Bitcoin Price Dips Below $13,000 Again, as Ripple Records Massive Gains

December 30, 2017 flippener

The bitcoin price has dipped below $13,000 for the second time in December, following the December 23 correction which led the price of bitcoin to plummet to $11,500.

Bitcoin Dominance Index at 37.9 Percent

Analysts have attributed the recent decline in the price of bitcoin to the unexpected surge in the valuation of several cryptocurrencies including Ripple and Cardano.

Over the past 24 hours, the market valuation of Ripple has increased by nearly 100 percent, surpassing $100 billion in market cap. While it has corrected since then, the market valuation of Ripple still remains above $89 billion, more than $23 billion higher than that of Ethereum.

Apart from the one brief period in November during which Bitcoin Cash overtook Ethereum for several hours, Ethereum had not given up its position as the second most valuable cryptocurrency behind bitcoin throughout the past 12 months. Yet, Ripple remains as the second most valuable cryptocurrency behind bitcoin 24 hours after it has initially taken over Ethereum.

For the first time since June, the dominance index of bitcoin over the cryptocurrency market has dipped below 38 percent. At the time of reporting, the dominance index of bitcoin is 37.9 percent, and is close to achieving an all-time low at 37.39 percent.

Historically, bitcoin has demonstrated a trend in which the value of bitcoin surges when other alternative cryptocurrencies drop. In contrast, when the value of alternative cryptocurrencies decline, the value of bitcoin has tended to increase.

As such, given that the recent fall in the price of bitcoin was mostly triggered by FOMO or fear of missing out demonstrated by a small portion of bitcoin investors switching over to Ripple, the bitcoin price will likely be able to recover to the $15,000 relatively soon, especially if the market cannot sustain the valuation of Ripple at around $90 billion.

Bitcoin warning: Cryptocurrency profits to be TAXED

December 28, 2017 flippener

BITCOIN will be taxed following a dizzying year of price rises and falls, industry experts have warned as the volatile cryptocurrency continues moving towards the mainstream.

With bitcoin’s price rising 1100 per cent over 2017 the HMRC has decided against creating new legislation to ensure the investment gains are taxed appropriately.

But experts have warned the cryptocurrency will not remain exempt from tax.

Bitcoin Price Chart (Image: NikonD300/MaxPixel)

Benjamin Dives, CEO of London Block Exchange told Express.co.uk:

“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Cryptocurrency may be new and unique, but it is not exempt from tax liability.”

Mr Dives says individuals who profit from their Bitcoin investments will be required to pay capital gains tax – just like those who profit from the disposal of their stocks, shares and other investment instruments – through their annual self-assessment.

Profits from bitcoin price rises are subject to 20 per cent Capital Gains Tax – or 19 per cent Corporation Tax if it’s a company doing the trading. Everyone has a Capital Gains Tax free allowance of £11,300 per annum – any gains up to this amount are tax free.

How to Install a Bitcoin Core Wallet

December 26, 2017 flippener

For most casual Bitcoin owners I would recommend the Electrum Wallet to hold their Bitcoin. However, many other wallets exist and here we’ll look at the Bitcoin Core one.

Bitcoin Core, as its name suggests, is maintained by the same team as the core Bitcoin software so you know it’s trustworthy. According to their website:

In addition to improving Bitcoin’s decentralization, Bitcoin Core users get better security for their bitcoins, privacy features not available in other wallets, a choice of user interfaces and several other powerful features.

For advanced users these additional features can be useful – for example I used Bitcoin Core to access the private keys for a Bitcoin address in Segwit format, something I couldn’t do with Electrum

There is a big obstacle to using the Bitcoin Core wallet, though, that one needs to be aware of: it requires downloading the entire Bitcoin blockchain to your computer. This can take a long time (for me, about 4 days) and use a lot of storage (a couple of hundred Gb).

