a credit card and asked if he could pay with bitcoins instead. Bitcoin was created in 2009 by a mysterious coder (or group of coders) under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto as a radical new payment system: decentralised, unregulated and, for the most part, anony*mous. Though it has real value (with a current exchange rate of around $250), bitcoin exists electronically. There's no paper, no coins, no bank to charge transaction fees or government to control the flow. Intrigued, Karpeles became an early adopter. He found purpose and community among bitcoin faithful such as Jed McCaleb, a young American who'd recently launched his own bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox. Mt. Gox was originally a site McCaleb had made for people to exchange Magic cards (thus the name – Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange, or Mt. Gox for short). But by July 2010, he'd devoted it to bitcoin, setting it up as the currency's first online brokerage: proces*sing purchases and holding customers' money. By taking a small commission on trades, Mt. Gox was set to bring in $100,000 its first year. But there were setbacks, like when a hacker stole $45,000 worth of virtual currency. By March 2011, McCaleb wanted out. According to Karpeles, McCaleb, who he'd become familiar with online, asked him if he'd want to take over Mt. Gox. All he asked for in return was a 50-50 split of the profits for the first six months, and a 12 per cent stake in the future. "I basically got it for free," Karpeles recalls. (McCaleb declined to comment.) At the time, with only about 1,000 people using the exchange, Karpeles hardly expected to get more than ramen money. But he figured it would be "a new adventure". It didn't take long for Karpeles' new adventure to take an unexpected turn. On June 6th, 2011, just three months after he took over Mt. Gox, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Agency administrator Michele Leonhart, urging them to shut down Silk Road, an online black market predominantly used for drugs. It wasn't just the site that was a concern, but the new economy making it possible. "The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as bitcoins," the senators wrote. Hoping to stay out of the fray, Karpeles wrote to the DEA, offering to comply with any investigation. "Ultimately, we are pursuing a goal of accepted legitimacy, both for bitcoin and our exchange," he wrote. To protect against drug dealers laundering money on the site, Mt. Gox began to track suspicious transactions, especially anyone moving large sums. All the news about Silk Road, however, proved good for business. With growing exposure, the price of bitcoin hit a new peak of $30. In less than two months, according to Karpeles, Mt. Gox had grown from 1,000 customers to 65,000. Karpeles announcing that his bitcoin-exchange company was filing for bankruptcy in 2014. This year, Japanese police arrested him for allegedly padding his accounts with fake bitcoins. But Karpeles' burgeoning empire would soon take a massive hit. On June 18th, someone claimed to have hacked into the Mt. Gox computers and was putting its files up for sale. Customers began to notice bitcoins mysteriously disappearing from their accounts. Karpeles took to Twitter and Reddit to reassure the nervous bitcoiners that, in fact, the problems affected only a handful of users. "Trust me," he wrote, "if we had a problem in Mt. Gox and it was actively exploited, we'd have way more than a dozen compromised accounts." Yet the next night, Karpeles awoke to an urgent call. The price of bitcoin was crashing. Around 2 a.m., he discovered a hacker was cashing out thousands of bitcoins, and thus plummeting the price from $17 per bitcoin to less than a penny. "Someone's cashing out the motherlode on mtgox!" one person posted on the forums. Karpeles quickly moved $7 million in bitcoins on the site to another server and temporarily shut down Mt. Gox before more damage could be done. These were just the first of many warning signs Karpeles seemed to ignore. Behind the scenes, people were growing concerned over his role in the nascent bitcoin economy. Chief among them was Roger Ver, the so-called "Bitcoin Jesus" who was also living in Tokyo at the time. A wiry libertarian from Silicon Valley, Ver had renounced his U.S. citizenship after getting arrested for flipping fireworks on eBay and serving 10 months in prison. Ver, who made millions selling computer hardware online, saw bitcoin as a way to subvert the government he'd grown to despise. "A real clear milestone is when governments no longer control money," Ver tells me one night at a Tokyo steakhouse, one of the many in town that accept bitcoins. "If the world's using bitcoin," he believes, "governments won't be able to fund wars through inflation like they do today." Ver bought up what's now worth millions in bitcoins, and he committed himself to spreading the word – after moving to Japan, he was the first to lend a hand to Mt. Gox in the wake of the hacking attack, desperate to keep the currency viable and attractive. But he grew dismayed over what he saw as Karpeles' strange sense of remove. "He has no work ethic," says Ver, who had to deal with panicked customers during the crisis while Karpeles went home. (Karpeles says he left because he "couldn't work on the code with everyone around".) Still, the company, and currency, survived the early hacks and continued to boom. Karpeles expanded to dozens of employees and moved to Google's former office building in Tokyo. Despite his tendency to be, as his mother puts it, "withdrawn", it seemed to some that the success was going to his head. "I had to talk him out of buying a Lamborghini," says co-worker Barr. "I always felt Mark was trying to prove something – like, from childhood he was told he wouldn't amount to much. One time at his computer he said, ‘I wish my old teachers could see me now.' He wanted to be the head of something big." From left: (1) Police officers carry pieces of evidence out of Karpeles' house in Tokyo on August 3. (2) A bitcoin investor at Mt. Gox, 2014 For Mt. Gox, one of the biggest breaks came from the "Winklevi". The twins had been vacationing on the Spanish island of Ibiza when they heard about bitcoin. The two had just begun spending their Facebook settlement by investing in various startups, and they were looking for the next big thing. "Bitcoin and digital currency is just this thing that was always going to happen," Tyler Winklevoss says. The Winklevi bet big, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bitcoin. And there was only one place to buy it in bulk, they realised: this company run by an elusive Frenchman in Tokyo, Mt. Gox. Still, the Winklevi were aware of the risks of getting involved with the exchange. "It's like, you see houses built on the side of a hill and they don't have insurance," Tyler says, "then a mudslide comes along and the houses get destroyed." By 2013, karpeles felt like he was achieving his lifelong dream of reaching computers around the world. But while he was enjoying his newfound wealth, the feds suspected his hands might be getting dirty in something nefarious: running Silk Road. In April 2012, investigators were able to identify Silk Road bitcoins being laundered on Mt. Gox. And by that summer, the lead investigator, Jared Der-Yeghiayan, had zeroed in on "a good target", as he later put it: Karpeles. In an affidavit, Der-Yeghiayan stated there was "probable cause" that the e-mail