Venezuela has been the vital force behind bitcoin mining as the country primarily uses it as an effective tool to fight hyperinflation in their country. In the city of Caracas and in a small office, there is a network of 20 complex computers with intense data crunching ability that mines bitcoins.

Although bitcoin mining is a practice which is being carried out globally but it was picked up mainly from a local office in Venezuela. One of the biggest reasons behind rising activities of bitcoin mining in Venezuela is that the country is fighting hard with its economic and political crisis. Its economic position is menaced by hyperinflation which has reached an astounding level of 720% this year (IMF report). Many miners are using computers to carry out complex calculations which is essentially book keeping for the digital transactions. Therefore, these miners earn a commission in bitcoin on every transaction.

Venezuelans have found respite in bitcoin these days and other virtual currencies as their local currency has almost become worthless. In addition, they are finding it very difficult to find dollars. Their rising interest in the virtual currency world has pushed bitcoin price to above $6,000 mark.

As reported in a local publication, Veronica – one of the office worker in Caracas (she did not reveal her complete identity due to arrest threat), has given a statement that her supervisor had installed these machines back in 2015. She said:

Randy Brito, bitcoin mining consultant speculates that roughly 100,000 Venezuelans are mining. However, it is very difficult to find the exact figure as they are shielding against the servers of other countries. He also added that virtual currencies picked up in 2014 when economic crisis in Venezuela became worse. The primary reason behind economic meltdown was slump in global oil prices as it constitutes 96% in their country’s revenues.

Randy also said:

Bitcoin mining and subsidized electricity in Venezuela
Venezuela has become a popular spot of bitcoin mining as it requires heavy power electricity which is almost free in the country. This is because the government has offered huge subsidies on electricity which makes it highly profitable to mine virtual currencies.

Many workers are attracted by the money in this business as Veronica herself has bought a machine worth $2,280 from China.

She said:

They have set up the machines in different locations to divide power consumption and avoid any raid by intelligence agencies.

Furthermore, she added:

Bitcoin transactions have reached $1.1 million in Venezuela during the last week of September. In the end Veronica said, “each Litecoin is worth $46, that’s $920 a month”.

This is indeed a treasure in a country where the minimum salary about $40.
Source https://pakwired.com/government-decides-to-depreciate-dollar-value/

Ever since Bitcoin set a new all-time high yesterday afternoon, it was only a matter of time until the momentum would sour again. After all, every new all-time high is met with a slight retracement before the next leg upward. Right now, the Bitcoin price is back below US$6,000, down from US$6,170 yesterday evening. A lot of people are wondering what’s next for the Bitcoin price, but things are still looking pretty good.


Most Bitcoin traders have gotten used to seeing the Bitcoin price go up, retrace, and go up again. These cycles of gaining value, correcting, and gaining more value have become a lot more common these days. While Bitcoin may be seeing less overall volatility compared to a few years ago, the current Bitcoin price swings are often a lot bigger in terms of USD value. That is not necessarily a bad or strange thing, especially when looking at the current Bitcoin market as a whole.

To put this into perspective, the Bitcoin price reached a new all-time high just yesterday. With the price surpassing US$6,000 and US$6,100 in quick succession, it was evident a correction would need to occur sooner or later. These corrections don’t have to be major, mind you, but right now we are dealing with another US$250 dip. With the Bitcoin price hovering near the US$5,950 level right now, it is evident there has been a very strong pullback, although it will not last all that long.

In fact, the Bitcoin price dipped all the way down to US$5,827 overnight, which is in stark contrast to the US$6,194 all-time high we saw just a few hours prior. Particularly during the weekend, such price swings have become all the more common as of late. This doesn’t mean we will see a full-fledged retracement anytime soon either, as reaching US$6,000 again seems to be only a matter of time right now. Dips are designed to be bought, as they allow for some quick profits along the way.

Moreover, we are still seeing very strong 24-hour trading volume numbers for Bitcoin. With US$2.2 billion worth of BTC changing hands across all exchanges, it is evident there is a growing demand for the world’s leading cryptocurrency. This is not entirely surprising, especially not with a few big dips along the way after setting the latest all-time high. Though it remains to be seen what the future may hold for the Bitcoin price, things aren’t looking all that bad by any means.

The trend established over the past few weeks has not changed when it comes to the exchanges ranked by trading volume. Bitfinex is still firmly in charge, followed closely by Bithumb. bitFlyer is still in third place, as no other exchanges generated over US$100 million in 24-hour volume. This is slightly changed from yesterday, even though all top 5 exchanges are comprised solely of fiat currencies. It’s a solid trend for Bitcoin; that much is rather evident.

