After Greece and Cyprus, the Italian peninsula is sending alarming signals while new European banking rules are likely to constrain state action.

On 25 June, the Italian government formalized the rescue of two medium-sized mutual banks - Banco Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca - on the brink of bankruptcy, after finding no investor in the markets to help them.

Such situations are causing investors all over Europe to question the safety of the banking system. The particular attributes of the unprecedented bailout of Cyprus' banks

in 2013 have led to a significant surge in Bitcoin price, as investors sought safe havens and access to liquidity. We have yet to see how future bank bailouts will impact the alternative financial systems proposed by cryptocurrencies.

Privacy-focused altcoin Dash has announced a three-year roadmap for its Evolution “decentralized payments platform.”

In a press release Tuesday, Dash, in a long-awaited announcement as to its future plans, confirmed the platform would be live in Alpha mode by December.

“Think of Evolution as online payments, a system similar to PayPal or Venmo, but completely decentralized, so that a user is always in control of his or her own money,” Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor explained.

“Moreover, Evolution will be incredibly inexpensive, with no cross-border fees or restrictions.”

Dash’s aim is to create a universal payments mechanism involving physical merchants, online point-of-sale and user-to-user transfers.

The project has seen huge investment, buoyed by the continued high trading price of the DASH token since the start of the year.

“Evolution is a massive endeavor with gigantic promises, but we will accomplish our goals through the help of an All-Star team of dozens of the world’s best programmers, researchers, project managers, technologists and user experience experts,” Taylor added.

With the full release slated for June 2018 meanwhile, further milestones on the horizon include hardware integrations to scale up the size of the Dash network drastically.

This was the code i received F601EA28B1. 100 XLC.
well this project looks interesting and i know is going to be fantastic

Privacy-centered altcoin, Zcoin, has announced the first working implementation of Merkle Tree Proof (MTP) as a proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. The Zcoin team claims the development will promote high performance, high security and egalitarian computing.

Poramin Insom, Zcoin's lead developer, describes centralization as one of the biggest challenges of PoW. The founder of Zcoin reiterated the original intent of proof-of-work which is to have decentralized security so that you don't have to trust or rely on a centralized authority.

He says:

"In a network that is dominated by ASICs, security is left in the hands of the few people who have the capital and technology to dominate the hash rate. It's been argued that with ASICs, the network is more secure due to the increased hash rate. In my opinion, it's not the absolute hash rate that matters, but rather the cost and the barriers to entry that you need to overcome to overtake the network."

Banks’ centralized digital tokens have come under fresh criticism from cryptocurrency experts and Max Keiser.

In a Twitter exchange yesterday, Keiser praised the perspective of computer scientist and Bitcoin enthusiast Datavetaren, who reiterated the vulnerabilities non-decentralized schemes face.

Datavetaren’s hacking example “demonstrates why centralization (single point of failure) prevents state actors from effectively competing with Bitcoin,” Keiser said.

Central banks in several countries have expressed particular interest in creating controlled digital tokens for a variety of uses.

The People’s Bank of China has extensively researched the concept and began testing a prototype last week. Meanwhile, Russia’s central bank is keenly assessing the implementation of the so-called ‘Russian Bitcoin’ which would also be strictly centrally managed.

Against this background, Datavetaren drew stark contrasts to Bitcoin’s inherent security model prohibiting such tokens entering the market.

Since 2009, Bitcoin has made a long road and has overcome many obstacles on its journey. The Bitcoin price has grown exponentially, and its market cap is at the time of writing over $41 bln, which is the same net worth of Google’s co-founder, Larry Page.

Bill Gates, the richest man on earth with a net worth of $86 bln, has approximately the net worth of Larry Page and Bitcoin combined.

Bitcoin equals Morocco
“Bitcoin is the Uber of cryptocurrencies: the biggest, baddest and best-known, but not the only one. Add it up to Litecoin, Monero and all the others, and the total volume of virtual money floating around the Internet, out of the reach of governments and banks, is a whopping $100 bln. That is about as much as the current GDP of Morocco the 60th-largest economy in the world,” notes Raul Amoros.