First download the Bitcoin Core installer from the Bitcoin.org website, choosing the appopriate one for your system – Windows 64 bit for most people. Run the installer:

Starting the Bitcoin Core Installer (Image: BIUK)

You will get the usual options for install folder, menu folder, etc. Once installed, run the Bitcoin Core program. It will start by saying it’s loading the block index:

Bitcoin Core loading index (Image: BIUK)

Then it will begin verifying blocks. Each of these operations can take some minutes to complete. It will then begin the synching of blocks:

Bitcoin Core synching blocks (Image: BIUK)

Very roughly you might find this takes about a day per year that you are behind since the creation of Bitcoin (so of course it’s a long time the first time, but much faster the next time you open it). If you need to you can close Bitcoin Core while it’s working and it will restart when you open it again – though of course that will extend the time it takes to synch.

Note that you can toggle the synch status display by pressing the right-most icon in the bottom status bar.

Eventually it will complete and you will be at the Overview screen, and the synch status button will be a tick:

The wallet is now up and running and you can send and receive Bitcoin through it in much the same way as with the Electrum wallet previously described. Additional features will be covered in later posts.

Cryptocurrency, Opinion

Mastering [alt]coins: The Poor Man’s Guide to Getting Crypto Rich

December 23, 2017 flippener

So you missed out on the crypto boom?

You had dreams of telling your boss where to shove it while you drove off in your shiny new pink Cadillac looking for the meaning of life but it didn’t happen.

Maybe you sat on the sidelines waiting for a good price that never came? These prices are crazy, you thought, they’ve got to come back down! Who would pay $10,000 for a single Bitcoin? It was only $1,000 a month ago. And so the prices kept blowing past you.

Or maybe you made all the mistakes in the Cryptocurrency Trading Bible parts one and two? You over traded, chased rallies too late, FOMOed, sold out too fast and in general did a lot worse than the market because you didn’t learn your lessons. The price to becoming a good trader is really, really high. Most people never make it. To get great at trading you have to lose a bunch of money fast and fail to outperform the market before turning it around.

If you’re lucky, you learn those lessons and wind up a savvy trader who trades well whether the market is up or down.

But the odds are against you. Human nature is against you. Emotions are against you. Everything is against you.

And yet there is hope.

Cryptocurrency Art Gallery: Litecoin, Ether, Ripple, Bitcoin and Namecoin (Image: Namecoin/Flickr)

You didn’t miss the boat. Well not totally. You can still swim out to it if you paddle real hard.

It’s not over. A mere 1% of people own crypto. Crypto can solve dozens of previously intractable problems, like digital identities, supply chain integrity, data breaches and many, many more.

But it’s going to take awhile. The crypto superhighway is still under construction. They’re paving the roads and pouring the cement. Nobody is living in the McMansions yet.

But…but…but bubble. Tulips. It’s all going to crash isn’t it?

Yeah. So what?

Let me let you in on a little secret. Ready?

Segwit2X, or the Old/New Bitcoin Hard Fork

December 21, 2017 flippener

Block No. 501451, which is planned to be produced roughly speaking on December 28, 2017, will be decisive for the old/new fork Segwit2X, and a Christmas present for the entire crypto-community.

An experienced team of developers declares that it will resume activity based on the launch of the suspended project on its website.

“Commission and transaction speed within the Bitcoin network reached inconceivable values. In the last month, the average commission of the network was 15-20 US dollars, and the confirmation rate could reach several days. It is simply impossible to use it as a means of payment.

Our team will carry out the Bitcoin hard fork – Segwit2X, which was expected in mid-November. At the same time, its futures trading is conducted on some exchanges, including HitBTC.

We promise that all BTC holders will receive, not only B2X in the ratio of 1:1, but also as a reward for your commitment to progress, the proportional number of Bitcoin of Satoshi Nakamoto who mined it in the first year of the network’s existence,”

commented Jaap Terlouw, the project CEO.

Home Page Segwit2X site (Image: b2x-segwit.io)

The new fork will appear as a result of the revival of Segwit2X, initiated by a group of professional developers. The idea is to resume and refine the suspended project, to create a really anonymous and instant Bitcoin. At the same time, the goal of this work is not the replacement of the original network, but the effective coexistence of two networks with different purposes.

Bitcoin (BTC), Opinion

What is Bitcoin?

