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UNDERLYING ASSET BITCOIN VALUE CLOSER TO $3000

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UNDERLYING ASSET BITCOIN VALUE CLOSER TO $3000

UNDERLYING ASSET BITCOIN VALUE CLOSER TO $3000

 

Bitcoin price has been skyrocketing, before this weekend’s cyber attack hiccup, but prices are again on the move upward. How much is a Bitcoin really worth right now? American investors are seeing a true value of more than 70% higher than the market rate this week.

As Bitcoin does not have any real level of mainstream investor access like an ETF, even though that is still a possibility, the next best thing right now is shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, or GBTC, according to sources. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is one of the very few ways to access Bitcoin through a standard brokerage account.

In the case of Bitcoin, its price has moved up about 50% over the last month, and the GBTC has nearly doubled. The extra buying and demand for exposure have pushed a premium onto shares of GBTC. To calculate the premium that you may be paying, you have to take your GBTC shares and times them by about 10.75. According to the company’s website, each share is about 0.093 BTC, as of late last month.

CLOSE TO $3000 BITCOIN VALUE

Just six weeks ago, shares were trading at half the price they are now. April 1st, 2017, GBTC shares were selling for $110 USD, and now they closing at $220, and have peaked at $265 each during inter-day trading. When you multiply these share values times 10.75, you are much closer to $3000 USD than you are the current market prices in the $1700-1800 range. $265 in GBTC shares converts to $2849 in underlying asset value.

This level of a premium price, in the 70% range, means there is a bubble forming, at least in this sector of the over-the-counter market, and now is not the time to buy. Even in markets like India, where Bitcoin currency is high in demand, it is selling at just over 20% over market. It may be advisable to wait until the market settles, which may not be until next month.

Considering these investment market realities, it is not hard to understand the mainstream interest in a future Bitcoin ETF to provide some level of competition. This is also a good indicator that the current price is legit, and a major, sustained Bitcoin price drop is not in the cards anytime soon, at least not in the U.S. market.

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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Cryptocurrency Bubble?

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Cryptocurrency bubble ?

Cryptocurrency Bubble ?
 

Some credible sources are citing a possible "cryptocurrency bubble", as the prices of coins and tokens rocket and the fever for initial coin offerings (ICOs) continues unabated. All this stuff involves the technology known as blockchain, so it's all broadly related, but there are also certain distinct phenomena to consider.

On the one hand, we are seeing a massive increase in the price of Bitcoin, ether, Dash, Z-Cash, Monero, what have you.

Also surging is the ICO trend, which involves many new startups issuing and selling their own tokens (often oversubscribed with speculative buyers) as a way to crowdfund the building of yet another use-case focused blockchain system.

One theory behind the dramatic increase in the value of existing "altcoins", as in alternatives to Bitcoin, such as Dash or Litecoin, is that Bitcoin is approaching its limit and as a result users are now forced to pay increasingly high fees to use the Bitcoin network. Indeed, users are paying transaction processors additional Bitcoins to prioritise their transactions among the many thousands that are queued in a backlog, termed the 'mempool'.

Preston Byrne, COO of Monax and a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, recently wrote about this: "The cryptocurrency market as a whole is interesting from an economic perspective in that it provides a perfectly transparent sandbox to see what happens when perfectly substitutable goods (Bitcoin clones) that accomplish the exact same thing (unregulated value transfer) in a fully automatic way (distributed state machines which require no human oversight) are placed in a position to compete.

"As far as an end-user of cryptocurrency software is concerned, whether a c-currency is $3000 in Dogecoin or $3000 in Bitcoin is immaterial; the shop round the corner prices its goods in USD/GBP/EUR, so as long as one coin or the other has sufficient liquidity to cash out, this means competition can occur on the basis of speed and transaction fees."

According to trading experts, the crypto ecosystem has been fleshed out lately with more cross pairs and on-ramps from the fiat world. There is a roll in roll out trade from Bitcoin to crypto and back as the markets inflate on both sides of the trade.

Charles Hayter, CEO, CryptoCompare, said: "Last year it was fairly easy to predict buying of Bitcoin through fiat and then into crypto. The cross pairs and markets have matured to offer direct Ethereum and Litecoin buying in a number of fiat pairs and this is increasing the options for traders to enter and exit positions. That said, Bitcoin is still the direct port in a storm for the entire industry.

