I've spent some time setting up this service to work with our upcoming fundraising drive and it's really great.  I have yet to perform live transactions on it but thus far I highly recommend its flexibility and ease of getting it setup.

After we go live, I'll post updates.  But thank you for the great service!  I looked a few different multicoin gateways and yours really stood out!

These are being implemented as CFD (contract for difference) futures.  As far as I can understand, they do not represent any actual holding of Bitcoin, the exchanges do not possess any "reserve" of Bitcoin, and there is no option (at this time) to "take delivery" of a settled contract in Bitcoin.  So it's basically betting on the price of Bitcoin at each contract's strike date.

I am more interested in how people in the community feel that a futures contract that is wholly disconnected from the underlying asset (BTC) will impact the price of BTC.  I posted a similar thread about that particular aspect.

I guess we'll know starting next week, but it's looking more to me as a way that they can sell clients on "paper Bitcoin" than something that could actually manipulate the real BTC price.  At least for now while they're totally disconnected from actual BTC.

Hi All,

As I'm sure most of you know, starting next week the CME Group and NASDAQ will be introducing Bitcoin derived futures contracts.

A very important consideration with respect to these futures is that they are cash settled, not settled in Bitcoin.

I've read a fair amount from the "traditional finance" media regarding this development.  A brief read is this article:

Bitcoin Futures And The Need For Control
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-05/bitcoin-futures-and-need-control


My question of the Bitcoin community is, how do you think these futures will impact the Bitcoin market?

If anyone has any good articles they've read that address this side of the issue, if you could post a link to them, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

I just bought this, waiting for the confirmation.  I'd like to thank you for adding this feature.  This account is an organizational account for a project/organization that is about to be announced, and I've been careful to post things that are consistent with the organization's mission and goals.  This will allow me to post announcements, with images, without having to either do it on my main account (BenOnceAgain), or posting a bunch of content unrelated to the mission of the project/organization.

I appreciate this new feature.

They have a whitepaper on their website that explains how they reach their daily reference rate.  I've been looking if they have a free source of the historical reference rate but I think you have to subscribe to their market data feeds to get at it.  Ugh.

Buy $1500 of BTC during a dip.  Wait a few days, maybe a week or two, till it goes up $1500, then sell that portion of BTC (hodl the rest of your dip purchase, so about half) and get your miner.

Blockchain distributed ledger technology is just beginning to reshape the world.  Bitcoin is a huge part of this, the first "killer app" for blockchain.

But blockchain (especially Bitcoin) also enables a larger paradigm-shift, the Decentralization Revolution.  Twitter censoring people?  Decentralize it.  Google manipulating search results?  Let's make them more fair with distributed search systems.  Elections being rigged because of closed-source, hanky-panky technology?  Open-source, distributed ledger, all the machines will achieve consensus over each ballot.  You'll get a receipt with a tx code or QR code to scan and verify your ballot was cast exactly as you specified.  YouTube keeping virtually all of the profits that should be more fairly distributed to the content creators?  Decentralize the platforms of video display, advertising, and monetizing content.

Structures of power and control, such as the large banks, large media, large importers and exporters of goods, government services, all of this, and more, will be leveled by the Decentralization Revolution.  Not eliminated, we still need to trade goods and have a media.  But made more fair.  For the first time in history, all the technology is here to really take away power from the few and give it to the many.

The people in this forum are on the leading edge of that.

This is not true regarding the United States.  Yes, it is more red tape, but it is very possible to structure an ICO/ITO and be compliant with all applicable laws and regulations.

I am not a tax professional, but from what I understand the cost basis of those forked coins was zero.  There's probably an argument to be made that they were a "gift", since you did nothing investment related to earn them.  However, I'm betting IRS will be treating them as what happens when a publicly traded business spins off a unit as a separate company.

In any event, seek the advice of a tax professional.  Also, you may consider donating either the forked coins or other crypto to a non-profit charity, which will allow you to offset capital gains.  Depending on the accounting method you use for your holdings, (i.e. average cost basis vs. tracking specific purchases as separately), donation of coins can allow you to deduct as charitable contributions a decent amount of what would otherwise be taxable gains.  Just make sure you get a receipt for your donations.  It can reduce what you have to pay the tax man while helping out a worthy cause!