accounts of Karpeles – whom he described as "a self-proclaimed computer hacker" – would contain evidence on a conspiracy to sell drugs online and run a money-*laundering business. On May 9th, investigators filed a separate affidavit to seize $2 million from Karpeles' U.S. bank accounts for allegedly operating an illegal money-transfer business. By doing this, Karpeles' U.S. business would effectively be shut down. (In a bizarre twist, the investigator who filed the affidavit was later revealed to be Shaun Bridges, one of two Silk Road investigators who broke bad while tracking the site's elusive founder, known as Dread Pirate Roberts. Bridges, a Secret Service agent, had moved $820,000 in stolen bitcoins on Mt. Gox, and some speculate that he ordered the seizure in an attempt to erase traces of his own misdeeds.) With the feds squeezing Karpeles, Mizuho Bank, the firm in Japan that handled all the international transfers and withdrawals for Mt. Gox, refused to process any more withdrawals from the site. When Mt. Gox customers began complaining that it was taking longer and longer to withdraw money, Karpeles would stall and reply that there was a "backlog" of orders. Meanwhile, the feds cracked the Silk Road case. In October 2013, authorities arrested Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old Texan, for running Silk Road. (This past May, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison.) By early 2014, concerns were mounting over Mt. Gox, which "started to look like a roach motel", according to Tyler Winklevoss, who, along with his brother, got out unscathed. But others wouldn't be so fortunate. On February 7th, 2014, Mt. Gox announced it was suspending all withdrawals. The decision sent bitcoin value dropping more than eight per cent and created panic online. "Someone has hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin that has not been returned," says an attorney suing Mt. Gox. "All signs point to Mark as the one who did this." The crash showed the power of Mt. Gox – and just how vulnerable the currency was to the company's troubles. "It was the only exchange," says prominent bitcoin investor Barry Silbert, "but it was one of the worst-run businesses." After two long weeks without any new information, customers logged on to Mt. Gox on February 24th to find the most nightmarish thing of all: a blank page. Their worst fears were confirmed when a note appeared on the site. A "decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being", it read. According to Karpeles, the problem stemmed from what's called a "transaction malleability", a software flaw that allowed people on the outside to manipulate the bitcoin transactions and steal money from the exchange. At first, he tells me, he had no idea how much bitcoin was missing, but the deeper he dug, the worse it became: By his estimate, $650 million in bitcoins were gone. "It really felt unreal," he recalls late one night in a subterranean Tokyo bar. "I don't know how to describe that. When you get a hospital operation without any anesthetic, it hurts at first, but at some point the pain reaches a point where you don't feel anything anymore." High above the anime billboards and lights of Tokyo, Karpeles hid inside his apartment, terrified. Protesters had flown in from around the world to camp outside his office. Reporters loomed outside his home. He got death threats. "We need an organisation to search and torture and kill Mark Karpeles," read one anonymous post on a bitcoin message board. "I didn't feel safe for my life," he tells me. On February 28th, 2014, Karpeles filed for bankruptcy and held a press conference in Tokyo. As he stood before the cameras in his ill-fitting grey suit, his mind raced. "There were weaknesses in the system," he stammered. "I'm truly sorry to have caused inconvenience." He says he wanted to say more, that he was sorry for what happened, how "devastated" he felt. But instead he just bowed awkwardly in apology. "I tried to speak," he tells me, "but I didn't feel any words come out." As Mt. Gox's collapse made headlines, it wasn't just the future of bitcoin cast into doubt, but Karpeles' role in the debacle. Suspicions rose that March when the company announced it had found 200,000 bitcoins in a forgotten digital wallet – the equivalent of forgetting $125 million in gold you left under a mattress. "This isn't something you could accidentally misplace," says Jay Edelson, an attorney representing the 600,000 North American Mt. Gox customers in a class-*action suit. Investigators hope to recover the missing bitcoins, a difficult task in an age when someone can hide half a billion dollars on a thumb-drive. "Someone has hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin that has not been returned," says Edelson For the true believers of digital currency, the fall of Mt. Gox and Karpeles' arrest mark the end of bitcoin's Wild West. With major banks such as Goldman Sachs now investing millions in virtual currency exchanges, bullish investors are betting that bitcoin will become "the future of money," as Cameron Winklevoss says. He, along with his brother, is set to launch a Wall Street-friendly exchange called Gemini. In the meantime, police are still trying to find Mt. Gox's missing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins and determine what went wrong. Some blame incompetence. Nicolas Christin, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, examined several leaked Mt. Gox databases and found evidence of bugs, missing records and internal accounting that was "a horrible mess". In the bankruptcy filing, Karpeles acknowledged that he had been aware of vulnerabilities since 2011, leading others to believe he had, at best, overlooked years of leaking funds. Others insist this was an elaborate theft. In January, after a six-month investigation into Mt. Gox, the Japanese police concluded the heist was at least a "partial inside job". Many people, including the lawyers filing the class-action suit, are pointing to Karpeles himself. "Mt. Gox was run by Mark," says Edelson. "He had control of all the code, all the transactions, and he kept everybody out of the process. All signs point to him as the person who did this." Karpeles, as of this writing, is still being questioned by Japanese investigators and has not yet been charged with any crimes. He has admitted to reporters that he did create fake bitcoins, but only as "a test" for new software, not with the intent of making himself rich. He has also said he will "of course deny" any charges that may come. So what does he say really happened at Mt. Gox? When I last saw Karpeles at his townhouse in May, he told me he suspected that perhaps someone within the company was the victim of a phishing attack, which allowed an outside hacker access to the Mt. Gox database. "I don't know if there was inside help or not," he says. "I still believe it's very likely someone from the outside coordinated the operation." Throughout my time with Karpeles, he maintained his innocence with such calm that I was left with two possible conclusions. He's either the greatest criminal mastermind of the digital age or an overeager chump who got in way over his head, and, perhaps, resorted to the most desperate means to get out. But whether he's found guilty or innocent, he's not done dreaming yet. He hopes to take the lessons he's learned at Mt. Gox and create a more secure form of digital cash: "I still want to be on every computer in the world." — — -

