As I pointed out before, the Bitcore coin (BTX) has a great ‘unique selling point (USP)’ that if you hold it you get 3% extra – effectively ‘interest’ – added weekly.
This week is the first time I’ve held enough BTX in my wallet (10 is the minimum quantity) to qualify for the airdrop. However, just like last week’s 25% one-off airdrop, it arrived on time and with no fuss.
Bitcore Weekly Airdrop received (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
An added bonus is that in that week the value of Bitcore has gone up from $6 to $10 – so my £100 stake is now worth £227. Now maybe you can see why I’m a BTX fan!
The price of bitcoin is down more than 8 percent, continuing losses that began after the cryptocurrency slipped below the $7,000 mark.
Markets have fallen to as low as $6,475.40, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), the lowest level reported since Nov. 1, when markets traded between $6,357 and $6,750.17. Markets slid below $7,000 earlier today in a reversal of the bullish market moves seen earlier this week that pushed the price of bitcoin close to $7,900.
Bitcoin price chart (Image: geralt/Pixabay)
Earlier in the day’s trading, the price had climbed as high as $7,330.06, with today’s fall marking a more than $600 decline since that level.
At press time, bitcoin is trading at $6,572.24.
The price decline is in contrast with the gains seen today in the market for bitcoin cash, which according to CoinMarketCap is up more than 43% in the past 24 hours.
At press time, Bitcoin cash is trading at roughly $882 on Bithumb, the largest exchange by trade volume for that cryptocurrency.
In a new blog post, the developers behind the fork of the bitcoin blockchain said that they would release a formal software client for download at 7:00 PM UTC on Nov. 12. Originally set for a public launch on Nov. 1, the project is backed by LightningASIC, a seller of mining hardware based in Hong Kong, as well as a community of relatively unknown developers.
As reported by CoinDesk, the idea behind bitcoin gold is to keep most properties of the protocol, but restrict the use of specialized chips for mining, or the process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain (while also creating new tokens as a reward).
It’s also the latest example of a “airdropped” cryptocurrency that will distribute new coins to anyone who owned bitcoin at the time of the split, or up until the date the ledger of transactions started to differ.
Bitcoin has reached a new all-time high of $7,888 as participants of the SegWit2x hard fork announce they have “suspended” it.
A circular sent to the mailing list by major proponent Mike Belshe says that it was “clear” the project “had not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time.”
Bitcoin Fork Pens (Image: BTC Keychain/Flickr)
SegWit2x will therefore not activate Nov. 16 as planned, Belshe not naming a possible future date.
The message reads:
“Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together. Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of SegWit2x.”
If you have solar panels on your house you are eligible to receive free SolarCoins in proportion to how much energy you can generate (specifically each year you get your solar system’s capacity in kW multiplied by a fixed ratio of 1.314). I have previously described the process of installing a SolarCoin Wallet and shown how to register a claim for SolarCoins.
I went through these steps for the two solar arrays on my house (front and rear, installed at different times). Officially you should receive any coins you claim in the first week of the month following your claim.
I am pleased to confirm that my coins came through this week exactly on schedule. The amounts are almost exactly what I expected (the small discrepancies likely relate to whether you calculate the time the panels have been operating in years, months or weeks, for example).
First SolarCoin claim received (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
The amounts I received were:
Rear roof: 33.9 coins (3.7kW x 7 years x 1.314)
Front roof: 18.6 coins (3.2kW x 4 years x 1.314)
The total came to 52.4775 SolarCoin which at their current value is worth about $18, so about £14.
I have been following Bitcore (symbol: BTX) for some months. It seems to be one of the more interesting new altcoins as it seems to have momentum. It has regular airdrops and community discussions which is more than most here-today-gone-tomorrow altcoins.
I first heard about it because it had an airdrop that allowed you to claim free Bitcore if you had Bitcoin in a private wallet on a specific date (26 April 2017). On that day I had 2.8 Bitcoin in my Ledger so I decided to claim. I assume this airdrop is still open so if you had some Bitcoin then you can still claim yourself.
The process is pretty straightforward – download and install a Bitcore Wallet from the Bitcore website as per the usual process (much like I detailed in How to Make a Bitcoin Wallet). You then need to sign a message using your Bitcoin Wallet to prove you own the Bitcoins, and then you register for the airdrop by providing the Receive address for your Bitcore Wallet, plus the message, on the Bitcore Airdrop page.
For me an additional complication was that my old Ledger Nano can’t sign messages so I had to import the account into Electrum and sign it there. I therefore didn’t make the claim until August.
From that original airdrop I received 2.8 BTX. They have held their value fairly constant at about $6 so that was worth $17 or about £13. Not as great as some airdrops (e.g. eBTC) but not bad.
