Indeed! Finally, the bitcoin price is recovering very fast from the recent market correction. I think the bitcoin price will be fully recovered by the by the end of this month of January.

Well, before all that, I want to build my small bitcoin mining farm this year 2018 that will produce an average of 1.2 PH/s and Invested hugely 2019 on my new cryptocurrency exchange which should be based in Switzerland. And then finally, buy my ticket to the Mars.

Bitcoin is a digital currency to be used by everyone, businessmen, scientist, engineers, doctors, programmers, and even the greedy politicians (criminals). Yes, the politicians are the real criminals because they are always supporting things in their favor not their people, and the people that are called criminals are very selfish that is why they are criminals. so what is the difference? they are all criminals, indeed!

So, you are talking about faucet gambling site, I don't think it is really effective to the level where it may help you make a living with such site. In fact, faucet sites are big waste of time. I suggest you should try to rank-up your account here on this community by posting positive comments and join the signature campaign that would be better.

What you are asking is hard to predict, predicting how when bitcoin is going up or down. But let's look at the last year 2017 and see what really happened. We first saw the bitcoin manage to grow consistently for about 3 months and it went down a little in March and follow the same route up to July. Bitcoin went through the same circles through out the year, the bitcoin went up for like 3 months and it went down for like 3-4 weeks then it will go up again. 

Sometimes, I wonder why people are asking such questions; Once you are planning on holding bitcoin for long-term the price doesn't matter at all when you are buying. Even if the bitcoin fall down, in time the price will surely recover and even grow higher to another level. So, what's with all the buzzing, anyway?

The future for bitcoin is looking brighter at the moment because the price of bitcoin manages to recover out of the biggest market correction since January 2017. Bitcoin price went through some nasty correction in the late December losing up to 45% of it true value and as of January 2018 it manages to recover more than 28% of the lost value and it may continue to do so until it is fully recovered.

Yeah, it is very risky to put all your money into bitcoin, there might be a very huge risk involved because the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market is unpredictable. You should invest half of your money in to the market and taste waters and if you feel you need to add more money to it then you should.

Bitcoin - A Long Way From an Everyday Currency: Expert Blog



First, let me start by saying that I love Bitcoin and that I am bullish on the long-term prospects of cryptocurrency as a whole. It has changed my life for the better, and I’ve met a lot of people along the way that can say the same about it.

But I wanted to take a moment to “get real” about Bitcoin, especially after experiencing, first hand, it’s dramatic rise in value this year, and the accompanying surge of interest from the general public, many of whom are rushing to purchase the coin despite not knowing what it really is.


What is Bitcoin?

According to Satoshi himself, Bitcoin was designed to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash that would allow online payments to be sent between parties without a financial institution.

It accomplishes this by broadcasting transactions in an append-only public ledger. Records of these transactions are stored on blocks which are cryptographically linked to each block before it, in a chain-like sequence. This work is done by miners which require computing power to find the variable nonce that will yield the correct hash – called proof-of-work, which is an integral part of the consensus protocol.


Transactions take a long time

Even if none of the above really makes any sense to you, the important part to get out of it is, that the integrity of Bitcoin’s trustless system relies on a difficulty adjustment setting that pegs the cryptographic function solve time to 10 minutes, regardless of the total computing power on the network. This dynamically adjusting difficulty setting was designed into the protocol to intentionally slow the transaction time down, so that it would be difficult for an attacker to gain an advantage by attempting to solve a consecutive chain of blocks and therefore own the keys to history. This does not take into account the wait time in the mempool before a transaction gets added into the next block – figure that in and you’re looking at up to seven hours for a confirmation.

The takeaway is that transactions are not instantaneous. They take time.


Transactions are expensive

Bitcoin fees are measured in Satoshi’s per byte of data transmitted. Since a Satoshi is a fraction of a Bitcoin, as the price of the coin continues upward, so too does the relative price of the transaction itself. To compound the problem, the wave of new interest has congested the network, causing transaction delays. To overcome this, senders can prioritize inclusion of their transaction into the next block by increasing the fee tied to their transaction. The increased competition further raises the market price per transaction. As of this writing, each transaction costs about $24.23 or nearly the same price as a wire transfer.