"You are also seeing the arrival of new nations to the crypto sphere with their own bespoke approach to local regulatory issues et al – South Korea is a perfect case in point as they have taken the number three spot in terms on direct fiat to Ethereum trading.

Hayter said another interesting trend has been the dislocation of markets premia / discounts across pairs have widened. "This has been exacerbated by the Chinese regulatory issues as well as Wells Fargos hiatus on international transfers connected to Bitfinex and USDT. New markets tend to sit at premiums, as direct fiat flow spikes prices with exit routes from dead pools of money trading at a premium for exiting the exchange," he said, adding, "bubble – to an extent."

However, as far as ICOs are concerned, many prominent people in the industry believe this is fast becoming pure bubble territory and will end in tears (and probably some actions by the SEC). Someone who would go the record about token sales is angel investor and author William Mougayar, who is organising the Token Summit in New York on May 25.

He said: "In the history of technological cycles, if you follow economist Carlota Perez's thinking, nothing great happens without overshooting during the installation phase of a given technology, before moving into the adoption phase.

"We are clearly in the installation phase of cryptotech, and there is nothing we can do to prevent this overshooting from happening. It's just human nature at play.

"Of course there are ideas, protocols, start-ups and applications currently being launched that will not make it long term, but out of all this activity, some great ones will emerge."

Byrne of Monax has been as staunch a critic of ICOs as anyone ("the equivalent of selling people rows in a database"). But he concluded by saying that, amid all the froth, the way blockchains perform is truly impressive.

"Even relatively obscure systems with a fairly low level of developer input, such as Dogecoin, continue to survive and thrive under the circumstances. This is a ringing endorsement of blockchain technology as a very capable way of automating financial process flows with maximal security and minimal supervision.

"In the enterprise blockchain space we benefit directly from observing the failings and successes of public blockchain systems, which allows us to deliver more value to our clients in the permissioned/regulated applications they ask us to build. All in all, it's great," he said.

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 


 

By Ian Allison

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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Cryptocurrency Ethereum soars by 900 per cent as stellar performer gets Chinese boost

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Cryptocurrency Ethereum soars by 900 per cent as stellar performer gets Chinese boost

Cryptocurrency Ethereum soars by 900 per cent as stellar performer gets Chinese boost
 

A CRYPTOCURRENCY that allows users to move value around as well as represent the ownership of property has rocketed by 900 per cent in just a year.

Ethereum, which uses apps that run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure, is attracting serious investor interest over its incredible financial returns.

The blockchain app, which claims it allows developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises and move funds all without a middle man or counterparty risk, was launched in August 2014.

It was developed by a Swiss nonprofit and crowdfunding campaign which has in turn catapulted it to huge success.

With a current market capitalisation of more than £7billion, the digital currency is outperforming its main rival Bitcoin, according to market data.

Now analysts say it has been of particular interest to the Chinese market which is embracing the explosion in digital currency with gusto.

Blogger Andrew Keys said: "I was fortunate enough to be invited to the city of Hangzhou for the Global Blockchain Financial Summit.
"During this trip to China, I learned about the burgeoning Ethereum communities in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou. Every night we hosted an Ethereum meetup and it was standing room only in each city.

"Peking University is creating an Ethereum Laboratory to work on protocol improvements and application use cases that effect China, specifically in supply chain and energy markets.

"The Royal Chinese Mint is experimenting with the ERC 20 token standard and Ethereum smart contracts to digitise the RMB".

Meanwhile Silicon Valley based Martin Frohler, who runs Quantiacs, told Express.co.uk that the cryptocurrency is set to revolutionise the way the world trades thanks to the advent of blockchain infrastructure following the news that Bitcoin surpassed $1,800 to a fresh record high today.

It rose more than $100 in just two days, driven by comments from policy makers and positive noises around the future of the cryptocurrency.

He said: "You can think of a Blockchain as an identical database of transactions (or other information) stored on hundreds of computers around the world.

"Every new transaction that's entered into the system has to be verified by the majority of the computers. Since no single person, government, or institution controls that majority it is close to impossible to hack a transaction.

“The process of verifying transactions through computing power is called 'mining'.

