The dump will be epic, either if the rumors are true or false

Bitcoin is not falling long term.

Also very few coins prosper and don't collapse in the long term

Good to know, thanks

Has anyone said free coins?

$50 is not that high at current prices

Only 15 people/day. will be a lottery

I think same thing happened with Ethereum

Also I see the profiles are "syncing" ?

btc-e isn't even alive anymore

Bitconnect

This site is totally unknown for me

wtf is a translation campaign?

Hong Kong’s TideBit drawing Chinese bitcoin investors frozen out in Beijing’s crackdown

Hong Kong-based tech company TideBit is looking to expand its bitcoin trading operations, seeing growing demand from Chinese investors frozen out by Beijing’s crackdown on the virtual currency.

Once the world’s largest market for virtual currency trading, China has been stepping up its policing of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin exchanges such as Huobi, OkCoin and BTCC have announced that the trade would be halted.

But for TideBit, the crackdown has translated into new business.

“The ban did not stop them [Chinese investors] from buying cryptocurrencies,” said Terence Tsang, chief operating officer at TideiSun. “In the last few weeks, we have seen a lot of mainland customers opening up accounts at TideBit. They still want to play the game. I see a growing need in that they will come to Hong Kong or Singapore to buy cryptocurrency,” he said.

Once the world’s largest market for virtual currency trading, China has been stepping up its policing of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin exchanges such as Huobi, OkCoin and BTCC have announced that the trade would be halted.

But for TideBit, the crackdown has translated into new business.

“The ban did not stop them [Chinese investors] from buying cryptocurrencies,” said Terence Tsang, chief operating officer at TideiSun. “In the last few weeks, we have seen a lot of mainland customers opening up accounts at TideBit. They still want to play the game. I see a growing need in that they will come to Hong Kong or Singapore to buy cryptocurrency,” he said.

Once the world’s largest market for virtual currency trading, China has been stepping up its policing of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin exchanges such as Huobi, OkCoin and BTCC have announced that the trade would be halted.

But for TideBit, the crackdown has translated into new business.

“The ban did not stop them [Chinese investors] from buying cryptocurrencies,” said Terence Tsang, chief operating officer at TideiSun. “In the last few weeks, we have seen a lot of mainland customers opening up accounts at TideBit. They still want to play the game. I see a growing need in that they will come to Hong Kong or Singapore to buy cryptocurrency,” he said.

TideBit was set up two years ago by think tank researcher turned businessman Chen Ping and is owned by TideiSun Group. Chen is best known for establishing the iSun Affairs online magazine, which is known for hard-hitting stories about Chinese political and social issues that are mostly banned in mainland China.

“At the time [of starting the platform] we had a documentary video platform. We liked users to pay using bitcoin or ethereum and we asked, ‘where do they get bitcoin?’ There weren’t many virtual currency exchanges in Hong Kong, so that’s why we started one,” Tsang said.
He added that the company is hiring, adding to a payroll of about 70 people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

TideBit offers customer service via the messaging platform WhatsApp. Its transaction volume is around 50 to 100 bitcoin a day and it collects revenue from deposit fees, withdrawal fees and transaction-based fees.

“Right now it’s a trading platform to buy bitcoin and ethereum. We are planning to offer more financial products like futures and derivatives,” said Vincent Poon, chief growth hacker at TideBit.

“We also offer different products like payment solutions, wire transfers and different types of blockchain projects. We are not just a trading platform, we also have a blockchain ecosystem.”

Earlier this month, the People’s Bank of China said the practice of initial coin offerings (ICOs) – fundraising by the issue of digital currencies outside the regulatory framework – was illegal. Up to 90 per cent of the ICOs launched on the mainland were found to have been fraudulent, the central bank said.

TideBit isn’t currently involved in ICOs, but Poon said the company would review the issue.
As regulators review virtual currencies, Tsang said the company wants to expand to countries where there are clear guidelines.
“We are getting a bitcoin exchange licence in Japan,” said Tsang, adding that the company will be also be setting up offices in Singapore and Taiwan.


http://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2113597/hong-kongs-tidebit-drawing-chinese-bitcoin-investors-frozen-out

Bitcoins are neither legal nor illegal in India: S P Sharma, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry


Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/60891733.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Unless it is properly regulated and monitored by the government or banks, it’s unlikely for bitcoins to ever become a mainstream currency in India, Dr. S.P. Sharma, Chief Economist,PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry tells ET Wealth.

