Friday, October 31, 2014

Bitcoin Foundation Executive Director Jon Matonis resigns

Jon Matonis has announced he will resign from his position as executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and that he intends to step down from the group’s board of directors at the end of his term on 31st December.


Bitcoin Foundation general counsel Patrick Murck will take over immediately as its newly elected executive director, while Matonis’ board seat will be filled in a January 2015 election that will also appoint new members to positions vacated by Peter Vessenes and Gavin Andresen.Matonis has served as the head of the bitcoin industry’s oldest trade organisation since July 2013, when current Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation Peter Vessenes resigned as executive director at the nine-month-old foundation. Matonis served as a board director and secretary for the group from its 2012 inception to the time he assumed the executive director position.In statements to CoinDesk, Matonis voiced his hope that the Bitcoin Foundation will remain a powerful advocate for bitcoin, and expressed his personal gratitude to those who have been involved with the organisation.



Matonis said:

“Leading the Bitcoin Foundation has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Merging the diverse interests of the bitcoin community has been intellectually and professionally stimulating and now its time to pass the baton.”



Matonis intends to continue to work professionally in the bitcoin community through private-sector initiatives. He will continue to hold the title of founding member due to his early involvement in the group. The Bitcoin Foundation is currently seeking to fill the role of general counsel, which has now been vacated by Murck.Matonis previously held positions at investment management and digital payments consulting company Lydia Group, encrypted messaging startup Hush Communications, authentication services pioneer Verisign, and international credit card giant Visa.A graduate from George Washington University, Matonis holds a BA in Economics, and also studied at the University of Maryland.



Although his appointment was originally greeted with enthusiasm by the community, Matonis’ tenure at the Bitcoin Foundation has not been without its share of controversies, the most notable coming earlier this year when two other members of the board of directors resigned amid accusations of criminal wrongdoing outside of the foundation.Former BitInstant CEO and current advisor at Payza Charlie Shrem was the first to abdicate his post in January, stepping down from his seat after he was arrested in connection with enabling commerce on the online black market Silk Road. Shrem subsequently pleaded guilty to unlicensed money transmission and is awaiting sentencing.Similarly, Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles vacated his post in February, resigning as a director at the foundation ahead of the company’s highly public collapse.The Bitcoin Foundation faced criticism from the community at the time for its handling of both incidents. The group would later again face criticism in May, as members exited following controversial appointments resulting from the group’s voting process.



There were numerous accomplishments during his tenure, as well. As executive director, Matonis also sought to expand the international reach of the Bitcoin Foundation, launching its first international chapters in December and overseeing the relocation of the group to London to align with these global goals.In the subsequent months, the Bitcoin Foundation would add 10 international groups, including new chapters in Australia, Mexico and most recently France.Matonis further led the organisation’s attempts to bring new standardization to the technology, championing such initiatives as establishing a three-letter currency code (XBT) for bitcoin, and later a Unicode-approved bitcoin symbol.Matonis also remained a visible figure in the bitcoin community, engaging community members at major conferences, contributing posts to the Bitcoin Foundation blog and writing opinion pieces for CoinDesk, where he continues to serve as a contributing editor.His work has appeared in American Banker, Forbes and PaymentsSource, among other publications.



The Bitcoin Foundation is an American lobbying group headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in September 2012 with the stated mission to “standardize, protect and promote the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide.” The organization was modeled on the Linux Foundation and is funded mainly through grants made by for-profit companies that depend on the Bitcoin technology.



Patrick Murck is also a member of the original founding team for the Bitcoin Foundation. He will assume his role as executive director effective immediately and an announcement on the general counsel will be forthcoming, the Foundation said.“Two years is a lifetime in Bitcoin and we’ve come a long way from where we began,” Murck said. “And yet, there is still so much ahead of us. I thank Jon for his service and am honored to receive this appointment. I commit to continue paving the way for our community of investors, entrepreneurs, and technologists to maximize Bitcoin’s potential for all people.”Established in July 2012, Matonis is a founding board member of the Foundation and was appointed executive director in July 2013 just as Bitcoin broke into mainstream consciousness, resulting in an increase in investments and official inquiries from policymakers and regulatory agencies.



“Jon stepped up to the plate and proactively extended Bitcoin awareness beyond the Bitcoin community, engaging industry professionals in banking, finance, economics and regulatory affairs at a time when the world looked to the Foundation for an organized voice,” said Peter Vessenes, chairman of the board of directors for the Bitcoin Foundation. “He also globalized the Foundation’s efforts, building a bridge on which we can build collaborative worldwide consensus for Bitcoin’s future.”



source: http://www.coindesk.com/jon-matonis-resigns-bitcoin-foundation-executive-director/

source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/jon-matonis-resigns-executive-director-bitcoin-foundation/

source: http://insidebitcoins.com/news/jon-matonis-announces-resignation-from-the-bitcoin-foundation/25877



Bitcoin Foundation Executive Director Jon Matonis resigns

Bitcoin Tutorial for the Online Adult Industry

I’ve noticed that quite a few people who take part in the online adult industry continue to use PayPal to process payments, even though PayPal does not allow for adult transactions and will freeze your account without warning!


Luckily, we now have the option of using bitcoin, which allows us to transact safely and instantly!




Bitcoin Tutorial for the Online Adult Industry

Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.5

To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin




Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.5

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Mining Feathercoin After the NeoScrypt Fork

Feathercoin (FTC) has hard forked from the Scrypt algorithm to the NeoScrypt as was announced earlier this year after block 432000.


You need to update your wallet to Feathercoin 0.8.7.0 in order to continue using it after the NeoScrypt update and you need to download a special version of cgminer with support for the NeoScrypt algorithm (link below). The goal of the hard fork away from the Scrypt algorithm is to make FTC not mineable with Scrypt ASIC miners giving back the opportunity to GPU miners to mine the coin. Currently the profitability of mining FTC is quite high compared to other coins that are being mined with GPUs, so there is high interest in Feathercoin at the moment. Do note that here is no special miner dedicated for Nvidia miners to mine NeoScrypt using CUDA, however the version of the cgminer with NeoScrypt support actually works quite well not only on AMD, but on Nvidia GPUs as well using OpenCL. The screenshot above is from a GeForce GTX 750 Ti video card at stock frequencies giving a bit over 40 KHS and with some overclock you should be able to push the performance of a single GTX 750 to about 50 KH/S.


Mining with cgminer 3.7.7B with NeoScrypt support (source) on AMD GPUs has something that you make sure to do to get the best performance out of your GPUs. You need to make sure you have Catalyst drivers 13.11 installed, and then run the cgminer to compile the kernel with the settings you are using, then update to the latest 14.9 drivers and run the miner with the already generated kernel (BIN) file with the old drivers. Make sure you don’t change settings affecting the kernel after getting back to the latest video drivers as this will invoke the compilation of a new kernel that will not work and you will most likely be getting HW errors only. Generating kernel with newer drivers and not using a kernel generated with the older 13.11 drivers will not work and you will be getting only hardware errors instead of actual work being done. This is a bit of inconvenience, but you will have to do the driver trick only once and hopefully there will be a fix for this in the future as well as further performance improvements. Currently we are getting about 90-100 KH/s on a single AMD Radeon R9 280X GPU, so the performance on Nvidia graphics cards compared to AMD is looking very nice considering that we are using OpenCL and not CUDA.


https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/7946-cgminer-neoscrypt-testing-optimisation-windows-7-r9-270-catalyst-1312/



source: http://minerdesk.com/mining-feathercoin-after-the-neoscrypt-fork-with-amd-and-nvidia-gpus/



Mining Feathercoin After the NeoScrypt Fork

FeatherCoin price rises with NeoScrypt fork

Several months ago, Feathercoin developer Pete Bushnell announced the coin would transition to the newly-developed NeoScrypt hashing algorithm, which is resistant to ASIC miners. On October 26, Feathercoin will undergo a hard fork to make the official transition. The Feathercoin price has increased in anticipation of the update. CCN analyzes this altcoin price movement.


Feathercoin released client 0.8.7.0 on October 13. The update includes the NeoScrypt hard fork, which will take place on October 26. Since the announcement, the Feathercoin price has risen almost 50%. On October 13, the Feathercoin price was 7,490 satoshis. The Feathercoin price increased to 8,966 satoshis the day after the update. It remained steady on October 14 yet climbed to 9,740 satoshis on the 15th. The Feathercoin price dropped to 8,205 satoshis on October 16, but it continued to increase over the next week. The current Feathercoin price is 11,028 satoshis.


Feathercoin now has a market cap of ~$2.3 million, placing it 17th on the cryptocurrency market cap charts. This correlates well with CoinGecko’s comprehensive analysis of Feathercoin. CoinGecko ranks Feathercoin 16th among cryptocurrencies with a 51% overall rating. Specifically, Feathercoin has a solid developer score. However, its community involvement and liquidity scores are less than desirable. Nevertheless, investors should expect Feathercoin to hold its value as long as it maintains its CoinGecko ranking.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/feathercoin-price-rises-ahead-of-neoscrypt-hard-fork/



FeatherCoin price rises with NeoScrypt fork

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Computer scientists can predict the price of Bitcoin

Scientists have crunched data to predict crime, hospital visits, and government uprisings—so why not the price of Bitcoin?



A researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems recently developed a machine-learning algorithm that can predict the price of the infamously volatile cryptocurrency Bitcoin, allowing his team to nearly double its investment over a period of 50 days.

Earlier this year, principal investigator Devavrat Shah and recent graduate Kang Zhang collected price data from all major Bitcoin exchanges, every second for five months, accumulating more than 200 million data points.