"The miner receives the right to create a very small new unit of that currency as reward.

"Depending on how much Bitcoin already exist that new unit becomes smaller and smaller over time.

"There is an absolute limit of the number of Bitcoin that will ever exist: 21 million. Bitcoin is by construction a deflationary currency, which makes it an attractive store for value.

"Anybody with internet access can buy or sell bitcoin at a bitcoin exchange or with a digital wallet".

The digital currency is trading at $91.20 (3.11%) today.

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

By SIOBHAN MCFADYEN

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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Cryptocurrency – Looking Forward from May 2017

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Cryptocurrency – Looking Forward from May 2017

Cryptocurrency – Looking Forward from May 2017

For cryptocurrency enthusiasts, developers and investors, the first half of 2017 has been nothing but exciting. Very few people would have predicted the trends that we are now seeing today: a vibrant and rapidly growing altcoin market, massive all time highs for both Bitcoin and Ethereum and an initial coin offering (ICO) crowdfunding mechanism that is creating enormous investor hype.

Among all of this noise are a number of very interesting developments. These developments could indicate what’s to come in the second half of 2017, and this article aims to summarize events so far and what may be to come. Whatever your role in the cryptocurrency space, this piece should serve as some inspiration as to where to look next.
 

RIPPLE – BITCOIN FOR BANKS

The popularity of Bitcoin’s blockchain stems from its ability to circumvent banks and allow users to engage in peer to peer transactions without authority; creating an enormous array of applications for Bitcoin gambling and dark net markets, as well as limitless “white hat” models. This ideology is more powerful than ever today, but the introduction of Ripple in 2013 has demonstrated that banks themselves can be revolutionized by overhauling their systems to use blockchain-based payments.

Ripple is unlike most other cryptocurrencies, in that it operates on a private or “consortium” blockchain, whereby the nodes (transaction verifiers) are controlled by trusted financial institutions that have been vetted to join the network – on the contrary, anyone in the world is free to join and use the Bitcoin network. The Ripple tokens (XRP) power international transactions on the network, whether that’s fiat to fiat, crypto to crypto or a mix of the two – with currency exchange conversions happening on the fly. Ripple allows banks to reduce global (and domestic) payment times from days and weeks down to seconds, with layers of transparency that are unprecedented in the traditional banking sector.

Despite being a private blockchain, anyone in the world is able to purchase XRP, and with a fixed supply of 100bn, scarcity may play an important role in the future price of XRP. This scarcity has also been compounded by the founding team of Ripple agreeing to verifiably “lock up” well over half of that total supply – adding some predictability to the XRP price. This lock up time is possibly planned for extension, which – combined with the listing of XRP on major exchanges like Bitstamp, and Ripple’s partnership with Japan’s largest bank – has led to a meteoric rise in the value of XRP from $0.01 to $0.18 in a matter of weeks.

Over the past several months, it has become apparent that large financial institutions are leaning towards consortium based blockchains as opposed to the public ones offered by Bitcoin – although Ethereum may buck that trend as discussed below.
 

ETHEREUM – EEA AND DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

Ethereum was the first blockchain to successfully convince investors that altcoins had a viable place in what was largely considered a Bitcoin-only ecosystem. Popular due to its built-in smart contract protocol, Ethereum is able to run computations that can transact value without middlemen. As a result, the project has led to the formation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) which connects dozens of businesses and academics who are rapidly researching and developing smart contract technology.

While a number of the projects being worked on are private forks of Ethereum – such as JP Morgan’s Quorum protocol – the interoperability with the main Ethereum chain, as well as the lessons being learned (and shared among EEA members and the open source community), is having profound effects on Ethereum as a whole.

The EEA is just one offshoot of Ethereum that has attracted enormous investment, however there are other developments which have led to a recent upsurge in the price of Ether, from $10 to roughly $90 at the time of writing.

ETHEREUM NAME SERVICE

In May 2017, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) launched the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). This protocol is analogous to the separate Domain Name Service (DNS), which ties domain names to i.p. addresses – making them more readable to human users. In a similar way, the ENS will tie long and unreadable smart contract or personal wallet addresses to a memorable “name” such as mywallet.eth. These names are currently at auction, and there has so far been $7m worth of bids, with exchange.eth receiving a massive $600,000 bid. Note that this is a proxy bid, meaning the winner would only ever pay a trivial amount more than the next highest bidder.

