The popular digital currency, bitcoin, came close to the $8,000 level on Wednesday, as markets reacted to the news that another cryptocurrency split might not happen after all.

The bitcoin split was scheduled to take place in mid-November, with developers planning to introduce an upgrade called SegWit2x. But, the idea was temporarily suspended after major developers reversed their support.

In response, bitcoin surged to $7,899.90, reaching a new all-time high during the day. The cryptocurrency later retreated and was last seen trading at $7,387.30.

The main reason for scrapping the update was that it could “divide the community.”

“Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin,” wrote Belshe. “Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin's growth. This was never the goal of SegWit2x.”

The email was also signed by some major developers in the bitcoin community, including Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, BloqInc co-founder Jeff Garzik, Blockchain CEO and co-founder Peter Smith and ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees.

SegWit2x was meant to upgrade bitcoin network’s capacity by improving the speed with which it processes millions of daily transactions. But, the change would have impacted bitcoin’s rules and led to a so-called split in the currency.

This would have been bitcoin’s third split, following one in August, which created bitcoin cash and one in October, which created bitcoin gold.

The update received a lot of support when it was first proposed in May. And the plans to proceed could resurface if there is an increase of support in the online community.

When bitcoin splits the owners of the original currency receive the same amount of the offshoot as well.

Analysts commented that the cancellation of the update was a positive move for the digital currency.

“Indefinitely postponing the fork is a healthy move for crypto assets,” Guy Zyskind, CEO and co-founder of Enigma, a crypto-investment platform, told Reuters. “The ability of the bitcoin community to self-correct and avoid a contentious fork inspires confidence and shows how the ecosystem is entering a more mature phase.”

Source: http://www.kitco.com/news/2017-11-08/Bitcoin-Nearly-Hits-8-000-As-Developers-Back-Out-Of-Another-Split.html

This is a big help. I was wondering if there is a possibility I can view my balance before but didn't bother to ask and turns out there is a site for that and it doesn't just show my balance in etherdelta but the tokens as well that I didn't deposit to it. Etherdelta is confusing sometimes especially if you are just a beginner in using it. Its important though to be careful when doing trading because there are some who input interchangeably the price and amount of tokens to be bought and sold and not being able to cancel the transaction.

This is a good idea but you have to make a feasibility study first if you can push through with it. You have to consider if the fees you will be able to collect from the people who will use your platform will be enough to cover the interest you will pay to those who will invest in it. There is also a need to take a look at the laws of your country if it is allowed or not and then know your competitors if you already have one and if you are the pioneer in this kind of project in your country then it would be an advantage too.

This is the reason why you should put your money into an investment vehicle that beats inflation because if you store it in an establishment or you just store it in your house/vault not generating interest then it will slowly lose its value. It is because of the financial crisis in 2008 that gave birth to bitcoin because Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to have a deflationary economy and it may took years for bitcoin to have value but we can see that it is constantly beating inflation that's why many are enticed to invest on bitcoin because of the significant rate of return that is incomparable to other traditional investment vehicle like stocks and mutual funds.

Current annual average inflation rate is around 3% now and to be able for us to still have profit in our investment then we should invest into something that has an interest more than that and it is clear that we cannot get it in banks that only gives an interest of only 1% more or less. Still many people are still saving their money in banks for long term because many of them are unaware that even though it is gaining interest, it is actually slowly losing its value because of inflation.

This week two well-known bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturers, Satoshi Labs (Trezor) and Ledger Wallet, revealed their contingency plans for the pending Segwit2x fork that may take place in nine days. Both companies explain they will support both chains and tethered tokens if there is a split and provide a tool for the splitting process.

The hard fork announcements keep piling up as block 494784 approaches with many cryptocurrency based businesses revealing their plans. On November 6 the two hardware wallet companies Satoshi Labs and Ledger explained how the firms would handle the upcoming fork. Satoshi Labs explains Segwit2x is a proposal to fork the network by increasing the block size to 2 MB. The company says the fork “is a contentious hard fork” that will likely result in a split. However Satoshi Labs explains Trezor wallets will support both chains calling the Segwit2x token “B2X,” and wallet owners will receive a 1:1 distribution if a split occurs.

“If you have held BTC on your Trezor before the fork, you will own the same amount of BTC and B2X after the fork — With Trezor, you own your private keys (in the form of the seed), therefore you have control over all of your coins, including forked coins,” explains Satoshi Labs.