Nowadays, tech companies are more than ever before dominating the stock market. The monetary value of giants like Amazon ($402 bln) and (Apple $730 bln) is equivalent to the GDP of much bigger economies like Nigeria and the Netherlands, respectively. Apple’s monetary value is 18 folds the Bitcoin market capitalization.

"Moving to upper scales, the amount of actual money in dollar notes and coins in circulation around the world is $1.5 tln. Amounting to 36 folds the market capitalization of Bitcoin."

Apart from fiduciary money, gold has played a significant role in the money game due to its scarcity and marketability. Gold was still the basis of money in the 1960s, in an unbroken line stretching back to the beginnings of history. Today, the latest figure for all the gold in the world is 171,300 tonnes, which is currently priced at $8.2 tln: 200 folds the Bitcoin’s market cap.

More on the left, the visualization shows that the sum of “narrow money” is $31 tln. Narrow money is a category of the money supply that includes all physical money like coins and currency, along with other liquid assets held by the central bank. This is 750 times the market cap of Bitcoin.

As for “broad money,” which is the totality of assets that households and businesses can easily convert into cash or use to make payments, it totals $83 tln. This represents 2,000 times the market cap of Bitcoin, but also 2.5 times the total sum of narrow money. It is only obvious that our current system will crash if everybody attempts to withdraw money that is supposed to be “easily” convertible into cash, while the stock of physical money is insufficient to cover such withdrawals.

“If the see-sawing rise of Bitcoin tells us anything, it is that people are losing their trust in money, and other traditional measures of wealth,” concludes Raul Amoros. “Let's talk again when the total value of all cryptocurrencies surpasses that of the world's supply of gold…”

Investment legend Michael Novogratz, the $3.2 bln investor and former manager of the multi-billion dollar investment firm Fortress, recently stated that the cryptocurrency market will be worth $5 trillion by 2022.
Preaching crypto optimism
Over the past two years, Novogratz has expressed his optimism towards cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum that have been leading the $100 bln cryptocurrency market. Previously, Novogratz revealed that 10 percent of his net worth, at least hundreds of millions of dollars, are invested in a diverse portfolio of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

Bitcoin has transformed into a global phenomenon within a period of years due to its decentralized and transparent nature that have made Bitcoin an efficient store of value, digital currency and safe haven asset for the vast majority of users, traders and investors.

Other successful cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin and Ethereum Classic have gained interest from both individual and institutional investors with their distinctive strategies, philosophies, monetary policies and purpose.

Ethereum, for instance, provides an infrastructure for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized applications (DApps), creating an intermediary-free network of applications. Ethereum Classic is more similar to Bitcoin in the sense that it has a fixed and deflationary monetary supply.

“We’re at the takeoff point”
Comparing the cryptocurrency market to the Nasdaq due to the variety of crypto-assets and Blockchain network, Novogratz explained that there exists no reason why the cryptocurrency market can’t be worth $5 trillion within the next five years.

“The Nasdaq got to $5.4 trillion in 1999, why couldn’t it be as big? There’s so much human capital and real money being poured into the space and we’re at the takeoff point,” said Novogratz.

During an interview with Bloomberg, Novogratz further emphasized that a rigid regulatory structure within the global cryptocurrency exchange market is absolutely necessary for the cryptocurrency market to evolve into a major financial market.

Already, overseas markets including Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong along with many other countries have regulated the cryptocurrency exchange market and have provided thorough, practical and efficient regulatory frameworks to attract the general public into the cryptocurrency exchange market.

China, in particular, is heavily involved in its local cryptocurrency market and is actually planning to regulate smaller markets such as the initial coin offering (ICO) market that has gained increasing interest from investors since the beginning of 2017.

