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The price rose to $12,000 because people on Bitfinex were trying to get rid of their tethers by buying bitcoin, and the arbitrage bots on the western exchanges simply followed them up, no realising that they need to decouple as 1 USD is no longer equal to 1 Tether.
Once the arb bots have their criteria changed, we should see a drop back down.
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With the last news about tether, I think it's going to implode soon.
I don't want to sell any of my btc, but I wish to be able to hedge this risk somhow. Is out there any place where I can short tethers, or any other roundaway to bet against it?
I think Bitfinex has a USDT/USD pair. So you can short tether betting that it will no longer be worth a dollar. |
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I think 2018 will be a bit like 2015 - we will rise a little, but not without a lot of time just treading water wondering whether bitcoin will meet it's challenges in scalingn and mass adoption. The jury is out on the latter - many of the companies that adopted bitcoin in 2014 have reversed their decision as bitcoin became unusable. This year will determine whether bitcoin makes it or is replaced by an alt.
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We all know that this week Bitconnect collapsed when the cryptocurrency markets came down. This left many investors down and out. However, it seems as if Bitconnect is trying to start over as a new scam ICO this time. They are currently raising funds through a new ICO called BitconnectX. https://www.coinbureau.com/ico/bitconnectx-attempt-scam-investors/There is almost 0 transparency over this project. There are no developers, leaders nor do they even have information on the company or any legal disclaimers. Most importantly though, for an ICO they don't even have a whitepaper! Just some vague references to PoW and PoS mining. Looks like a legit scam to me. What are your guy's thoughts? Thoughts: are there really idiots who are willing to lose their money participating in their ICO? |
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I understand that Coincheck are reimbursing all their users, so they don't suffer. That means Coincheck is going to eat the loss. How this will affect them long term is anyone's guess. The best outcome is if they can find the theives and get the coins returned. The worst case scenario is they eat the losses and struggle for the next few years to make the money up thorough fees.
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Ethereum has issued Part One of it's Sharding roadmap to scale the currency: https://www.coindesk.com/vitalik-first-part-ethereums-sharding-roadmap-nearly-done/Ethereum is getting closer to deploying new technology that would allow the network to scale, its founder said.
"It seems like part one of phase one is getting something like being already done," Vitalik Buterin said in a developer meeting.
The technology, known as sharding, attempts to split the ethereum blockchain's data into more manageable parts. Pointing to an initial spec posted on Github, Buterin said:
"It's theoretically a good spec of what minimal sharding is going to look like."
Ethereum is under pressure to keep up with the rising popularity of the platform, which has led to slower transaction times and high processing fees. The congestion has already led some token-based projects to build atop other blockchains such as Stellar.
Buterin went to state that the next phase of the four-stage scaling proposal will be completed in "a month and a bit," adding that development work will likely circulate on stateless clients, a type of ethereum software that does not need to process the complete history of the platform. |
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This definitely lends credence to my theory that Chinese market manipulation is still rife in crypto.
Everybody have been acting as if the Chinese suddenly took all of their bitcoins and vanished into thin air in September when exchanges were banned in mainland China, whereas the reality is they just moved their coins to exchanges located outside China.
Expect to see more shenanigans like January 15 from the Chinese in the future..
Yes. It's my belief that they're still players and are acting through the Hong Kong and Korean exchanges (hence the huge volumes that suddenly appeared in the Korean exchanges after the China "ban") |
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Coincheck says it will compensate everyone who has had a loss. The following is a blog post they have issued on this, which is in Japanese: http://corporate.coincheck.com/2018/01/28/30.html(use google translate to translate it into English) Refunds will be in Japanese Yen (JPY) |
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The problem with "Chinese coins" is that China has banned cryptocurrency. Yes, people are working around the bans, but only the most determined people. Everyone else has moved on.
Therefore if Fortuna wants to suceed it needs something other than "the next China coin" to promote it. So, what is this other attribute?
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-chinese-bitcoin-buyers-are-getting-around-government-banChinese citizens are still investing in Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market despite the government’s heavy crackdown.
In September 2017, Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges BTCC China, Huobi and OKCoin were ordered by the government to shut down their businesses. At one point, executives of the three cryptocurrency exchanges were prevented from leaving the country, due to a government investigation into local cryptocurrency exchanges.
Three months later, in December of 2017, China’s three largest cryptocurrency exchanges relocated their businesses to Hong Kong. BTCC China, Huobi and OKCoin rebranded to BTCC, Huobi Pro and OKEx, respectively. They intended to address the rapidly growing demand from Hong Kong-based investors.
Shortly after their move, the three trading platforms started to see daily volumes from Chinese investors grow exponentially. Somehow, Chinese investors were managing to circumvent Chinese trading restrictions by using Hong Kong-based exchanges. How is this possible?
In Hong Kong, it is relatively easy for investors to set up businesses. With less than $1,000, businesses can be legally created, which allows the opening of business bank accounts at Hong Kong-based financial institutions. Beginning in December 2017, many Chinese investors moved their funds from their Chinese bank accounts to Hong Kong bank accounts and started to trade cryptocurrencies more actively, effectively bypassing China’s restrictions.
But, unlike China, Hong Kong has a substantially lower supply to meet the growing demand. While China is home to major miners like Bitmain, Hong Kong does not produce much Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As such, premiums in the Hong Kong cryptocurrency market increased, surpassing even that of the South Korean market. On January 18, when the global average price of Bitcoin was around $11,500, Bitcoin was being traded at above $13,000 on Huobi Pro.
Krystal Hu, a Hong Kong-based finance journalist, noted that traders outside of China have also started to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity presented by the Hong Kong market. For instance, on January 18, the price of Bitcoin on Coinbase was $11,800. Purchasing Bitcoin from Coinbase and selling it on any Hong Kong-based market would have generated $1,200 in profit.