Why is bitcoin trading gaining so much traction? What has led to the upswing in prices?
In the past few months, the trend in bitcoin prices has attracted investors from across the globe. The price of a bitcoin jumped fi ..

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/60891733.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Chinese money dominates bitcoin, now its companies are gunning for blockchain tech

Beijing’s decision to shut down bitcoin trading platforms has left investors scrambling to cut their losses and threatens to deprive the crypto-currency of a crucial market.
“The authorities don’t understand anything about bitcoin!” fumed Zhang Yanhua, founder of an investment fund that was dead on arrival after Beijing started tightening the screws at the start of the month.
In mid-September the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, told virtual currency trading platforms based in Beijing and Shanghai to cease market operations. The bank has focused its sights not just on bitcoin but also ethereum and any other electronic units that are exchanged online without being regulated by any country.
They include two Chinese platforms, Okcoin and BTC China, which accounted for 22% of the global volume of bitcoins at the end of August.
The bank’s warning shot has shaken world prices and put a damper on the active community of local investors.
“The chances of a reversal are minimal,” said Zhang Yanhua, who has been scrambling to offload his bitcoins.
Three months ago the 50-year-old had set up a small investment fund dedicated to crypto-currencies, which met a premature end.
To acquire virtual currencies, “investment channels (in yuan) are becoming scarcer” and access to platforms using foreign currencies “will become too complicated”, Zhang told AFP.
Others are seeking an alternative way out: private over-the-counter transactions between individuals are taking off on messaging applications.
But Zhang said that was “too risky”.
For his part, Sun Minjie, an investor who says he bought more than $150,000 worth of bitcoins, intends to hold on to them for the long term.
“I expect nothing from the government...but the fate of bitcoin does not depend on the Chinese authorities.”
Why has this hardening attitude towards bitcoin come about?
In mid-September, the National Internet Finance Association of China — an offshoot of the central bank — drew up a damning indictment against virtual currencies, accusing them of being “increasingly used as a tool in criminal activities” such as drug trafficking.
Bitcoin has also lured many ordinary Chinese attracted by the incredible surge in prices, a popularity that has generated “pyramid schemes and financial fraud”, said Dong Ximiao, an economist at Peking University.
But the central bank, which at the start of September banned companies from issuing electronic currency units to raise funds, wants to fight “the speculation” around the crypto-currencies, which “seriously disrupted the financial system”.
“They didn’t ban bitcoin, but banned exchanges from trading for speculative purposes,” said David Yermack, finance professor at New York University. China “has a long-term concern about capital flight”, which hits the value of the yuan, he said. “It has a lot to do with problems in the Chinese financial system, that they’re worried about this as a competitive threat in some way,” said Yermack.
The price of bitcoin plummeted mid-September after the ultimatum to the Chinese platforms, slipping to under $3,300. It made a vigorous recovery to around $4,100 Friday, though it had traded around $5,000 a month ago, according to the Bitcoin Price Index.
Another cause for concern is the future of bitcoin mining in China, which the authorities have yet to comment on.
The virtual currency is created through blockchain technology, which publicly records transaction details including the unique alphanumeric strings that identify buyers and sellers
It is very profitable but long, expensive, energy-intensive process requiring powerful servers.
Between 60 and 70% of new bitcoins are mined in China, where the local leader Bitmain has imposing infrastructure.
If the government officially attacked the Chinese “miners”, “this would reduce the volumes produced” and move the mining elsewhere, strengthening the hand of Western players such as BitFury, observed Greg Revenu, managing partner of investment bank Bryan, Garnier & Co.
But “it’s a separate topic from trading platforms,” said Revenu.”And as the spectrum of applications using the blockchain technology widens, China may take another look.”
In fact, blockchain technology — which is reputedly very secure and in principle impossible to tamper with — is already used in food safety, finance and sea freight.
And Beijing does not want to be left behind: Despite the crackdown the Chinese ministry of industry announced last week the launch of a research laboratory dedicated to blockchain to “accelerate” its development in the country.