The Prague-based firm explains their users need to be careful sending transactions during the fork due to Segwit2x’s lack of replay protection. Additionally, Satoshi Labs will provide a splitting guide and tool for users looking to obtain B2X within the platform’s beta version.  

“B2X will use the same address format as Bitcoin,” Satoshi Labs notes. “However, Trezor will generate B2X addresses with a different derivation path.”

Ledger Wallet Will Also Support Both Chains
The France-based Ledger Wallet also says it will support both chains and the associated tokens if a split happens. Ledger explains users should be precautious about sending transactions during the fork and says users should “wait until the dust settles.”

“As for the previous bitcoin cash fork, we’ll let our users trade on both chains and split coins easily, even if the ride might be slightly more bumpy due to the fact that Segwit2x was not initially designed to cause a split,” details Ledger’s fork announcement.

For the sake of clarity and as different actors might name a different chain “Bitcoin” during the fork and some time after, we’ll call in this article the current Bitcoin chain Bitcoin-1x and the potential Segwit2x chain Bitcoin-2x.
Ledger also details the company’s wallet platform will display a warning if a user’s transaction is vulnerable to replay attacks. At that point, the platform will ask the user if they want to split the coins or they can choose to bypass the warning as well. Additionally Ledger will offer both a non-custodian and “half custodian” process to split tokens after block 494784.

“The non-custodian process will rely on the software created by the chainspl.it initiative and offer a command line or web interface to use it with Ledger Nano, Nano S or Blue — It’ll be non automated and recommended for advanced users only,” Ledger’s plan details. “The “half custodian” process will involve a new Ledger application created for the Nano S and Blue (it will not be available on Ledger Nano) and will be fully automated.”

We’ll make available tainted inputs to our users with a contract enforced by the new application that sends back those tainted inputs to us — this is possible because our secure applications distribution architecture allows to securely share a set of keys with our users without revealing it. In other words, our splitting app will take care of everything automatically and with the highest levels of security.

Read more here: https://news.bitcoin.com/two-popular-hardware-wallet-firms-reveal-segwit2x-fork-plans/

If the site is paying a too good to be true rate then more often than not, it is scam. I have been scammed before by a "cloud mining" site that's why I don't invest on them anymore and I realized that most if not all are just scam anyway. Many are enticed to invest on it because there is no hard work to do. You just invest and after sometime you will get the interest of your investment. Some cloud mining sites offer 10% a day return which is just unbelievable and from the moment you saw it, you know it is just scam but many are still attracted to invest because they are paying. They are paying at first to attract more investors that would testify that they are paying but after maybe weeks or a month, they would suddenly be gone and re-appear again with another site name. If you value your money then better learn trading because that's where you can earn significant amount of money that is legit.

Looking at the price now, it seems hard to just buy immediately because you would only get a little amount of satoshi in your wallet but if you do the dollar cost averaging then it won't hurt that much to see the price go up or down because you have the average of it. One thing also is to buy in the dip, with the incoming hard fork, there is an expected dip after that so maybe it would be the opportunity for you to buy bitcoin.

In the psychology of a market cycle, we maybe in the period of thrill or euphoria now. We don't know when it will end but at some point, buyer steam would be weaker and that's the time the price would slowly go lower. Those who are already experienced in trading knows this cycle that's why they know when to buy and sell and see whale activity and when the price is down, that's the time to buy.

I cannot disagree with this one. There are ICOs that are just hype up because people take advantage of the opportunity to have free coins even though they see that the coin has no viable project. There are projects that have active developers entertaining the invesstors and bounty participants during the ICO but after the ICO, they would be suddenly gone leaving their investors and bounty participants in vain. Though there may be legit ICOs out there, it is hard to trust again if you have been betrayed/scammed and I think with so many ICOs launching this year, the bubble would burst sooner or later and I hope those legit ones would remain and scammers would be gone.

If I can see that bitcoin is rising, there has to be some point when it will have a dip then that will be the time that I will buy. It may be a psychological price or a price targeted by the traders like fibonacci price. With the expected hardfork in the coming days, people are expecting a dip after the event and that would be the time also that I will be buying bitcoin. If the dip will not happen then I will accept my mistake in my judgment and will just wait again for the next dip because I think we are already above in the market cycle.

As for the altcoins, I would buy when the bitcoin is not making a major move because when it does move either way, altcoins take the hit so I always set my stop loss because cryptocurrency market is so volatile and if a news comes out that would have a negative effect to the coin, in just hours or minutes you will see the coin losing almost half of its value.