GoFuckYourself said:

Bitcoin


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin



Is Bitcoin poised to be the largest fraud ever perpetrated upon the world?

Unleash the pain upon the greedy, ignorant and naïve.

Click to expand...

Scary shit. First of all it's the ultimatte fiat money, it has no basis in the concrete. While national currencies are of barely little more value, at least they have the merit of having some basis, however tenuous, of having a rationale based on some productivity. Bitcoins value is virtually all in the minds of the beholders.

Buy Gold.

Ishmael

Why the price of bitcoin is skyrocketing again

The price of Bitcoin, the world's most popular virtual, digital currency, is on the rise again. After trading in a range of $200 to $250 for most of the year, the price of one Bitcoin shot up to $500 this week, although it has since fallen back to $392 on Thursday.

A great surge to $1,000 at the end of 2013 ended in disaster for investors as the currency lost three-quarters of its value in ensuing months. But what's behind the latest rally and will it stick? Here are three possible explanations:

Perhaps questionable Chinese interest

As often happens with bitcoin price surges, a lot of the trading is coming out of China. And there is a social financial network called MMM Global growing massively in China that requires users to buy bitcoin and share it around with other members. The Financial Times has said MMM has elements typical of pyramid schemes. The site was founded by a former Russian legislator who was jailed for fraud over a pyramid scheme he operated in the 1990s.

China has also tightened capital controls recently, making it harder for its citizens to send money abroad. Some bitcoin buying may be related to efforts to get around the crackdown.

