Despite its steadily increasing price, not to mention a growing acknowledgment from the financial mainstream, the technical roadmap for the cryptocurrency has never been so hotly contested.
After years of debate on the best path forward, a new code proposal called Segwit2x is set to put the cryptocurrency – the world’s largest by value – to the test. And while it boasts significant support from miners and businesses, it remains unclear whether the new code will change bitcoins’ rules, or if another new cryptocurrency will be created (one already being branded bitcoin2x by some).
Bitcoin fork pen and bitcoin keychains (Image: BTC Keychain/Flickr)
Quite simply, there’s never been a larger change to the platform, nor one that has been the subject of such criticism and scrutiny.
And it might not be all free money. As developers are keen to note, this is bleeding-edge science; in short, we’re in uncharted territory, and if past forks are any indication, decisions could lead to consequences – for users, investors and the market at large.
If you own a solar array you can claim free SolarCoins. To do so you will need the MCS Installation Certificate provided by your installer (or equivalent) in electronic form (e.g. PDF or JPG).
Click on the Login / Register button to get to the Log in page, then select the Create new account tab. There enter your Email address and your preferred Username, and click to enter the prompted security code.
SolarCoin Create New Account screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
You will then be sent an email to verify your email address – click the link in this email to activate your account. You will then be able specify a password on the site (as usual, I recommend creating a new one at PasswordsGenerator.net).
Login and you’ll see your My Account page. Click on the link to add a solar facility; this is also available as a menu item in the right sidebar – Add Solar Facility.
On the Create Solar Facility Registration page enter details as follows:
Facility identifier: this is just the name you want to give your solar array so you know what’s being referred to – it could just be ‘my solar’ or, if you have multiple systems, perhaps the property address and, say, ‘front roof’, ‘rear roof’, etc.
First Name, Last Name, Email address : these are self-explanatory. The Address is that of the property with the solar array.
Facility Nameplate Capacity: This is the power of the solar array in kW, and should be specified clearly on the Installation Certificate, typically as Declared Net Capacity. For most UK residential systems it will be between 2.0 and 4.0.
Facility Interconnection Date: This is the date the solar array started generating, and will be specified on the Installation Certificate.
Documentation: Press the Choose file button and navigate to and select your copy of the MCS Certificate, or equivalent supporting documentation. If you have an online system that monitors your solar array then you can also enter its website address here, but it’s not required.
SolarCoin Public Wallet Address: This is an address in your SolarCoin Wallet where you want your free SolarCoins to be deposited. To find it, start up the Wallet app, wait for it to synch, then press the Receive button.
Initially this will just show a single Address value – this is what you need so right-click it and select Copy Address. Go back to the SolarCoin website and Paste. Valid addresses begin with the number 8.
(NB: You can have as many receive addresses as you want, so if you have more than one solar array you can choose to press the New Address button and create more, one for each array. In this case you should also right-click in the Label column, select Edit and give each address a name to help identify it.)
Optional: Were you referred by someone to register with SolarCoin? (Click to open): Click on this to open it up – it would be appreciated if you could fill this in with my details. It won’t cost you anything and will earn me about 10p per referral.
Referral Resource Contact Email: Copy flipener@gmail.com and paste it there.
Referral Resource SolarCoin Public Wallet Address: Copy 8ccFy7EaMPziwwe2qH3SkfEtJB4k6qL9gt and paste it there.
The remaining entries can be completed or not as you wish. Click Save. Your solar array is now registered and you will have an entry in the right-hand sidebar under My Solar Facilities.
Bitcoin cash price caught a fresh bid wave today, reaching a nine-day high of $373.
At press time, the bitcoin cash-U.S. dollar (BCH/USD) exchange rate is trading at $346 levels. The relatively new cryptocurrency has gained 4.12 percent in the last 24 hours, as per CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin Cash (Image: M. Verch/Flickr)
Still, the cryptocurrency has been restricted to a narrow range around $330 in the last two weeks, with only occasional spikes above $350. Meanwhile, the downside was capped below $300 levels.
However, today’s price gains look sustainable as trading volumes are on the rise. Notably, the rally to $350 levels on Thursday was backed by a 54 percent boost in volume, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Once again, it seems gains are being fueled by a surge in South Korean trading – volumes on Bithumb (which offers a BCH/KRW pair) are up 42 percent.
The front page of The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday:
“Amazon Lures 238 Bids for its Second Home.”
It’s not a good thing that a single company can get the political leaders of so many American cities and states to scramble over each other to try to lure $5 billion in spending on some new buildings.