REDUCING MINER REWARD

A poll taking place on carbonvote.com has indicated that an overwhelming 99.73% are in agreement with a move to reduce the miner reward from 5 ETH per block to 2 ETH (with blocks continuing to be mined at roughly 15 second intervals). The motivation behind such a change is to reduce uncertainty about the future total ETH token supply, helping to drop ETH inflation from 13% to a figure that is more inline with Bitcoin’s 4% inflation.

PROOF OF STAKE

Proof of Stake (PoS) is an alternative consensus protocol to the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism that was made famous by Bitcoin’s blockchain. In order to secure a blockchain, miners must be rewarded by processing valid transactions, and ignoring invalid transactions. In a PoW system, a miner must expend enormous amounts of energy (with a significant cost in doing so) to process a “block” of transactions and to earn their reward. PoW protocols are enormously inefficient, with huge energy requirements that are not inline with modern day environmental considerations.

Proof of Stake serves as an alternative consensus protocol that achieves similar levels of security, but requires “miners” (called validators) to stake value in the form of cryptocurrency – expending little to no energy at all. If the validator tries to game the system for their own advantage, they lose all of their staked value. Validators that act honestly are rewarded by receiving what is analogous to interest payments.

Ethereum plans to move from their PoW structure to a PoS one, and this move is pegged for the end of 2017/start of 2018. Such a change in protocol would lock enormous amounts of Ether in staking contracts, removing said Ether from the ecosystem and reducing circulating supply.

 

BITCOIN – SEGREGATED WITNESS AND THE LITECOIN TEST BED

Bitcoin has been unswayed by the incredible rise in altcoin market caps over the past 6 months and remains one of the best performing cryptocurrencies in the market. Having matured beyond the “pump and dump” phase, the currency has now established itself as the gateway into the world of crypto. Bitcoin is, in its current form, the ultimate store of value and medium for exchange when dealing with other currencies. All of this is despite major concerns over the currency’s ability to scale. Transaction fees have increased several fold, and the mempool (unconfirmed transactions) has seen enormous growth – leading to delays of several hours or even days.

Thankfully, Bitcoin’s little cousin – Litecoin – has played a vital role in abating fear amongst Bitcoin investors. Litecoin, whose market cap is a fraction of Bitcoin’s, has acted as a test bed for introducing Segregated Witness (SegWit) – a code change to help mitigate some of the scaling problems mentioned above. Litecoin’s activation of SegWit has given developers, users and miners renewed confidence in what this code change can do for Bitcoin, providing a “light at the end of the tunnel” on a 3 year long debate.
 

WHERE DO CRYPTOCURRENCIES GO FROM HERE?

Many early adopters have hailed blockchain technology as “the internet 2.0”. In past years, a number of key figures in the industry analogized the current state of blockchain to that of email in the 1990s, suggesting that what we see today is a fraction of what can be achieved with the protocol in the years ahead. That analogy, which was (and still is) heavily criticized by skeptics, is now becoming too obvious to ignore.

Rather than blockchains competing with one another, we are seeing interoperability take hold, and growth is practically ubiquitous amongst all majro cryptocurrencies. Smart contract technology is destined to have an enormous impact on a broad range of markets in the years to come, and the impact that blockchain-based banking will have on global economics is undeniable.

It is likely that cryptocurrencies will continue to grow at an unprecedented rate until, in the same analogous way to the Internet, we experience a gigantic bubble. At what point the bubble bursts is an unknown, however – sticking with the analogy – it wasn’t until the Internet reached a value well into the trillions that the market crashed. Compare this figure with that of the blockchain market which is worth no more than $100bn and it seems that we may still be some way off. Despite what seems like an inevitable bubble, the very long-term outlook for blockchain users, investors and developers could not be brighter.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Author: Mark

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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Study highlights growing significance of cryptocurrencies

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Study highlights growing significance of cryptocurrencies

Study highlights growing significance of cryptocurrencies

 

More than 3 million people (three times previous estimates) are estimated to be actively using cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, finds the first global cryptocurrency benchmarking study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

While many members of the general public may have heard of "bitcoin", the first decentralised cryptocurrency launched in 2009, a new report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) paints a broader picture of "cryptocurrencies".