Using a technique called “Bayesian regression,” they trained an algorithm to automatically identify patterns from the data, which they used to predict prices, and trade accordingly.

Specifically, every two seconds they predicted the average price movement over the following 10 seconds. If the price movement was higher than a certain threshold, they bought a Bitcoin; if it was lower than the opposite threshold, they sold one; and if it was in-between, they did nothing.

Over 50 days, the team’s 2,872 trades gave them an 89 percent return on investment with a Sharpe ratio (measure of return relative to the amount of risk) of 4.1.

The team’s paper was published this month at the 2014 Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.

“We developed this method of latent-source modeling, which hinges on the notion that things only happen in a few different ways,” says Shah, who previously used the approach to predict Twitter trending topics. “Instead of making subjective assumptions about the shape of patterns, we simply take the historical data and plug it into our predictive model to see what emerges.”

Shah says he was drawn to Bitcoin because of its vast swath of free data, as well as its sizable user base of high-frequency traders.

“We needed publicly available data, in large quantities and at an extremely fine scale,” says Shah, the Jamieson Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “We were also intrigued by the challenge of predicting a currency that has seen its prices see-saw regularly in the last few years.”

In the future, Shah says he is interested in expanding the scale of the data collection to further hone the effectiveness of his algorithm.

“Can we explain the price variation in terms of factors related to the human world? We have not spent a lot of time doing that,” Shah says, before adding with a laugh, “But I can show you it works. Give me your money and I’d be happy to invest it for you.”

When Shah published his Twitter study in 2012, some academics wondered whether his approach could work for stock prices. With the Bitcoin research complete, he says he now feels confident modeling virtually any quantity that varies over time—including, he says half-jokingly, the validity of astrology predictions.

If nothing else, the findings demonstrate Shah’s belief that, more often than not, what gets in the way of our predictive powers are our preconceived notions of what patterns will pop up.



source: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-scientists-price-bitcoin.html



Computer scientists can predict the price of Bitcoin

Winklevosses make their Bitcoin index

Early Bitcoin investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have created their own index of the virtual currency, as they gear up to launch the first publicly traded US Bitcoin fund.




Announced in a regulatory filing Wednesday, The Winklevoss Index—Winkdex— will serve as the basis for an exchange-traded fund the twin brothers are planning for later this year.

The Winkdex will represent a “blended price” for Bitcoins based on the prices on the top three US exchanges for the currency, by volume.

Late Wednesday the price was $624.49, up 0.84 percent from late Tuesday.

The Winklevosses are tech sector venture capitalists initially famous for their claim to having had the original idea for Facebook, and have picked up tens of millions of dollars from Facebook to settle that claim.

Since then they have invested large sums in Bitcoin-related ventures as well as the currency itself.

Last year their Math-Based Asset Services filed a plan with the Securities and Exchange Commission to market the $20 million Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, which will hold the currency as an investment.

Amid regulator wariness over Bitcoins, the trust has yet to gain formal approval.


source: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-winklevosses-bitcoin-index.html#inlRlv



Winklevosses make their Bitcoin index

Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.4

To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin.




Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.4

Sexy Bitcoin News EP.5

This is a show where I talk about things I find sexy in the world of bitcoin!




Sexy Bitcoin News EP.5

Sunday, October 26, 2014

DarkCoin 2.0 open source

Darkcoin 2.0, and I thought I’d reach out to Core Developer Evan Duffield to see if they can end 2014 on the same trajectory with which they started it.


If you don’t already know, Darkcoin was released in the first quarter of 2014, and it’s unique selling proposition as a digital currency was it’s enhanced privacy and security structure relative to the almighty Bitcoin. A minor-league detective can figure out the transaction origins made on Bitcoin’s Blockchain, and mine your privacy, in effect. Darkcoin aims to take your financial dealings into total darkness, with a security-centric design language.


The main advantage of using Darkcoin is their proprietary form of funds transfer called Darksend. How Darksend works is if you want to send funds to someone anonymously, your transaction is merged with another similar transaction, like shuffling a deck of cards. The recipient gets the amount of Darkcoins promised, but the nature of the actual transfer prevents tracking of the funds from Point A to Point B.


Picture a game of 3-card Monty, but with eight “Master nodes” instead, and you’ll have a basic idea. Multiple transactions are used for “mixing” the transactions to protect the information from prying eyes. You can also adjust the setting to not be so private. The premise behind Darkcoin is why not have any financial transaction online be as secure as possible, and why have a Blockchain full of eyes on any transaction you make if you do not wish? You can have maximum security and ease of use, according to Darkcoin’s Duffield.


Sounds awesome, in theory, and is a goal not just shared by Duffield and his team, but many digital currency users worldwide. Darkcoin’s initial demand, price, and market capitalization were unprecedented in their growth. Darkcoin hit a live nerve in the marketplace, and the crypto-currency community ate it up. It’s price shot up to over $15, which is obviously affordable, yet shows tremendous market interest & growth potential. It took Bitcoin almost four years to reach that price level! It had already passed most of the established players to become the #3 digital currency overall by May 2014. It peaked with a total market cap value of over $62 million on June 1st, after just four months on the market. Given the incredible price growth shown by Bitcoin just six months earlier, Darkcoin was in the right place at the right time, and the market was all ablaze for an even more secure Bitcoin. And Darkcoin’s glass slipper fit perfectly.


The Darksend technology was introduced in May, and issues came about almost immediately. As sometimes happens during coin updates, the “Master Node hard fork” caused some new issues. Some Master Nodes were not processing transactions correctly, and spontaneous forks began cropping up within the network, causing panic among Darkcoin owners. Due to these issues, exchanges had to halt trading at times for several hours. Investors then began panic-selling their holdings, which caused the Darkcoin price to plummet. Darkcoin not only lost it’s momentum, but couldn’t stop its downward spiral throughout the summer. The descent bottomed out in August, with a new 90-day low price of $1.54 on August 18th, an almost 90% loss in value.


Is that the end of Darkcoin’s tale? Yes, the first version of Darkcoin, anyway. Now Duffield’s team has released Darkcoin 2.0 at the start of the fourth quarter, and it has a host of revisions meant to get it back to it’s once prominent position as Bitcoin’s darker, more clever cousin in the marketplace. So here are five questions and answers with Evan Duffield, the core developer of Darkcoin. He explains where DRK has been, where it is right now, and what Darkcoin may bring to the future of digital currency.


What happened in the Spring that cause Darkcoin to go from the hottest coin on the market to a cautionary tale? Darkcoin must take some responsibility for the precipitous drop in value, losing tens of millions in cap value as quickly as it was gained.


Crypto-currencies, in general, suffer from high volatility, prices fluctuate a lot depending on market sentiment and speculation, this is for the most part outside of the control of any development team. If you take Bitcoin, for example, it peaked at around 1200.00 USD towards the end of last year and is now trading below 400.00 USD. At the same time, Bitcoin has seen amazing progress in the adoption and general market awareness. This is true for Darkcoin too, the project has matured tremendously, and we must separate the quality, future potential and added value proposition of the coin from its short-term price fluctuations.


Back in May, Darkcoin was a very young coin, only five months old, and the market was quick to recognize its potential. This leads to tremendous growth in a very short period, and when this happens, it can often be followed by a consolidation phase. Traders take a profit, and this had a lot to do with the subsequent price decline.


We also went through some difficult moments as we brought new technology to production, back then; we were using hard forks for updates that required fundamental changes to the coin. A hard fork is a very delicate process and back in May we had to revert two hard forks to ensure stability of the network and the market didn’t like that. In the end, these challenges had a very positive outcome, as the development team came up with a new way to bring new features to production.


We don’t need to use hard forks anymore, which is what caused the issues. We now use a phased approach we call the “spork”, by which updated code is released to the network, but not immediately made active (or “enforced”) which is a way safer method of implementing new features. With this approach, those who update their clients run the new code, but in the event of errors occurring with that new code, the client’s blocks are not rejected by the network and unintended forks are avoided.


Once the development team is satisfied with the new code’s stability in the mainnet environment, and once acceptable network consensus is attained, enforcement of the updated code can be activated remotely. Should problems arise, the code can be deactivated in the same manner, without the need for a network-wide rollback or client update. This puts Darkcoin in a position where we can innovate with confidence and without worries of ever running into such problems again.


How do “Darksend” and “The Master Nodes” work to help user security. Why should a new user trust them?


The Darksend technology is designed to protect its users privacy. It stores pre-mixed, denominated Darkcoins in the user’s wallet, to be used instantly at any time the user desires. The mixing and denomination process is seamless, automatic, and requires no intervention on the part of the user. Master nodes are nodes that help coordinate the Darksend process and are compensated by the network for their service. They are run independently by users to create a decentralized architecture; anybody can run a master node, we currently have around 900 master nodes running all around the world.


The system works by breaking Darkcoins up into smaller pools of funds – called “denominations” – and by making ownership of those denominations ambiguous. Users may indicate their desired level of privacy, by selecting between 2 and 8 “rounds” of mixing, a randomly selected masternode is used to coordinate each round.


In each round, three or more Darksend peers will create a common transaction, each feeding their input funds into the transaction and receiving output denominations out of it. That cannot be clearly attributed to either user. Funds are broken down into common, denominated amounts so that the greatest number of users can mix funds with each other in this fashion. The sameness of denominations is what provides the ambiguity of ownership. You can think about it this way: Imagine you’re flying in a helicopter trying to track a red car on the highway, and it passes under a bridge. If two red cars emerge on the other side of the bridge, it’s ambiguous which one you want to follow. If a blue car and a red car emerge, then it’s not ambiguous at all, and the chase ensues. By going through the Darksend process multiple rounds, users can achieve a very high level of privacy.