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How could you be so sure it's over?
Nobody is sure. Bitcoin first tested the $10k level on Jan 17th. It bounced back up, and it tried to go below $10k on Jan 23rd. Since then it has been trading above $10k, and if it can survive above $11k for a few more days, it will break upwards. The next few days are crucial. |
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Stripe has announced that it is working on enabling BCH, ETH, LIC and Stellar. So it's dumping bitcoin but not giving up on crypto as a whole.
The reason why they stopped accepting bitcoin payments is because of the fee and slow confirmation but haven't they realized that the fees are quite good and transactions became faster now? They remain optimistic about cryptocurrency and just like the US gov't declared about bitcoin as an asset, they are also looking on it as an asset not a payment method anymore. Source; https://cointelegraph.com/news/payment-processor-stripe-ends-support-for-bitcoin-hypes-altcoinsIt's only speeded up in the last few days. They don't know if this is temporary or permanent. On the other hand, they've seen fees rise from Jan 2017 to Dec 2017. So they're erring on the side of caution and dumping bitcoin for other coins. It will be up to bitcoin to demonstrate low fees for at least a few months before anyone reconsiders and includes them as a payment option again. |
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Bitcoin is just a virtual currency, but it is used as real money to buy many things. There are many people who accept Bitcoin payments for items, including online stores and regular stores. Popular online stores accept Bitcoins including Newegg, Overstock, Microsoft, Dell and more.
In the United States, there are Reeds Jewelers, One Shot Hotels, Holiday Inn, and even pizza locations, restaurants and more. You can even use Bitcoin to buy addictive drugs, gambling, bullion, or even donate to charity. This is the reason why I like BTC.
Microsoft and Dell no longer accept bitcoin. |
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It looks like BitPay is enabling Bitcoincash. Here is their latest update dated 26th Jan 2018: https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-plugin-updates/At BitPay, we want to make it as simple as possible for merchants to accept bitcoin payments. Our plugins with popular e-commerce payment solutions let online stores accept bitcoin without headaches or bitcoin price volatility risk.
These updates will open up new BitPay features coming soon to BitPay merchants, including Bitcoin Cash support. If they can get a wide number of merchants to accept BCH, then that is bullish for the coin. |
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Coinbase has not started batching yet but its good other exchanges have started doing that. What do you think of segwits impact?
It must be another exchange that has started batching then, because the drop in the mempool is dramatic. Segwit use is still only around 20%, so it isn't big enough yet to reduce the mempool by 80%. It must be something else. |
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Litecoin is being used more and more. See the following article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/news/accepted-4m-litecoin-fleet-racing-cars/Would you transfer £4m into cryptocurrency to pay for a fleet of fast cars? This is the question being asked by Eleesa Dadiani, the self-styled “Queen of Cryptocurrency”, who has set up an agency that aims to connect buyers desperate to pay digitally with sellers wary of accepting.
Her eponymous Mayfair art gallery has been accepting digital currencies, including Bitcoin, since last year. Now she aims to give buyers a way to pay in a range of cryptocurrencies for very valuable items. Her most recent deal facilitated the £4m sale of a fleet of racing cars using Litecoin, a Bitcoin rival. That wouldn't have happened a year ago, bitcoin's spike in fees are made people look for alternatives. |
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Rumour of a "merger" between Monero and Litecoin: https://bitcoinist.com/possible-litecoin-monero-merger-steps-closer-reality/Charlie Lee admits his ambition to work with Monero in a series of tweets he posted yesterday, claiming that Litecoin’s liquidity would be a good fit for Monero’s anonymity and fungibility.
Monero (XMR) creator Riccardo Spagni and Litecoin (LTC) creator Charlie Lee would appear to be taking tentative baby steps in potentially bringing their two coins closer. Spagni posted the following tweet yesterday, which first bandied the idea of a possible merger between the two cryptocurrencies:
"Such a productive few days, finally got to sit down with @SatoshiLite and talk about a possible merger between the Litecoin Enterprise Alliance and the Monero Enterprise Alliance, which we’d obviously call the LAMEA. #blessed #justblockchainthings"
Lee, who has professed a desire for increased anonymity in the past with regard to Litecoin, was quick to respond in his own indomitable manner with his own series of tweets:
"Although @fluffypony was kidding here, I think it would be good for Litecoin and Monero (2 of the top non-scam coins 😄) to work together. A while back, I proposed to him that we work on making it easy for people to do on-chain atomic swaps of LTC and XMR in a decentralized way." |
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My advice is to keep an eye on the Google trend graph for "bitcoin", "Ethereum", "Litecoin" etc.
Google trends tracks how many people are searching for those keywords, and when the graph spikes, there is usually a surge in price as well as these noobs invest. When google trends turns down, trading volume and price usually drop as well.
Google trends also shows which countries are doing the searching. Not all countries have cryptocurrency exchanges, so surges in the USA, Europe, Korea have more effect than surges in south america or africa.
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I think Bitcoin fees have reduced recently. Is it due to Segwit?
They ARE reducing, only about 29,000 transactions in the mempool now, down from over 200,000 in mid December: https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24hI think two things are happening. Bitcoin's price was at an all time high in mid December and a lot of those transactions were from people hurriedly sending coins to the exchanges to cash out. Now that the price has fallen, people are hodling again. Also - I'm pretty sure a large exchange has started batching transactions. It might be Coinbase, who announced in early Jan that they were looking at doing this. In December about 50% of the mempool was just Coinbase and GDAX transactions, so if they're batching, that's a big reason the mempool has cleared., |
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