FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Bitcoin is not a currency but a mere instrument of speculation, the vice president of the European Central Bank said on Friday, comparing the digital currency to tulip bulbs during the 17th century trading bubble in the Netherlands.

The dollar value of the Bitcoin has nearly trebled this year and, while its adoption has yet to pick up in a significant way, the rise of this cryptocurrency is worrying central bankers across the world.

But ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio denied it posed a threat to monetary policy and compared its rise to the ‘Tulip mania’ seen three-hundred years ago.

“Bitcoin is a sort of tulip,” Constancio said at an ECB conference. “It’s an instrument of speculation ... but certainly not a currency and we don’t see it as a threat to central bank policy.”

The ECB said year last year digital currencies, which are generally issued by private companies and only exist in electronic form, could in principle erode its power over the supply of money, inviting European Union lawmakers to tighten proposed rules on the matter.

Trading can be fun and exciting if you are making profits, but one bad move, or an unlucky swing downwards and you will be in red. buy and hold for a couple of months, maybe three, you shall profit.

“A third of our customers come from outside China, and I believe these overseas users will continue to use the ViaBTC platform, so we can still provide value,” said Yang Haipo, chief executive of the exchange during a global blockchain event in Hong Kong on Thursday.

He said there was no time frame yet to relaunch the platform abroad, and urged current users to withdraw their assets before the company stops its domestic services on September 25.

“We have enough liquidity to support all of our customers’ withdrawals,” he said.

The Shenzhen-based firm announced a week ago that it would shut down its Chinese exchange business by the end of the month. Other mainland platforms such as BTCChina, OkCoin and Huobi have also said they will cease trading following Beijing’s orders.

Evolve Funds Group Inc. wants to offer Canada’s first cryptocurrency ETF. The company says in a release that’s it has filed a preliminary prospectus with Canadian securities regulators for a fund called Evolve Bitcoin ETF (BITS).

BITS will seek to replicate the performance of exposure to Bitcoin obtained through investments in CFE Bitcoin (USD) Futures. The fund will invest directly or indirectly in exchange-traded futures contracts as well as other financial instruments and derivatives that provide similar return characteristics.

“Accessing Bitcoin is not easy for many […] Investors are currently unable to trade them in a regular brokerage account,” says Raj Lala, president and CEO of Evolve ETFs, in the release. “As more and more of the world goes digital, usage of cryptocurrencies could increase significantly in the coming years,” he adds.

BITS will offer investors with both hedged and unhedged units, and Evolve Funds will act as portfolio manager.

Ripple is the most overvalued

Most under valued are: UBIQ, Diamond and LTC

1/ I have a trusted source that says that there's no truth to China banning mining or network. FYI, I haven't made any trades on this info.

2/ The FUD is propagated by large manipulators trying to make money shorting. They know that China ban FUD works and cannot be proven wrong.

3/ Take it for whatever it's worth, but I have not traded this and have no plans to buy or sell in the near future. /End

4/ One more thing. 😀 Exchange ban is still absolutely true. Just not banning mining and the network. And not clear about OTC ban. /RealEnd

Last week was tumultuous for bitcoin, as Chinese authorities announced plans to ban the cryptocurrency’s trading in the country.

I am not surprised that Chinese authorities are acting to put a lid on bitcoin BTCUSD, -3.16% trading. What is surprising is why more governments, including the U.S., are not doing the same.

China’s slam of bitcoin should be viewed through how its own currency, the yuan USDCNY, +0.0046%  , correlates to bitcoin. In June the Chinese yuan hit a low of 6.86 to the dollar, while in September amid the bitcoin crackdown the yuan appreciation accelerated, changing hands at one point at 6.44. The bulk of the appreciation in the yuan (fewer yuan per dollar means a stronger yuan) has come in the past three months, just in time for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China next month (see chart).

The point is that the Chinese leadership would do anything to keep the Chinese economy going in order to keep power at this important juncture in Chinese history. Messing with the yuan exchange rate, or with bitcoin for that matter, is one of the tools to meet their goals before the October summit.

The bitcoin ban is a way for China to enforce capital controls, given the $1 trillion that has left the country since the summer of 2014. Foreign exchange reserves have stabilized in 2017, and risen by less than $100 billion. The clampdown on outflows, the rebound in the yuan, and the bitcoin ban all comprise multiple steps taken by Chinese authorities to assure smooth sailing at the National Congress.

The yuan-engineered short squeeze took its first big victim on Sept. 6, when Corriente Advisors threw in the towel after a bearish bet on the yuan resulted in a $240 million loss. Using yuan options, forwards, and most other derivatives unfortunately makes any bear easily detectable by the Chinese authorities, who in some cases directly oversee the financial intermediaries that facilitate those bets in Hong Kong. So, if the Chinese authorities know where the shorts are and what the terms of the derivative contract are, it won't be hard to squeeze them with $3 trillion in forex reserves. This is precisely what they may be doing.

Two years in a row, we experienced huge overnight spikes in the Hongkong Inter-Bank Offer Rate (HIBOR) market, where in one case overnight yuan borrowing costs rose to 66%, while the following year they topped 100%. I have no doubt that the People’s Bank of China engineered those moves in order to squeeze the yuan shorts on multiple fronts. The latest sharp appreciation of the yuan before the October summit is also designed to do damage to yuan bears and to show that the PBOC is in control of the Chinese financial system.