As to why users should trust Darkcoin works as intended, you must know Darksend has already passed code reviews by external auditors. The code is now fully open source so that anyone can verify it or assist in improving the technology.


When will this new technology be available, and who is your target market for it?


Darkcoin’s privacy technology is already working in production and was completely open sourced on Monday.


Darkcoin is a currency, and as such is appropriate to be used as a means of exchange for products and services in every market segment. Darkcoin is digital cash. We are adding value in areas where there was room for improvement, like privacy or transaction speed. These are attractive features for users and should be available to people in the same situations where they use traditional money or other crypto-currencies.


What is your long-term goal for Darkcoin? Will it be accepted in stores? What is the long-term strategy?


The long-term goal for Darkcoin is to help crypto-currency technology evolve and realize its full potential by bringing innovation and value to the market.


We see Darkcoin being accepted in stores and businesses, it is adding value to users in some key areas that should facilitate its adoption in the future. Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin transactions are not private and they remain openly accessible on the Internet for anyone to see. Although this is great for many things, it creates an opportunity to offer an alternative for businesses or individuals that want to adopt crypto-currencies, but don’t wish this information to be publicly available.


Darkcoin comes to complement Bitcoin as you can easily work with both while using Darkcoin to keep the sensitive part of your finances private. This can be great for merchants in competitive situations, as tools to mine data from the Bitcoin blockchain become more prevalent we must also create options that protect the businesses privacy.


Is this a Darkcoin redesign, and what is coming in the future?


The version of Darksend that was finally open sourced on Monday, is an improved redesign of the original technology we used in our first beta releases. Previous versions gave the development team some amazing experience that was used to develop Darksend, so it comes to market as a very mature system.


We are now working on new features to further improve the coin, including the instant transaction confirmation speed. Traditionally, crypto currencies take a long time to confirm a transaction fully, making them less useful for certain applications. The Darkcoin development team has come up with a design that may allow Darkcoin to compete with traditional payment systems like credit cards in point-of-sale situations by reducing the confirmation time to as little as twenty seconds.


We have some other secret projects we are not ready to reveal yet but we have created a very solid foundation to continue to innovate at a very accelerated pace.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/darkcoin-2-0-open-source-interview-darkcoins-duffield/



DarkCoin 2.0 open source

Darkcoin Solves Bitcoin Privacy Challenges

Darkcoin is a revolutionary new cryptocurrency which offers privacy and fast transaction speed.


Four years ago, the mysterious and brilliant Satoshi Nakamoto developed a revolutionary piece of software called Bitcoin. In doing so, Satoshi created both a digital currency (so-called “cryptocurrencies” are decentralized and secured by cryptography, rather than by a government) and an inexpensive payment network. Bitcoin uses a decentralized financial ledger called a “blockchain” to keep track of everybody’s balances and to transfer money from one bitcoin address to another.


Yet Bitcoin has two shortcomings. First, because it operates on a ledger system, anybody can freely view the account balances and transaction history of other people. Secondly, the Bitcoin network takes up to an hour to transfer money and fully confirm it, which makes it less useful in day-to-day retail environments. Darkcoin has already solved the first problem, lack of privacy, and is rapidly advancing toward a solution to the second.


All of this is accomplished with a key piece of technology called Darksend, which works by mixing up the digital fingerprints of many user’s coins all together. Everybody still keeps possession of their own coins through the entire process, but the origin of those coins is obscured from any outside party. Darksend was developed as a closed-source technology while it was being properly tested and audited by third parties. Following last Monday’s release of the newest version of Darkcoin, the developers are confident that their application is ready for mainstream use and have open-sourced the Darksend code. Darkcoin is now the first fully open-source cryptocurrency with financial privacy built directly into the software.


Open-sourcing of a financial product such as Darkcoin is essential. It allows users to be certain that their privacy is protected and leads to increased confidence in the quality and performance of the software. It also means that anyone can now go through the code and build upon it, as it has been done over the years with Bitcoin.


Core developer of Darkcoin, Evan Duffield has also announced that Darkcoin’s privacy technology has moved out of the beta stages of development and is now ready for mainstream, real-world use.


Future updates to Darkcoin are expected every few months, and will include such things as encrypted multipath communication technology, which is already in the works, this will add another layer of privacy to the system as it will allow users to communicate with the network securely without exposing their IPs and will also hide the identity of the Darksend mixing nodes making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for third parties to spy on users information. It uses multi-path routing so users can send more than one encrypted message using different routes on the mesh network for redundancy.


But perhaps the most anticipated new feature is the Instant Transaction confirmation system, described in a recent white paper, which will allow Darkcoin to provide a decentralized and more secure alternative to credit cards, with similar transaction speed. The release of Instant Transaction technology will also make Darkcoin the fastest-confirming cryptocurrency in the industry. This will, for example, enable merchants to process transactions in seconds, and it could also remove the risks of people leaving funds on exchanges as they will be able to move coins in and out within minutes.


The Darkcoin client and more information can be obtained at our website:


http://www.darkcoin.io.



source: http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2014/09/30/669303/10100544/en/Darkcoin-Solves-Bitcoin-Privacy-Challenges-Releases-Open-Source-Code.html



Darkcoin Solves Bitcoin Privacy Challenges

Vegas racing weekend, fueled by BitCoin

The MaiTai BitFury Racing experience – a three-day VIP event from October 23 to 26 – is hosted by MaiTai Global founders Susi Mai and Bill Tai and professional race car driver Collete Davis, with the assistance of Bitcoin infrastructure provider and transaction processing company BitFury, of which Bill Tai is a board member.



The Hottest New Networking Event


“MaiTai BitFury Racing is the hottest new networking ticket that provides the opportunity to influence the heaviest hitters in Silicon Valley and beyond while racing some of the world’s fastest supercars. Fueled by Bitcoin through the partnership with BitFury, the world’s leading Bitcoin infrastructure provider and Bitcoin transaction processing company, we aim to raise global awareness and visibility of the cryptocurrency through a series of high profile, extreme racing adventures around the world. “


Collete Davis, one of the few females in professional car racing, on a quest to be the first woman to win the famous Indy 500, said:


“Bitcoin is truly the next frontier in finance, and every new frontier needs its pioneers to accelerate its position in the world. That’s exactly how I think about BitFury, and exactly what makes them an ideal partner for this series of extreme racing experiences – both of which embody the pushing of boundaries and testing of limits.”


Valery Vavilov, BitFury co-founder and CEO, said:


“We recognized an opportunity with MaiTai BitFury Racing to increase the visibility of Bitcoin within a high-profile group of people who might have never been exposed to it so directly before. Seeing is believing, so creating a way for people to experience Bitcoin is a win for the entire industry. MaiTai Global, which specializes in unique experiences, is the perfect host for this first-of-its-kind event.”


The package includes staying at the luxurious NOBU Hotel, racing some of the world’s fastest supercars, shooting machine guns, poker lessons from top pros Liv Boeree and Huck Seed and a private poker tournament at Caesars Palace.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/ultimate-vegas-racing-weekend-fueled-bitcoin/



Vegas racing weekend, fueled by BitCoin

Sterlingcoin wallet listed on CNET

First of all, CNET, which once used to be an incredibly popular site for downloading software, has approved both the Macintosh and Windows version of the SLG client.


In order to gain more credibility in the world of digital currency and altcoins, Sterlingcoin has gone through the Coins Source Trust Verification process. SLG is now rated 7/7, as the last point was awarded once the coin was in existence for at least 30 days. You can find more information here.


For those of you who haven’t heard, there is a StartJOIN campaign in order to fund the Sterlingcoin Crypto Currency Card. Every card will come pre-loaded with 50 SLG. A total of 1,000 GBP is needed to fund the project, and so far, 20 people have backed the project for a total of 540 GBP. You can find more details about this campaign here.


Last but not least, users can now search for Sterlingcoin addresses when using the transaction explorer. While this might seem like a trivial development to some of you, it is a feature important to several crypto enthusiasts out there.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/sterlingcoin-wallets-listed-on-cnet-startjoin-campaign-more



Sterlingcoin wallet listed on CNET

ShadowCash ShadowSend V2

The Shadow team has released an infographic displaying what we can expect from ShadowSend V2.


A technical whitepaper will follow shortly, but we can at least give our readers a brief overview on what to expect. Do keep in mind all of these things are subject to change, depending on the testing results.


Garlic Routing


At first, I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of this, but then it occurred to me that, when using a Tor connection, you are routing traffic through onon addresses. Garlic routing has to be either an improved version of Tor, or perhaps something else entirely. What we do know is that it will obfuscate user’s IP addresses. Sounds interesting already!


Dual Key Stealth Addresses


Even though these have been announced for a while, it never hurts to provide a quick recap of what Dual Key Stealth Addresses do exactly. ShadowSend V2 provides the users with unlinkable transactions by using a “one-time” disposable receiving address. (The actual explanation is a bit more technical than that, but we want to dumb it down enough for novice users.)


Ring Signatures


Ring Signatures have been an interesting topic, creating great feedback and also quite a bit of controversy, depending on which type of Ring Signatures you are looking to implement. ShadowSend V2 wants to implement Ring Signatures to obfuscate transaction signatures.


The reason why Ring Signatures are incredibly useful and powerful is because they will not allow outside sources to pinpoint the person signing a transaction. Ring Signatures hold multiple public keys, but it is not possible to determine who signed a transaction, as there is no trace left behind.


NIZK


Not a spelling error, as NIZK means Zero Knowledge Anonymity. A bit confusing, I know, but I’ll try to explain it briefly. Zero Knowledge Anonymity allows user A to prove coin ownership to user B, without revealing any identifying (personal) information to user B (except for the fact user A knows some secret keys which control “X” amount of coins).