http://www.gulf-times.com/story/565772/Investors-bemoan-China-crackdown-on-bitcoin

Chinese money dominates bitcoin, now its companies are gunning for blockchain tech

Beijing, China
It’s a sweltering summer night when I’m invited to join a bitcoin miner from Shenzhen at a “bitcoin club” somewhere in downtown Beijing. I’ve just returned from visiting one of the world’s largest bitcoin mines and find myself at a gathering of cryptocurrency enthusiasts at a craft beer brewery in the Sanlitun nightlife district.

I excuse myself from the bitcoin meetup and resort to jumping in a pirate taxi because I don’t have a mobile wallet from Alibaba or Tencent—the primary way to hail and pay for taxis in the city. After paying in cash—now a rarity in China’s mobile payment saturated cities—I disembark, then get lost amid Beijing’s ancient hutongs, the narrow alleyways that link China’s traditional courtyard residences.

My host puts me out of my misery by sharing his location on a real-time map over our WeChat direct messages. Now drenched in sweat, I meet Jack Liao, who runs a bitcoin mining firm called Lightning Asic. He leads me through a dark hutong, coming to a set of carved wooden double-doors. Pushing them open, we enter into the courtyard of a palatially renovated villa. This is my first look at the elusive “bitcoin club.”

The club is located in a 2,000-square-foot villa with a staff of 15, including cooks, cleaners, and wait people. It has two guest rooms, a dining room that hosts two dozen people, a professional Texas Hold ‘Em table emblazoned with the legend, “Faith in Bitcoin,” an automated mahjong table; shelves stacked with fine wine and liquor, a room for practicing Chinese caligraphy, and so on. The table stakes are bitcoin, AliPay credits, and sometimes even yuan, the only non-virtual currency accepted. Guests can sleep, eat, drink, and gamble for free if they’re acquainted with the miners who run the place. “People come here just to chat about projects,” Liao says.
The eye-popping villa bankrolled by bitcoin mining is a symbol of just how lucrative the cryptocurrency industry has been for some on the Chinese mainland. China is home to the world’s largest bitcoin mines, thanks to abundant and cheap electricity, and at one time the country accounted for 95% of the volume traded in global markets. Its central bank is experimenting with a blockchain-backed digital currency, and its biggest companies, from tech giants to industrial conglomerates, are racing to bake blockchain tech into major new projects.

All this points to a central question: How did stateless cryptocurrencies get so big in China, a country where the national currency—along with so much else—remains tightly controlled by the government? Why has bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, flourished with so much vigor here in China? A two-week journey through bitcoin trading operations in Shanghai, mining operations in Inner Mongolia, and the club in Beijing hasn’t answered the question definitely—but it’s gotten me much closer.

Bitcoin is a political statement

Bitcoin began as an experiment in economics and politics, as a project to create electronic money that anyone could use but no one controlled, especially a sovereign authority. The code behind the new currency gave life to libertarian ideals like: money free from government controls on spending and taxation; transactions that could ignore a global, sometimes corrupt banking system; and freedom from central bank targeting of interest rates and inflation. It was also rebuke to the very notion of conventional money.
Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, encoded a headline from the Times of London in the first block of transactions ever created on the bitcoin blockchain. It read: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
Given bitcoin’s political bona fides, it’s a great irony that Chinese companies and individual users are so dominant in its daily activities. The world’s biggest bitcoin miner is a Beijing-based company called Bitmain, which operates two mining pools that control nearly 30% of all the processing power devoted to bitcoin mining. It might seem that Chinese bitcoiners are carrying out some kind of libertarian protest against China’s ruling communist party, subverting the status quo by processing cryptocurrency transactions towards a yet-to-be-revealed political end.

They aren’t.

“In China, bitcoin is one thing and in America and Europe it is another thing,” Liao said as we sipped tea from porcelain cups on the villa’s top floor. Our host, Wu Bi, explains there is no competition between cryptocurrencies and the government-controlled renminbi, at least as the government sees it. “In China our government says bitcoin is not a currency, it is a commodity, so there is no chance it will compete with the renminbi,” Wu told me in Chinese, with Liao translating. “Bitcoin is a great idea, but in China we care more about blockchain.”