The PBOC-engineered short squeezes do absolutely nothing to change the dynamic in which the Chinese economy's growth rate has slowed dramatically, while borrowing has surged and keep surging. China's "total social financing" does not include shadow banking leverage, which adds another 100% to the total debt to GDP leverage ratio, making the total close to 400% and still rising (see chart).

When I examined this dynamic of rising leverage ratios and a slowing economy, coupled with a stock market crash in 2015, I thought that by 2017 the strain in the financial system would begin to show and the Chinese economy would experience a hard landing. The fact that it has not happened does not mean it won't happen. There is no such thing as "controlling a credit bubble" after it begins to pop. The Chinese authorities may have slowed this process down, but I doubt they will be able to prevent the hard landing. Watch out in 2018.

Never heard about that site. Stay away from it for safe, just use other trustworthy exchange site. All exchange sites name have been given by frelabit

If they totally ban bitcoin then it's safe to conclude that they they hate it, isn't it?

The people of China loves bitcoin, but what can you do if the government doesn't want it in their backyard? So banning bitcoin would only hurt their citizens, but they doesn't care because they will always do what they think is right for their country. Unfortunately many of them have relied on bitcoin too much like in mining, who I assume have a lot of workers monitoring it 24x7 and an outright ban of everything bitcoin related would really affect those workers in the end.

Beside Bitcoinbase, which is regardless if you like it or not are well establish one, we are missing having a well recognize establish exchanges! We need one in Europe beside Bitstamps, we need on in Africa, one in Latin america, one in far Asia (In English).

I don't know there are so many geo areas..But most are so small you feel so much worry about.

And Eastern Europe, plus Russian based don't give much of trust outside that area. ( With respect)

I've come across a number of places that will exchange BTC into fiat currency, but all have a shockingly bad exchange rate.

What methods offer the best exchange rate these days?

I was pretty hopeful that the wave of bad news would be done after the market absorbed the ICO and exchange bans. But it sounds like there is more to come. I haven't seen any reputable sources confirm the story about banning the Bitcoin network itself. But there are reputable VCs with sources on the ground who are saying, "we haven’t seen the worst yet." Apparently we're talking about a complete ban on OTC trading at least. We could even be looking at a mining ban, or a state takeover of mining operations: https://twitter.com/bitcom21/status/910579445198602240

The FUD is strong right now...

Apparently, there are more regulations coming down the pipeline, and we haven't seen the end of it. In addition to banning exchanges, supposedly the most conservative outcome is banning all OTC trading. But we could be looking at a state takeover of mining operations. I would say that any miners residing in China have an uncertain future right now.

Why is it so? why all the altcoins are dependent on bitcoin? What is the relationship of altcoins with the bitcoin? If bitcoin price is to be be praised then what are the atcoins here for? It simply indicates that bitcoin is the genuine and the rest are just useless clones.

You don't seem very bright considering you said you would buy back BCash instead of the real Bitcoin, BCash being a joke coin with a dead github and a dead blockchain that ironically can't even fill 100 bytes of transactions, but i'll byte:

1. Roger Ver is a clown. We've had XT, Classic, Unlimited, Cash.. the list goes on. All altforks will fail and never will dethrone the real bitcoin. Segwit2x will join this list.

1/
He made SBI Crypto before BCH fork. He will take 30% share in BCH mining.

2/
He thinks "8MB" block will the determining factor for the dominance over the others.

Blockswater, an algorithmic liquidity provider, has filed a market abuse report against Jamie Dimon for "spreading false and misleading information" about bitcoin.

The firm filed the report with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority against JP Morgan Chase and Dimon, the company's chief executive.

Blockswater said Dimon violated Article 12 of the European Union's Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) by declaring that cryptocurrency bitcoin was "a fraud".

The influential executive last week slammed cryptocurrencies, pushing the digital currency to a three-week low.

Dimon said he would fire an employee who traded in cryptocurrencies for being "stupid".

The complaint said Dimon's statement negatively impacted "the cryptocurrency's price and reputation". It also said Dimon "knew, or ought to have known, that the information he disseminated was false and misleading".

"Jamie Dimon's public assertions did not only affect the reputation of bitcoin, they harmed the interests of some of his own clients and many young businesses that are working hard to create a better financial system,” said Florian Schweitzer, managing partner at Blockswater. ​

Blockswater said JP Morgan traded bitcoin derivatives for their clients on Stockholm-based exchange Nasdaq Nordic before and after Dimon's statements, which Schweitzer said "smells like market manipulation".

The Mexican bitcoin exchange Bitso has announced they are soliciting donations for victims of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that took place on September 19. The trading platform was previously raising funds for the devastating quake that took place on September 7.

Mexico is having an unfortunate time with catastrophic earthquakes that took place over the past two weeks killing hundreds of people. According to the trading platform Bitso’s recent blog post, the startup is asking for donations in BTC, XRP, and ETH in it’s “Bitcoin Aids Mexico” fundraiser. Bitso says the donations will be sent to the Mexico-based Red Cross center and the local earthquake rescue crew Brigada de Rescate Topos Tlaltelolco A.C.   

“Unfortunately Mexico has been hit with another devastating earthquake. Please support Mexico by making donations via BTC, ETH, or XRP,” explains the Bitso exchange.

 "Bitso will provide verifiable receipts signed by Mexico’s Central Bank that donations were made. Please help raise awareness by using the hashtag #BitcoinAidMexico.