Growing legitimate business interest

At the Money 20/20 conference last week, many companies announced new bitcoin-based services. The Nasdaq (NDAQ), for example, will be recording transactions in private stocks using bitcoin's public ledger, known as the blockchain. And Mastercard (MA) joined the long list of establishment institutions investing in bitcoin startups. And, two weeks ago, the European Union's top court agreed that virtual currencies like bitcoin can be traded like established currencies without triggering taxes applied to sales of goods and services. Past rallies have been linked with speculative bets that these kinds of deals and rulings would popularize the cryptocurrency and lead to greater demand which would push up the price.

Jamie Dimon

The always opinionated CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) says bitcoin has no future -- governments will shut it down, he said at Fortune's Global Forum on Wednesday. “Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” Dimon said.

Coming from the the guy who bought Bear Stearns and WaMu and missed those billions of dollars of crazy trades by the London Whale, Dimon's remarks may be attracting contrarians to bet against the big bank CEO. Probably not many, but with bitcoin, you never know.

Has bitcoin matched gold’s status?

Has bitcoin matched gold’s status?

Cryptocurrency still a ‘speculator’s market’

The price for a single bitcoin exceeded the price of an ounce of gold for the first time ever Thursday, but the digital currency isn’t ready to join gold or silver as a reliable long term store of value, Paul Mladjenovic, author of “Precious Metals Investing for Dummies,” told MarketWatch.

“I want to see a lot more stability and I want to see that [bitcoin] has the same characteristics of durability that gold and silver have had over not just years but centuries,” Mladjenovic said in a Facebook Live interview.

The price of a single bitcoin US:BTCUSD rose to an all-time high of $1,251.32 on Thursday, according to CoinDesk’s bitcoin price index. April gold futures on Comex GCJ7, -0.58% changed hands at $1,233.20 an ounce, down 1.4% on the day. For the year to date, gold is up more than 7%, while bitcoin is up more than 25%.

See: Bitccoin is now worth more than ounce of gold for the first time ever

Some view the eight-year-old cryptocurrency as a proxy for gold and silver because of its limited supply, Mladjenovic said. But it’s relatively short record and volatile action mean it has yet to achieve the same status, he said, arguing that bitcoin remains a “speculator’s market.”

Bitcoin has been in rally mode since early 2015, boosted in part by increased Chinese demand. Recent gains have also been attributed to expectations the Securities and Exchange Commission could soon authorize the creation of the first bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

The price of a single coin rose as high as $1,242 on some exchanges in late 2013 before the collapse of Mt. Gox, which was one of the largest digital currency exchanges. Bitcoin slumped to a low of $200 in the ensuing bear market.

Bitcoin:

"the best part about bitcoins is that you get to watch libertarians slowly discover why financial regulations exist to begin with"
—@porn_horse[1]

Bitcoin (code: BTC, XBT[2]) is an Internet-based digital currency and payment network. It uses strong cryptography to prevent users from duplicating money. Bitcoin's notional independence from the control of governmental entities tends to appeal to libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, technophiles[3] and criminals. At the same time, it also does not enjoy the security, protection and dispute resolution which those large bodies tend to provide, making it a volatile and often insecure asset.

Bitcoin was first proposed by a person known only by the apparent pseudonym of "Satoshi Nakamoto" in late 2008, at the height of the banking crisis.[4] Satoshi's identity has been a continuing source of intrigue.[5][6]

The currency is designed to employ lots of computers to process and record transactions. The solution to this is "mining," in which Bitcoin users run software to do all the necessary work.[7] Every time someone successfully proves they performed this work, they receive bitcoins in return. This provides an incentive to keep the currency running, but also attracts a lot of prospectors and speculators looking for easy money, and scammers who consider them suitably exploitable suckers.[8]

The use case of the currency is purchasing illicit goods (e.g., drugs and stolen data on darknet marketsWikipedia's W.svg) and darknet scams (e.g., murder-for-hire)[9][10] and extortion (e.g., "ransomware").[11] It is becoming the preferred currency for internal use by online criminals.[12][13] Although Bitcoin is widely used on the darknet, it has a key flaw; it's the most transparent currency in existence.[14][14] Zerocash is a viable alternative to Bitcoin; however, its usage is limited and has flaws of its own.[15]

In 2014, the cryptocurrency began a sharp decline after a principal exchange, Mt. Gox, shut down following three months of blatant market manipulation.[16][17] It was later revealed that an undiscovered "leak" in the company's bitcoin wallet had rendered them insolvent in 2012, and virtually penniless by 2014.[18] Essentially, Bitcoin's astronomical rise was the direct result of meaningless trades with fake money.[19]

Click to expand...

