I agree that the Mt Gox trustee dumping coins on exchanges is the primary reason for the fall in price. I would attribute it to sheer incompetence on the part of the trustee and not some international conspiracy. If the US wanted to keep the price of Bitcoin down to spite North Korea, they have many more avenues to do so. Rumours about an announcement of impending rule tightening would do the trick. They don't have to lean on the Mt Gox trustee to dump coins and bring down the price.

It was a good comeback by the Indian bowlers, after Sri Lanka looked set to score over 200 at one stage. Sri Lanka were 94/2 at the end of 10 overs and would have been disappointed to set a target of only 153. Washington Sundar and Shardul Thakur applied the brakes on Sri Lanka, with Thakur picking up a handful of wickets. A target of 153 was never going to challenge India, and Suresh Raina ensured that a few quick wickets at the start of India's innings didn't affect the end result.

It is a simplistic approach and the easiest way for a government to be seen as 'doing something'. You must note that 2 years ago the Indian government through a process of demonetization, made most of the fiat currency notes worthless overnight. This is precisely one reason why people may trust decentralized currencies like Bitcoin over fiat. The government will find it tough to crack down on Bitcoin given the presence of overseas exchanges and a tech-savvy, young population.

Australia have lost 5 wickets and are effectively only 41 runs ahead. South Africa will be banking on their bowlers to polish off the tail without giving too many additional runs. Even if Australia set South Africa a target in excess of 150, I don't think South Africa will face too many difficulties in overcoming it. When the Australian top order has folded cheaply, you can't expect the tailenders to come in and score runs.

Banks seem to be hiding behind the Anti-Money Laundering  rules in place in the EU, whenever they decide to close the cryptocurrency accounts of exchanges. But it does seem strange that in some countries, exchanges seem to be flourishing while in others banks are acting against them. Finnish banks are shutting accounts, while in Luxembourg, Bitstamp is a registered exchange. In today's globalized world, customers will just move to an exchange abroad.

If the trustees of a retirement fund cannot be trusted to manage the funds optimally, they shouldn't be in the job. I doubt if any trustee is going to gamble with retirement funds and put a substantial portion into cryptos. If anything, they would allocate a minuscule portion into Bitcoin, to get that added return. Even if Bitcoin does crash, it won't hurt the fund. The government should not be trying to micromanage how trustees do their job.

Well, you have to put things in perspective. Bay was worth 2c around 1.5 years back and 0.2c around 2 years back. So we definitely have come a long way. When you compare Bitbay to its peers, you do get the feeling that it is undervalued. Coins with no real development and which have raised money through ICOs are valued ahead of Bitbay. So I think the price will correct eventually and Bitbay will again be back in the list of top 100 coins.

South Africa had only 3 wickets in hand at the end of day 2, but one of those wickets was AB DeVilliers. As we had seen the South Africans played really slowly on day 2, except DeVilliers. DeVilliers has now scored 125 and the lead has extended to 138 (and is still not done). South Africa has the upper hand and can push for victory now.

This is a bit of an extreme view. As long as there are governments around, which have powerful militaries, fiat currencies are here to stay. You may argue that the concept of a nation-state is a new one and that three hundred years ago there were no nations - only kingdoms whose boundaries kept changing. But you would need a revolution to change that.

England had an easy victory and Jonny Bairstow made an amazing century, the third fastest for England. However, the match was in the bag long before that due to the fine performance of the English bowlers. They had New Zealand on the back foot right from the word go and had reduced them to 93/6 at one stage. New Zealand recovered somewhat but could only post a below-par score of 223.

True. The only saving grace is that there are a lot of bag holders, who think that it cannot get worse from now onwards. Unfortunately, Byteball's price keeps dropping and it does keep getting worse. If this continues, it won't be long before Byteball drops from the top 100. When that happens, you can be sure that anybody who is new to crypto will not give it a second look.

This might be a very good business idea, but it would be interesting to see how they aim to get merchants to sign up for this. Would they be using existing payment processors like Visa / Mastercard. If they don't, then they will have to convince merchants to install a new PoS machine. It is not easy to break into such markets, because merchants will be reluctant to add yet another machine.

In today's T20 matches, 140 is a below par target, irrespective of the nature of the pitch. Bangladesh's batting really let them do, as they would have been trying to set a score of at least 170-180. Except Sabbir Rahman who tried to accelerate at the end, none of the batsmen showed any sense of urgency. India got there easily, led by Shikhar Dhawan's fifty. Bangladesh would need to try hard against Sri Lanka.

It is fortuitous that the hackers were not successful in their attempts to get their funds out quickly. I wonder how Binance's move of seizing the hacker's funds would stand scrutiny. After all, there is a contract in place between Binance and their users - I doubt if it allows Binance to seize all your funds if its terms and conditions are not followed.
They have reversed all fraudulent transactions in this case. Would they have done the same if it involved the exchange losing money?

The market is definitely volatile and investors expect substantially higher returns compared to other asset classes. That is natural, because higher risk investments are expected to give high returns. I wouldn't call them greedy for that. They are just investors, with high risk appetite. There are others who try to gamble in the crypto markets and buy/sell on the latest fud and positive news articles. You cannot really attribute rationality to their behaviour.

This kind of FUD has been around since the days of the Silk Road - when people thought Bitcoin was a currency only used to purchase drugs. That perception has changed but once in a while articles like this do come. Criminals, like all other people, look for the utility value of different technologies. They recognize the potential and value of cryptocurrencies and use it as a medium of exchange. Nobody is talking about shutting down the internet just because some illegal activities take place there.

An airdrop across Bitcoin and Byteball holders (as was done previously) is not the same as a burn. But Saxnot's idea was an airdrop of Bytes to the existing Byte holders. This would do nothing to widen the distribution and is similar to a burn. The only advantage could be psychological - liquidity could increase as Byte holders consider these as free dividends and might be more likely to sell them.

If an ICO token constitutes a security, then the ICO must have followed onerous securities registration procedures to be completely on board. Else, the ICO could constitute an illegal securities offering and the promoters could face the music. If the promoters / developers of a coin face action from the US government, then you can predict what will happen to the market price of the security. In the best case, the SEC may ask the promoters to refund initial investors.

In spite of Ross Taylor's mammoth effort of 181, the match went to the very last over. 335 is a good score, but not an insurmountable score in today's ODIs. Teams score 300 with ease and 335 just stretched New Zealand a little more. They would have felt nervous after losing 2 early wickets, but Ross Talyor's knock was magnificent. Took away the sheen from England's innings, where both Bairstow and Root scored centuries.

That is equivalent to just burning the undistributed Bytes. Waiting to see if the methods proposed by Tony to actually bring in new users will be prudent. By and large, the method of distributing Bytes to those who link their real world ids seems to have failed. That doesn't mean that the other proposed methods are not worth trying out.