A slow down in the growth of the money supply could push the price of Bitcoin to record highs next year. The web-based currency—which has been pitched as money of the future—is set to rise in price due to adjustments in the reward structure for mining set to go into effect in July.

As Reuters reports:

"[T]he price of bitcoin could test its 2013 highs of above $1,100 next year and then pick up speed to rise to $4,400 by the end of 2017.

That would be due to a number of factors… including an increased acceptance of payments in bitcoin by big companies and authorities, rapidly growing interest and investment in the "blockchain" technology that underpins bitcoin transactions, and also more demand from China as its currency weakens and the economy slows."

https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/26/will-2016-be-a-record-year-for-bitcoin

Much of the time, cryptocurrency needs the help of others to get its name out.

In recent months, bitcoin experienced a heavy spike in price thanks to renewed interest in China. As a result, the price of everyone’s favorite digital currency rose and now stands near the $450 mark. Not a bad place considering it was less than $200 back in August. It’s quite amazing what a little international publicity can do in such a short while.

Factom’s cryptocurrency has recently “fallen victim” to similar circumstances. Ethereum capabilities were recently introduced to Microsoft’s Azure, a newly-formed service that according to its website is, “an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform.” Following Ethereum came the introduction of Ripple and now Factom, and the company’s digital currency has risen about 600 percent in price (nearing 0.002 bitcoins, roughly $0.90). The good news? The gains have managed to stand their ground, suggesting that this is not some temporary rise we’re witnessing, but one that’s striving to last. You don’t see that too often in the world of digital currency, nowadays.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/26/microsoft-factom-baas-cryptocurrency/

Amid the controversy surrounding the dismissal of two recently elected members Jim Harper and Oliver Jansen, an old piece of evidence has surfaced in bitcoin forums regarding the legitimacy of the contribution of its founding members including former Bitcoin Foundation chairman Peter Vessenes.

According to the Mt. Gox counterclaim against CoinLab filed on October 9, 2013, venture-backed digital currency company CoinLab CEO Peter Vessenes wrongfully converted around US$5 million in Mt. Gox customer deposit.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/26/bitcoin-foundation-were-trying-to-recover-from-the-mess-peter-vessenes-made/

Blockchain-based record keeping solutions provider Factom has officially stalled its Honduras land title registry initiative announced earlier this year, due to complex political issues and procedures.

The company has communicated with policy experts and land title software developers to discuss the future of its project.


http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/26/factom-stalls-honduras-land-title-registry-initiative/

OpenBazaar may soon face some new competition in the coming months. A new upcoming crypto-based decentralized marketplace MaskNetwork, currently in testing phase will soon be going live next year. However, MaskNetwork is a bit different from OpenBazaar in its own ways.

MaskNetwork is a secure P2P distributed marketplace that allows its users to buy and sell goods using their own MaskCoin cryptocurrecy. MaskCoin transactions on MaskNetwork offers similar levels of protection as bitcoin to its users. According to a discussion on one of the crypto technology forums, the founder of MaskNetwork offered various details about the upcoming product. The person answered various questions regarding the platform, privacy and security issues etc. on the forum. Based out of Romania, development of the platform was announced earlier in July this year.

MaskNetwork, which has been under development all this while has recently launched the alpha version of the platform. The test release is aptly called the TestNet and it is being used by the cryptocurrency community to operate and test the various features currently integrated into the TestNet. Some of the features available on the alpha product includes multisignatures, integrated escrow system, transaction support, messaging etc.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/26/masknetwork-openbazaar-contender/

There are times we feel like Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day.” No matter what we do, we’re subjected to the same surroundings and events. Everywhere we look, we see the same thing over and over again. Things tend to become routine. It becomes mundane and to a degree, even a little irritating.

Today is one of those days; a recently published article details a think tank’s findings regarding bitcoin and digital currency, and surprise! Those involved in the think tank believe that insurgencies and radical groups ranging from drug cartels to terrorist units will find further ways to misuse digital currency for the sake of evil.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/27/is-bitcoin-really-as-evil-as-some-think/

i believe in bitcoin future
but im not want to take risk with no save USD / local currency

Never put eggs in one basket...

coinbase is only a wallet no more
you should try to use BItcoin Core or electrum wallet

bitcoin is so far if we compare with paypal
this is about decentralization money and about highest technology

agree with you
start with signature campaign learning more about trading then you can try trading with free bitcoin fund from signature campaign
im trader at yobit and bittrex and i use free bitcoin from signature campaign

but if we see the fact , now bitcoin price down arround 2-3%
look at https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd

this is tactic from bank to make bitcoin and blockchain is not 1 packet, and i believe bank want to create new international "shitcoin" with blockchain technology and he can control it

Conclusion

From each and every technical indicator presented above, one can infer that the current level might not be suitable for the buyer. The better choice would be to keep decreasing long positions on higher levels and wait for lower levels to enter the market.