All things considered, this brief dip is doing the Bitcoin price some favors right now. Every new all-time high needs a small correction before the uptrend can be resumed. Even a near-$400 dip is pretty insignificant when looking at Bitcoin’s bigger picture. With just a 2.38% loss over the past 24 hours, things are still looking pretty positive for the time being. It is only a matter of time until we see US$6,000 again, and even US$6,100 isn’t completely out of reach for later today.
Source: https://themerkle.com/bitcoin-price-beyond-the-new-all-time-high-brief-dip-before-next-leg-up/

Bitcoin has officially entered the mainstream. The most recent edition of Charlie Rose, the PBS interview show that has endured since 1993, features Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of Ark Investment Management, along with reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

Early in the interview, Wood compares the overall market cap of Bitcoin (in which she includes BCH) to the cap of companies such as Apple or Amazon. She says:
 
Bankers and the changing financial world

During the interview, the discussion turns to the ways that Bitcoin will disrupt the banking industry. Because it circumvents bankers, all three participants in the interview agree that the banking industry is very much not pro-Bitcoin. However, according to Wood:
 The world’s radically changing financial landscape has begun to take on new properties that investors and consumers could have never imagined. Comparing the technology to VOIP, Wood remarks that no one understood that voice transmissions could be free over the internet, but now they are. Eventually, “money over IP will be free as well.”
Source: https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-bigger-idea-than-apple-amazon-says-ark-investments-ceo

check this video, how Scamconnect works 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fujWfmgRJU

lol scammer busted, get the fuck outta crypto fucking scammers, crypto is not for bad guys!

Small business entrepreneur triples her money with Bitcoin - but beware the risks

On paper, Dee Heath looks like the poster child for bitcoin speculation. The small business entrepreneur invested $5000 in Bitcoin and in three months it turned into $14,000.

Her day job is a pole-dancing fitness business in Sydney's western suburbs. She's tech savvy and has been following the  rise of cryptocurrency for some time.

She is so impressed with the return that she is considering becoming a full-time investor in virtual currencies.
But Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, said the risks of virtual currency investing are considerable. "They are a punt," he said.

Ms Heath is well aware of the risks. "You need to be a long-term investor who doesn't stress out if there is big dip," Ms Heath said. "I only invest what I am willing to lose." she said.
"I really love the idea of online currencies and I think that everything is shifting so online now that I see a lot of potential in it," she said.

As Bitcoin moved up sharply again this week, after breaching $US5000 last week, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue heard evidence on Wednesday about virtual currencies and tax.

Most governments around the world are only starting to come to grips with the impacts of cryptocurrencies, which can be invisible to tax authorities, and to the "blockchain" technologies that support them.

Kevin Hogan, the member for Page in NSW and chair of the committee, said there would be problems for governments if virtual currencies become widely accepted and remained outside regulation.

"If people choose to go 'off the grid' and it is fully encrypted, that presents challenges," Mr Hogan said

However, there are also opportunities. If the Tax Office embraces blockchain and accounting software packages embrace it, the collection and payments of taxes could be much more efficient, he said.

"However, if these cryptocurrencies emerge in greater numbers, certainly the government will need to adapt to some of that to make sure that the tax payment system is included in that," he said.

He said we are still a long way from widespread acceptance of virtual currencies, but that the government wants to get on the front foot. 

Some governments have recently made moves to control and limit the growth in virtual currencies.

Bitcoin fell to about $US3200 last month after China's central bank said it was cracking down on initial coin offerings and virtual currency exchanges. It come back even stronger, passing $US5000 last week before rising a further another $US500 this week.

Last week Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said governments around the world will "crush" Bitcoin before long.

He noted recent moves to curb the circulation of Bitcoin in China and an initiative in Japan to launch an electronic currency pegged to the yen.

These were signs of authorities getting a proper grip on virtual currencies, he said, because "they like to know where the money is, who has it, and what you're doing with it".

"I don't personally understand the value of something that has no actual value," he said. "If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay a price for it one day."

Blockchain is an online ledger controlled by a global network of computers, in which records are distributed across the network, it cannot be hacked or falsified as easily as information held in a single repository.

Virtual currency is just one of the early applications of blockchain technology.

Bitcoin's price in US dollars has increased sixfold since the start of this year.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/government-considers-tax-implications-of-virtual-currencies-20171019-gz3zv3.html

Mobile bitcoin wallets users might not realize it, but their money might be at a heightened risk this November.

While advertised as a tool bitcoin users can tap to achieve an experience more akin to a conventional financial product, mobile bitcoin wallets today send transactions to the bitcoin blockchain, though in a way that differs from the default wallet options. But come November this construction could cause turbulence, because that's when the bitcoin protocol is aiming to undergo yet another major change to its software.