Video December 19, 2017 flippener

A quick guide on the Bitcoin blockchain and how to buy BTC with a wallet:

Bitcoin (BTC), Fork, News, Super Bitcoin (SBTC)

The Upcoming Bitcoin Hard Forks: What You Need to Know

December 18, 2017 flippener

If you thought Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin Diamond were excessive, we’ve got a surprise for you: Bitcoin has 6 forks lined up going into the new year.

That’s right–six shiny new mints bearing Bitcoin’s name. Super Bitcoin, Lightning Bitcoin, Bitcoin God (no joke) Bitcoin Uranium, Bitcoin Cash Plus, and Bitcoin Silver are slated to launch throughout the Christmas and New Year holidays. This will double the number of forked currencies within the month, leaving the market with 8 total Bitcoin derivatives to choose from.

For those that don’t know, a hard fork is a method for developers to update and alter Bitcoin’s software. Once Bitcoin reaches a certain block height, miners switch from Bitcoin’s core software to the fork’s version. After this split, miners begin mining the new currency’s blocks, creating a new chain entirely and a currency to go with it.

Bitcoin Cash was the first hard fork to occur on Bitcoin’s blockchain, followed by Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond. As you can probably imagine, hard forks have become a hot topic within the crypto community. Many believe that they are necessary for improving the network and solving Bitcoin’s scalability issue, as with Bitcoin Cash. Others have criticized them as money making schemes, as anyone holding Bitcoin at the time of a fork receives an equal share of the new currency.

Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s important to understand what each fork is and what it wants to accomplish, and given the number coming up, there’s a lot of information to digest.

That’s why we compiled info on each fork into these manageable chunks, to make that research a bit easier to swallow. Time to dig in.

Super Bitcoin (SBTC)SBTC

The first of our new forks, Super Bitcoin, is estimated for December 12th at block 498888 with a circulating supply of 21,210,000 SBTC. Of this supply, 210,000 will be pre-mined.

As its name suggests, Super Bitcoin is like Bitcoin on steroids. Its team picked through what they like best about the current Bitcoin protocol and introduced some added features that they believe will buff-up the network. Like Bitcoin Cash, it will increase block sizes from 1MB to 8MB to improve scalability. It will run Bitcoin’s lightning network, and it plans to support anonymous payments with a zero-knowledge proof by May of next year.

Funnily enough, Super Bitcoin’s distinguishing feature isn’t even Bitcoin-related–it comes from Ethereum. The team wants to implement Ethereum-inspired smart contracts into Super Bitcoin’s program, which will allow third parties to build decentralized apps on the new protocol.

This is all the information as presented on Super Bitcoin’s website. There’s no white paper, but there is a developer’s reference “to provide technical details and API information to help you start to build Bitcoin-based applications.”

The team includes INBlockchain Inc. founder Li Xiao Lai, Link Capital founder JaiPeng Lin, and Ranger Shi. With their software upgrades, they hope to “revitalize [bitcoin’s] dominance,” which they believe has “lost a tremendous share of the cryptocurrency market.” Oh yeah, and they want to “Make Bitcoin Great Again.”

Bitcoin Platinum (BTP)BTP

We included Bitcoin Platinum and its “specifications” in an earlier draft of this article, but since then, it’s been exposed as a scam.

A Bitcoin User’s Guide on Upcoming Forked Coins

December 15, 2017 flippener

Like it or not, forking bitcoin has become an efficient approach for blockchain teams to receive quick money.

How many forks will we have? Are there services support them?

A Glimpse at Forked Coins Already Existing

Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the first bitcoin fork, was only listed on Viabtc when it first came out. Most of the bitcoin community, if not all of them, thought it was just a joke at first. The emergency difficulty adjustment (EDA) mechanism BCH adopted led to unstable block times, but since the November 13 upgrade and recent price spikes, it is safe to say that BCH has survived and is enjoying more support from exchanges and wallets.

Ordinary wallets supporting BCH include: Bitcoin.com, Electron Cash, Coinomi, Webmoney, Strongcoin, Stash, Jaxx, Bitpay, BTC.com. Hardware wallets: Ledger, Trezor, Keepkey. Paper wallets: Cashaddress, Walletgenerator. Mobile wallets apps: Bitcoinindia, Mobi and more. Official BCH wallets: Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, XT, Parity, and Bitprim.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG), the GPU-friendly forked coin based off of bitcoin, was created on October 25 to compete with BCH and to fight mining centralization, according to its creator Jack Liao.

