This raises two important questions: Why has the government made this U-turn I can only read this from one perspective, after being hostile and now wanting to "regulate"/embrace cryptocurrencies, Russia has found a way to profit severely with this at the expense of user privacy and ease of use, and will probably impose heavy taxation to anything cryptocurrency related. They can't reverse their stance out of the blue in a few months time, that's basically impossible. That's why I say on every post of mine here regarding these issues... Careful what you wish for, most people see regulation as something positive, but regulations may cripple Bitcoin adoption severely depending on what's decided. Something is fishy out here and doesn't feel right at all. From what I interpret it is Russian government will at one hand allow you to use crypto currencies but only the one through the government exchange, basically controlling prices and charging taxes. Those who comply won't be investigated, but those found doing otherwise will be investigated and harassed. Basically they are applying Carrot and stick approach, luring people with Bitcoins and hitting them with taxes. Not a good news for Russian people who use Bitcoins. Everyone has to pay taxes, and Russians are no exemption. States that fail to collect adequate taxes tend to collapse. |
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To have a world war, you need two big countries to square up against each other. North Korea is not a big country, and China is sloqly squeezing it, as part of their deal with the USA - for example, they have stopped buying north korean coal. My guess is that NK will back down, and we'll have a chinese brokered peace.
Basically the US is playing bad cop and China good cop, and it all seems to have been agreed by Trump and Xi at their recent meeting in Florida.
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https://geopoliticalfutures.com/russia-opens-door-cryptocurrencies/Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies. Official reports from the State Duma and the Finance and Economic Development ministries confirmed last week that a bill is being drafted to create the legal framework for trading in bitcoin, dash, ether and other digital currencies. This comes just a year after the same Russian institutions said that people trading in these currencies could be jailed. This raises two important questions: Why has the government made this U-turn, and what opportunities does it now see in this technology? The answers lie in Russia’s need to address serious problems in the banking sector and their impact on the economy.
The Russian economy has been under severe strain since 2014, when oil prices dropped and the United States and European Union imposed sanctions that have dried up foreign investment. As the costs of accessing money increased, the banking sector was also affected by the downturn. Against this backdrop, the Russian Central Bank has intensified its anti-corruption campaign meant to address dodgy, inefficient banks, some of which use money-laundering schemes to remove capital from the country. About 100 banks have closed in the last three years. Central bank head Elvira Nabiullina said the campaign would continue for at least two more years.
But closing banks is expensive – the process has so far cost the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) about $50 billion. In addition, the central bank needs to act carefully to avoid a liquidity crisis caused by closing banks. Local companies depend on banks for liquidity. Extended cash shortages in the country’s mono-industrial regions (many of these regions exist in Russia) could fuel social unrest, which the central government wants to avoid.
Moscow hopes to address some of its banking sector woes with new technology. The biggest question is what caused Russia to have a change of mind. They have been very strict with the use of any cryptocurrency before but they are very open to it at this point of time. This is possibly due to the large business opportunity and the potential market and profit that cryptocurrency will come in to Russia using the digital currencies. They have a good financial analyst on their side and they have seen the future of cryptocurrencies and they dont want to be left behind. If you read the article, it says they're having problems with fraud - many of the banks they are closing are bankrupt because someone ran off with the money and they can't trace it. They believe that bitcoin will help them track people if they start to put banking onto a blockchain - also, they probably hope to track fraudsters who send money to exchanges to be traded, which is why they are legalising the trading. In part it's because they have decided that banning it is silly - but they have also decided it might be a nice honey pot to catch people. |
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https://geopoliticalfutures.com/russia-opens-door-cryptocurrencies/Russia has announced that it will legalize the use of cryptocurrencies. Official reports from the State Duma and the Finance and Economic Development ministries confirmed last week that a bill is being drafted to create the legal framework for trading in bitcoin, dash, ether and other digital currencies. This comes just a year after the same Russian institutions said that people trading in these currencies could be jailed. This raises two important questions: Why has the government made this U-turn, and what opportunities does it now see in this technology? The answers lie in Russia’s need to address serious problems in the banking sector and their impact on the economy.