Following this summer's activation of the code upgrade SegWit, a group of businesses are now seeking to trigger a hard fork to increase bitcoin's block size and further expand its transaction capacity. The code, part of a larger upgrade called Segwit2x, could lead bitcoin to split into two (again), that is, if not everyone decides to support the upgrade.

Still, the difference is that, unlike bitcoin cash, Segwit2x's developers are doing everything they can to keep all bitcoin users on the same blockchain.

Segwit2x lead developer Jeff Garzik told CoinDesk:

To do so, developers backing the project also have made a couple of key (if controversial) design decisions that have to do with maintaining compatibility with "simplified payment verification" wallets, the technical term for smartphone-based bitcoin wallet applications.

But developers argue that there are pros and cons of how they are trying to accomplish this.

For one, it might not exactly be safe for mobile wallet users to make transactions immediately after the hard fork is enacted.

Attack resistance or convenience?
The first design decision is omitting so-called "replay protection."

A bit of a political term, it's meant to describe what happens when a blockchain splits in two, as users suddenly have equal value on both blockchains. This means that when users move tokens on one blockchain, the tokens also move (or "replay") on the other.

But this isn't visible to people who might not know that they have money on two networks during a network split. Worse case: users might lose some of their money and not even notice.

"It becomes unpredictable what money you're moving and when," Bread Wallet CMO Aaron Lasher explained in conversation with CoinDesk.

Since not everyone agrees with the Segwit2x hard fork – some are even going as far as to write up manifestos in opposition – it's likely to split into two competing networks, and this could be confusing for general users.

However, Segwit2x developers have a reason for leaving replay protection out: to keep Segwit2x compatible with SPV mobile wallets.

"'Replay protection', as you call it, splits the chain. It simply doesn't make sense. You'd suddenly be breaking [more than 10 million] SPV clients that otherwise work just fine. It is a goal of Segwit2x to help avoid this," BitGo CEO Mike Belshe wrote in an email debate between developers of the project.

In other words, replay protection would cause inconvenience for mobile wallet users who want to shift over to the Segwit2x blockchain, so Segwit2x developers don't plan on adding it.

Hard fork decisions
Mobile wallets are the subject of debate in another area as well.

Many providers of this wallet option, such as Electrum and Bread Wallet, rely on SPV. This does away with need to hold a full copy of the blockchain, making the data far easier to store on storage-strapped cellphones.

But, they have some drawbacks. (Coinkite co-founder CEO Rodolfo Novak went as far as to quip that "the 'V' in SPV stands for Victim.")

As implemented today, SPV wallets will automatically follow whatever version of bitcoin has the most miners backing it. So, if bitcoin splits into two, and Segwit2x attracts more computing power than the legacy bitcoin chain, then all of the SPV wallets will follow along. That's by design.

But some mobile wallet providers aren't so happy about this, as it's hard to explain to users what's happening.

"It's really tough for us because we are so direly affected," said Lasher.

This also has the potential to lead to some technical problems. If there are two bitcoins, mobile wallet software might get confused about which chain to follow, especially if miners switch between blockchains over time (as happened in the aftermath of the bitcoin cash fork).

"It could confuse SPV clients and result in clients switching back and forth between chains, making them lose money depending on which chain has more work at what point," Chaincode engineer Matt Corallo said.

Novak painted another scenario.

"With SVP you don't know if the node you are connected to is lying to you. For example, a Segwit2x node can spoof as a [bitcoin] node [on the other chain], this means that without replay protection your wallet may spend the funds in the wrong chain and lose them on the correct chain," Novak told CoinDesk.

Overall, developers paint an assortment of "if-then" scenarios. Lasher admitted as much, noting that it's unclear which ones will actually play out.

"It's really this decision tree of many, many things that can happen. And all of them are on the scale of somewhat annoying to downright dangerous," he said, adding that Bread Wallet plans to encourage users to stop making transactions during the hard fork, "if they can manage."

A solution?
But with disarray at the application layer, protocol developers have been arguing about how best to handle what might come.

Bitcoin contributor James Hilliard, well-known for helping to prevent a bitcoin split earlier this year, suggested a change to the Segwit2x codebase that he argues would give mobile wallets more control over the which bitcoin they ultimately land on.

Again, though, Segwit2x developers argue that this change would make it more difficult for users to transition to a blockchain with a block size increase – something they believe many users want to do, so that they can make cheaper transactions. (Garzik argued that is the most "neutral" metric for determining which chain SPV wallets should follow.)

But, again, others believe that this will confuse users and perhaps even lead those that are unaware of the situation to lose money.

Some developers even agree that there needs to be a block-size parameter increase, but simply disagree with some of Segwit2x's design decisions.

As such, the statements highlight that, while often portrayed as black and white, the scaling argument still has its shades of gray.

