Category Archives: News

Bitcoin briefly surges more than 11 percent Wednesday after news that Square’s payments app Cash is testing support for the digital currency.
The gains brought bitcoin within 10 percent of its record high hit last Wednesday.
However, the controversy over the best way to improve bitcoin’s transaction speeds and costs remains unresolved.

Bitcoin has again recovered quickly from a sharp drop.

The digital currency briefly surged more than 11 percent Wednesday to a high of $7,336.80 , according to CoinDesk. That’s within 10 percent of its record high of $7,879.06 hit last Wednesday. Bitcoin had fallen 30 percent below that record over the weekend amid controversy over the digital currency’s future.

In the established stock market, a decline of at least 10 percent from a recent high sends a stock into “correction” territory, and a drop of at least 20 percent marks “bear market” territory.

Wednesday’s gains in bitcoin came after news that Jack Dorsey’s company Square is testing support for bitcoin through its payments app Cash. Early on Wednesday, Credit Suisse analysts published a report on the Square news describing how the “bitcoin buying option could help stock.”

SegWit2x’s Failure Confirms Bitcoin’s Status As Digital Gold

November 16, 2017 flippener

When 10,000 Bitcoins were used to buy two pizzas, the digital currency was a truly decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that operated across the globe instantly.

Today, the price has risen nearly a million-fold, but the network is no longer quite as functional as it was back in those days.

Bitcoin still struggles with its identity, as many would like it to revolutionize money, but they are equally happy sitting on hordes of it and watching it appreciate in value faster than perhaps any other asset in history.

A single dollar invested in Bitcoin on the original Bitcoin pizza day would be worth over $3 mln today.

While upgrades have been made to Bitcoin along the way, it looks like Bitcoin is becoming less of a payment network and is instead evolving into digital gold. The failure of SegWit2x, which aimed to decrease transaction costs and improve confirmation speed, failed for a number of reasons.

Some of them were good, and some were mere straw men. But at the end of the day, one thing is clear: there is clearly no rush to increase Bitcoin’s capacity.

After Declines, Bitcoin Comes Back Stronger

November 14, 2017 flippener

They say a bad penny always turns up. While the saying may refer to an unwelcome guest, the same could be said for Bitcoin, according to recent analysis by CNBC. Based on chart evaluations, Bitcoin price has always increased substantially after dips greater than 20 percent.

The rise in Bitcoin prices for the four previous dips over 20 percent were substantial. On average, the cryptocurrency posted 61.5 percent gains in each cycle after substantial sell-offs. This astounding number has lead to an increased desire among insiders to ‘buy the dips’ – to purchase Bitcoin during the lows and realize the substantial gains as the price continues to rise.

Bulls and bears and Bitcoin, oh my!

The most recent drop over the weekend spurred on by the death of the SegWit2x hard fork proposal from the New York Agreement, appears to be no different. After more than 20 percent declines, the price has already recovered peaking in recent trading over $6,500. This response seems to indicate that the fundamentals underlying the recent increases in price are real.

Bitcoin Cash Skyrockets, Bitcoin Price Drops As Civil War Continues

November 12, 2017 flippener

Well, get your popcorn after all.

Earlier this week, a planned hard fork on the Bitcoin blockchain that threatened to create two new coins, causing disruptions on exchanges and potential losses for users on both sides — but also possibly one of the most exciting chapters in Bitcoin’s history — was called off.

But in the last few days, a previous fork of Bitcoin (BTC) called Bitcoin Cash (BCH) that was launched in August and immediately dismissed by many Bitcoiners and the wider crypto world alike, has skyrocketed in value. After languishing in the $300 range for a while and jumping up to the $600 range in November, it has now nearly quadrupled to around $2,500 a coin as of press time — it had traded as low as $650 on Friday.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin, which was trading at an all-time high of around $7,800 on Wednesday, is now down to around $6,000 as of press time but had dipped as low as about $5,500.

Bitcoin Price Decline Continues As Markets Drop Below $6,500 (£4950)

November 10, 2017 flippener

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.

Source: CoinDesk

Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Fork, News

Bitcoin Gold Sets Sunday Date for Cryptocurrency Release

November 9, 2017 flippener

Bitcoin gold is set to go live this weekend.

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.

SegWit2x Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin! Price Hits All-Time High As Hard Fork Canceled

November 8, 2017 flippener

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.”

Bitcoin Sets New Record as Price Tops $7,000

November 2, 2017 flippener

[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.

Understanding Segwit2x: Why Bitcoin’s Next Fork Might Not Mean Free Money

November 1, 2017 flippener

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.

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.

These International Bitcoin Communities Are Rejecting SegWit2x

October 31, 2017 flippener

The hard fork part of the New York Agreement is scheduled to take place within about two weeks.

This incompatible protocol rule change is set to increase Bitcoin’s block weight limit, to allow for more transactions on the network — if everyone adopts the change. Otherwise, it will create a new blockchain and currency that may or may not be considered to be “Bitcoin.”

The list of signatories of this agreement includes several of the largest Bitcoin startups and mining pools that, together, claim to represent a majority of users and hash power. Yet, it is far from clear that this 2x part of SegWit2x proposal really has much support outside of these signatories. Most of Bitcoin’s development community, a significant number of other companies, some mining pools, user polls as well as futures markets suggest otherwise.

And now, a growing list of international Bitcoin communities is putting out public statements against the SegWit2x hard fork as well.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Bitcoin Investors UK