Super-Surprise said:

Bitcoin


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin



Is Bitcoin poised to be the largest fraud ever perpetrated upon the world?

Unleash the pain upon the greedy, ignorant and naïve.

Click to expand...

There is a lot of competition for that.

Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High

Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High



A year ago, one Bitcoin could be had for about $450. On Thursday, the cryptocurrency peaked at just over $1,340, as measured by the Coindesk price index, before retrenching slightly to $1318 by this morning. That's still a return of nearly 200%.

Bitcoin has seen a remarkably steady rise since early 2016, fueled by global regulatory normalization, broad interest in the technology from enterprises and banks, and rising transaction volumes. Cryptocurrency analysts, according to Coindesk, think the trend will continue, citing among other factors that most Bitcoin investors are long-term bulls who will take profits conservatively.


But the very transaction volume that is Bitcoin's key fundamental also presents a serious medium-term threat, as the system has struggled to keep up. Transaction speeds have become impractical for merchant payments, and fees have risen, making the system less competitive with conventional payment systems such as credit cards. Struggles over how to fix the problem have raised the spectre of a network split --though that could, at least theoretically, give holders additional value in a manner akin to a stock split.

Bitcoin had a notable previous peak of around $979 way back in November of 2013 (Coindesk's number seems conservative here--Coinmarketcap records a 2013 peak of $1149). That push was fueled by a wave of mainstream media attention, but prices slumped through 2015 on the realization that the tech's promise would take some time to fulfill, dipping as low as $204 that August.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hits-time-high-155313907.html

Bitcoin set a new price record

Bitcoin set a new price record


New York City

“Blockchain! Blockchain! Blockchain!”



Taariq Lewis, a bitcoin entrepreneur wearing a tuxedo, is chanting as he sprints down from the ballroom stage of the Marriott Marquis in Time Square. He high-fives the dark-suited executives seated in the front row before returning to the stage to close out his routine—a song about blockchains and cryptocurrencies—with two sequin-studded backup dancers. It’s 8:30am on a Monday morning.

The bitcoin and wider blockchain world is gathered in New York for the annual Consensus conference, an industry confab organized by trade publication CoinDesk. (Full disclosure: I started the conference in 2015.) They have good reason to be singing and dancing: The cryptocurrency’s price has rocketed in recent weeks. On May 22, the day of the event, the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index pegs it at $2,230.

The unusual kickoff to a conference aimed at 2,500 financial and technology executives sums up the schism at the heart of the blockchain world. Blockchain tech was meant to be the grown-up version of the freewheeling, anarchic, bitcoin scene that it descended from. Yet it’s clear from Lewis’ dance routine that the wilder impulses of cryptocurrency culture—fueled by euphoria over an ascendant price—aren’t so easily tamed by its would-be corporate overlords.



It’s not just bitcoin’s price that’s climbing. Etherum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency on the market, with more powerful computational features than bitcoin, is setting records too. Indeed, one speaker remarked on stage that everyone at the conference seemed more interested in ethereum than bitcoin this year.

While these cryptocurrencies are often treated as speculative financial instruments, the point of the Consensus event is to showcase their potential real-world usefulness. To that end, conference-goers were presented with a slew of announcements from corporations hoping to harness the technical principles behind blockchains. Here are some of the most interesting:

Toyota Research Institute is using blockchains for self-driving cars. They could be used to share data between car users or about a car’s environment, to handle payments between users for car-sharing platforms, or to store data about how a car was used for insurance purposes. Blockchains could even help record information about whether a car’s trunk is available for rent.
CoinList, a platform for launching so-called Initial Coin Offerings, was launched on May 18; at Consensus, co-founder Juan Benet talked about its progress and high-profile partnership with Naval Ravikant’s AngelList. ICOs are upending traditional fundraising mechanisms by making everything automated and on the blockchain. Benet was mobbed by business-card waving executives as he tried to leave the hall.
Microsoft, Ideo, Accenture, and others launched something called the Decentralized Identity Foundation, a nonprofit with the ambitious goal of creating a blockchain-based identity layer for the internet. That means users would control how their data is stored and accessed. Such a development could potentially curtail the increasing dominance of Facebook or Google accounts as our online identities.
Alibaba is using a blockchain to track dairy supplies, vitamins, and more in Australia, part of a partnership with consultancy PwC. The idea is to reduce fraud in the food supply chain using a blockchain’s tamper-proof logging abilities and smart contracts.



The breadth of companies plunging into blockchains suggests that enthusiasm for the technology has not waned, though some projects are closer than others to showing real cost savings. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which is responsible for processing trillions of dollars of securities transactions daily, said its blockchain-based platform developed by IBM would slash clearing and settlement costs across the entire industry by a quarter when it goes live next year. In a separate project with shipping line Maersk, IBM promised savings of “tens of billions” for the company by digitizing supply-chain paperwork with a blockchain.