Ordinary wallets supporting BTG: Coinomi, Bitpie, Guarda, Freewallet. Official BTG wallet: BTGWallet.online. Hardware wallets: Trezor, and Ledger. News.Bitcoin.com spoke with Ledger’s Vanessa Rabesandratana who shared how to claim BTG at Ledger.

Yeah! One More Bitcoin Hard Fork- Super Bitcoin [SBTC]

December 13, 2017 flippener

There is another Bitcoin hard fork coming our way in next few hours, which will create yet another breed of Bitcoin fork called ‘Super Bitcoin‘.

So quickly coming straight to the point, we will explore the following salient points regarding this Bitcoin fork so that we all can benefit from it in a safe and secure way.

What Is Super Bitcoin?

Super Bitcoin is the new upcoming Bitcoin hard fork of original Bitcoin which will launch at Block Height of 498888 of the main chain.

Super Bitcoin is abbreviated as SBTC as of now and is dubbing itself with the motto of “Make Bitcoin Great Again”.

It seems like a friendly fork because they have not mentioned explicitly that they want to compete with BTC but of course they are doing it to make the new version a lot better than BTC. All new things they are doing will explained further in the post.

When Is The Fork Happening?

According to their official website, Super Bitcoin was supposed to fork from the original Bitcoin Blockchain on December 17, 2017 but it looks like it will happen before that.

The new timeline and date of the Super Bitcoin fork is December 15, 2017 at a block height of 498888, according to the latest announcement by one of their team member on medium.

But we think it is going to happen even sooner than that. Probably December 12/13 according to your time zone because of the increased mining speed. So the best thing is to ignore the date and track the block height 498888 at which the fork will happen.

The Obvious Bitcoin Christmas Gift Guide 2017

December 11, 2017 flippener

It’s that time of year again when thoughts turn to all the cool swag you’ll receive on Christmas Day, and hand out of course, cos’ let’s not forget that Xmas is also about giving.

Whether you’re an experienced bitcoiner seeking gift ideas for one of your own, or a complete novice cursed with a crypto crazy nephew, the following guide covers all bases, price brackets, and payment types. Hand your loved one a bitcoin-branded gift this Christmas and watch their face light up like a green trading candle breaking out.

Take a Little, Give a Lot

The Ultimate Bitcoin Christmas Gift Guide 2017Should any of the entries on this list prove too darn irresistible, by all means treat yourself. You’re entitled to a reward for all the hodling you did this year while your mates were rinsing their hard-earned on holidays, designer threads, and vice. Just remember that there’s more happiness in giving than receiving.

To get the ball rolling, we’ll start with a practical selection of gifts for bitcoiners. The decadent and downright silly stuff comes later. If the following suggestions don’t sate your thirst for gift ideas, incidentally, our Christmas guide from last year is also rocking.

Practical Bitcoin Christmas Gifts

If your favorite bitcoin obsessive doesn’t already have one, give them a hardware wallet for safely storing their cryptocurrency. We’re wallet agnostic, but market leaders Trezor and Ledger are both excellent choices. There’s also Keepkey.

Gift-Wrapped Computer Tech

Pretty much any piece of computer gear can be branded as bitcoin-ready, but the following suggestions all have specific applications. If you’re tech-savvy enough to pick out the right product for your beloved bitcoiner, try these for size:

Computer monitor: A second screen for watching cryptocurrencies pumping and dumping in realtime is sure to go down well.

Hard drive: Cryptocurrency hobbyists interested in running a node or downloading a full wallet client are gonna need somewhere to store the blockchain. A few extra GB – or even TB – will be welcomed.

Cellphone: Another practical (if unexciting) gift is a cheap cellphone that can be stashed in a safe place and used for 2FA access and email verification when signing into exchanges. If their Twitter bio says “crypto trader” – regardless of the reality – a second cell will secure their bags by reducing the risk of SMS porting, among other things.

Bitcoin Investors UK

Monthly Archives: December 2017