“Most cryptos will eventually be worth zero”
Evidently, the cryptocurrency market and the majority of cryptocurrencies are still in the early stages of development. As Ari Paul, portfolio manager for the University of Chicago's $7.5 bln endowment, explains, most cryptocurrencies that are in existence are likely to decline in value while several major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ethereum Classic survive.

“Most cryptos, like most companies, will eventually be worth zero. This is the nature of competition. Buy and hold is a strategy, not safety,” said Paul.

More importantly, as prominent venture capitalist Naval Ravikant famously stated before:

“All Bitcoin has to do to become the premier store of value is...survive.”

For me i think so.. 


http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2015/04/02/how-bitcoin-will-end-world-poverty/

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The China Bitcoin Roundtable’s latest meetup to confirm SegWit2x implementation may not be as persuasive as its members hope.

BTCC’s summary of the gathering, which occurred in Chengdu June 15, announces those present “reached a decision to fully support and implement the New York Consensus on Scaling Bitcoin.”

However, this would only be put to the test on “June 31st, 2017” - a date which does not exist.
“We expect to fully implement the SegWit2X scaling solution by June 31st,” BTCC, which is one of China’s best known exchanges, confirmed.

The error, while likely no more than an accident, adds an ironic air to the deeply-contentious Bitcoin scaling debate, which has seen infighting so complex that many are unable to understand which entities support which solution, and what consequences these solutions bring.

The post was cause for amusement among social media commentators.

Bitcoin circles meanwhile continue to be awash with opposing viewpoints on scaling, with the New York consensus still under attack from those who refer to it as “FrankenSegWit.”

It is unclear whether the debate is linked to the latest drop in Bitcoin prices, which began during the tail end of last week.

IOTA, designed as a cryptocurrency for the Internet of Things, suffered a 20.16-point price drop in the last 24 hours, the biggest fall for all cryptocurrencies holding more than $1 billion in market capitalization, and the highest for all top 100 cryptocurrencies besides Peerplays, a currency with a $48.444 million market cap, which dropped 42.8 points, according to coinmarketcap.com

A new downturn in Bitcoin and the majority of top altcoins this weekend has left investors wondering what this week will bring for prices.
NAt press time Monday, Bitcoin had fallen to an average $2534 on Coinmarketcap, down 4% in 24 hours and more since Friday.
Ethereum (ETH), after a combined three ICOs caused significant network congestion on two occasions last week, fell considerably more, returning below $300 to currently trade around $286.
The move repeated across the top ten cryptocurrencies, assets following Bitcoin with the notable exception of Ethereum Classic.
While still growing Sunday in the face of the already entrenched cross-cypto falls, gains have since tailed off, growth for the past 24 hours nonetheless achieving around 4%.
ETH’s sudden underwhelming performance meanwhile is leading analysts to forecast continued losses into this week.
In annotated Poloniex charts, Tone Vays highlighted weak lines of support versus BTC, and argued prices “might drop another 40%” before “strong support” appears.

American Banker, a daily trade newspaper that has been covering the financial sector since 1836, recently featured an analytical piece by its editor-in-chief Marc Hochstein entitled “How I missed the point of bitcoin,” to demonstrate how Bitcoin has shown what global banking should be.

Fees and speeds
In 2012, Hochstein noted in an article entitled “Lightning fast, dirt cheap: bitcoin shows what banking could be,” that a new peer to peer digital cash system has emerged. Five years ago, Hochstein praised the Bitcoin network’s ability to settle transactions with low fees and at fast speeds without the necessity and involvement of intermediaries or mediators.

The decentralized nature of Bitcoin remains identical but what has changed in Bitcoin is its fee and settlement speed. Due to the explosive growth of the Bitcoin network and its market, average Bitcoin transaction fees have increased beyond $2.5. In addition, at certain periods wherein the Bitcoin mempool, the holding area of Bitcoin transactions for the miners, is full of unconfirmed transactions, the confirmation of transactions can take hours.
Financial privacy and cost-effectiveness
Since its launch, the problem Bitcoin went on to solve was not the high fees of banking services nor the issuance of an anonymous financial network. Financial privacy and cost-effectiveness came as byproducts of Bitcoin’s actual purpose. As Marc Hochstein wrote, Bitcoin’s primary focus was to establish a global digital cash system that is censorship-resistant and decentralized.