Very short-term traders can go short on Bitcoin by placing a stop-loss just north of $468 when the price reaches $465. The target for the trade would be $ 440.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/bitcoin-weekly-price-technical-analysis-gains-reduced-in-fed-week/

This weekend, the Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 18.14% to 93,448,670,796, its biggest jump since August 2014.

Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to discover the hash below a given target, which is required to validate the next block of transactions. The difficulty level automatically changes every 2016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks. The adjustment is based a target of 10-minute block times.

http://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-jumps-the-most-in-16-months-100b-next/

The current indicator conditions are similar to previous instances where price had found support and advanced from.

A concern is that the upside is constrained by a resistance ceiling near $468 (OKCoin Spot). That the 1hr MAs are turning down slightly is another concern – implying that their support of price is fading.


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-trading-lacks-direction/

SPOOKED Justice Department officers fear hackers are poised to pinch a $15 million stash of digital currency from Victorian coffers.

Civil servants have thrown a cloak of secrecy over the status and planned auction of 24,500 bitcoins confiscated from a drug baron, amid concern thieves will steal the booty.

So fearful are authorities of a virtual heist, they’ve secretly awarded a tender for the ­management and sale of the currency — and refuse to say how much taxpayer money is being spent, or even who won the tender.

Bitcoins are a controversial virtual currency traded anonymously from computer to computer.

Jittery justice staffers have revealed deep concerns about the department’s ability to ­secure the asset from crooks.

“Due to the nature of ­bitcoins and the manner in which they are stored, they are vulnerable to hacks and theft, as well as computer viruses,” a staffer wrote in response to a Herald Sun request for ­information.



http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/crime-auction-kept-top-secret-as-hackers-circle-15m-bitcoin-sale/news-story/5374dcba64e72b6a07732b498797d41a

We have all heard of the recent developments in blockchain technology and how it is being increasingly adopted by various industries including banking and financial sectors. While we all prefer to see a rosy picture of bitcoin and its underlying blockchain technology, there are few apprehensions regarding how it will turn out to be in the near future.

The Bitcoin industry is definitely growing and it has been attracting a lot of investments lately. Investments in the sector crossed another huge milestone recently when venture capital investments in the crypto-segment crossed the $1 billion mark. There are lot of new blockchain based products currently under development in the segment and also bitcoin as a currency by itself is being increasingly adopted by individuals and business. How long will this go on until things change for better or worse…

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/does-the-future-look-all-rosy-for-bitcoin-and-blockchain-technology/

Bitcoin Core Developer Jeff Garzik has introduced Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 202, proposing the bitcoin community and miners to take small and economically sound steps in increasing the maximum Bitcoin block size to 2 megabytes.

Over the past few months, bitcoin core developers have proposed a number of BIPs including BIP 100 and 101, to increase the Bitcoin block size up to 8 megabytes. However, bitcoin experts have criticized such proposals with concerns that it may “break” the Bitcoin code.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/jeff-garzik-proposes-bip-202-block-size-increase-to-2-mb/

We have 10 more days to go for the new year to being. This year has been great for bitcoin and most of us. Hope you were one among them too. In one of our previous articles we discussed about the progress of bitcoin over 2015. While the bitcoin sector has had its share of ups and downs during the year, it has made a good overall progress. Now it is time to have a look at what might be in store for the digital currency in the coming year.

The adoption of bitcoin among individuals has been good in 2015, and we can expect the same thing to continue in the coming year as well. The development of products and services using blockchain technology has been on a full swing in the recent days and the potential of this technology has attracted lot of investments lately from various venture capitalists and fintech industry alike. As the year 2016 progresses, we can expect many of the much awaited products hit the market.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/2016-bumpy-road-ahead-bitcoin-industry/

Key Highlights
In one of the previous week’s analysis I suggested that buying favored in Bitcoin price near ¥2600. The idea played well as the price bounced and traded higher
However, as stated earlier the ¥3100 resistance area holds the key, and currently stalling more gains.
Buyers need to be very careful moving ahead, as a break below a major support trend line on the 4-hours chart (data feed from BTCChina) may call for a correction.

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/bitcoin-price-weekly-analysis-top-created-near-%C2%A53100/

As a wise man once said, there is no escaping taxes and death once you are born. When bitcoin was introduced there was a glimmer of hope, most of us thought that we might just be able to escape taxes. However, it was short lived, until IRS decided to impose taxes on virtual currency holdings. Now that bitcoin is considered as money, asset, commodity, currency and what not by various government agencies in the United States, one can do nothing but pay relevant taxes.





http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/12/20/prepare-manage-bitcoin-taxes/