[An old video, but still one of the best]
The most watched Bitcoin introduction video ever. Updated in April 2014, this video explains how bitcoin works and the importance of this paradigm shifting technology.
10 Bitcoin Winners and Losers of 2017
The year of 2017 was a fantastic year for some Bitcoin users, but others were not so lucky with the cryptocurrency.
Below, we’ll look at some of the most impressive success stories of the year, as well as the profiles of people who probably wish they’d never touched Bitcoin at all.
It’s a highly erratic currency, but people who invested in it before its recent prominence often found their foresight was lucrative in ways they never imagined at first.
This Anonymous Person Who Became a Bitcoin Millionaire
One anonymous person who posted a detailed story on Steemit said that in 2010, the price of each Bitcoin was so low that it was not even valuable enough to buy a pizza. Still, by the end of that year, the person reportedly had 12,000 Bitcoins and collecting the large number of them paid off.
That’s because by April 2013, the worth of each Bitcoin had ballooned to over $100. Due to some issues in the individual’s personal life and a few other non-Bitcoin-related factors, the person took a couple of breaks from Bitcoin but was never completely out of the loop with them. Eventually, this anonymous Bitcoin user heard that the 12,000 Bitcoins were now worth over $10 mln.
Despite that fortunate turn of events, the person only began selling them in small quantities so as to not attract attention. The individual also planned for the future by choosing investment strategies and did not let the rapid wealth impact their employment. As words of advice, the person suggests exercising patience and not getting greedy, while also keeping up on newsworthy events.
Erik Fineman
Erik Fineman began investing in Bitcoins in 2011 when he was only 11 after his grandmother gave him $1,000 and his brother offered him a tip about what to do with the money. In those early days, Bitcoins were only worth $12 each. However, when Fineman sold his first Bitcoins at the end of 2013, each one had a value of $1,200.
Read more: CoinTelegraph
Mining Adventure Part 1: Is GPU Mining Still Profitable
Graphics card stock has long been tapped out due to cryptocurrency miners, but does what they’re doing make any sense? Let’s find out.
Bitcoin Price Dips Below $13,000 Again, as Ripple Records Massive Gains
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.
Read more: CCN
Bitcoin warning: Cryptocurrency profits to be TAXED
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.
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.
Read more: Express
How to Install a Bitcoin Core Wallet
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:
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:
Then it will begin verifying blocks. Each of these operations can take some minutes to complete. It will then begin the synching of blocks:
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.
Mastering [alt]coins: The Poor Man’s Guide to Getting Crypto Rich
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.
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?
Read more: HackerNoon
Segwit2X, or the Old/New Bitcoin Hard Fork
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.
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.
What is Bitcoin?
A quick guide on the Bitcoin blockchain and how to buy BTC with a wallet:
The Upcoming Bitcoin Hard Forks: What You Need to Know
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.
Read more: CoinCentral