“No, the key thing about bitcoin is its censorship-resistance — something that I only obliquely touched on in my original post, when I mentioned that the currency could be used to purchase drugs on the dark web or send donations to WikiLeaks, which was then operating under a blockade by the major payment networks,” wrote Hochstein.

Ethereum experienced intense volatility last week, leading to its price crashing as low as $0.10 on GDAX. The exchange now says that it intends to compensate customers for whom stop-losses were triggered during the fall.

Reasons for the crash
Ethereum has been one of the star performers in the cryptocurrency space, rising over 40x in 2017. However, network congestion and two ICOs resulted in price volatility last week.

Problems at exchanges also contributed to the uncertainty, resulting in Ether price falling. A large sell order (96,100 ETH) at GDAX resulted in the price slipping from $317.81 to $224.48.

This resulted in stop-loss orders and margin positions getting triggered, resulting in the price slipping momentarily to as low as $0.10

A major issue hindering Bitcoin is uncertainty about its future. The debate is over whether Bitcoin will be a successful long run innovation or fizzle out like so many prior innovations.

It is possible to make a relatively accurate prediction about the future of Bitcoin by analyzing five factors successfully used by technology adoption experts for decades: relative advantage, compatibility with other innovations, experience through trialability, complexity and observability.

These factors, derived from the classic work of innovation diffusion theorist Everett Rogers, when combined with features unique to Bitcoin, suggest that Bitcoin is here to stay.

Monero
the anonymous coin has demonstrated a lot of resistance with all indications it is not ready to give up. Since Saturday, it has been fighting with Stratis over the bottom spot of the top 10.

It has been a seesaw affair with each digital currency dislodging the other four times in four consecutive days, making the battle intense.
Stratis’ lead is beginning to assume a commanding position and Monero may not be able to catch up. But in the crypto world, anything can happen over night.

The reality is that the latter has not been consistent for months now. Monero gradually declined from the sixth rank in April till it finally lost elite status last week.

Even though Stratis entered the top 10 with great zeal, it basically couldn't maintain the momentum along the line. Moreso, with the entry of the likes of BitShares and IOTA, the race has become intense, leaving the weak no other option but to fall down the ranks.

For now, Stratis is the tenth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and Monero needs to prove what it is made of in order to take over.

After a major market correction which sent bitcoin price from its all-time high of $2,973 to $2,261, bitcoin price has stabilized at the $2,700 region.
Since the June 14 fall to $2,261, bitcoin price has since recovered and stabilized at $2,730. Since June 18, for nearly a week, bitcoin price maintained its upward momentum and sustained its price in the $2,700 region.

Tone Vays, prominent bitcoin trader and consultant, stated that he foresees a breakout with the activation of the Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability fix Segregated Witness (Segwit) imminent.

The Vietnamese government has issued a strong statement against the purported Ponzi scheme OneCoin after the company claimed to have been licensed by the government.

The company held a supporting event in the country, after claims that Vietnam had given the company official licensed status to function. After the event, the Vietnamese authorities began looking into the company and have since issued the statement detailing the forged license. After some brief investigation, the government stated that the signature on the form didn’t even match the officer of the government institution responsible for the licensure.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) had begun receiving public inquiries after the company posted a (now deleted) note on its OneLife Vietnam website stating that: “The Hanoi Investment Management Department officially signed a document confirming that the ONECOIN electronic money business of TRIDENT CRYPTO ACADEMY is not contrary to the laws of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

The news follows a recent government ultimatum for OneCoin in Norway as well. The OneCoin Ponzi scheme is one in a long line of coin-based frauds including the now defunct Ecoin Plus.