The report shows that cryptocurrencies – broadly defined as digital assets using cryptography to secure transactions between peers without the need for a central bank or other authority performing that role – are increasingly being used, stored, transacted and mined around the globe.

The Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study gathered data from more than 100 cryptocurrency companies in 38 countries, capturing an estimated 75 per cent of the cryptocurrency industry.

Prior to this research, little hard data existed on how many people around the world actively use cryptocurrencies. The conventional wisdom has been that the number of people using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies was around 1 million people; however, based on newly collected data, including the percentage of the estimated 35 million cryptocurrency "wallets" (software applications that store cryptocurrencies) that are in active use, the CCAF research team estimates that there at least 3 million people actively using cryptocurrency today.

While bitcoin remains the dominant cryptocurrency both in terms of market capitalisation and usage, it has conceded market cap share to other cryptocurrencies – declining from 86 per cent to 72 per cent in the past two years.

The study by the CCAF at Cambridge Judge Business School breaks down the cryptocurrency industry into four key sectors – exchanges, wallets, payments, and mining. Highlights of the findings are:

Exchanges

Cryptocurrency exchanges provide on-off ramps to cryptocurrency systems by offering services to users wishing to buy or sell cryptocurrency. This sector was the first to emerge in the cryptocurrency industry, and has the most operating entities and employs the most people. Currently, about 52 per cent of small exchanges hold a formal government license, compared to only 35 per cent of large exchanges.

Wallets

Wallets have evolved from simple software programs to sophisticated applications that offer a variety of technical features and services. As a result, the lines between wallets and exchanges are increasingly blurred, with 52 per cent of wallets providing an integrated currency exchange feature.

Payments

Cryptocurrency payment companies generally act as gateways between cryptocurrency users and the broader economy, bridging national currencies and cryptocurrencies. They can fit into two broad categories: firms that use cryptocurrency primarily as a "payment rail" for fast and efficient cross-border transactions, and firms that facilitate the use of cryptocurrency for both users and merchants. The study found that the size of the average business-to-business cryptocurrency payment ($1,878) dwarfs peer-to-peer and consumer-to-business cryptocurrency payments.

Mining

In the absence of a central authority, cryptocurrencies are created by a process called "mining" – usually the performance of a large number of computations to solve a cryptographic "puzzle". The study shows how cryptocurrency mining has evolved from a hobby activity into a professional, capital-intensive industry in which bitcoin miners earned more than $2 billion in mining revenues since 2009. The cryptocurrency mining map indicates that a significant proportion of publicly known mining facilities are concentrated in certain Chinese provinces.

The study found that more than 1,800 people are now working full time in the cryptocurrency industry, as more companies are engaged across various cryptocurrency sectors.

"Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been seen by some as merely a passing fad or insignificant, but that view is increasingly at odds with the data we are observing," says Dr Garrick Hileman, Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at Cambridge Judge Business School, who co-authored the study with Michel Rauchs, Research Assistant at CCAF.

"Currently, the combined market value of all cryptocurrencies is nearly $40 billion, which represents a level of value creation on the order of Silicon Valley success stories like Airbnb," Dr Hileman says in a foreword to the study. "The advent of cryptocurrency has also sparked many new business platforms with sizable valuations of their own, along with new forms of peer-to-peer economic activity."
 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

Source: University of Cambridge

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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Hefty Trading Boost Cryptocurrency Market Cap Soars Above $40 Billion

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Hefty Trading Boost Cryptocurrency Market Cap Soars Above $40 Billion

Hefty Trading Boost Cryptocurrency Market Cap Soars Above $40 Billion

 

Bitcoin may be getting most of the headlines, but cryptocurrency as a whole is on a roll. Statistics from Coinmarketcap.com reveal that 82 out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies posted gains in a recent 24-hour period. Whether all cryptocurrencies are riding bitcoin’s coattails or investors are suddenly discovering altcoins is anybody’s guess.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization (price per coin times amount of coins in circulation) stands at $42.6 trillion. That marks more than a $10 billion gain in 10 days.