Wu and his Chinese compatriots are focused not on the currency, but on the technology behind it. Blockchain is simply a technical way to record encrypted transactions that are distributed across a computer network; once entered they cannot be altered. Instead of using blockchain, or bitcoin, as a permissionless cryptocurrency, banks want to shoe-horn some of bitcoin’s features into current transaction systems to create a low-cost network that, crucially, would require administrators to grant users access. Those administrators, of course, would be banks, or central banks. “Different countries may have different ideas about what is government, and what is the liberty of individuals,” Wu says.
Bitcoin users I met in Beijing were similarly dismissive of bitcoin’s libertarian politics. They did not want to be named or quoted directly, but their argument was essentially this: People in China simply aren’t interested in bitcoin’s potential for political change. And besides, China’s closely controlled economy has delivered prosperity for now—what benefits does bitcoin bring besides as an investment that might appreciate?
Object of speculation

Ordinary Chinese bitcoin users I spoke to, and those who are served by the exchanges and wallet providers, are far more interested in the ability to speculate on bitcoin’s wild price swings—it’s just another way to make money as China continues to adopt characteristics of a market economy.

As it happens, bitcoin arrived just as a class of retail investors in China is growing in size, and seeking better returns than those offered by a restricted financial products market. Even the market for property in China’s top-tier coastal cities, usually reliable for spectacular returns, has been subjected to ever tightening lending restrictions by a government eager to curb speculation. “[Chinese consumers] have had such limited channels for so long, and [bitcoin] was finally one that was not tightly controlled by the government,” says Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow specializing in Chinese internet finance at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC.

One seasoned observer of the Chinese bitcoin scene concurs. Eric Zhao is an engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and runs the widely followed Twitter account CN Ledger. Bitcoin became popular almost by default, because of the paucity of products for the Chinese retail investor, he says. “There are not many good investment choices for common people in China. Many people worry about inflation and lots of people feel insecure about their financial status,” he says. “They buy it simply because they believe it will appreciate in value.”

Uncorrelated to major asset classes and generally disconnected from the Chinese economy, bitcoin has been hugely attractive to Chinese investors already overweight domestic stocks and property. Indeed, research from Pantera Capital, a venture fund for blockchain companies, shows that bitcoin is almost completely uncorrelated to major equity, debt, and commodity asset classes. “Because [bitcoin] is globally connected, it’s not easily affected by the Chinese economy,” says Isaac Mao, a longtime entrepreneur and investor in China’s technology scene. “It may be the only economic activity fully connected to the global economy.”


full: https://qz.com/1072907/why-china-is-so-hot-on-bitcoin/

If you find the concept of Bitcoin confusing, you are not alone. The virtual currency has been a constant source of controversy, but it is still not well understood.

On Monday, one Bitcoin was worth $4.442.

Are Bitcoins those coins I see in photographs?

No. Those coins are novelty items that newspapers used in photographs because they couldn’t find anything else to illustrate their stories about Bitcoin.

A Bitcoin is a digital token — with no physical backing — that can be sent electronically from one user to another, anywhere in the world. A Bitcoin can be divided out to eight decimal places, so you can send someone 0.00000001 Bitcoins. This smallest fraction of a Bitcoin — the penny of the Bitcoin world — is referred to as a Satoshi, after the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.

This all gets confusing, because Bitcoin is also the name of the payment network on which the Bitcoin digital tokens are stored and moved.

Unlike traditional payment networks like Visa, the Bitcoin network is not run by a single company or person. The system is run by a decentralized network of computers around the world that keep track of all Bitcoin transactions, similar to the way Wikipedia is maintained by a decentralized network of writers and editors.


The record of all Bitcoin transactions that these computers are constantly updating is known as the blockchain.

Why do criminals like Bitcoin?

Criminals have taken to Bitcoin because anyone can open a Bitcoin address and start sending and receiving Bitcoins without giving a name or identity. There is no central authority that could collect this information.