If it's craftily structured, it can possibly do even better... My non-profit, that is about to launch an Initial Donor Offering, is creating a hybrid structure for Internet 3.0/blockchain projects that allows donations to fund development, complete transparent governance (with open participation), and projects that are completed with the incubator process are spun-off as for-profits, where the donors can be rewarded for their contributions to the development.  It's designed to raise the bar on the quality of projects that reach ICO/VC funding stage, which I believe is sorely needed, and to solve some other problems in the FinTech ecosystem, such as very difficult times dealing with legacy banks here in the United States.

You can check us out at https://www.btric.org.  Our whitepaper and IDO platform will be launched in a few days and I'm really excited about our prospects.  If you have any questions, feel free to PM me on here or on my personal account which is BenOnceAgain.

Good luck!

(Once again, I am not your lawyer, tax professional, or financial advisor so nothing I've said is intended to replace competent advice of those professionals.)

Keep your eye on the United States.  Don't count America out of this revolution!

It might seem like we're a sea of red tape, and in some sense we are right now, but that's going to be changing.  Many state governments are about to undertake "regulatory arbitrage" to encourage blockchain projects in their states.  It will be interesting to watch it unfold.

I formed my organization BTRIC (Blockchain Technology Research Innovations Corporation), which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity business incubator for Internet 3.0 projects (which will then be spun-off as for-profits, either as ICO or VC funding methods) in the United States after considering many other jurisdictions and seeking advice of some attorneys that specialize in FinTech and securities law.

One of the biggest problems here, finding crypto business friendly banks (necessary evil to be able to interface with the legacy financial structure), is one of the first projects we're going to tackle.

In some ways its even safer.  If you give someone a bank account number, they can perform an ACH debit transaction on it.  They need the routing number to do that but if they know where you bank, they can usually get the routing number for that bank.

A bitcoin public address for donations is not able to be accessed for sending transactions without the private key.

That being said, if a person were to look at your public address and find that it contains a lot of BTC, it could "inspire" them to try to figure out how to hack you to get your private key.  Even if they don't end up with the key, if you are not well secured you could have to deal with other consequences of their hacking attempts.

Best to use a public address that doesn't hold much BTC for a tipping address.

I think there was a push up out of other crypto prior to the BTG snapshot and now people are reallocating into the other cryptos.

It will recover.

Just look at any dip as Bitcoin "being on sale".

This is a very interesting problem that I haven't considered.  In fact there could be legal implications of not refunding an appropriate amount.

Great to do thorough research.  I'd definitely consider splitting any speculative investment on crypto projects between multiple.  Great ideas are one thing but it has to have follow through with execution.  The stature of the team means less to me than follow through and passion.  Everyone was once a "nobody", and they deserve a break.

I'd also consider hodling some BTC and other crypto.  Those are pretty safe, you can shift in and out of them easily as market conditions warrant, and could grow your budget from 5 to 6, 7, or even more figures over a reasonable time frame.

Don't ever put all your eggs in one basket.

Hi All,

I am in the early-to-mid stages of framing together a concept for a bitcoin/blockchain related offering (not really an ICO).

Of course, one of our priorities is to ensure that we reach out to as wide a section of the coin community as possible, while still being kept within a relatively tight initial budget.

I thought I'd reach out to the community and inquire regarding any thoughts as to the top languages to target in making our materials (website, whitepapers, etc.) available to the non-English speaking members.

I did take a look at https://bitnodes.21.co/ for the distribution of BTC nodes and here's the top 9 list of countries (removed the N/A):

• 1. United States
• 2. Germany
• 3. France
• 4. China
• 5. Netherlands
• 6. Canada
• 7. United Kingdom
• 8. Russian Federation
• 9. Singapore

We can target the predominant language in these countries.  Does anyone have any other languages to suggest?  Of course, we'd love to be in every language, but we have to make choices to fit within time and budgetary constraints.

Thank you for any feedback you're able to provide.  As our project becomes more solid, we will be seeking translators and others to join our team.

Electrum wallet is my recommendation.

Really?

Fortunately it looks like no one took the bait.  https://blockchain.info/address/1E5DT7UQtTKJDmHHJS8Rtshy8un9JxA8s

Thanks for the great service and website!

It needs to be as easy as square was for people to turn their smartphones into credit card terminals.  That will be a big help to drive merchant adoption.

My thoughts exactly!