Note from the author : More research will be done into wero-knowledge anonymity, and you can expect a separate article in the near future.


Invisible Money


This is not a cheap parlor trick, and your money is still safe and secure, don’t worry. By using the term “invisible money”, the Shadow team simply means blockchain analysis immunity. No one will be able to link transactions, find out who signed transactions, providing ShadowSend V2 users with the ultimate anonymity and privacy package.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/shadowcash-introduces-shadowsend-v2-featuring-ring-signatures-zero-knowledge-anonymity-lots-more



ShadowCash ShadowSend V2

WhiteCoin releases WhiteOS

The time has come to introduce the world to WhiteOS Release 0.2.0.


WhiteOS is a full-fledged linux operating system, based on Ubuntu version 14.04LTS. By adding additional and unique anonymity features into this custom Ubuntu environment, users can experience real, portable, secure and anonymous cold storage for WhiteCoin. As WhiteOS can be loaded on a USB drive, you can take it with you wherever you go.


In order to achieve anonymity and user privacy when running an operating system is concerned, WhiteOS redirects all wallet and browser traffic through a Tor proxy. Once you have unplugged your USB device from the host computer, no trace of you ever running WhiteOS will be left behind.


More features are coming to WhiteOS, and community feedback will play a pivotal role into what we can expect next. No official statement has been released on which features are in the works right now, but we will keep an eye out for more details.


Even though you can load WhiteOS on a USB stick, that is not the only installation option provided to the users. Running WhiteOS in a VirtualBox/VMWare instance, or even sideloading it next to an existing Windows installation are also possible.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/whitecoin-releases-whiteos-version-020



WhiteCoin releases WhiteOS

Friday, October 24, 2014

ByteCoin - Story

It was around the middle of 2013 that I first stumbled upon CryptoNote technology.


Right about that time Gregory Maxwell described his concept of user privacy protection tech called “CoinJoin” and I got interested if anyone else was working on the same issue. Back then the notion of anonymous transactions was not as hyped as it is now and Google search would give me all sorts of anonymity related results but not what I was looking for. It took me awhile before I was able to find the bits of information about CryptoNote and its first implementation, Bytecoin.


Prior to the release of Bitcoin there were a number of ecash technologies starting with the issuer based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands, and moving on to Adam Back’s hashcash, Wei Dai’s b-money and Nick Szabo’s bit-gold. However beautiful these precursor technologies were, they had one thing in common. They lacked the user privacy protection, namely the anonymity feature. And it seems that what everyone was missing had already been up and running in Bytecoin.


The heart of the CryptoNote protocol, which is what Bytecoin relies so heavily on, is its ring signature technology. This scheme makes it possible to sign a message on behalf of a group and while the fact of a transaction taking place is clear, nobody is able to pinpoint the transfer to a specific individual. The CryptoNote protocol also makes it possible for transactions to be untraceable. Payments are split up between multiple one-time addresses that can only be received by the person who has the correct public key. So to estimate the amount of a transaction is virtually impossible.


And Bytecoin mining principle is diferrent from the Bitcoin’s one we got used to. The award for each next block is a bit less compared to the previous one. This stepless decrease in award forms a smooth award curve and does not suffer from 50% sharp declines as Bitcoin does.


Another feature that deserves looking into is PoW algorithm CryptoNight. It is memory bound and designed to be suitable for ordinary PC CPUs. Currently no special purpose devices for mining are available. Therefore, CryptoNight can only be CPU/GPU-mined for a few years to come. Although CPU-mining has one potential disadvantage, namely botnets, while looking at the BCN hashrate/difficulty charts I couldn’t find any significant spikes that would indicate presence of botnets.


All that is known about the origin of CryptoNote protocol is that it was developed in 2012 by the members of the community comprised of cryptologists, mathematicians, economists and programmers. As for Bytecoin, it was officially launched on July 4th 2012 and the embryo of its user base that was formed in scientific circles gradually transformed into a more diverse pool of users.


The initial bulk of BCN transactions is riddled with abnormalities. It is likely that the very first of them were created deliberately to increase the number of outputs needed in order to enable the anonymity feature in future transactions. Also, growth in transactions volume on initial stages is equally slow on both charts. In case with Bitcoin it could be explained by novelty of the technology i.e. while thousands were aware of the new cryptocurrency only a few dared to become early adopters. The spikes that are clearly visible on both charts (S1, S2 and S3) appear right before the surge in transactions volume and apparently coincide with influx of new users. Trying to draw a parallel between hashrates of BCN and BTC I’ve faced an insurmountable problem since hashrate fluctuation in Bitcoin can be explained by introduction of ASICs and hashrate of CPU-mineable Bytecoin can only be affected by a change in number of users. All in all, BTC and BCN are alike in many ways while differences between them are strictly conceptual.


Bytecoin has been making a significant progress over the last two years, and it has one important feature to offer that Bitcoin unfortunately can’t match. Simply put, Bytecoin offers robust user privacy protection. Development of a user-friendly interface is something that most of the community members are looking forward to and that is what BCN developers’ team should focus on in the nearest future. It is also expected that BCN ecosystem will include versatile merchant solutions and payment systems. One more reason why Bytecoin stands out from the other cryptocurrencies on the market is because it has been around for over two years, which is almost a lifetime for the most of the coins.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/bytecoin-whos-who-of-the-digital-currency-world



ByteCoin - Story

Darkcoin and Blackcoin – Bitcoin Killers

If you follow the 200+ cryptocurrencies out there with any regularity you would have heard a couple of new entrants making quite a racket over the last couple weeks, Blackcoin and Darkcoin.


We have written about Blackcoin and are deeply impressed with some projects and capabilities coming down the pike. They raised $15k+ in donations to hire a PR agency and are being included along with Bitcoin with Coinkite‘s payment processing service starting on June 1st. This along with their intense efforts of chasing ecommerce business transactions leads me to believe that it’s current valuation at the time of writing (.0002) is cheap.Very cheap.



Darkcoin is another coin that has been making some waves over the last couple days. I watched it go from .0069 to .0175 in 24 hours. The growth/ pump on this was insane. Just when I thought there would be a mass sell off, the coin continued to rise, kinda like those days in November 2014 when Litecoin went from $11 to $40. Darkcoin is aiming to be the anonymous version of Bitcoin. It’s recent release of Darksend, an anonymous transaction feature, is truly securing this coin as Bitcoin’s 2nd in command. Wallets no longer indicate balances and 3rd parties cannot trace your transaction history. It is all nicely screened within Darksend’s technology. While this is great for privacy folks, Libertarians and drug dealers, this could hamper mass adoption and acceptance by Big Brother governments who want to know what the proletariats are up to. Maybe Darkcoin’s barrier to entry in the mainstream will push it down to the recesses of the Darkweb where it will flourish among marginalized societies?



I know investors and miners love new crypto’s as they are highly speculative and can make you a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time but it’s time to separate the fools gold from the real thing. I personally hate most of the 2014 crypto births and consider the bulk of them bastard children but Blackcoin and Darkcoin have the attention of Altcoin Fever (Disclosure – we own both). They are doing some things right with new features (Darksend, POS, interest on coins held) that further legitimize cryptos in general. Bitcoin has basically done all the hard work for future cryptos and brought the reality of virtual currency to the world. Many have long speculated what will eventually replace Bitcoin. I think we have 2 strong candidates in Darkcoin and Blackcoin.



source: http://www.altcoinfever.com/blackcoin-darkcoin-bitcoin-killer/



Darkcoin and Blackcoin – Bitcoin Killers

OpenBazaar – Bitcoin Marketplace with Namecoin Identity

OpenBazaar, the free & open source decentralized marketplace for the digital age – with Bitcoin as currency and Namecoin for Identity – get your Namecoin id/ today.


No censhorship, no fees.


Openbazaar is the freedom to exchange directly with anyone on the internet without a middleman. It’s about time.


Or help to build the bazaar …


Github: https://github.com/OpenBazaar


http://openbazaar.org



source: http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/namecoin-openbazaar-bitcoin-marketplace-with-namecoin-identity-presentation/



OpenBazaar – Bitcoin Marketplace with Namecoin Identity

Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.3

To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin.




Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.3

Sexy Bitcoin News EP.4

This is a show where I talk about things I find sexy in the world of bitcoin!




Sexy Bitcoin News EP.4

Thursday, October 23, 2014

PeerCoin price falls back

Last week, Peershares lead developer Jordan Lee announced his semi-secret project, NuBits, would release on September 23.


He revealed few details about the project, but investors began buying Peercoin in anticipation that NuBits would increase Peercoin’s value. However, once investors realized NuBits is an entirely new altcoin and will have little effect on Peercoin, the Peercoin price began to fall back to earth. CCN analyzes this altcoin price movement to help investors make informed trading decisions.


On September 15, the Peercoin price fell out of a major slump, rising nearly 40% in less than a day. The price movement was spurred by Peershares developer Jordan Lee’s announcement that NuBits–which he claimed would eliminate cryptocurrency volatility–would release on September 23. After remaining at ~151,000 satoshis before Lee’s announcement, the Peercoin price rocketed to a high of 401,176 on September 20. Over the next two days, the Peercoin price declined a bit, falling to 371,532 satoshis on September 22. Despite the small decline, the Peercoin price remained quite high on the eve of the NuBits release. However, it turned out that NuBits would not increase Peercoin’s standing among altcoins. As a result, the Peercoin price plummeted to 269,265 satoshis the day of the release. The Peercoin price briefly recovered on September 24 but resumed its decline on September 25. At press time, the Peercoin price was 266,647 satoshis.