I missed a trick, though, as Bitcore provides free airdrops weekly worth 3% of your current balance. That certainly beats the 1% per year you might get with a conventional fiat savings account! However, you only get the airdrop with a minimum balance of 10 BTX which, of course, I didn’t have.
Anyway, when I heard of proposed changes in BTX airdrops from 30 October I decided to do something about it. The airdrops would only be available to those who registered, but would start with a free 25% airdrop which seemed rather attractive. Therefore last week I bought £100 worth of BTX (so 19.77 BTX) – that brought my total to 22.6 which was more than enough.
My reasoning was that £100 was enough to be worth doing – since I would get about £25 free for the effort of registering – and that I didn’t have the nerve to do what I maybe should have done. Which was buy £10000 worth of BTX and make £2500 overnight. Of course, the latter would have left me open to big losses if BTX devalued quickly.
Anyway, I’m pleased to report the free 25% BTX (5.64 BTX so worth about £30) has arrived in my wallet. And the price has remained relatively stable so I should really have bought much more…
I plan to keep hold of my BTX for some time (whereas I usually sell airdrops fast) because of the weekly airdrops I should now get. Of course, Bitcore know that’s what people will do and I credit them with coming up with a very clever way of keeping their currency stable and with significant value.
A bounty is a reward paid out for the completion of a certain task.
In the “Old West,” sheriffs used to post bounties in order to encourage bounty hunters to capture dangerous criminals. This concept is alive and well in today’s world and the cryptocurrency space has made it a core concept of its very special culture. In the crypto world, bounty rewards are almost exclusively paid in Bitcoin and ICO tokens.
Star Wars Bounty Hunters (Image: PopCultureGeek/Flickr)
Bitcoin faucets
Bitcoin faucets are websites or apps that dispense rewards in the form of Bitcoin. Visitors can claim this reward in exchange for completing a captcha or task as described by the platform. The main revenue stream from this faucets comes from advertisements.
Back in 2009, Bitcoin faucets used to pay up to three Bitcoin per hour. With today’s Bitcoin prices, that would net around $19k. It’s important to note that back then the Bitcoin price was just a fraction of a cent. Nowadays, faucets pay rewards in “Satoshis,” which is a hundredth of a millionth Bitcoin.
Bounty campaigns
In the ICO space, a bounty program is an offer made by many startups which enables individuals to receive compensation for performing marketing tasks, reporting bugs or improving a product or service. Blockchain startups that plan to hold a crowdsale often allocate a certain percentage of their total tokens to such a campaign.
Bounties are mainly found on forums like Bitcointalk and bounty networks. There are rarely any barriers of entry at all and the only thing a bounty hunter needs to do in order to participate is submit a link to his work. This submission will then be checked by the admin of the campaign who will decide if the submission deserves a reward or not.
[Update: Bitcoin’s price passed $7,000 soon after 10:00 UTC, and has reached a record high of $7,034.14 so far today.]
Another day, another record…
Bitcoin prices have continued to climb overnight, building on
Bitcoin Price Chart (Image: NikonD300/MaxPixel)
consecutive highs in recent days and ultimately reaching a new all-time high close to $7,000.
At 07:00 UTC, bullish bitcoin trading saw the cryptocurrency soar to a peak of $6,994.01, having opened the session at $6,750. At press time, the price of a bitcoin is $6,939, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index – a 2.8 percent gain for the day so far.
As per CoinMarketCap, bitcoin is up over 20.56 percent for the last 7 days, and its market capitalization has now peaked at over $116 billion.
Bitcoin is gearing up for what could be the biggest (and least understood) change to its software to date.
Often called simply a “digital currency,” bitcoin is best viewed as a protocol (a set of code) that delivers data (in this case bitcoins) in defined quantities (called blocks) that are then stored in a sequence (called a blockchain) on a distributed set of global computers. Bitcoin is decentralized – in that many people help make the network function, and in choosing to run its software, users all agree to abide by the same rules to keep it operational.
It’s these qualities that make the proposed change particularly divisive.
Bitcoin Fork Pens (Image: BTC Keychain/Flickr)
Called Segwit2x, the plan calls for a very specific fork (or a change to bitcoin’s rules), one that would make certain rules valid that weren’t valid before. Specifically, Segwit2x would change the size of the blocks passed regularly around the network and stored in the blockchain from 1 MB to 2 MB.
Some users think this is a good idea, others don’t.
But to begin, it’s important to note how this fork differs from others. Coming on the heels of the bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold forks, bitcoin users might be accustomed to certain outcomes – ones that might not be guaranteed in the case of Segwit2x.
With bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold, for example, bitcoin users could have paid little to no attention and it wouldn’t have impacted their transactions. If you held bitcoin on certain exchanges (or your own wallet), you received new cryptocurrency.
This smooth outcome, however, isn’t guaranteed with Segwit2x. Complicating matters is that in many ways, Segwit2x sounds (and is) similar to other bitcoin forks.