Bitcoin first took off in 2011 after drug dealers began taking payments in Bitcoin on the black-market website known as the Silk Road. Although the Silk Road was shut down in 2013, similar sites have popped up to replace it.

More recently, Bitcoin has become a method for making ransom payments — for example, when your computer is taken over by so-called ransomware.

Why won’t the government just shut it down?

The records of the Bitcoin network, including all balances and transactions, are stored on every computer helping to maintain the network — about 9,500 computers in late 2017.

If the government made it illegal for Americans to participate in this network, the computers and people keeping the records in other countries would still be able to continue. The decentralized nature of Bitcoin is also one of the qualities that have made it popular with people who are suspicious of government authorities.

Can Bitcoin users give themselves more Bitcoins?

Anyone helping to maintain the database of all Bitcoin transactions — the blockchain — could change his or her own copy of the records to add more money. But if someone did that, the other computers maintaining the records would see the discrepancy, and the changes would be ignored.

Are there legal uses?

Only a small percentage of all transactions on the Bitcoin network are explicitly illegal. Most transactions are people buying and selling Bitcoins on exchanges, speculating on future prices. A whole world of high-frequency traders has sprung up around Bitcoin.

People in countries with high inflation, like Argentina and Venezuela, have bought Bitcoin with their local currency to avoid losing their savings to inflation.

One of the most popular business plans is to use Bitcoin to move money over international borders. Large international money transfers can take weeks when they go through banks, while millions of dollars of Bitcoin can be moved in minutes. So far, though, these practical applications of Bitcoin have been slow to take off.

How can I buy a Bitcoin?

There are companies in most countries that will sell you Bitcoins in exchange for the local currency. In the United States, a company called Coinbase will link to your bank account or credit card and then sell you the coins for dollars. Opening an account with Coinbase is similar to opening a traditional bank or stock brokerage account, with lots of identity verification to satisfy the authorities.

For people who do not want to reveal their identities, services like LocalBitcoins will connect people who want to meet in person to buy and sell Bitcoins for cash, generally without any verification of identity required.

Who decides what a Bitcoin is worth?

The price of Bitcoin fluctuates constantly and is determined by open-market bidding on Bitcoin exchanges, similar to the way that stock and gold prices are determined by bidding on exchanges.

What is Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining refers to the process through which new Bitcoins are created and given to computers helping to maintain the network. The computers involved in Bitcoin mining are in a sort of computational race to process new transactions coming onto the network. The winner — generally the person with the fastest computers — gets a chunk of new Bitcoins, 12.5 of them right now. (The reward is halved every four years.)

There is generally a new winner about every 10 minutes, and there will be until there are 21 million Bitcoins in the world. At that point, no new Bitcoins will be created. This cap is expected to be reached in 2140. So far, about 16 million Bitcoin have been distributed.

Every Bitcoin in existence was created through this method and initially given to a computer helping to maintain the records. Anyone can set his or her computer to mine Bitcoin, but these days only people with specialized hardware manage to win the race.

Are there Bitcoin competitors?

Plenty. But these other virtual currencies do not have as many followers as Bitcoin, so they are not worth as much. As in the real world, a currency is worth only as much as the number of people willing to accept it for goods and services.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 by an unknown creator going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, who communicated only by email and social messaging. While several people have been identified as likely candidates to be Satoshi, as the creator is known in the world of Bitcoin, no one has been confirmed as the real Satoshi, and the search has gone on.

Satoshi created the original rules of the Bitcoin network and then released the software to the world in 2009. Satoshi largely disappeared from view two years later. Anyone can download and use the software, and Satoshi now has no more control over the network than anyone else using the software.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/technology/what-is-bitcoin-price.html

WTF?

Girona made as many goals today as in all of their other games combined this season

What happened with the team that defeated Eibar 4-0?

Schalke 04   1 : 1 Bayer Leverkusen

Not really a surprise

First install your local wallet and make sure it is working.
Then transfer to the address associated to your local wallet.

Simple as that.

It already dumped some 12 hours ago. Wasn't that hard, just close to $4000 and was quick.

Not slow and low enough to cause panic