Ripple Leads In Growth Rate

Among the currencies with a market capitalization in excess of $1 billion, Ripple has posted the top growth rate of 33.6% in a 24-hour period, yielding a $2.831 billion market cap. Litecoin comes in second with a 22.34% growth rate and $1.132 billion market cap.

Ripple’s gain has been credited to a strategic partnership initiative, teaming with Asian and Australian banks in conjunction with its stated goal of acting as PayPal-like mechanism for large interbank transfers.

Litecoin, for its part, has benefited from Coinbase’s decision to support it, allowing users to buy, sell and store Litecoin using its platform and wallet. It became the third cryptocurrency, after bitcoin and Ethereum, to gain Coinbase’s full support.

What Drives Bitcoin?

Bitcoin, far and away the largest market cap in excess of $25 billion, posted a 5.81% 24-hour jump. Bitcoin’s price reached a new all-time high once again, at $1,567.

Brian Kelly, a financial analyst at CNBC, has attributed the recent surge in bitcoin’s price to the rise in institutional investors within the bitcoin market. Other factors include the bitcoin community’s consensus not to support Bitcoin Unlimited, and an overall increase in global trading.

Some analysts have attributed some of bitcoin’s growth to that of the altcoins; altcoins are usually bought and sold with bitcoin, requiring traders to buy bitcoin.

Ethereum Has Its Own Story

Ethereum, which has the second highest market cap at just over $8 billion, has jumped 12.12% in the 24-hour period. Its price rise is due to a number of factors.

Google searches for Ethereum have spiked to an all-time high, nearly doubling in just one week.

Some countries appear to be using ETH a hedge against national currencies. Switzerland, where the Ethereum Foundation is based, showed the strongest interest, followed by Venezuela, which is suffering triple-digit inflation.

South Korea seems to have fallen in love with the currency. Its three largest exchanges handle twice the ETH/fiat volume of Coinbase’s GDAX and Kraken combined.

South Korea is also big into fantasy sports, an area where ETH’s smart contracts can be used to make the game more transparent and reduce cheating.

Don’t Forget Dash

Dash, number 5 with a $683.3 million market cap, jumped 6.77% in the 24-hour period. Featuring exceptional transaction speed, Dash continues to become more accessible to investors and consumers.

The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken recently announced the integration of Dash to its trading platform. BitCart, an Ireland-based discount gift card platform, recently allowed users up to a 20% discount for using Dash on Amazon purchases. Crypto-Woo, a payments plug-in, has integrated Dash, allowing users to pay for online purchases with Dash. CryptoBuyer, a Venezuela-based crypto exchange, has begun selling Dash, allowing consumers in the economically ravaged country to have another alternative to its imploding national currency.

Ethereum Classic, number six at $664.4 million, rose 8.97%.

NEM, at %521.7 million, jumped 9.5%.

Monero, number 8 at $371 million, rose 8.76%.

The top 14 cryptocurrencies all posted gains in the 24-hour period. PIVX, which at $84.1 million has the 15th highest market, cap posted a 3.16% drop.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin soars Above $1,400

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Bitcoin soars above $1400

Bitcoin Soars Above $1400

The price of bitcoin has bulldozed its way to a new historic all-time high on the Bitstamp Price Index (BPI) as the trading value of the cryptocurrency scaled beyond $1,400.

Bitcoin prices are now trading at previously uncharted levels as the value of the cryptocurrency reached a high of $1,425 on Bitstamp on Monday. The previous high of $1,350 registered on March 10 amid heightened traders’ interest in the lead-up to the SEC decision about a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Since the turn of 2017, bitcoin’s value has now risen by over 42%.

The latest surge in prices is a part of a continuing bullish trend that began in last quarter of 2016. The value of the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency struck a significant milestone on January 1 when prices struck $1,000. Within days, bitcoin made history and reached gold parity. That early momentum has stuck through what has been a dramatic four months since the turn of the year.

The crackdown led by the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, remains the single largest negative driver in prices throughout January and February. Prices fell as low as $750 on January 12th, before recovering.

In March, the anticipation of the SEC’s decision toward a bitcoin ETF drove prices to hit an all-time BPI high of $1,350. The federal agency’s rejection sent prices tumbling below $1,000 in a sharp fall to a low of $891 before bouncing back to begin a bullish price trend in April.