Lasher concluded:
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/money-risk-mobile-wallets-become-new-battleground-bitcoin-fork-debate/

Russia moves quickly in its push against Bitcoin and other decentralised currencies, as it first issued a ban on access to exchanges, then followed that up with a state-mandated currency.

This play is to seemingly control the burgeoning cryptocurrency market within its state borders, allowing the government to be in charge of digital currencies and of course to tax them.

The Russian regulatory model is one that is seemingly not against digital currencies, but against ones that are decentralized and not controlled by powerful officials. This has in turn seen more and more of those at the top in Russia come out and slander Bitcoin.

Russia’s Economic Development Minister, Maksim Oreskin, has said that Bitcoin is no better than casinos.

Taking a gamble
In a talk at the World’s Festival of Youth in Sochi, Oreskin said Bitcoin had characteristics that made it worse than casinos, state-backed Russian media outlet RT reported.

He was speaking on a day which saw Bitcoin suffer its deepest one-day decline in a month, with rumours circulating that the USA may well be clamping down in the near future.

“As for Bitcoin, if you look at how the value of this asset fluctuates, it's dozens of percent up, then dozens of a percent down. An asset that can be available for an unqualified investor should not have such characteristics, because it's worse than casinos. First, you earn, then you will lose everything and be left with nothing," Oreshkin said.

“Those who do not know how to manage risks in instruments with such volatility, should not be able to invest, because in 99.9 percent of cases it results in losses for such people and then they will find themselves in a difficult life situation, which is not good," Oreshkin added.

A Russian way of doing things
In a manner similar to the Russian state capture of cryptocurrencies, the finance minister has his own thoughts on how to deal with Bitcoin in the country.

Oreshkin has proposed granting the right to trade Bitcoins only to qualified investors. To get the status, you need to have at least six million rubles in your account ($100,000), make at least 40 transactions a year with a turnover of six million rubles, or have worked for at least two years in a financial institution that traded securities.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/russian-economic-development-minister-calls-bitcoin-worse-than-casinos

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not the "new gold," Goldman Sachs said in a note, advising investors that precious metals "remain a relevant asset class" in portfolios.

In a note to clients earlier this week, Goldman detailed the benefits of holding gold in a portfolio.

"The use of precious metals is not a historical accident – they are still the best long-term store of value out of the known elements," the investment bank said.

But it also addressed the rise of cryptocurrencies. Many commentators have dubbed bitcoin "digital gold" because of the fact it has a finite supply and has at times seen price rises due to geopolitical tensions.

Goldman concluded that bitcoin is not a good store of value versus gold.

"Gold wins out over cryptocurrencies in a majority of the key characteristics of money," Goldman said.

The analysts said that digital wallets, where people can store cryptocurrencies, are vulnerable to hacking, and virtual currencies also have "significant regulatory risks." For example, China recently banned cryptocurrency exchanges and put a stop to initial coin offerings (ICOs), the new way for start-ups to raise money by issuing digital tokens.

Goldman also said that cryptocurrencies are subject to network or infrastructure risk during a crisis. For example, there was a "hard fork" this summer when bitcoin split to create a new cryptocurrency called bitcoin cash.

Some regulators, like those in Japan, have allowed bitcoin to be used as a form of payment. Bitcoin can also be broken down into much smaller units. While this may make it look like a better medium of exchange than gold, Goldman said that transaction fees have risen sharply this year. The average transaction fee at its peak in mid-July was just below $9, according to bitinfocharts.com.

The investment bank said that gold is not subject to competition from alternatives. Bitcoin has rival virtual currencies like Monero or Dash for example. There are over 1,000 cryptocurrencies in existence.

And finally, Goldman said that gold "is clearly better at holding its purchasing power, and has much lower daily volatility." The note said that bitcoin's volatility averaged almost seven times that of gold in 2017.

The price of spot gold is up over 10 percent this year. Bitcoin meanwhile is up over 400 percent. However, the cryptocurrency has had wild swings in price.

"Cryptocurrencies are not the 'new gold' despite their recent popularity," Goldman concluded.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/19/bitcoin-is-not-the-new-gold-goldman-sachs-says.html

dev don't knows what he is doing, he don't even knows how blockchain works, he just wanna make some quick money but thanks God he failed! cause now we all know that this a scam and no1 will spend a penny to buy this shitcoin.

 Entrepreneurs do not often welcome regulation. For Japanese cryptocurrency start-ups, however, a framework put in place by the country’s financial authorities has been a boon.

Rules announced this year by the Financial Services Agency allow people to pay for goods and services with bitcoin and require cryptocurrency exchanges or remittance operators to be licensed and subject to annual audits. These have given bitcoin official approval.