Now imagine a scenario where you’re trying to buy a stick of gum at a gas station – will you wait 10 minutes or more and pay nearly $25 for the processing fee? Probably not. In fact, for the majority of your daily or even occasional purchases, Bitcoin doesn’t seem like a viable option against the methods you already use.


Competing systems are still better

Bitcoin’s network of miners can handle about 3.5 transactions per second (tps) on a 1MB block. Compare that with PayPal which easily processes 150 tps during peak periods or Visa, which does 2,000 tps without breaking a sweat and has a theoretical peak maximum of 56,000 tps, and you can see that competing systems can scale with transaction load a lot better. In order for Bitcoin to be an everyday payment system, it must at least compete on the same level as existing systems and have a hope to scale to greater heights.

Centralized systems like Visa and PayPal can continuously make infrastructure improvements to increase the transaction processing speed and throughput. However, Bitcoin’s decentralized structure means that it does not benefit from uniform decision making motivated by a business objective. Despite its rapid growth and adoption, improvements to the protocol have been few and far between, failing to keep up with demand, and therefore exacerbating the problems I’ve mentioned in earlier sections of this article.

Many have noticed other cryptocurrencies addressing the problems I’ve mentioned with Bitcoin. In the early days, Bitcoin relied on market dominance of its brand and was less encumbered by transaction time and costs. Today, it has brought awareness to the cryptocurrency community and allowed other “altcoins” exposure to interested buyers. Those that spend time researching the tech behind the currency are well aware of the problems I’ve mentioned and might see stronger merit in a competing currency. In fact, Bitcoin is losing market share rapidly to all other coins, representing just 36 percent of the cryptocurrency market, just half of it was a year earlier.


What about the coming improvements?

There has been a lot of discussion around off-chain tech that is supposed to address these issues. Many still seem a long way from being implemented, have their own issues, and still have to contend with consensus agreement and user education in order to work.

Then there’s the argument of improvements to Bitcoin’s protocol itself. The community has been highly fragmented after the breakup of the New York Agreement, which was supposed to help address Bitcoin’s lack of centralization, by allowing different, but important, factions of the community a vote. In its current state, it’s hard to imagine the implementation of any near-term scalability improvements to the protocol, to address these issues.


Bitcoin as digital gold

There’s another side of the virtual coin in this discussion – that Bitcoin doesn’t need to be an everyday currency, but rather serve as the store of value in the representative form of digital gold. If that is the case, then higher transaction fees and long confirmation times reduce the incentive for participants to move money, leading to more ‘hodling,’ theoretically reducing the supply and increasing the price. Other currencies can then serve as the decentralized payment method to allow for fast and low-cost transactions. The concern with this is that by removing the utility value of Bitcoin, larger capital flows of fiat into more useful currencies might also encourage a reduction in Bitcoin’s relevancy and thereby cause the opposite effect. It seems that with its dwindling market share, this might already be happening.

In the end, Mr. Nakamoto’s goal was to make Bitcoin a payment system, not a wealth accumulation medium. Only time will tell which argument wins out, but in its current form, Bitcoin is a long way from an everyday currency.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-a-long-way-from-an-everyday-currency-expert-blog

Study: 22% of Bitcoin Investors Used Borrowed Money For Trading, Not Recommended



According to LendEDU, a personal loan research firm, more than 18 percent of Bitcoin investors have used borrowed money to trade the cryptocurrency. In a global survey of 672 active Bitcoin investors, researchers asked traders the method they used to fund their cryptocurrency trading accounts. The majority of investors used banking systems such as credit cards and ACH transfers to fund their accounts.

But 22 percent of traders revealed that they have not paid off their credit and debit cards after purchasing Bitcoin, effectively investing in the cryptocurrency with borrowed money. The report read:

    “The wisest and most frugal way to fund a virtual currency exchange account would be through an ACH transfer, which is completely free of charge. Only 18.60 percent of our 672 Bitcoin-invested respondents were paying for the cryptocurrency in this fashion.