CCN warned that investing in Peercoin based on speculation that NuBits would increase the Peercoin price was a bad idea because Peershares had released virtually no details about the project. Unfortunately for Peercoin speculators, we were right.


CCN: World’s Largest & Leading Independent Bitcoin News Source


Though developed by Peershares, NuBits is a completely separate altcoin–one that is trying to eliminate cryptocurrency volatility. Far from increasing the value of Peercoin, NuBits could actually hurt Peercoin (among other alts) if it proves successful. The one silver lining in the NuBits announcement was that NuShares, the voting mechanism that also secures the NuBits blockchain via proof of stake, will distribute dividends to NuShareholders using Peercoin as the payment medium. Thus, Peercoin could receive buy pressure on exchanges if there is demand for NuBits. However, that buy pressure would only appear if the cryptocurrency community begins migrating to NuBits. But it is unclear how much this would affect the Peercoin price, as well as whether or not the potential boon on exchanges would offset the sell pressure created by people leaving Peercoin for NuBits.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/peercoin-price-falls-back-to-earth-after-nubits-announcement/



PeerCoin price falls back

Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.2

To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin.




Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.2

Sexy Bitcoin News EP.3

Welcome to Intimate Moments, I’m Saffron Bacchus and this is a show where I read erotica, and we share an intimate moment…




Sexy Bitcoin News EP.3

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Feathercoin 0.8.7.0 - The NeoSrypt Update

It has been a long time in the works but we have finally got NeoScrypt and a GPU miner so we can now release the Feathercoin 0.8.7.0 client with NeoScrypt set to replace Scrypt on block 432,000, this should be early morning on the 24th October 2014.


NeoScrypt uses stronger components than the Scrypt we are familiar with. A key element of Scrypt is Salsa which adds memory complexity, the problem is that the version of Salsa in Scrypt is weak and has been broken by differential analysis which is why we see cheap and powerful ASICs. NeoScrypt uses a blend of Salsa and its successor Chacha set to a higher level of strength. In theory these two should not be broken for at least a decade, this gives better protection than simply adding hashing functions.


However the goal is not simply to avoid ASICs forever as this may not be possible though ideally we want to stay in reach of as many people as possible without the need for expensive mining equipment. As the majority of people buying Scrypt ASICs are not doing so to mine Feathercoin and the fact that some very large ASIC suppliers will be releasing products soon it seems sensible to move algorithm now before we face the challenges that hit many SHA-256 alts when the SHA-256 ASICs hit. We are moving to a new tier of hashing where Feathercoin can be the leading coin.


Please be aware that after the update your Scrypt mining setup will no longer work. You will need to use the new GPU miner that we have been developing for several months now. Not only do miners need to upgrade their software but pools do as well.


 


Feathercoin Downloads
Windows
Mac
Linux


Miner Downloads
CPU Miner 2.4
GPU Miner 3.7.7b
NeoScrypt CPU miner (source)
NeoScrypt GPU miner (source)


Pool modules
NOMP MultiHashing PR
Stratum Algo Module
Stratum Mining Repo


Resources
NeoScrypt, a Strong Memory Intensive Key Derivation Function (white paper)
NeoScrypt – the latest proof of work algorithm (press release)
NeoScrypt (source)



source: https://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?/topic/7856-feathercoin-0870-released/



Feathercoin 0.8.7.0 - The NeoSrypt Update

Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.1

To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin.




Bitcoin News You Can Use Ep.1

Sexy Bitcoin News EP.2

Welcome to Naughty Bits, a weekly bitcoin “news” show where I talk about things that I think are sexy in the world of bitcoin!




Sexy Bitcoin News EP.2

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Josh Wise & the DogeCar

The Josh Wise-helmed Dogecar will make its third and final appearance on the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit in Sunday’s Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Wise hopes to improve upon last week’s subpar performance at the track where multi-car wrecks are commonplace, and the only sure thing is a wild finish.


On Sunday, NASCAR will descend on Talladega Superspeedway for the Geico 500. The Chase for the Cup–NASCAR’s championship playoff–is just heating up, and all eyes are on perennial favorites Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Brad Keselowski, each of whom must pull off a miracle to avoid elimination and move on to the next round of the Chase.


But from time to time, the audience may shift its gaze to the lovably-decorated, Dogecoin-sponsored “Dogecar.” NASCAR may not seem like a target demographic for cryptocurrency, but the two spheres have developed an excellent working relationship.


The partnership of misfits began in March, when the Dogecoin community rallied to raise more than 67 million Dogecoins to sponsor Josh Wise’s #98 Phil Parsons Racing Chevrolet for the spring race at Talladega Superspeedway. The Dogecar received widespread media attention, and the Dogecar roared to a 20th place finish (a very solid run for a small team). All parties considered the event a resounding success.


Josh Wise and Dogecoin decided to raise funds to allow the Dogecar to run in the October Talladega race. Wise helped design a t-shirt that mimicked the shirts his pit crew wore. They sold nearly 6,000 shirts, which was enough to sponsor the #98 for another race. However, Wise surprised the Dogecoin community by announcing he would also race the Dogecar at the June Sonoma race as a gesture of goodwill.


The Dogecar also made its way into the NASCAR All-Star race. Though Josh Wise failed to qualify for the race, the Dogecoin community rallied to vote him into the race, beating out fan-favorite Danica Patrick. Wise finished 15th in the event, which featured a low Dogefan turnout due to the limited notice that the Dogecar would participate.


Nevertheless, Dogefans don’t appear bored with NASCAR or the Dogecar. Recently, Dogecoin users voted Josh Wise The Fast and the Fabulous’ “2014 Hottest NASCAR Driver,” defeating opponent David Ragan by an embarrassing 99.41 to .59% ratio. Moreover, Josh Wise has set up a website for the Dogecar, where fans can purchase memorabilia to raise funds for Dogecar sponsorships in 2015.


Anything is possible at Talladega, and Josh Wise and the Dogecar hope to land a strong finish. But Wise will have to improve upon last week’s poor performance at Charlotte if he hopes to disrupt things at Talladega. After starting 38th, Wise spent much of the early part of the race running in the mid-30s. However, his car experienced rear gear trouble, which forced him to exit the race on his 179th lap. He placed 41st.


Thus far, the Dogecar has run well at Talladega. The drivers will not qualify until Saturday, but Wise performed well during early practice runs. At press time, Wise and the Dogecar possessed the 29th fastest lap time and speed–48.826 seconds and 196.125 miles per hour–and were 1.038 seconds off leader Clint Bowyer’s pace.


Nevertheless, Talladega has a reputation as NASCAR’s wildest and most unpredictable race track, so all bets are off once the race begins. With a lot of luck and a little Dogecar magic, Josh Wise could shake things up at Talladega–as long as he can avoid “The Big One.”



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/josh-wise-dogecar-look-shake-chase-talladega/



Josh Wise & the DogeCar

MonaCoin price

The Monacoin price had a terrible week. The “Japanese Dogecoin” saw its price fall by more than 20%, including more than 10% in the past day alone. However, the Monacoin price has historically been very volatile, and the recent price decline is not an unusual occurrence. CCN examines this altcoin price movement.


The Monacoin price as 17,725 satoshis on October 9. The next day, it rose slightly to 18,930 satoshis. That mark would prove to be Monacoin’s weekly peak. On October 11, the Monacoin price declined to 17,541 satoshis. After briefly rising again on October 12, the Monacoin price dipped to 16,346 satoshis on October 13.


The Monacoin price would not experience another recover for the remainder of the week. It fell to 15,893 satoshis on October 14 and 15,043 on the 15th. On October 16th, the Monacoin price fell another 11% to its current price of 13,564 satoshis.


Analysis


Rapid price swings are par for the course for Monacoin, so the recent price decline is unlikely to sway longtime investors. However, CoinGecko’s comprehensive Monacoin analysis should give traders pause. Monacoin ranks sixty-third on the CoinGecko charts with a 31% rating. This negative disparity between Monacoin’s market cap and CoinGecko ranking indicates Monacoin’s market cap is outperforming its overall coin health by a wide margin. Coins may over or under-perform in the short-term, but investors should remain wary of placing long-term investments in coins with inflated market caps.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/monacoin-price-terrible-week/



MonaCoin price

Litecoin Price Holding

On October 11, the litecoin price was still reeling from a weekly decline that had dropped the coin’s value from ~1,150,000 satoshis to 1,034,500.


The decline continued until October 13, when the litecoin price dropped below 100,000 satoshis.


Luckily, that price floor was temporary. On October 14, the litecoin price began increasing, which it continued to do throughout the week. By October 15, the litecoin price had risen to 1,026,192 satoshis. It continued to rise, hovering around 1,04,500 satoshis for the next 48 hours. The litecoin price declined a bit on October 17 but recovered to its current price of 1,038,756 satoshis on the 18th.


Analysis


Somewhat surprisingly, Litecoin has failed to reclaim the second-place spot from Ripple, who passed Litecoin on the charts in late September. At press time, Litecoin had a market cap of $134 million, placing it third on the CoinMarketCap charts. Although litecoin is not the sexiest altcoin investment and has endured recent declines, it consistently remains among the most valuable coins on the market cap charts. Investors should consider litecoin a safe long-term hold–at least relative to other potential altcoin investments.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/litecoin-price-holding-steady-dip/



Litecoin Price Holding

OpenBazaar - Sam Patterson

OpenBazaar – Sam Patterson | TheProtocol.TV




OpenBazaar - Sam Patterson

Sexy Bitcoin News EP.1

Naughty Bits, which is a bitcoin “news” show where I talk about things that I think are sexy in the world of bitcoin, while stripping!