The exuberance in the blockchain world is matched only by the enthusiasm of speculators who trade in bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies that are exploding in value. From inside the ballrooms of the Marriott Marquis, the value of blockchain tech really does look like it’s going “to the moon,”—a popular refrain among cryptocurrency investors—as Taariq Lewis sang to a room full of suits.

https://qz.com/989042/bitcoin-sets-...for-consensus-2017/?utm_source=YPL&yptr=yahoo

Blockchain is the way to go forward...

In 2010 someone Bought 2 Pizzas With 10,000 Bitcoin. That Would Be Worth $20 Million.

In 2010 someone Bought 2 Pizzas With 10,000 Bitcoin. That Would Be Worth $20 Million.

$20 Million Pizza

On May 22, 2010, a developer bought two pizzas using 10,000 units of a then-little-known digital currency called bitcoin.
Laszlo Hanyecz bought these pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins on May 22, 2010. Mike Lazlo

Today, 10,000 bitcoins are worth more than $20 million (£15.4 million).

Bitcoin is going nuclear. Its price is tearing upward, with each bitcoin worth $2,128 (£1,638) — a little shy of its all-time-high of $2,185 (£1,682) reached earlier Monday morning.

Just a year ago, it was trading at just $443 (£341), after deflating from what was then seen as the giddy highs of about $1,100 (£847) in late 2013. It has since embarked on an epic bull run.

“The Japanese have caught the Bitcoin bug and inefficiencies across markets are being exposed,” CryptoCompare founder Charles Hayter said in an emailed comment. “Irrational exuberance is taking hold as the Japanese stumble over each other to enter the Bitcoin market and drag up international prices.”

The digital currency has come a long way since 2010, when the purchase of the two Papa John’s pizzas by Laszlo Hanyecz from another bitcoin enthusiast marked what is believed to be the first “real-world” bitcoin transaction.

He posted on the Bitcoin Talk forum on May 22, 2010, writing (emphasis ours):

“I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I’m aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don’t have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a ‘breakfast platter’ at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you’re happy!

“I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, etc.. just standard stuff no weird fish topping or anything like that. I also like regular cheese pizzas which may be cheaper to prepare or otherwise acquire.

“If you’re interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.”
Bitcoin Pizza Day

Ten thousand coins were then worth about $40 (£30). A British user agreed to buy the pizza for him, and even at the time the buyer got a good deal out of it: The person paid only $25 (£19) for the two pizzas.

The date is a marked on an annual basis by bitcoin users as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.”

Today, 10,000 bitcoins add up to about $20.5 million (£15.8 million).

“It wasn’t like Bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool,” Hanyecz told The New York Times in 2013. “No one knew it was going to get so big.”


https://futurism.com/someone-in-201...10000-bitcoin-that-would-be-worth-20-million/

Bitcoin is heading to $10,000, CNBC survey says





The price of bitcoin could be heading to over $10,000, nearly half of respondents to a CNBC survey said.

During the week, CNBC ran an unscientific survey online asking: "Where does bitcoin go from here?"

Forty-nine percent of the 23,118 people who voted said above $10,000. Similar calls have been made by market participants. Former hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz told CNBC in a recent interview that he sees bitcoin heading to $10,000 in the next six to 10 months.

One option that people could also vote for was: "Jamie Dimon is correct, you'll pay the price for buying." JPMorgan Chase

CEO Dimon has been critical of bitcoin, calling it a "fraud" and said "if you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day."
Just over a third (35 percent) of people sided with Dimon.
And 16 percent of respondents went with the final option of bitcoin heading to between $6,000 and $8,000.
The cryptocurrency has risen over 470 percent this year. Earlier this month, bitcoin hit an all-time high of $5,856.10, according to data from industry website CoinDesk. So it's not far off the $6,000 mark.

Rising institutional investor interest, favorable regulation in some markets like Japan, and an upcoming split in bitcoin known as a "fork," have helped to boost the price.
But the cryptocurrency has also had a lot of criticism. UBS said in a recent note that bitcoin is a "speculative bubble" and unlikely to be come a real currency, while Goldman Sachs said the cryptocurrency is not the new gold.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-heading-10-000-cnbc-075500825.html

I keep hoping to find one on the sidewalk, but all I find are zinc pennies...



https://mises.org/library/inflation-and-fall-roman-empire

Money is pouring into bitcoin cash after bitcoin crashed more than $1,000 in 48 hours


The price of bitcoin, the red-hot digital cryptocurrency, was trading down 7.2% on Friday afternoon, at $6,618 a coin.
That's down more than $1,000 from its all-time high of nearly $7,900 a coin, which it hit on Wednesday after news broke that a planned upgrade to the network had been called off.
But now money is pouring out of bitcoin and into bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency that split from bitcoin in August.
Bitcoin cash soared to an all-time high of $1,009 a coin on Friday afternoon.