    However, this was not even the most pressing concern coming from the LendEDU poll. That recognition belongs to this data-point: 22.13 percent of Bitcoin investors did not pay off their credit card balance after purchasing Bitcoin.”


Exaggerated generalization

Lately, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, revealed that it has been adding more than 250,000 active users on a daily basis, and were forced to stop adding new users temporarily as a result. Coinbase and Bitstamp have also been adding more than 100,000 users per day and at the time of reporting, Coinbase has close to 20 mln users.

In early December, Bitstamp Co-founder and CEO Nejc Kodrič stated:

    “Please understand that we currently have over 100,000 new accounts opened daily. It is challenging to cope with such surge. We are expanding our capacity to onboard clients faster, but this takes a bit of time.”

Hence, 618 Bitcoin users, is nowhere sufficient to create generalizations about the entire global Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market.

But, it is important to acknowledge that a small portion of Bitcoin investors are still trading the cryptocurrency with debt to this date, despite the advice of experts and analysts to refrain from doing so.


Only invest amount that can be lost

In June, Bitcoin and security expert Andreas Antonopoulos strongly emphasized that he only invests an amount in cryptocurrencies that he is willing to lose, given the significant risk involved in cryptocurrency trading. While the risk of investing in Bitcoin is lower than others given the size of its market, the risk for other cryptocurrencies in the global market still remains substantially high.

“I own a few different crypto assets as part of a small but diversified portfolio. I only risk as much as I'm willing to lose,” said Antonopoulos.

In a presentation at Coinscrum, an event hosted by the Imperial College London, Antonopoulos also noted that he can lose all of his investments in cryptocurrencies and still have everything else because he has invested his career, intellectual capacity, and work in Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market.

For casual investors and newcomers, it is extremely risky to obtain debt to invest in a particular asset and this is not exclusive to Bitcoin. It does not matter which asset it is, becoming in debt to invest in a particular asset or asset class is highly risky.

"My small savings that I do have are invested in Bitcoin. 100 percent [of it]. I actually have a tiny debt in US dollars that I'm still trying to pay off, so it is more than 100 percent in Bitcoin. Now, I'd like to emphasize again, that is not a recommendation to invest. Because I haven't invested my money in Bitcoin, I invested my career, my intellectual capacity, my creativity energy, my passion, and my work in Bitcoin. The money is the least of the investment that I have made in Bitcoin and I could lose everything of it and I'd still have everything else,” Antonopoulos explained.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-22-of-bitcoin-investors-used-borrowed-money-for-trading-not-recommended

Combined Crypto Market Capitalization Races Past $800 Bln



The combined market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies hit $800 bln on Sunday, just days after reaching the previous all-time high of $700 bln. The number is at over $825 bln as of press time and keeps growing.



Following a two-day period of sharp decline just before the New Year, the majority of cryptocurrencies are now growing again, contributing to the rapid increase in the combined market capitalization.

The latest all-time high comes just under a month after the market has achieved a total capitalization of $500 bln. This immense growth, coupled with the fact that 2017 started at a mere $18 bln combined, seems to indicate that cryptocurrency is well on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar industry.

Speaking of individual coins that are driving this upward dynamic, several are of note. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, is hovering at a relatively stable price range between $16,500 and $17,000, with slight growth over the past week. However, the share of its capitalization against that of the market as a whole is still at all-time lows of around 34 percent, as major competitors seem to be outpacing it.



Ethereum, for example, has surpassed the $1,000 mark for the first time this Friday and keeps growing. Among the likely reasons for this dynamic is the immense level of adoption of the cryptocurrency, which seems to be higher than that of the rest of the market combined.

Ripple is another major producer of growth on the market. It started skyrocketing in mid-December 2017 and has already managed to displace Ethereum as the second-highest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, making its own chairman potentially the richest person on the planet in the process.