April began with bitcoin gaining recognition as a legal method of payment in Japan. The legislation has led to retailers making notable moves toward accepting the cryptocurrency. As many as 260,000 Japanese storefronts will be enabled to accept bitcoin as payment by this summer. Emerging markets such as Russia and India have significantly changed their previously hardline stance with bitcoin, with authorities now talking about regulating (and acknowledging) the cryptocurrency. The last week of April also saw the SEC announce its decision to review its rejection of the bitcoin ETF application filed by the Winklevoss brothers. News of the review, it appears, has helped bitcoin’s bull run step up a gear. A week later, bitcoin is now trading at historic highs.

A protocol upgrade with Litecoin is among a number of factors that have contributed to the wider cryptocurrency market also making marked gains. Ethereum, the second most prominent cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, struck a new all-time high today and is now valued at $7 billion in overall market capitalization.

 

Global average prices struck a high a historic high of $1,433.81, according to data from BitcoinAverage.

David Ogden
Entrepreneur
 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitcoin Price Keeps Above $1300

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Bitcoin Price Keeps Above 1300

Bitcoin Price Keeps Above $1300

 

The fact that trading volumes went down from the peak that was reached in preceding trading sessions lately didn’t stop price levels above $1300 from being maintained. BTC/USD rates might have peaked above $1340 through the last trading session, but in spite of the continuous selling pressure after that point, prices didn’t drop below $1315 levels.

Major Signals Bitcoin markets maintain support levels above $1300 in spite of volatility caused by the return of selling pressure’s effect. Resistance at $1330 after the price fall has been strengthened, making a return after the decline in trading volumes seem harder. Bitfinex’s premium remains and the spread is still looming around a $100 difference between prices of the two BTC/USD markets.

Bitstamp BTC/USD charts make the effect of the returning selling pressure seem apparent. In what almost seems like an overturn, bitcoin prices dropped from a peak above $1340 down to 1315 in the recent hours thanks to the still ongoing pressure. Resistance, on the other hand, has also come to affect the market’s sentiment right at the time that volumes dropped. Whilst the market’s sentiment hasn’t allowed for any significant breaches on established support levels so far, it’s still actively changing.

OKCoin BTC/USD weekly futures charts indicate that futures traders were quite vigilant in following upward price swings through the last trading session, yet the recent wave of negativity has left futures markets back in their previous state of a bearish mood. What’s worth noting about future’s markets though, is that the spread remains smaller as futures traders don’t seem to be following through the latest price drop through completely.

Finalizing, it’s important to mention that in spite of what could be a shift in the market’s sentiment, support remains unbreached. If markets are to break through from the recently

By George Krash

 

David Ogden
Entrepreneur

 

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Bitpay Gearing up to Test Extension Blocks

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Bitpay Gearing up to Test Extension Blocks

Recently, the Bcoin team released the specifications and particulars for launching extension blocks for a blockchain protocol upgrade. They have now nearly completed implementing these extension blocks. Bitpay’s CEO Stephen Pair responded with an article on April 24 saying that Bitpay would be willing to test these “secondary blocks” on a testnet.  

Also read: Bcoin Developers Plan to Test Scaling Concept ‘Extension Blocks’

Bitpay Gearing up to Test Extension Blocks

Pair said, “The bcoin team has released specifications and working code for the developer community to critique. At Bitpay, we think this idea of extension blocks holds a lot of promise, and we intend to participate in its technical evaluation”.

This news of testing extension blocks comes at a time of great divide within the Bitcoin community over whether Segwit should be activated. Pair suggests that extension blocks could solve the problem because these “secondary blocks” act as a non-contentious hardfork. In a previous article, Pair said that the communities need to avoid initiating a contentious hardfork at all costs. He said:

“One very important challenge we must resolve is how to successfully upgrade Bitcoin in a safe, deliberate and non-contentious manner. And we must be able to upgrade Bitcoin because no organism can live in its own waste products.”

How Secondary Blocks are Non-Contentious; Pair’s Three Step Formulation

This “secondary block” or “extension block” upgrade is non-contentious and will disallow Bitcoin to wallow in its own excrement, because of the manner in which it solves the problem of filled block sizes. In Pair’s previous article, he outlines a three step outline on how extension blocks could be implemented. He said the nodes will acknowledge new rules for these secondary blocks, and thus they will start accepting data.