I think some signature campaigns will appear more after the fork because bitcoin is soaring and if the owners implementing the signature campaigns will have it now, they would be paying pretty high but they also have a solution of adjusting the rates after the fork when the correction comes. It is expected that the price would go down so they don't need to adjust the rates if they decided to implement it during that time. You can also have the option of looking some signature campaigns in altcoin section. Some are paying pretty high compared to bitcoin signature campaigns.

Oh well I am one of those investors who have been scammed by Hashocean. I just discovered bitcoin during that time last year before the halving and hashocean is very popular so being a newbie, I em enticed by the idea of just investing and waiting for the coin to arrived in my wallet everyday. I am happy for a few weeks getting almost half of my capital and then suddenly their website is inaccessible. People are in panic and just realized that they have been scammed including me. I learned my lesson in that investment and promise never to invest in a HYIP site again. Through that experience, I search legit ways to earn bitcoin and found this forum so it was a blessing in disguise then.

They could not completely kill it because there would always be others who would take the risk even if it is illegal in their country. However, they can slow down the growth of mass adoption because many would not want to risk to be imprisoned or be fined by using it. I, for one, would not want to do something illegal so I would just let go of it even if there is a big potential to earn significant amount because there would be other opportunities out there that would not make me be imprisoned. However, if they will just implement insane taxes instead of making it illegal and I can still profit from it then I will continue to use it.

Huobi Bitcoin exchange will begin offering over-the-counter (OTC) services for Chinese traders soon, as announced by CEO Lin Li. This news came as traditional Chinese crypto-to-crypto exchanges breathed their last breath.

Heavy regulation has forced Chinese exchanges to rethink their business models. As of 1 November, trading cryptocurrencies on open Chinese exchanges is henceforth prohibited, and in response, they are considering over-the-counter transactions. This would enable traders to purchase digital currency (i.e.Bitcoin) using fiat currency such as the Chinese yuan. Timeline for introducing this feature is yet unannounced. More here: https://cryptoanswers.net/china-bitcoin-exchanges-trade-over-the-counter/

While bitcoin world is moving on without them, apparently they will be back sooner. China would not want to lose the opportunity to have some share of the crypto market so they will be back. What do you think will be the effect of it in the price of bitcoin and other crypto when they come back?

While Bitcoin bulls will probably never have it so good as they have in 2017, we wonder whether many of them have stopped to think about the environmental downside of this roaring bull market. After all, back in the dot.com boom, people had ideas about potential internet businesses, issued pieces of paper representing ownership and watched their prices go parabolic parabolic. All it took was a Powerpoint presentation, some computer programming expertise and a “research” report, courtesy of Mary Meeker, Henry Blodgett et al.

The environmental downside we’re referring to in Bitcoin is, of course, is energy.

We alluded to this in a constructive way here when we noted that a new Bitcoin mining hub is developing in Iceland, where the natural temperature dramatically reduces the cost of cooling computing hardware.

The primary energy requirement, however, goes into the computing power to “mine” the Bitcoins. The Bitcoin mining industry can consume 24 terawatt hours of electricity and still be profitable – the Motherboard website provides some context...  

Bitcoin's incredible price run to break over $7,000 this year has sent its overall electricity consumption soaring, as people worldwide bring more energy-hungry computers online to mine the digital currency. An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year… De Vries also estimates that the worldwide Bitcoin mining industry is now using enough electricity to power 2.26 million American homes.

A rapid “Google” later and we discovered that there are 125.8 million American households, so almost 2%.

Another way of looking at Bitcoin’s energy consumption is divide the electricity use in Bitcoin mining each day by the number of daily Bitcoin transactions. As the Motherboard notes, each Bitcoin transaction now requires the same amount of electricity needed to power the average American household for one week.

Expressing Bitcoin's energy use on a per-transaction basis is a useful abstraction. Bitcoin uses x energy in total, and this energy verifies/secures roughly 300k transactions per day. So this measure shows the value we get for all that electricity, since the verified transaction (and our confidence in it) is ultimately the end product…This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. Since 2015, Bitcoin's electricity consumption has been very high compared to conventional digital payment methods. This is because the dollar price of Bitcoin is directly proportional to the amount of electricity that can profitably be used to mine it.

Unfortunately for the environmentalists, the Bitcoin price – as every bull knows – entered the parabolic phase in 2017. This Bloomberg chart calculates the number of days for each $1,000 rise in price.