Sexy Bitcoin News EP.1

This Moment In Bitcoin

About the present state of Bitcoin. Also a preview of what my show is like. To stay up-to-date and informed on Bitcoin.




This Moment In Bitcoin

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Pocket Bitcoin Safe - Trezor

Bitcoin is often marketed as allowing people to “be your own bank”. The caveat, however, is that you have to take the responsibility worthy of a banker. It may sound simple; all it requires is to keep the private key safe, but the simplicity can be deceiving.



A Bitcoin private key is a long string of alphanumeric. They are all unique but look sort of like one another. While the entropy makes it hard to crack by random guessing, it is quite impractical to memorize for most.Many people use paper wallets, which is the written or printed form of private keys. While this is a relatively secure way of storing the bitcoins, it is rather troublesome for those who need to spend their funds often. Many of them would rather use a third party online wallet service such as Blockchain.info, at the cost of increased risks.


The quest for paper wallet-grade security without compromising the convenience of online wallets led to what is known as hardware wallet.Though nobody claims to be inventor of the Bitcoin hardware wallet, one of the pioneers who posited the concept is Clement Cap, a professor at University of Rostock in Prague.


In a 2011 speech, Prof. Gap described the requirements of a Bitcoin hardware wallet as:


Trusted display

Trusted input

Trusted storage

Communication with the Bitcoin network

Stability (so the stored private key won’t be erased by a firmware upgrade)

First Impression


My Trezor arrives in a square plastic-sealed box. Rip the wrap off, you will see a sealing sticker. It has a warning message that reads: “Make sure the sticker is intact before opening”. Take this warning seriously because at stake is more than the 100 USD you paid for the device, but whatever amount of Bitcoin that you will trust it with.Look at the Internet and it is not hard to get the impression that hardware wallets are reminiscent of mobile phones in the early days – there seem no unified design language or standard to speak of. While some, with touch screens and wireless connections, look like smart phones, the plainness of Trezor reminds me of my first MP3 player bought over a decade ago.


Simplicity is definitely in the heart of Trezor’s design. The designers seem to have tried to remove all unnecessary parts and stick to the essentials: a screen, two buttons, a tiny electronic board with a USB port. The benefit of simplicity is increased reliability. Compare a decade-old Nokia and a new iPhone, as much as you may enjoy the rich user experience that the later offers, you may have to admit that the former is much less likely to crash.


For the paranoid, they may be interested to know the conditions under which these devices are manufactured. Even though the hardware is supposed to be open-source, most of us don’t have the capacity to examine it, so we still have to trust Satoshi Labs who designed it and the manufacturer that it chooses to work with. I contacted Satoshi Labs customer support and was told that the devices were made In Czech Republic, where Satoshi Labs was based. In the email, I was told that: “All components are stored in a restricted access area watched by cameras 24/7…Only chosen employees can get into the area. The plastic casing parts are joined with an ultrasound that melts the material together so it’s impossible to replace the internals without a notable damage to it.”


All the assurance notwithstanding, the little thing still looks a little too flimsy to inspire much confidence in me. For that matter, the company also has an aluminum version, with a metal body that give some extra psychological comfort. But on the flip side, that Trezor doesn’t look like something that can potentially keep money (and a lot) is actually not a bad idea. After all, you don’t want it to attract too much unwanted attention to your safe.


The first step is setting up a pin – the pin is password that you have to use when sending money out. It is quite different from setting up an email password: A 3*3 grid appears on Trezor’s screen, each grid containing one of the digits from 1 to 9, all scrambled out of order. On the computer screen there is another 3*3 grid, identical except each grid contains a question mark. It may sound complicated, but the real process is quite ingenious. Basically, you move the cursor and click on the question mark on the computer screen that correspond to the digit you would like to select on the Trezor screen. This is designed to prevent malicious programs from secretly recording your keystrokes.


Then you will need to set up a recovery seed. In case you lose your Trezor or forget the pin, the recovery seed is all you can count on to recover your funds. The seed is a string of randomly selected English words. Write them down on a piece of paper (or the tiny notebook that comes with Trezor). Once you are done, put it away. Don’t put it too close to your Trezor. You would lose your money if you lose both.The thing I like most about Trezor is the ease of use. Even when compared with online wallets, it is just more convenient. Blockchain.info for example, requires one to type in the password every time. When you have the two factor authentication activated, you will also have to type in the verification code. With Trezor, to check the balance, all you need to do is to plug in and go to Mytrezor.com.


One thing that users may frown at is the current lack of support from other websites. There should be alternative sites if Mytrezor.com experiences a server failure. But these alternatives don’t exist at the moment (at least I didn’t see any information on Mytrezor.com). Another issue that may prevent the device from becoming more successful is that it doesn’t have multilanguage support. So if you want to use a Trezor, some basic English reading skill is a requisite.



source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericxlmu/2014/10/15/meet-trezor-a-bitcoin-safe-that-can-fit-into-your-pocket/



Pocket Bitcoin Safe - Trezor

Saturday, October 11, 2014

KoreCoin VOIP alpha release

KoreCoin enthusiasts will be pleased to hear the ALPHA version of KORE’s VoIP feature will be receiving an update very soon. On the other hand, the BETA version still has no official release date, but other things have been announced to make up for that, so let’s take a look!



KORE developer announced he had to push back the VoIP BETA release date of October 1st in order to fix some ALPHA version bugs. So far, the fixes in regards to notifications., instant messages and the buddy list are coming along nicely.


In the upcoming ALPHA version update, which is scheduled for release on October 18th, a new feature will be introduced. KoreCoin VoIP users will be able to leave a voice message to people in their buddy list when they are not answering/online.


We expect more information in regards to the VoIP featureto be released over the coming days, and will keep our readers informed accordingly.


In other news, two other KoreCoin are taking shape it seems. Both KoreCard (debit card for KoreCoin) and KoreSurf (unknown feature at this point but it could be the Tor browser being integrated into the wallet) have been mentioned.


Official announcement :


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=668886.msg9116836#msg9116836



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/korecoin-voip-alpha-release-update-will-include-voicemail-feature



KoreCoin VOIP alpha release

MerchantCoin will accept top 25 altcoins

MerchantCoin (https://merchantcoin.net/) today launched a private pre-sale of its software in XMC “Founders Block” tokens that can be exchanged for bitcoin and the top 25 altcoins based on overall market cap.



MerchantCoin has further committed to accept tokens from a limited number of other digital currencies that provide strategic or technological advances enabling the adoption and functionality of the MerchantCoin ecosystem as defined in its white paper, also released today.


“Merchant Coin is the first cryptocurrency to exchange tokens with each of the top 25 altcoins and we view the process as a move towards inclusion and industry cooperation, which is critical today for the progression and development of the global digital currency movement. These altcoin founders, miners and thought leaders represent a knowledge base and experience level that MerchantCoin recognizes as key components to our future success. We respect their unique accomplishments and their support of our initiative is a great confirmation of our vision!”said Kirk St. Johns, MerchantCoin’s founder.


The MerchantCoin solution provides a faster, cheaper, easier and smarter method for merchants to transact business within its ecosystem. The mWallet enables each merchant to accept bitcoin, but also to buy and sell bitcoin and many other of the top 25 market cap altcoins. As a result, the MerchantCoin solution provides every merchant with an immediate onramp to the digital currency marketplace.


Through this process, consumers are driven to exchange fiat currencies into bitcoin, counterbalancing the current pressure for merchants to convert bitcoin to fiat. “This is unprecedented and has the potential to exponentially expand adoption of bitcoin on a global basis. Our vision is a world where cryptocurrencies are routinely used for purchases of every day products, services, real estate, loans, investments, and charitable donations,” said St. Johns.


To register as a MerchantCoin merchant, go to: http://merchantcoin.net/merchant-registration/.


To become a MerchantCoin advocate, go to: http://merchantcoin.net/advocate-registration/.


For more information about MerchantCoin go to www.MerchantCoin.net or contact Maya Babish at maya@merchantcoin.net.


About MerchantCoin


MerchantCoin is domiciled in Zug, Switzerland, and maintains an office in Tacoma, Wash. The MerchantCoin token (XMC) is the first digital currency brought to market with the sole purpose of driving bitcoin adoption and facilitating the consumer-merchant transaction process. MerchantCoin drives this adoption with XMC as a reward to motivate and empower people (“advocates”) in their local markets, recruit merchants and promote the benefits of using bitcoin. To support newly registered businesses, the MerchantCoin Decentralized Marketplace offers a faster, easier and cheaper open-source ecosystem.



http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/merchantcoin-to-accept-all-top-25-altcoins-in-its-crowdsale-with-pre-sale-underway



MerchantCoin will accept top 25 altcoins

SysCoin release candidate 2

The developers feel they need to do some additional testing and tweaking over the coming weekend.



Considering all the work they have been putting into the release, as well as taking community feedback to heart, they really want to deliver a proper client. No official release date was announced at this point however.


In other SYS news, a lot of projects are currently under development. Public Release Candidate 3 for the 0.1.5 client for example, which should normally pop up at some point next week, depending on how the aforementioned testing goes.


The SysCoin Blockmarket is also under development, which we reported earlier in this article. No further updates in regards to progress or features was provided, but this serves as a general reminder of things to come.


Both the iOS and Android Wallet are slowly nearing completion as well. The SysCoin Android Wallet will not be the standard copy & paste Android wallet most altcoins use, as this wallet will receive all of the desktop client functionalities as well. Some very cool stuff is expected to roll out this month, so we will keep an eye out for that.



source: http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/syscoin-release-candidate-2-requires-additional-testing-cool-stuff-coming-this-month



SysCoin release candidate 2

StealthCoin Community issues

The Stealthcoin price has decreased more than 37% in the past day alone, leaving the community in chaos.