“The Japanese have felt that cryptocurrencies are a scary thing but trading volumes have increased as many now see it as trustworthy thanks to government approval,” says Yusuke Otsuka, chief operating officer at Coincheck, a bitcoin exchange.

The FSA issued operating licences to 11 bitcoin exchanges late last month. Coincheck has applied for a licence and is hoping to receive approval next month, Mr Otsuka says.

The new digital currency rules come as other governments clamp down on cryptocurrencies. China, for instance, has banned companies from issuing their own virtual currencies and is cracking down on cryptocurrency exchanges.

However, for Japan, cryptocurrencies sit within the realm of fintech. The government and banking leaders hope that this sector’s businesses — ranging from artificial intelligence-led investment advisory groups to cloud data storage — will free up cash sitting in bank deposits and reignite the economy.

There has been domestic hand-wringing over the investment going into fintech ventures in Japan compared with that in other developed countries. Japan’s fintech sector, seen as a laggard, had investments of $65m in 2015. This compares with $12bn in the US, $974m in the UK and $69m in Singapore, according to consultants Accenture.

“We’re hoping that fintech will change economic and corporate activity,” says Takuya Fukumoto, director of industrial finance in the economy, trade and industry ministry. The ministry set out the government’s vision in August, calling for an increase in cashless consumer payments, digitising back-office functions and new technologies to enhance cash flow between companies.

Japanese banks, worried that fintech ventures will become mainstream players, are trying to gain exposure to new technologies by either creating a business or investing in a start-up.

Kazuhisa Shibayama, founder and chief executive of WealthNavi, a “robo-advisory” company that offers customers investment advice provided by AI, has been helped by the government’s push for fintech businesses.

When he started his company two years ago, the financial technology sector was not as well known as today.

“I was only told by venture capital investors after I started that my company was part of the fintech sector and that it was what people described as ‘robo-advisory’,” says Mr Shibayama.

He points out that for many fintech entrepreneurs, technology is only a tool to offer users better services at a cheaper price.

Many feel that unlike Japan’s manufacturing sector, where companies introduced the notion of kaizen, or continual improvement, financial services might have been left behind.

Anecdotally, Mr Shibayama says, the new enthusiasm for fintech among businesses and investors has led to more venture capital firms looking for investments.

However, fintech entrepreneurs and start-ups are scarce, he adds, with young people still choosing the traditional route of looking for jobs in established companies.

The fintech arena also struggles to attract many of Japan’s IT engineers and programmers, who tend to enter the country’s thriving gaming sector.

While some may end up in financial services, the cultural gap between the two industries can be hard to bridge.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/b8360e86-aceb-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e130

The president of Brazil’s central bank has rebuked bitcoin, comparing the cryptocurrency to a pyramid scheme.

Brazilian central bank president Ilan Goldfajn has taken a dismissive stance against bitcoin and criticized the marked growth in the value of the cryptocurrency this year. Since the turn of 2017, the cryptocurrency has grown from $1,000 to its recent all-time high of $5,920.

According to the official, investors of bitcoin are only buying in to fuel its appreciation and are therefore contributing to a pyramid scheme. A typical pyramid scheme sees operators encourage investors to buy rope in new investors to fuel an unsustainable revenue stream reliant on new capital from investors.

He went on to add that “the central bank is not interested in bubbles or illicit payments” while stressing the need to “separate” bitcoin from other applications of blockchain, the cryptocurrency’s underlying decentralized technology.

The influential figure’s comments are notable at a time when the central bank is planning regulations for the cryptocurrency and FinTech sector at a time when Brazil is reeling from its worst recession ever following to political scandals and money mismanagement. Brazil has seen a notable rise in its appetite for bitcoin in recent years. One report by a Brazilian non-profit revealed that bitcoin trading among Brazilian cryptocurrency exchanges surpassed gold sport trading on Brazil’s securities exchange in the first half of 2016.

It is yet unknown if Goldfajn’s comments have a material impact on the upcoming regulations. Market observers have previously called Brazil’s central bank, the Banco Central do Brasil (BSB) – as the only governing body left to save [Brazil’s] economy.
Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-bubble-pyramid-scheme-says-brazil-central-bank-chief/

why all the hate   it's the same to us, we ll get the same amount of PPP even if he remove them because this campaign isn't
based on stakes.

dev playing dirty game here, he just pumped the price and here is the proof: Here and people who participate in airdrop can't move their tokens, SCAM it's clear as hell. $5m market cap for this shitcoin lol scammers are counting money now  
you can see that eDge devs have more than 50% of total supply 500m token in more 100 different addresses: here when they gives only 5m to airdrop participants!!

Bitcoin is already in retail and restaurants—so it was only a matter of time before the cryptocurrency took on real estate. That time is now. Bitcoin is slowly making its way into closings on everything from Lake Tahoe land in California to Manhattan condos to single-family homes in the heart of Texas.