Read more here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-04/each-bitcoin-transaction-uses-much-energy-your-house-week

Right! Even before the existence of cryptocurrencies, there are already scammers and phishers existing to get hold of the bank accounts like sending an email stating that you need to update the information and when you update in their site which only the observants can really notice as they are almost the same, by the time you entered the info then say goodbye to your money. It is the same to cryptocurrencies now, scams are happening everywhere because I always receive an e-mail from slack stating that I need to update my MEW because of some upgrade but thankfully, I am skeptic so I search for more information and discovered to never click a link in e-mails from slack regarding MEW.

It would always be better to bookmark the site you are trading and always using so that you can avoid clicking phishing sites because most of the sites at the top of google search are advertisements and if you are not vigilant then there is a possibility you will be scammed.

Maybe or maybe not. You will only know if you made the right decision when the coin is already trading and more people bought the coin for its price to go up. Upon hitting exchanges, it will be pump and dump and then price will stabilize after that and that's the time if your investment to the project will materialize. You didn't invest a significant amount so it would be a learning period then if ever price go south but if it really has an active developer and project is active and follows the roadmap then it would be good for you. Latest news of it is that it will be traded in Kucoin. It may not be one of the major exchange but it is a start.

US business schools are beefing up training in the software that underlies digital currency bitcoin, a technology expected to be a game changer in many industries.

The move makes sense as more students seek careers in financial technology, or "fintech," which has captivated leading Wall Street banks and been called "the most important technology since the internet."

In January, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley will offer its first ever course in blockchain software.

The Haas school, which is near San Francisco and Silicon Valley, will handpick 60 students from the departments of business, engineering and law and split them into groups of six to explore possible applications of the technology.

"When people think about blockchain they think about cryptocurrencies," said Haas school lecturer Greg LaBlanc, who sees the technology as potentially disrupting many sectors.

"We believe it will have the biggest impact on contracting, logistics and supply chains, healthcare, public administration, assets clearing, property, transactions," he said.

"Pretty much every function of businesses are going to be affected by this."

- 'Very transformational' -

Blockchain runs by recording transactions as "blocks" that are updated in real time on a digitized ledger that can be read from anywhere and does not have a central recordkeeper.

It was originally developed as the accounting method for bitcoin. But while that cryptocurrency remains controversial with some players in finance, bankers increasingly see exposure blockchain as a must.

Blockchain is "something we are very optimistic about," JPMorgan Chase chief financial officer Marianne Lake said on a conference call last month.

Newer technologies could be "very transformational for the financial services industry and we are forward-leaning and optimistic about that," Lake added.

The technology, which lets users trace items back through their supply chains, also could offer a means to limit tainted food problems, or to guard against "blood diamonds" that come from a war-ravaged area.

In finance, blockchain could be used to permit parties to check the solvency of counterparties, significantly reducing costs.

Training students for that function and other evolving roles in finance is altering curricula at universities and shifting how students structure their programs.

Students who wish to work in trading must learn how to code, while bankers need to understand algorithms and big data to be able to attract new clients and devise strategies for fast-changing markets.

Read more here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5050905/Blockchain-rage-US-business-schools.html

Maybe the best thing to do is to consult a lawyer and ask him about the status of cryptocurrencies in your country or if he has no idea then you can just search in the internet or ask here in the forum in your local group if you have one maybe they have an idea of your status. As for my country, the government did not regulate yet cryptocurrency but they are aware of it since I have seen some news coverage about it and just warn the people to be vigilant always and investigate first where the people will put their money because it is a highly speculative investment and if in case they lost their money then the government cannot backed them because it has no legal implications yet.

There may be a lot of good reason why bitcoin should be used by the government but still the government would not want to lose its control especially in financial sector cause this is the blood of the government. Bitcoin can still be use and regulated but it can't be the only currency that the country is using because not anyone can have access to it unlike fiat. Unfortunately, there are so many people in the world that have no access to technology yet so it would be hard for them to use digital currency if they don't even know what it is. It is still better to use fiat especially in countries that have limited resources in terms of technology.

Always have a trading plan. It would be good if you already know where is your entrance and exit strategy to the trade so that as much as possible, you can avoid getting your emotions involve in the trade. If in case you don't have a trading plan and just buy a certain coin because it is getting hype then it is either you are lucky why you are in profit or you got what you deserved when you are at loss because you didn't think of a proper plan. One of the struggles of the traders are the emotions during trading because they will either become greedy if already in profits or still hopeful that the price would still go up even if they are already in a major loss because they didn't use stop loss.