Stealthcoin Price Plummets Amid Community Chaos


On September 22, the Stealthcoin price reached an all-time high of 14,479 satoshis. However, the Stealthcoin price has been in decline since reaching its peak. By September 24, the Stealthcoin price had dropped by 4,000 satoshis. Over the next week, the Stealthcoin price continued to decline slowly, broaching the 9,000 satoshi mark on September 30.


The Stealthcoin price began October with a bang, rallying to 12,306 satoshis by October 2. Alas, the recovery would be brief. The Stealthcoin price soon fell, and from October 4-7 it hovered around 10,000 satoshis. But it would not stay there for long.


As the CoinMarketCap chart below demonstrates, large bagholders began to dump their coins on October 7. By October 8, the Stealthcoin price had dropped to 7,610 satoshis. Before the day was over, Stealthcoin had rallied back to almost 9,000 satoshis, but then the price began to fall again. On October 10, the Stealthcoin price dropped another 37%, falling to its current price of 5,126 satoshis.


The Stealthcoin price decline has hemorrhaged the coin’s market cap. At press time, Stealthcoin had a market cap of $388,612, which is barely one-third of its peak cap of more than $1.2 million and ranks Stealthcoin fifty-sixth in coin market cap.


Analysis


The Stealthcoin price decline is a classic case of community FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) caused by investors with shaky hands and coin rivalries. Despite frequent developer protests, many altcoin holders spam the threads for other altcoins to try to disparage the coins and increase the standing of their own coin (and by extension their own investments). The current feud primarily involves ShadowCash trolls, another privacy-centric altcoin competing for the same investors as Stealthcoin (ShadowCash developer Rynomster has admonished the trolls for their actions). At present, the Stealthcoin thread on BitcoinTalk is in chaos. Only time will tell if investors double down on their Stealthcoin investments or jump ship for another coin.


Stealthcoin photo taken from Stealthcoin website; other images from Shutterstock.


Disclosure: The author is paid in and holds investments in bitcoin. He is not invested in or affiliated with any of the altcoins discussed in this article. Any advice contained in this article is solely the opinion of the author and does not reflect the views of CCN. Neither the author nor CCN is liable for your investing decisions, so do your homework and never invest more than you are willing to lose.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/stealthcoin-price-plummets-amid-overt-community-chaos/



StealthCoin Community issues

Monday, October 6, 2014

BitcoinDark

BitcoinDark seeks to strengthen coins who offer substance to the cryptocurrency arena while weeding out copy-and-paste cryptocurrencies that do not offer any new value to the industry.



Select coins connect to the BitcoinDark SuperNet (UNITY) network while providing both the features of that particular coin, as well as the features of BitcoinDark’s SuperNet. BitcoinDark’s Teleport technology allows for anonymity while using any coin connected through the SuperNet network.


BitcoinDark Pays Out in Bitcoin


BitcoinDark has completed its PoW phase with 1.2 million BTCD mined and now it has entered its PoS phase. Every year shareholders receive 5% interest on the BTCD which they have staked. By the year 2020, there will only be 1.5 Million BTCD available and coins will continue to be added until the available supply reaches 22 million coins. BitcoinDark will reach its maximum of 22 million BTCD in about 60 years. Instead of paying shareholders in BTCD, BitcoinDark pays shareholders in Bitcoin raised through Teleport fees and InstantDEX.


Coin developers have access to BitCoinDark’s array of tools, such as access to trading their coin through BitcoinDark’s decentralized exchange, InstantDEX. Developers may also create trading bots on the InstantDEX exchange for their coin, and allowing coin-holders to auto-convert the coin into Bitcoin for easy access to making payments in Bitcoin wherever Bitcoin is accepted. Coin developers also earn dividends from InstantDEX’s revenue sharing so they may earn money for their work just by integrating their coin with the BitcoinDark SuperNET.


Easy access to the SuperNet


The BitcoinDark development team invites coin developers to integrate the BitcoinDark open source library, libjl777 for easy access to the SuperNet. This library allows coin developers, and enthusiasts to easily code trading bots and encrypted communications, as well as providing easy access to website APIs and any coin’s RPC interface.


Futuristic Teleportation has arrived with BitcoinDark


Well, you might not be capable of teleporting yourself from place-to-place, but BitcoinDark has now invented technology that will teleport your funds from place-to-place to ensure your privacy while conducting commerce. Teleportation takes place off the blockchain while providing all of the benefits of the blockchain, which allows for your private information to stay private. Your funds are teleported through transporters by telepods as all transaction data is stored securely in the telepod and sent through the encrypted network to its destination.


Transactions move through a network of nodes called Privacy Servers and jump nodes. Every node on the BitcoinDark network is a Privacy Server, and it’s these nodes that make the transaction impossible to track. The teleportation technology makes every coin transaction secure for both corporate and private usage.


BitcoinDark is not just a cryptocurrency, but a whole new revolutionary infrastructure that the whole market may rely on for access to the cutting edge technology which propels the market forward. Everyone benefits from BitcoinDark’s innovative technology.


Are you interested in BitcoinDark? You may trade BitcoinDark on popular cryptocurrency exchanges such as BitTrex, Atomic Trade, Cryptsy, and Poloniex or by using BitcoinDark’s built-in InstantDEX decentralized trading platform.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoindark-strengthening-mission-critical-altcoins/



BitcoinDark

Bitcoin Is Exciting Because It's Cheap

After long remaining mostly mum on Bitcoin, Microsoft’s legendary co-founder Bill Gates has spoken.



At the Sibos 2014 financial-services industry conference in Boston, America’s richest man just threw his weight behind the controversial cryptocash. Well, at least as a low-cost payments solution.


At the event, when asked about Bitcoin’s potential to ease the cost of payment transactions for moving money from one place to another Gates waxed mostly positively about the virtual money.


“Bitcoin is exciting because it shows how cheap it can be,” he told Erik Schatzker during a Bloomberg TV’s Smart Street show interview yesterday. “Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient.”


Gates again reiterated his stance on cryptocurrencies when he delivered the event’s closing keynote address, in which he stated that, in the future, financial transactions will eventually “be digital, universal and almost free.”


While he seems relatively bullish on how inexpensive transacting in Bitcoin can be, Gates isn’t singing the praises of its anonymity. The billionaire alluded in an oblique, somewhat rambling fashion to some of the more nefarious anonymous uses associated with Bitcoin.


“The customers we’re talking about aren’t trying to be anonymous,” he told Schatzker. “They’re willing to be known, so Bitcoin technology is key and you can add to it or you could build a similar technology where there’s enough attribution where people feel comfortable that this is nothing to do with terrorism or any type of money laundering.”



source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238103



Bitcoin Is Exciting Because It's Cheap

Altcoin market fall down

Because altcoin prices are coupled to the bitcoin price, most altcoin market caps have fallen dramatically.



As the CoinMarketCap chart below demonstrates, altcoins have taken a huge hit over the past day. The bitcoin price decline caused nearly every altcoin market cap to fall by default. Additionally, many altcoin prices fell as investors bought back into bitcoin or panic sold their holdings for USD.


The Litecoin price fell more than 7%, reducing its market cap from ~$127 million to ~$119.5 million. The Dogecoin price fell 9.84%, which dropped its market cap $5 million. Twelfth-ranked BitcoinDark fell almost 18%, making it the highest-ranked altcoin to see double-digit percentage drops over the past day. BitcoinDark’s price decimation is joined by several other prominent altcoins, including Monero, Mastercoin, and Blackcoin.


However, a few altcoins did experience price increases. Bitshares PTS and Counterparty, the tenth and eleventh-ranked altcoins, experienced 8% and 3% price increases, respectively. Several smaller altcoins saw surprising price spikes. The Feathercoin price rose 26%, and Monacoin’s price increased 55%.


Sunday’s altcoin price crash highlights why altcoin investments carry so much more risk than bitcoin investments, which themselves are quite risky. At present, virtually every altcoin price is coupled to the bitcoin price because there are few direct USD/altcoin markets and most traders buy and sell their altcoins with bitcoins. Consequently, altcoin investors do not just have to worry about their coin’s stance among other altcoins; they also have to worry about how the state of the bitcoin price alters the value of their investment. Investors should keep this in mind as they plan their present and future trades.


Disclosure: The author is paid in and holds investments in bitcoin. He is not invested in or affiliated with any of the altcoins discussed in this article. Any advice contained in this article is solely the opinion of the author and does not reflect the views of CCN. Neither the author nor CCN is liable for your investing decisions, so do your homework and never invest more than you are willing to lose.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-decline-makes-altcoin-market-caps-bleed/



Altcoin market fall down

BitCoin price drop is good news

Looking at a Bitcoin price “candlestick screen” is no way to go through life.



If you are day trading Bitcoin, or are in Bitcoin for the short-term, to make a quick hit, this article is not for you. If you think the U.S. Dollar is going to be the global currency for the rest of your waking days, turn back now. If you think gold and silver are the only “real” commodities worth investing in, you are free to leave the room.


That is for the Bitcoin full-timer. The lifer. The person who gets paid in BTC and knows how special it truly is. You learned about Bitcoin one day and said “This is going to change everything!” The one who owns a Bitcoin business, and sees it as “The Future of Money”. To you, Bitcoin is The Internet 2.0. You are a little down because of the Bitcoin price drop, and you just need a little pick-me-up! Well, here is your Bitcoin pep talk, ladies and germs!