"Our buyer has evolved, they've moved from mom-and-pops to young people who want to pay with various forms of payment," said Ben Shaoul, president of Magnum Real Estate Group.
"Cryptocurrency is something that has been asked of us — 'Can you take cryptocurrency? Can we pay that way?' — and of course when somebody wants to pay you with a different form of payment, you're going to try to work with them and give them what they want, especially in a very busy real estate market."

Shaoul is redeveloping a building on Manhattan's Lower East Side, turning it into condominiums priced between $700,000 and $1.5 million. He admits that there is currently a lot of inventory in the market, and therefore having an edge over his competitors is especially key. Bitcoin, he hopes, will be that edge.

"I think the demographic of the crypto user is a younger millennial, but, that being said, you have a lot of people come over from other countries, who are buyers from different places, who like to trade in different types of currency. Not everyone wants to trade in dollars or yen or euros," Shaoul said.

He intends to hold the bitcoins, rather than convert them to dollars. As an investor in the art market, where bitcoin is also increasingly present, he sees an opportunity to make even more money. Bitcoin has also been appreciating at lightning speed lately.

Others, however, are not as comfortable with the relatively new currency. The first ever single-family home sale in Texas involving bitcoin was announced last month. The buyer, who works in the tech industry, bought the newly built home in Austin using bitcoin, but the seller, a custom homebuilder, wanted the currency converted to dollars during the transaction.

"Austin is a really technologically advanced city, I'd say, so I was surprised we hadn't heard anybody wanting to do this before," said J Kuper at Sotheby's International Realty, which brokered the deal. "But, candidly, we didn't know how to do it. It was a quick challenge and scramble to figure out all the moving parts, but we were instantly excited about the opportunity to figure that out."

They used Bitpay, a global bitcoin payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta. It converted the bitcoins into dollars for the buyer. Given that bitcoin's value is a moving target day to day, the risk was all on the buyer side. The seller agreed to a fixed price in dollars.

"We found that on the day of the closing, we were kind of watching it [bitcoin's value] through the day," said Kuper. "The timing actually ended up perfect for the exchange, very well for our client, so there was really no hesitation, no need to postpone."

Kuper said the client got a "very fair" exchange rate, though he could imagine how it could've been more volatile. He says bitcoin has proven to be a bit more stable in the past six months.

There is, however, still a lot of nervousness for newcomers to the currency. Neither the buyer nor the seller in the Austin deal would talk about the transaction. Much of the concern may be around the lack of regulation so far in cryptocurrency and the lack of understanding as to how gains in bitcoin are taxed. The Internal Revenue Service issued a bit of guidance on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in 2014.

"What they said in that guidance is if you hold bitcoin or etherium or one of these other convertible digital currencies as a capital asset, when you use that bitcoin to purchase goods or services — so for example, if I were to take $1 million in bitcoin to buy an apartment building or something — to the extent that bitcoin has appreciated since I acquired it, any of that gain, that built-in gain, would be taxed when I used the bitcoin to buy the building," said Jeremy Naylor, a tax attorney and partner at Cooley LLP.

He added that whether people are voluntarily paying that tax might be a separate question, but from a technical, legal perspective, it would be similar to selling stock to generate the cash to buy an apartment. In a direct transaction, buyers simply skip the part where they convert the bitcoin into dollars. Using Bitpay, the buyers are 'selling' the bitcoin, and therefore any appreciation is taxable.

The complicated nature of real estate may be why bitcoin has been slow to move into the market. One of the first deals in the U.S. involved a $1.6 million sale of land — a home site — in Lake Tahoe in 2014. Martis Camp Realty Inc. President Brian Hull, who brokered that deal, said his firm has not received any other inquiries from buyers interested in using bitcoin.

International buyers seem more comfortable with the currency. Last month British entrepreneurs Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman launched a bitcoin-priced real estate development in Dubai.

The U.S. market has been slower to buy into bitcoin for real estate. All of the deals so far have been done without a mortgage, and Shaoul said the bulk of those inquiring about his Manhattan condos are foreign buyers.

"This industry of real estate is notorious for lagging behind in technology, and innovation," he said. "Now we are starting to innovate, so we're very far behind. Bitcoin and payments with bitcoin have been around for years. Why it hasn't touched down in real estate in the sale of an apartment is odd, quite frankly."

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/10/16/bitcoin-is-finally-buying-into-us-real-estate.html

As bitcoin approaches yet another record, Union Square Ventures LLC’s Fred Wilson says investors should be careful how much of their portfolios are allocated to digital currencies.

Wilson, who first invested in the sector in 2013, wants to set the record straight on exactly what percentage of someone’s investments should be tied to things like bitcoin.