Bitcoin has shed more than $1,000 over the past 48 hours.

On the other hand, bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency that split from bitcoin in August, reached an all-time high of $1,009 a coin on Friday afternoon, according to data from Markets Insider. It was trading up more than 50%.

Experts think bitcoin's crash and bitcoin cash's rise are related to the same thing: a planned upgrade to bitcoin's network being called off.

Developers behind the upgrade, known as Segwit2X, revoked their support on Wednesday, meaning bitcoin's network will remain intact — at least for now.

The news initially sent bitcoin to an all-time high of nearly $7,900 a coin. But at 2:40 p.m. ET on Friday, it was trading down 7.2%, at $6,812.

Segwit2X was designed to increase the size of the blocks underpinning the bitcoin blockchain network to enable it to process more transactions more quickly. Backers thought the plan would help the digital currency scale faster.

A fork in the network resulting from the upgrade would have doubled the number of coins some investors owned — just as it did when bitcoin cash split from the original bitcoin network.

Tor Bair, the head of growth for Enigma, a crypto-investment platform, told Business Insider that investors might have increased their bitcoin holdings in hopes of getting more clone coins.

"Some traders may have been attempting a 'dividend play' on the Segwit2X fork and purchasing bitcoin in anticipation," Blair said. "With the fork called off, these speculators are now reducing their positions."

Another expert told Business Insider that backers of Segwit2X might be switching over from bitcoin to bitcoin cash.

"When you look at the trends, it does look like many Segwit2X supporters have switched to bitcoin cash," Abhishek Pitti, the CEO of Nucleus Vision, a blockchain-technology company, said in a statement. "The forked currency has seen a 35% increase in a matter of days."




https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/money-pouring-bitcoin-cash-bitcoin-202200393.html

Is Bitcoin the New Gold?

The stratospheric rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has caught many pundits by surprise. Since January 2017, Bitcoin?s value has soared more than seven-fold to over US$7,200, and there are signs that it will keep appreciating for at least the foreseeable future. This has sparked considerable controversy over whether or not its value is overinflated and if Bitcoin is in the midst of a massive bubble. One of the latest claims to emerge about the digital currency is that it is the new gold and a superior store of value to the lustrous yellow metal.

Now what?

While on initial appearances this seems to be a somewhat absurd claim, Bitcoin possesses many characteristics that potentially make it a store of value and, in some cases, superior to gold.

Key among those characteristics is its scarcity. The total supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million units, of which, just under 17 million are now in circulation. The remaining units will be produced over time by Bitcoin mining and other network-approved activities. That means Bitcoin can?t be diluted or debased, making it unique and a secure store of value.

Gold, which is praised for its limited supply and inability to be debased, typically sees its supply increase when prices rise. This is because higher prices create an incentive for gold miners to ramp up production. The surge in gold since the start of 2017 has triggered a flurry of activity across the industry as gold miners focused on growing their gold output to take advantage of those higher prices.

This becomes quite clear when reviewing the third-quarter 2017 results for intermediate miner Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (TSX:KL)(NYSE:KL). It was able to almost double its gold production for the quarter compared to a year earlier to 139,000 ounces.

Nevertheless, Bitcoin?s limited supply combined with its portability and convenience as a means of conducting cross-border transactions certainly, in some ways, makes it superior to gold. When coupled growing investor distrust of governments, fiat currencies, and central banks, as well as claims that gold is being manipulated, these characteristics fueled a surge in interest in Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset when tensions in northeast Asia spilled over. This certainly lends some credence to claims that Bitcoin is the new gold, especially for tech-savvy millennials who are distrustful of central banks and traditional financial markets.

A commonly held misconception is that the Bitcoin Investment Trust (NASDAQOTH:GBTC) is one of the easiest means of gaining exposure to Bitcoin. While it does provide the usual benefits of investing in a traditional listed investment vehicle, it levies an annual fee of 2%, which over time eats into investors? returns. That makes directly owning Bitcoin far more appealing.

So what?

While Bitcoin may possess some gold-like properties, it essentially is an untested asset with no intrinsic value that is subject to considerable volatility ? not desirable characteristics for any store of value.

Furthermore, any investment in Bitcoin is highly speculative because it has no utility, meaning that its value is extrinsic, or solely determined by supply and demand.