However, even if you disregard the major players, there are a lot of factors as to why the numbers are growing so fast. When even meme coins are reaching billion-dollar capitalizations, countries are issuing their own cryptocurrencies, and prominent tech CEOs like Thiel and Zuckerberg are eyeing the industry, a trillion-dollar combined market cap can easily seem a distinct possibility.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/combined-crypto-market-capitalization-races-past-800-bln

Crypto Tax Tips To Start 2018 Right



Even though cryptocurrencies are getting more and more exposure, their legislation seems to be a grey area for most governments, especially when it comes to declaring your income in digital currencies. The Internal Revenue Service, the US tax collection agency, has issued Notice 2014-21 stating that Bitcoin and altcoins are subjects to federal income and payroll taxes. So what to do with your crypto money and how to declare your taxes right?


Records

Let’s start with the dreary subject of records. Yes, that applies to crypto investors too. You’d better have some if you are thinking about taxes. If you’ve ever tried to tell the IRS “I lost my receipt,” you don’t want to do it a second time.

The IRS has heard every excuse in the book. While it is not without sympathy, you’ll find it far easier not having to go to the additional effort of proving something by another means. Periodically, the IRS issues reminders to taxpayers regarding the importance of safeguarding your tax records.

That’s especially true in cases of natural disasters that make traditional record-keeping go haywire. But think of it year-round wherever you are. The IRS suggests creating a backup set of records stored away from the originals. It is good advice for crypto investors.


Selling some assets?

If you are sitting on some big gains, you might consider how your tax picture will look for the entire year. It isn’t too soon to start thinking this way. In fact, try to do it long before year-end so you can make adjustments. You might want to sell or hedge some, even if you think the market is still headed up.

There is a lot more than taxes involved in such decisions. But it can be wise to at least think about it. For example, what if your tax year already has a big capital loss in it, or you have a big carryover loss from prior years? In general, unused capital losses can be used to absorb up to $3,000 per year in ordinary income.

But unless you have capital gains to offset your capital losses that $3,000 would be the extent of your tax benefit. Some people sit for years and years with unused capital losses that carryover each year. So, if you also have unrealized capital gains, you might consider selling some gain assets, to be able to absorb your losses. Run some numbers and see how it looks.


And what exactly are you selling?

Another topic as tax time nears is to ask whether you really know what you are selling. That is, if you have 100 Bitcoins and you sell 10, which 10 did you sell? There is no perfect answer to this question. Most of the tax law considers shares of stock, not cryptocurrency. 

However, many advisers think that the same kinds of rules should be applied in the case of multiple crypto assets that you hold. If so, specific identification of what you are selling, when you bought it, and for what purchase price, is likely to be the cleanest. But that may not be possible.

Some people use an averaging convention, where you essentially average your cost across a number of purchases. Consistency and record-keeping are important. You don’t want the IRS to claim that you denied the government its fair share of each sale. And remember, if you are claiming long-term capital gain treatment, being able to prove that you held the cryptocurrency for more than a year before selling is key.


Loans with interest and hedges

Loaning money shouldn’t be a taxable event to either the borrower or the lender, except for interest payments. So, can you loan out your cryptocurrency to people? You can, but the question is whether that loan will be treated the same as a loan of money by the IRS.

The jury is still out on that question. The IRS says cryptocurrency is property for tax purposes. You don’t want the loan and the repayment (of different cryptocurrency?) to be treated as taxable dispositions. Some of it may depend on your documents, and how much you make it look and feel like a real loan.

Hedges of cryptocurrency are another hot topic to consider. Hedges can help to avoid some of the volatility that has characterized the various crypto markets. But be careful that you are doing your best to avoid a disposition, meaning a sale for tax purposes, that you don’t want.


Gifts

The holidays may be over, but probably everyone in your family would still like some Bitcoin or other crypto issues. The prices have been so ever-present in the news, that gifts and donations are still very much in the news. But is it smart tax-wise?

A charitable contribution would be the best type of transfer. If you give to a qualified charity, you should get an income tax deduction for the full fair market value of the crypto. If you bought for $500, and donate to a 501(c)(3) charity when it is worth $15,000, you should get a $15,000 charitable contribution deduction. What’s more, you won’t have to pay the capital gain tax on the $14,500 spread.