The Russian economy has been under severe strain since 2014, when oil prices dropped and the United States and European Union imposed sanctions that have dried up foreign investment. As the costs of accessing money increased, the banking sector was also affected by the downturn. Against this backdrop, the Russian Central Bank has intensified its anti-corruption campaign meant to address dodgy, inefficient banks, some of which use money-laundering schemes to remove capital from the country. About 100 banks have closed in the last three years. Central bank head Elvira Nabiullina said the campaign would continue for at least two more years.
But closing banks is expensive – the process has so far cost the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) about $50 billion. In addition, the central bank needs to act carefully to avoid a liquidity crisis caused by closing banks. Local companies depend on banks for liquidity. Extended cash shortages in the country’s mono-industrial regions (many of these regions exist in Russia) could fuel social unrest, which the central government wants to avoid.
Moscow hopes to address some of its banking sector woes with new technology.
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bitfinex did not get $65m from exchange fee profits. they grabbed funding from https://bnktothefuture.com £42.66m=$54.5m and now using that to pay out to users in debt but taking from peter to pay paul is also known as a ponzi. so dont think that bitfinex's finances/drama is over anytime soon Good catch! If this funding a loan that needs to be paid back with interest, or did they just sell shares in their business? |
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Yep. Buy on bitfinex for $1300 to get BTC out and sell on Chinese exchanges for $1000 to get fiat out. Careful. Chinese exchanges like OKCOIN are not allowing USD withdrawals either. |
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But there's a psychological impact in the other markets that makes them bullish too I think. When people see "wow, bitfinex $1350? let's buy right now!" they buy on other exchanges with legit money and it ends up pumping the price in the rest of the market. Make no mistake, a lot of people act like this, they don't do any research.
That's definitely what happened with the MtGox highs. People were buying btc to get their money out of the exchange, but the wider world still thought MtGox was basically sound and just having a few solvable problems and pumped up to match the mtgox price. I think it's different now. Bitcoiners have now been through so many shennanigans that they've seen it all and no longer act blindly. Everyone and their dog will know the true reason for the bitfinex highs and will be ignoring them. |
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But as soon as all the whales and the big traders have gotten everything they have out from Bitfinex that is when the truth starts coming out. It is happening just like Gox. I hope we also get the biggest pump in Bitcoin history with it.
I expect a dump will happen as soon as all the whales and big traders have gotten everything they have out of bitfinex if they decided to convert it into fiat. I also hope to see the biggest pump in history but there is the possibility that we will see again the repeat of 2013 and I know many of us dont want to see a dump that big again except for those who want to buy cheap bitcoin. Whales are not stupid, why would they immediately dump after they bought bitcoins at a premium? This is what panic sellers do. And panic sellers have small purses, because they lose their money just as fast as they make their few pennies. And you're hoping for a dump.... Problems with the stomach? Agree with this. They won't dump once they've got their coins out - they'll patiently wait till bitcoin rises above their purchase price and slowly feed the coins into the market. (Those who withdrew in the form of litecoins a week ago are already in profit). |
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The price could easily dip to half what it is now if Bitfinex closed and customers lose their Bitcoins. That would be below $700. But if think it would be temporary and there would be some recovery but it would not get to $1300 for a while.
The amount of coins in their cold wallet has been dwindling rapidly. That tells us that everyone who wants out is getting out fine and there are no reports of crypto problems. And if it does die there'll be far fewer coins lost as it drags on. If it can't solve its problems then it's gonna be a gradual death that's publicly observable and not an implosion. There won't be any shocks to the system but there will be a slow burning effect. This. Gradual death is fine - lots of exchanges have gradual deaths, it is the nature of capitalism. The important thing is that financial losses are few, and the more people who get their money out, the better, because they can just trade somewhere else and life will go on. |
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No, is the short answer.