Why the Bitcoin Price Drop is Great News

Fret not, little camper! Turn that frown upside down! I will give you four very good reasons not to fear the drop in price, but rather to embrace it. Wear it like a merit badge, young Eagle Scout! Your “Eagle Eye” for the next great global currency and online protocol was indeed right on the mark.


A Lower Price is a Better Price

That is the easiest and most obvious reason. Buying something that was once almost $1200 for less than $400 is a good thing. The only way this wouldn’t be a good thing is if you think Bitcoin is dead, and it is heading down to Ground Zero. Bitcoin has had more dirt thrown on it, mostly from the mainstream media and private interests, than a dinosaur’s fossils. When Chunky Soup goes on sale for 30% off this week, you don’t avoid Chunky Soup because it costs less. You see it as an opportunity to buy. Why avoid buying Bitcoin when it’s price drops? The rich buy the prices of an appreciating asset drop. They seize the moment. Bitcoin price must rise over time. It has proven that it’s value model works. So take advantage of the short-term sellers, and treat it like a coupon at your favorite store.


After five straight years of exponential growth, Bitcoin should have earned the benefit of the doubt by now. After one year on the market, it’s value went from fractions of a penny to $0.05 USD, which is borderline infinite ROI. The next year, it rose to $0.30, only a 500% increase in value. Good luck getting that anywhere else. 2011 saw BTC rise to over $6 USD, which was just scary growth. The next year, it only doubled in value, a real “off year”. 2013 was a rebound year, and it finishes up at almost $800! Mind you this was mostly because of the Mt. Gox Bot Buying Bubble, and the Chinese market having free reign at an initially unrestricted BTC market.


In China, it was like Wal-Mart on Black Friday. When Mt. Gox (more like Empty Gox) collapsed, and China was reminded what living in a totalitarian state is all about, Bitcoin had to click it’s heels, and return to Kansas. Did you REALLY think Bitcoin was worth almost $1200 on Thanksgiving, after being worth about 2% of that on New Year’s? Really? That was the mother of all bubbles, and if you didn’t see that for what it was, I hope your learned something. I’ll go over economic bubbles again later, so be prepared to use this knowledge soon.


In order to take that price drop seriously, you have to think of the major players secured by Bitcoin over the last year, including Dish Network, Dell Computers, PayPal, Expedia.com, Bloomberg LP and others. Are those not epic votes of confidence? They are not in Bitcoin for the long-term. You have to think that those mainstream players are fairweather friends that would run from Bitcoin based on its price versus the dollar. That Bitcoin has not proven it’s inherent value by attracting these major players as business partners. In other words, you have to be the type of person that looks for every cloud in the sky to not see that Bitcoin is here for the long-term, which leads me to the second reason.


The Real Reason Bitcoin is Sliding is the U.S. Dollar is Rising

The facts are Bitcoin is doing everything right. It is getting more and more major merchants to accept it. It is securing more mainstream press in general, increasing awareness. The customer base is getting broader, with so many agreements to give people worldwide more opportunity to buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin production wasn’t ramped up by greedy private interests during the bubble last year. And better wallets, stronger exchanges, new debit cards, and innovative trading options are being added every day to the Bitcoin ecosystem. So what is the problem?


The U.S. Dollar is the problem. The story goes that the Dollar is rising in value, up over 4% in the last quarter. That sounds great, but just like with the U.S. Consumer Price Index, you might want to look the gift horse in the mouth. The U.S. Dollar Index doesn’t compare it to the Chinese Yuan, which was up over 7% over the same period. Just because other currencies in Europe are dropping faster than the dollar, doesn’t mean the dollar is actually strong. The facts are the dollar did have a very good quarter, regardless. A stronger dollar buys more Bitcoin units per dollar than a weaker dollar. But let’s look at the dollar’s track record since Bitcoin hit the market in 2009. Maybe you will see something called an economic bubble? Or at least see an anomaly, if not a trend.


Any currency can have a good quarter, but if you listen to the U.S. Government (U.S. Department of Labor/Bureau of Labor) tell it, inflation was LESS than 2% from the beginning of 2012 to the end of 2013. Are you buying that? The national price of gas was $1.61 on January 3rd, 2009, the day Bitcoin was officially invented, and now it’s price is double that. U.S. ground beef prices are up 79% since Bitcoin. A lot of that has to do with actual cattle supplies being at an all-time low, but inflation is only 10% of that number? Eggs have also consistently risen in price much higher than 1-2%. If the Consumer Price Index is a very controversial way to measure inflation, it is the most popular, and is government-controlled. The problem with the index is the goods themselves change at their discretion, as will the quantity of a good.


Like eggs. The price of ten eggs has been inserted for a dozen eggs in the index, but who buys ten eggs? Fewer eggs yield a lower price, and would drop the rate of inflation for eggs itself by almost 20%! The point is if you’ve lived in the U.S. over the past five years you know inflation is MUCH greater than 1.8% over the last two years. So why believe in the Dollar Index, also supplied by government forces? The fastest way to keep the dollar from falling like a rock is to convince Wall Street that the dollar is rising, and manipulating the Dollar Index is too easy and influential not to do. I just don’t trust any government-supplied information, because why should I? Whatever they say, usually the opposite is true.


More Bitcoin Acceptance and Bitcoin Commerce Does Cause Price to Drop

In some ways, Bitcoin is a victim of its success. With all of the new merchants coming onboard, when merchants take more Bitcoin, they are selling it out into USD 95% of the time. And they do a lot of volume of Bitcoin sales. The seller’s market is outnumbering the buyer’s market at this point, with the merchants almost exclusively selling Bitcoin out of the market. Bitcoin is attracting companies in the business of selling out Bitcoin.


If merchants were taking Bitcoin, and then paying employees in Bitcoin, the ecosystem and price would strengthen, not weaken. That conversion to paying employees in BTC as a popular option is still in Bitcoin’s future. Right now, that’s a rarity. But the eagerness of merchants to accept Bitcoin is another sign of its enduring strength and market demand. This is a very good thing, but paying employees in Bitcoin would be a great thing.


Bitcoin Went Through Its Bubble. Now It’s The Market’s Turn.

As we went over earlier, Bitcoin has gone through the Mt. Gox Bot Bubble, the closure of Silk Road, the Chinese government/People’s Bank of China (Their Federal Reserve) regulation of the Bitcoin exchange market in China, and Ben Lawsky’s draconian NY Bitcoin License fiasco over the last 12 months. And Bitcoin is still up 200% over last year at this time.


The stock market is in the middle of one of the largest bubbles in it’s entire history. The economy is stagnant, at best, but the stock market is booming? Did you ever think to ask yourself why? It wouldn’t have anything to do with all the new phony Fed money that’s been created since “Quantitative Easing” began being invested into the stock market, which is a textbook way to create a stock market crash? Inflated stock value without any actual production supporting it? And all “Bull Runs” come to an end, and this one is running on fumes. The average Wall Street Bull Run lasts 2.1 years. This one is at 5.5 years. All good things come to an end. It’s just a matter of time.


And how many times over the last year have you heard someone on TV, online, or in an investment discussion say “Buy Gold & Silver!”? You hear it almost every day. So how is silver down about 25% over the last year, and gold has dropped more than $100? These markets are rigged and manipulated, just like the Dollar Index and the Consumer Price Index. The banks control those markets, and they’re holding the prices down, but experts believe the true price of gold and silver is as much as 10X what the listed price is.


If you believe everything you’re told about the value of the dollar, the amount of inflation, and the price of gold and silver, you are walking blind without a cane. I do have a financial investment background on Wall Street, and all I can say is gold won’t be under $1500 long-term, and is ready for unprecedented growth, only because the price you see is not real. One day, you’ll wake up, and gold will be $5-8k an ounce. Silver will be $80. And hyperinflation and the dollar collapse will hit the United States like a freight train. The only question is: Do you see the shell game for what it is? And will you get out of the market in time, or collapse with it?


So what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? When these manipulated markets correct themselves over the next 3-4 years, Bitcoin will be there to reap the rewards. Smart people, rich in gold and silver, will sell when price seeks it’s true level, and will invest in something else. Like Bitcoin, if they haven’t already. You have to be patient. Fools rush in, and out.


In closing, no one said Bitcoin hitting the mainstream would be smooth or easy. Bitcoin is going through some growing pains. But I needn’t go through history to show you how so many of today’s staples have gone through bumps in the road only to come clean out on the other side, stronger than ever. There is too much money invested, too much technology available, too many built-in advantages, and too much corporate and global interest to stop Bitcoin at this point. The Network Effect. Bitcoin must go through this awkward stage, like a pubescent teenager who has outgrown his clothes from last year, before it can mature and become what you expect it to be. Last year, it went from Kid Currency to grown adult, married with children, with no stops in between. Then the market corrected it. And now, the Dollar is having it’s day in the sun. And here we are. This too shall pass.


Bitcoin is an invention. It cannot be “uninvented”. Bitcoin may evolve, may add new features, may change in value. But digital currency is here to stay, mostly because it is better than what’s in place, and the world badly needs a better currency system, and the superior digital protocols that come with it. Bitcoin isn’t controlled by a single entity, which scares most establishment forces, but the Internet was never centrally controlled, and it did just fine. And you are doing just fine with the Internet. Better than fine. Think of Bitcoin as the child of the Internet.


So have the experience of an Internet user, the savvy of rich investor, and the guts of a top poker player to watch the large waves hit the shore, and smile, knowing your island of digital providence has a secure future.


Bitcoin is not just a dollar price because Bitcoin is much more than a mere investment. The world needs Bitcoin to succeed.



source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-drop-really-good-news/



BitCoin price drop is good news