For those investors seeking a hedge against geopolitical and economic uncertainty, they would be far better off increasing their exposure to gold by investing in a quality gold miner such as Kirkland. It has not only massively expanded its production since the start of 2017, but it?s also substantially reduced costs. All-in sustaining costs for the nine months to September 30, 2017, came in at US$811 per gold ounce or an impressive 14% lower than a year earlier. When considered in conjunction with its ability to significantly expand production and the positive outlook for gold, Kirkland should report some solid full-year results.

https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/bitcoin-gold-143051825.html

Bitcoin tops $10,000 in some exchanges

Bitcoin tops $10,000 in some exchanges


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin soared to an all-time high above $10,000 on Tuesday in some smaller exchanges and digital currency indexes, but remained just below that milestone in major trading platforms such as Luxembourg-based BitStamp and U.S.-based GDAX.

On CEX.IO, which started out as a cloud mining provider, bitcoin hit $10,234. On crypto-currency index coinmarketcap.com, bitcoin touched $10,050.

But bitcoin has not crossed that $10,000 mark on BitStamp; Coinbase's digital asset exchange GDAX; or Gemini Exchange, owned and operated by virtual currency entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

Still, bitcoin has gained more than 900 percent so far this year, on increased institutional demand for crypto-currencies as financial and mainstream use has expanded.

The first crypto-currency hit a high of $9,968 (BTC=BTSP) on BitStamp. It last traded up more than 2 percent on the day at $9,907.70 (BTC=BTSP).

"With bitcoin nearing $10,000, long-time bitcoiners finally feel vindicated that their currency that has been ridiculed for years, is at last being taken seriously," said Sol Lederer, blockchain director at San Francisco-based technology company LOOMIA.

"Bitcoin's future is still uncertain; it faces the same serious technical challenges it has for years and faces stiff competition from newer, more sophisticated blockchains. But even if it were to crash, it's apparent that bitcoin is here to stay."

In some of the emerging markets, bitcoin has hit well over $10,000. In Zimbabwe, bitcoin traded at $17,875 on Monday. Tuesday's price in Zimbabwe was not available.

In South Korean exchanges, bitcoin was already at close to $11,000 or higher. It traded at nearly $11,000 on Tuesday on bithumb and hit the $10,000 milestone on Monday. At Coinone, bitcoin traded at more than $11,700, and at $11,734 on Korbit.

Bitcoin has been boosted as exchanges such as the CME Group Inc (CME.O) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange announced plans to launch futures contracts for the currency.


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-tops-10-000-exchanges-215859443.html

Given:
1BTC (Bitcoin) = $10,000USD

And:
1 Satoshi (the smallest unit of a Bitcoin) = 0.00000001 BTC

And:
1mBTC (a millibit of a Bitcoin) = 0.001 BTC / 100,000 Satoshis

Then:
1mBTC / 100,000 Satoshis =

BTW:

Just looked at a BTC ticker for the first time today (last time I checked was about 2AM this morning when 1BTC = ATH (all time high) around $10,300), and currently 1BTC = $11,300, which means the price of 1BT has increased 10% in just 7 or so hours.

I can easily see 1BTC = $25,000 within 6 months and even hitting 1BTC = $100,000 by this time next year, whenever the first old-school crony finally jumps on board the Bitcoin train.

I can also easily see 1BTC = $1,000,000USD within 10 years (if that long).

Very, very, very few folks possess the vision of how much Ƀ is changing the world of finance even now, let alone how drastically it's going to change society in toto...

What will the world be like when the corrupt moneymen hold no more power over the world's dominant financial system than any other INDIVIDUAL?

Just 10BTC >

If you have a keen enough eye for it, it's possible to watch atomic time as it happens:


https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/935917012231974912

If you can see what's overtly happening at an untrusted 3rd Party such as the one-of-a-hundred+ cyrptocurrency exchanges in America like the one above, you have at least a slight whiff of what's actually happening on the one-and-only trustless, permissionless, decentralized, peer-to-peer, full node Ƀ blockchain itself; software which, of course, VALIDATES each and every Ƀ transaction, software you can run on your own computer, making yourself your own Bitcoin exchange, your own Bitcoin wallet, your own Bitcoin bank/banker.

https://bitcoin.org/en/

So here exactly does one go to change their bitcoin into Dollars?

There are many bc exchanges.

I might cash some of mine i have had for a long time. My avg purchprice is about $200. Execellent investment, yes!

MagnusRichard said:

There are many bc exchanges.

I might cash some of mine i have had for a long time. My avg purchprice is about $200. Execellent investment, yes!

Click to expand...

Like where can you be sure of an American Dollar exchange? Most of these exchanges say "approved currency" exchanges. People I know have trouble exchanging for Dollars, hence my question, where exactly?Say, in the United States?