I think Segwit will be activated for Litecoin, and people will be told, why don't you use LTC for segwit related activities. Then it will turn out no-one actually uses it at all, and the whole thing will fall flat.
Loads of little alts now have segwit, eg digibyte and some others, so plenty of segwit around for the afficionados without involving bitcoin!
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r a drop of around 97%.[/i] Second , Speaking to Bitcoin.com, Vays maintains his critical opinion and said that anyone still considering investing in any of Steemit’s tokens would be a “moron.”
“They (developers) locked everyone in for a one-year duration before they could cash out while they were cashing out,” he said. “They claim all transactions are visible on their site, yet people caught them deleting their own washouts from view, and so on.”
He also tweeted misgivings about the planned changes, commenting that they were simply moves to allow senior developers “to exit their positions sooner rather than later.”Source ; https://news.bitcoin.com/steemit-criticism-plunge-value/Because of the critics , steemit should crawl with low prices. Do you think steemit will survive or even grow. It is worth investing in steem or steem dollar for an expectation will rise again? Umm... that changed on December 6th 2016 - you are locked in for just 13 weeks. The change happened 5 months ago - anyone who wanted to cash out has cashed out. |
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All the big miners are signaling SegWit now on Liecoin. Hopefully, the same kind of agreement can be reached on Bitcoin to move us forward.
Nah, bitcoin will remain as it is, and there will be a considerable wait to see whether litecoin is really benefitting from segwit beyond the pump. If litecoin's transactions don't pick up and no-one is actually using segwit, then the conclusion will be that the market doesn't really want or need it... |
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It might. The amazing thing is how much volume of trading is still being done on Bitfinex: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/It's the second biggest exchange. If people could shift their volume to other more stable exchanges, then if bitfinex goes kaput it won't really matter. |
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According to the following article, this is down to Taiwanese Banking Reforms: http://www.livebitcoinnews.com/taiwanese-banking-reforms-cause-issues-bitfinex-bitcoin-companies/Most cryptocurrency companies dealing with funds from international clients have signed up for a Taiwanese bank account due to less strict AML and KYC procedures. At one point, this loophole seemed worthwhile, yet it is coming to bite these companies in the rear as of right now.
Since the United States recently stepped up their internal banking requirements for USD transfers, other banks dealing with USD transfers must follow suit. This also means the Taiwanese megabanks will have to go through some major changes. Until that happens, US banks are free to refuse transfers from banks not complying with the new guidelines. It appears that is the real reason why Wells Fargo bounces iFinex, Tether, Xapo, and BTC-E transfers coming from Taiwan, and does not send money to the country either. |
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It took Bitcoin nearly 9 years for it to get to this point with the help of global economic meltdown FUD. It only took Ethereum about 2 and a half years (of real developmemt) for its valuation.
I can see alts taking a dominating position in the next 3 to 5 years with Ethereum being the most likely choice.
Well we know that ether is actually being used. It had 73941 transactions in the last 24 hours and the number is trending upwards: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/ethereum-transactions.htmlIf it ever tops the number of transactions done by bitcoin, then watch out! |
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Yes - but the Chinese exchanges are still not allowing either bitcoin or litecoin withdrawals - and this has been the case since February. |
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Signalling is now at 77.5% in the last 24 hours. Hopefully it will continue like that and will activate this period. I sold my stash when the price jumped, managed to get a 10% return, and I am content - will wait to see what happens after segwit activates. I kinda think that when nothing much happens, the price will go down again. There were only 7,768 transactions in the last 24 hours, no-one actually uses this coin: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/litecoin-transactions.html |
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Well - according to the following, the segwit signalling has fallen to 61.6% in the last 24 hours: http://litecoin-segwit.info/It's going in the wrong direction.. |
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