“In this step, nodes begin upgrading to support the new rules. Nodes will validate and relay valid data that can be included in the secondary block (imagine some new form of transaction, but it could really be any kind of data). These nodes will not relay data considered invalid according to the new rules.”

In phase two, Pair suggests that a second soft fork is performed. However, he mentions instead of adding new rules to the protocol, old blocks will be “deprecated.” This means that transactions will no longer be allowed in the old block.

Finally, in phase three, the protocol will start to shed its old skin and stop rolling around in its own filth. Pair clarified this step, “After the soft fork that deprecates use of the original block has activated, all transactions and data will be in the new secondary block. At this point we can schedule a hard fork that simply drops the old block and adopts the secondary block as the primary block structure.”

Pair seems confident that the “secondary block” or “extension block” plan is the way to go for a non-contentious fork and upgrade of the bitcoin protocol. Of course, others disagree.

Do you think a “secondary block” upgrade is the solution to the scaling dilemma? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Shutterstock and fintech.nl

At Bitcoin.com there’s a bunch of free helpful services. For instance, have you seen our Tools page? You can even look up the exchange rate for a transaction in the past. Or calculate the value of your current holdings. Or create a paper wallet. And much more.

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive.com

By Sterlin Lujan –

April 25, 2017

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Markethive

Breaking: SEC Will Review Decision of Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Rejection

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Breaking: SEC Will Review Decision of Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Rejection

The securities and exchange commission has granted a request by the Bats BZX Exchange, Inc. to review its decision of disapproving the bitcoin ETF back in March this year. According to a document signed by Eduardo A. Aleman, Assistant Secretary at the SEC:

“The petition of BZX for review of the Division’s action to disapprove the proposed rule change by delegated authority be GRANTED; and It is further ORDERED that any party or other people may file a statement in support of or in opposition to the action made pursuant to delegated authority on or before May 15, 2017.”

Aleman is the person who, through delegated authority, made the decision on March the 10th which some in the bitcoin community saw as an intentional slap. In a fairly angry article back then, I wrote

“How can one man have so much power? We were told there will be a vote, but apparently, the SEC commissioners didn’t think this decision was important, delegating it to Aleman. Then, what’s the point of the commissioners?… Delegating this decision to a faceless bureaucrat is an insult. For them to hide behind an Assistant Secretary, not even a Secretary, is an intentional slap.

The decision document mentions a specific date, data analyzed by the 28th of February. That’s almost two weeks ago. Could he have not released the decision then? Did he have to allow so much speculation? Was it an intentional insult to the entire bitcoin community for this clearly already long ago made decision to be released at the very last hour? Who knew of the decision before it was released? Did any of them trade the market?”

Aleman’s reasons for rejecting the ETF was because he wanted a surveillance sharing agreement between exchanges and because he said much of the trading was carried out in unregulated Chinese bitcoin exchanges.

The latter part was out of date even at the time of the decision. PBoC has moved in, laying out some red lines for Chinese exchanges. Aleman further said Gemini lacks liquidity, but that’s mainly because traders naturally go to exchanges with futures and margins, two necessary facilities that CFTC continues to deny to regulated American exchanges such as Gemini and Coinbase.

It is surprising, however, that the decision is now to be reviewed. Even more so because the person who rejected the ETF, Aleman, has approved the review of his own decision. It is still too early to say how this review will be carried out, but one thing I hope we can say for sure is that Aleman will have no further part in any of it.

That’s for obvious reasons which do not even need to be stated. One can’t review their own decision in an institutional context. It’s like carrying a judicial appeal in front of the same judge who clearly has already reached a decision against you.

This review should be carried out at the commissioners’ level. To them, I say what I said just a day before Aleman’s decision, a day when I thought it was the commissioners who were to decide, specifically the acting chairman of the SEC:

“Dr. Piwowar, open the doors for business. Welcome innovation. And not by default approval. Stand in front of the world and show that America has two parties, show that this administration means free market capitalism, hail the geniuses who bring new things to this world, lift the spirits of this great nation.”

Chris Corey CMO MarketHive Inc

Andrew Quentson on 25/04/2017

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member