The story shows that Amazon’s influence over American urban life is far more than one company deserves: over tax policies, over city planning decisions, over the aesthetics and culture of our communities. Society’s interests lie in sustaining a dynamic, innovative and evolving economy, not one in which hegemonic companies have oversized sway over everyone’s decision-making.
The Rebuke of Adam and Eve by Domenichino (Image: Wikimedia)
This is the core problem of centralization in the internet age – a pet topic for those of us who believe the ideas behind blockchain technology can point us toward a better economic model.
Amazon is not alone, of course. But it’s in a very select group. An acronym has emerged to define the small club of digital behemoths to which it belongs: GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple).
Two other WSJ stories this past week bring home the distorting influence of two other members of that club. One was Christopher Mims’ column about Facebook’s “master algorithm,” which in determining what we see and read is literally dictating how we think. The other was about Google winning the quantum computing race, a prize that will afford the winner unimaginable competitive advantages in data-processing capabilities.
Meanwhile, with my iPhone 6’s screen cracked and its functionality deteriorated since I upgraded to iOS 11, I’m tempted to switch to a Samsung phone, but don’t want to lose all the data and connectivity that the Apple universe has locked me into. And I know that with the Android OS, I’d just be getting Google’s version of the same dependency anyway.
From $0 to $2,900 – and seemingly everywhere in between.
Bitcoin gold, a new fork of the bitcoin software, may not have been officially launched (or distributed to users), but that isn’t stopping the cryptocurrency markets from seeking to determine its potential value (or profiting from its eventual existence).
In an interesting twist on a typical distribution, a number of exchanges are now listing a token that represents a claim on the future delivery of bitcoin gold (in advance of it becoming available to all bitcoin users). Ahead of that event, however, traders are seeking to value the asset, which proposes an alternative to the difficulty of competing for rewards on bitcoin’s mining network.
Still, it’s safe to say there’s disagreement so far.
In interview, analysts expressed a reservation about bitcoin gold, both when speaking about its developer team, and when characterizing the protocol’s potential market opportunity.
Bitcoin has been touted as the currency for the people as its decentralized platform allows for its users to be free of the banking monopoly with their exorbitant fees and charges.
Crippling debt cycles and unbreakable lending policies which are not conducive to economic empowerment have long dogged society forcing the new generation to seek alternative; this is where Bitcoin has come in.
Open bank vault (Image: ahobbit/Pixabay)
Now, a man in Townsville, Australia, has become a proof of concept for the economic freedom Bitcoin can provide by paying off his mortgage and is funding the development of a new home through profits generated through investing in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin for business
Michael Sloggett first began trading in Bitcoin as a means to pay for overseas acquisitions of supplements for his Townsville supplements store.
But in January this year, he decided to make investments in the currency and the strategy has paid off with the value of the currency soaring from about $900 to $6,000 during that time.
“We paid off the mortgage and bought a block of land at Townsville out of the profits. We are now building a new home,” Sloggett said.
There’s an airdrop coming up on 30 October for the Bitcore cryptocurrency (symbol BTX). This airdrop promises 25% on top of your BTX holding, followed by 3% per week. That’s pretty generous!
I have a small amount of BTX from a previous airdrop (which depended only on you holding some Bitcoin on 26 April this year – more details here). This time I’ve decided to go in bigger and buy some BTX ahead of the airdrop date.
Bitcore Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
BTX is primarily traded on Cryptopia so I registered there and transferred some BTC from my Ledger to my new Cryptopia account. I decided to go for £100 (0.0238 BTC) so the 3% would be worth something.
Cryptopia Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Although it was the first time I used Cryptopia the deposit was easy to do:
Depositing Bitcoin to Cryptopia (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
It went through smoothly, though it took nearly an hour.
I bought the Bitcore and transferred to it to my wallet (which only took about 10 minutes), to join the 2.8BTX already there from the previous airdrop:
Bitcore Wallet (BItcoin Investors UK)
I registered my wallet address following the excellent detailed instructions put out by Hashers. They also cover downloading and installing the Bitcore wallet if you don’t already have one.
My Bitcore is now ready sitting in my wallet, with the address registered with the Bitcore site for the airdrop. Now I just need to wait for the free Bitcore!
When a group of Bitcoin users and companies split the digital currency into two different versions in August, it was an unprecedented event in the technology’s nine-year history. Now just four months after that “hard fork,” as such splits are known, yet another version of the world’s most popular digital currency is scheduled to be created.
Within the next 12 hours, if all goes according to plan, techies and investors will be able to choose between Bitcoin (the original version), Bitcoin Cash, and the latest, soon-to-be-created iteration: Bitcoin Gold. As the deadline looms, Bitcoin companies and exchanges are taking sides on whether to support Bitcoin Gold or not.