“I have about five percent of our net worth in crypto assets, across a number of vehicles; direct holdings, Union Square funds, token funds, etc.,” Wilson said in a blog post. “I think that’s likely at the high end of what the average person should have, but I also think its not a ridiculous number for the average person to have.”

If someone had invested in bitcoin the same day that Wilson announced his venture capital firm’s investment in Coinbase Inc., a trading platform for cryptocurrencies, they would have seen their investment rise a whopping 5,000 percent.

Here’s a look at how much a few different types of investor should have tied to cryptocurrencies, according to Wilson:

 . Young, aggressive risk takers should have the highest allocation at 10 percent of net worth
 .  Someone who’s a sophisticated investor, but maybe not as much of a risk taker should have 5 percent
 . The everyday investor who’s more conservative, but still willing to take on some risk should devote 3 percent
 . Someone at the retirement age and simply trying to preserve their portfolio shouldn’t have anything in crypto

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/with-bitcoin-pushing-6000-early-investor-says-how-much-to-buy

Buyers wishing to purchase a Notting Hill mansion that will go on the market for £17 million will need to pay in bitcoin, which is believed to be a first for London, according to the Evening Standard. The six-storey stucco-fronted home is near Portobello Road.

London Wall bought the property in 2013. Company co-founder Lev Loginov hopes to pioneer transactions using bitcoin in England.

A Cryptocurrency Advocate
Loginov said he wants to change perceptions of cryptocurrency. He said cryptocurrency will remove the need for solicitors and property title, and will change the way real estate transactions are conducted. Loginov said bitcoin transactions can be done faster, more efficiently and more easily than working with banks, which bring overregulation.

Property sellers in the U.K. have accepted bitcoin in the past, but this marks the first time that an owner has said that they will only accept payment in bitcoin.

The owner of a £1.7 million Peckham townhouse last month offered to accept bitcoin, but also agreed to accept sterling. London Wall purchased the Notting Hill property for £9.5 million and has spent around three years renovating it from five flats into a single residence.

Loginov said it is likely that an Asian tech entrepreneur familiar with bitcoin will buy the property.

Hurdles Remain
He said hurdles remain for accepting payment in bitcoin for real estate property, such as how commissions will be paid to agents and stamp duty to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom (HMRC).

Loginov, who is 36, said he grew up in Siberia after the Soviet Union collapsed in the Nineties. He said barter was common since his family had no money. He said he expects London real estate agents will be able to figure out how to get commissions in cryptocurrency for such a large value property, and he has faith in HRMC to figure out how the sale will be taxed.

The sale will result in a £1.95 million stamp duty bill.

Bitcoin has been associated with tax evasion and drug trafficking in the past, but Loginov and Ned El-Imad, his business partner, have hired advisers to make sure the currency has not been purchased to launder money.

Quintel, a business intelligence firm, and James Ramsden QC, a lawyer and an asset tracing specialist, will work to determine the source of a prospective buyer’s funds.

Source: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/seller-of-17-million-u-k-mansion-will-only-accept-bitcoin/

Back in December 2012, Mark, a fourteen-year old millennial living in Hong Kong, poured some of the money he saved for college to Bitcoins.

Now a student in Australia, Mark is cashing in some of his Bitcoins to pay for his college education and living expenses.

Apparently, including Bitcoins in an education fund paid off for Mark.

But that was back in 2012, when Bitcoin was trading at low teens. What about now, with Bitcoin trading close to $6000? Is it a good idea for parents to pour some of the funds set aside for the education of their children in Bitcoin?

Nobody can say for sure, as guessing where the price of a highly speculative asset will be several years from now is a difficult task even for the most sophisticated forecasters.

But there are a few things that should make parents skeptical about the future of Bitcoin. One of them is timing. Bitcoin had an astronomical rise in recent months, and therefore, it’s due for another correction one that could be vicious. The digital currency has gained 32.45% in seven days only—see table.

Another thing is competition from competing cryptocurrencies, which might eventually lead to a collapse of the Bitcoin market -- like the tulip market back in 1637.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/10/15/do-bitcoins-belong-in-your-childs-education-fund/#a3a8e89423dc

Bitcoins is closer to diamonds than it is money, as its scarcity is its key attribute
Prices of bitcoin went through the roof and into the sky this week as traders decided it was the one true cryptocurrency. In just seven trading days, between Oct. 7 and Oct. 13, the bitcoin value has skyrocketed from $4,384 to $5,621. The new all-time high is $5,829, achieved overnight.

At $5,621, the bitcoin value represents nearly 55% of all cryptocurrency market cap — almost $94 billion. Ethereum, the next most popular coin, is worth about $31 billion. No other coin market is valued as high as $10 billion.