While Bitcoin Cash focused on increasing transaction throughput, Bitcoin Gold aims to tackle the problem of decentralization. The algorithm that governs how Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash “miners” create new digital coins for a reward has been monopolized by specialized (and expensive) hardware. Because of this, the average Joe or Jane has essentially no chance of making any money mining these currencies with their home computer. But Bitcoin Gold will use an algorithm known as “Equihash” which is designed so that people can effectively use their graphical processing units, or GPUs—common computer gaming hardware—to profitably mine the coin for the foreseeable future.
Here’s a quick guide to how to get started with Bitcoin. You’ve heard about it, you like the sound of it, and you want to get your first Bitcoin or part of one.
Bitcoin (Image: Antana/CCBY-SA2)
If you just want to buy and own Bitcoin you just have to do the first two steps below. If you want to take it off the Internet and store it on your own computer and have full control over it, then also do the last two steps:
Once you’ve bought Bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange or other online platform it is advisable to transfer it to your own wallet.
If the currency has low value then you could take a chance and leave it online, but there are three risks to be aware of:
The exchange could collapse (it has happened before, e.g. Mt Gox).
You can’t get access to your currency as fast as you need it (e.g. to sell in a falling market). Currently Poloniex can take 24 hours for a withdrawal to go through, Bitfinex 12 hours.
The exchange gets hacked and a third party withdraws your Bitcoin.
Here we’ll cover the process of moving your Bitcoin from an online platform to your own wallet. It will be similar on most platforms and wallets – here we’ll assume:
Each wallet owns a series of Bitcoin addresses where coins can be deposited. Select the Receive tab to show the first address available in your wallet, listed as Receiving Address.
[A quick detour into addresses: Note the subject of addresses is quite a complex one that we don’t need to go into here – just be aware that most wallets will manage a series of addresses for you. For example, many wallets will use a different address for every transaction for enhanced security. Also, since a sending address may contain more Bitcoin than is sent from it the ‘change’ may get sent to a third address. You don’t need to worry about this, you just rely on using the addresses the wallet suggests. If you want to see the addresses that are being managed ‘under the bonnet’ have a look at the Addresses tab to see the various Receiving and Change addresses handled by your wallet.]
Copy this address to the clipboard: you can either select it and copy or click on the Copy icon at its right-hand end. Enter a Description, e.g. ‘Initial transfer from Coinbase‘. With that done we are ready to receive Bitcoin to the copied address in this wallet.
Note that the sending platform is in control of the transaction, Coinbase in our example. It doesn’t matter how much Bitcoin you want to receive, you’ll only receive what is sent – so the other items here (e.g. Request amount) are irrelevant for our purpose. By all means click Save to record your description of this transaction, but otherwise it isn’t necessary.
Electrum Receive screen after saving (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Click on the Send button under BTC Wallet. to bring up the Send BTC screen. On the day I wrote this it had a message about delays in sending Bitcoin – you may or may not get that.
Paste the address copied from your Electrum wallet into the Recipient box. Check that Withdraw From shows the BTC Wallet. Under Amount click in the BTC box – this will bring up a Send Max button. Click on this to transfer out all your Bitcoin in this account (the fee is shown at the bottom). Add a Note such as ‘Transfer to my Electrum wallet‘. Press Continue.
Press Confirm. You should then get a brief confirmation message saying the transaction is going through. Go back to the Dashboard and you should see the transaction is listed under Recent Activity as Pending.
Now you have to wait. You may get an email confirmation from Coinbase that it is going through.
A transfer can take from minutes to hours depending on how busy the network is and how much Coinbase spent on fees to transfer the money (they probably default to a low fee). A transaction has to be confirmed by a number of different nodes on the blockchain and these transactions will come through one by one. If you click on the transaction in the Coinbase you can see how many Confirmations have gone through.
The first sign that the transfer is definitely happening may be seen in Electrum on the History tab. With luck this will show the transaction as it is confirmed, with the Description that you entered above and saved.
Electrum History screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
If you double-click on the transaction you can see the confirmations counting up.
As the confirmations come in the ‘Unconfirmed’ message changes to a clock face that fills in segments and goes from red to green.
Electrum Transaction Being Confirmed (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
When the transaction is complete it will show a green tick (you can see the details on the Addresses and Coins tabs and by double-clicking the transaction line):
It will also be shown in Coinbase as no longer pending (and if you double-click it there under Recent Activity it will be marked Completed).
It’s done. Your Bitcoin has been successfully transferred from your Coinbase account to your private Electrum Wallet. There it can only be transferred out using your private seed or password, otherwise there is no way for anyone to access it.
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