This has happened despite forks in both the bitcoin and ethereum blockchains; and a pending fork (dubbed SegWit2) in bitcoin scheduled to take place in November.

Nearly 95% of the bitcoin market had signaled support for SegWit2, which is designed to speed transaction processing. The decision by mining pool F2Pool, however, to back off its support set off a speculative frenzy.

What’s Going On?

It’s ironic that buyers have voted for bitcoin, as it has well-documented problems that make trading it difficult and expensive. While cryptocurrencies are touted as being highly liquid, bitcoin is the least liquid among them. That’s because its blockchain is old. It’s the equivalent of running all trades through a single PC in a cloud-based world.

But this is precisely why the latest boom has happened. Holders of bitcoin have simply held on. With no coins available to buy, prices skyrocketed like Cubs World Series tickets did last year.
The pending fork in bitcoin was supposed to have been settled by a New York agreement, engineered by Barry Silbert, whose Bitcoin Investment Trust was profiled by me this week as a “safe” place for retirement accounts to buy bitcoin.

Now, some bitcoin developers are condemning the fork, writing that coins held by Silbert’s Digital Currency Group may not be safe after the fork. DCG includes Coinbase, the most active bitcoin market in the U.S.

People or Technology

What’s being sold to traders and the media as a technical argument seems more like a political struggle. Bitcoin Core seems to resent the control Silbert and his fellow signatories have over the market and are revolting against it.

Under the New York agreement, control of the reference client after the fork will move next month from a “/bitcoin” directory at Github, the open source repository, into a /btc1 directory, under the control of Jeff Garzik in Atlanta, co-founder of blockchain developer Bloq. This will let the standard bitcoin block size grow, by two megabytes, which would ease trading bottlenecks.

From a technological perspective, the fork makes sense. From a market perspective, where traders want maximum value for what they have, it doesn’t. Bitfinex, a Hong Kong trading house, has created a futures market for speculating between the coins, which it has designated BCC, for Bitcoin Core, and BCU, for Bitcoin Unlimited.
These “Chain Split Tokens” show the new BCU coins created through SegWit2 trading for $447, less than 10% of what the older tokens are worth.

The Bottom Line

Bitcoin was designed to be a single global market, under decentralized control, but it is evolving into multiple markets, with Chinese and American players battling for control.

Right now, the Chinese have the advantage, because for all its technical problems a bitcoin token is rare and illiquid, thus highly prized for its scarcity. That’s behind the price rise, not the idea that bitcoin is money but the idea that the true bitcoin value is like diamonds — worth the extraordinary expense to mine and traded among elites based on that scarcity.
source: https://investorplace.com/2017/10/bitcoin-value-rules-cryptocurrencies/2/#.WeJaxTIo_IU

Born August 1, 2017, Bitcoin Cash is to its proponents what Bitcoin ought to be. As of now, it features 8MB blocks as opposed to one or two. Its transaction time is just under a minute and a half per block, and its fees are low, about seven cents per transaction. However, Bitcoin Cash did not take over Bitcoin after the fork. Let’s look at a few reasons why.


Litecoin’s SegWit activation led to adoption and drove prices higher. Perhaps some traders took wind of this and held Bitcoin despite some negative sentiment.


Not everyone who knew about the fork took advantage of it. Some kept their coins on Coinbase or other online wallets or exchanges that did not immediately divvy up a fork dividend.


The old credo, “Build it and they will come” did not apply in this case. Retailers and restaurants that accepted Bitcoin just weren’t there, leaving Bitcoin Cash without the killer app it could have used.


When it comes to cryptocurrencies, anything new comes with both speculation and, perhaps, a bit of paranoia. No one knew what would happen in regards to either coin after the fork. But SegWit had proven to work with Litecoin. And the market loves predictability, especially when it comes to an event such as the integration of optimizing software.


The chant for bigger blocks has been intensifying to a crescendo for the past couple of years, and SegWit proponents’ negation of this has kept pace. The lay user of bitcoin never really understood what the fight was truly about, and can hardly tell the difference between the two approaches.

 

Bitcoin is expecting another fork next month. However, after the first fork on August 1, speculators and traders learned that staying along for the ride with Bitcoin for the forked coin can prove profitable. This is especially the case if they can ride the storm for both coins.

There has been palpable fear in the market as a lot of altcoins saw their values slowly decline as traders jumped ship to bitcoin. Who can blame them? Bitcoin is now cruising past five thousand and nearing six as of the time of writing. In the meantime, we watched altcoins suffer this past week. Bitcoin Cash has caught itself in a balancing act, as its supporters have to maintain a code that will lead to profitability for miners in order to ensure the long-term success of the cryptocurrency.

source: https://themerkle.com/why-bitcoin-cash-isnt-king/