Giving to private parties is not as impressive. The same gift to your niece gets you no tax deduction. And it requires you to file a gift tax return since the gift is worth more than $15,000. For 2018, $15,000 is the amount of so-called “annual exclusion” gifts you can give to any number of people each year with no reporting required.

Any gifts over that $15,000 amount require a gift tax return, even though you probably won’t pay any gift tax. You normally would use up a small portion of your lifetime exclusion from gift and estate tax. For 2018, that number just went up dramatically. The amount you can transfer tax-free during your life or on death just went up to $11.2 mln per person. That is $22.4 mln per married couple.


Forms 1099

Finally, don’t forget about the coming onslaught of IRS Forms 1099. Normally, these not-so-fun little tax forms arrive around the end of January, reporting income paid to you in the previous calendar tax year. The IRS says that wages paid to employees using virtual currency are taxable, must be reported on a Form W-2, and are subject to federal income tax withholding and payroll taxes.

Similarly, payments using virtual currency made to independent contractors are taxable to them, and payers who are engaged in business must issue Form 1099. A payment made using virtual currency is subject to Form 1099 reporting just like any other payment made in property. That means if a person in business pays virtual currency worth $600 or more to an independent contractor for services, Form 1099 is required.

If you are a recipient of Form 1099, as most everyone is, keep track of them. Each one gets reported to the IRS and applicable state tax authorities. If you don’t report or otherwise address the reported income on your tax return, you can expect that the IRS will follow up.

This may seem confusing, but you shouldn’t worry. The IRS is usually much more lenient to those who fill in taxes, even with mistakes, rather than to those who avoid doing it at all.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-tax-tips-to-start-2018-right

Exponential Growth: Cryptocurrency Exchanges Are Adding 100,000+ Users Per Day



Major Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading platforms within the global market have been adding more than 100,000 users per day.

Many of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase (GDAX), Binance, Bittrex, Bitstamp and Kraken have struggled in dealing with the abrupt surge in demand for cryptocurrencies. Some exchanges have overhauled their systems to improve their scalability, while others have temporarily stopped opening new user accounts.


Unexpected growth rate

This week, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, the global market’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with a staggering $9.5 bln daily trading volume, revealed that it has added more than 250,000 users on a single day.

“Sorry guys, servicing existing members is higher priority at this point. Full team working around the clock. Both tech and support. Just too much demand. Added 250,000 new users in the last 24 hours,” said Zhao, referencing the official statement released by the company.

On Jan. 4, Binance stated, “due to the overwhelming surge in popularity, Binance will have to temporarily disable new user registrations to allow for an infrastructure upgrade. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

In December, both Kraken and Coinbase allocated a significant portion of their resources and capital in improving customer support and the scalability of their platforms. On Dec. 23, Kraken, which has found difficulty in processing account verifications, disclosed that it has implemented major system upgrades and improvements in performance and will continue to develop its trading platform to support new users.

The Kraken development team admitted that its current infrastructure is “degraded and unreliable,” and vowed to improve it throughout January. The company said:

    “We have made significant progress in the last week with the system upgrades and have realized moderate improvement in performance. Unfortunately, we were not able to complete all of the upgrades and the most impactful measures are yet to come. For the time being, systems should still be considered degraded and unreliable.”

Regional exchanges such as South Korea’s Bithumb, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume, have also stopped accepting new users.


Why are large exchanges struggling?

In late 2017, South Korea’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange Korbit was acquired at a valuation of $140 mln by a $10 bln gaming giant in Nexon. Given the size and the market valuation of Korbit, major exchanges like Bithumb, Bitstamp, Kraken and Binance could be worth more than $1 bln, as Coinbase was valued at $1.6 bln in its latest funding round.

Even with such large market valuation, high-profit margins, and many resources, cryptocurrency exchanges are struggling to address the exponentially increasing demand from investors because of the strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) systems the companies were forced to implement by the authorities.

Each user application must be manually approved and verified. The failure to segregate fraudulent accounts from legitimate users could result in large fines and lawsuits for exchanges. Consequently, the vetting process of users is rigorous and requires significant efforts from the employees of exchanges.

Given that exchanges are adding more than 100,000 users per day, it is likely that exchanges are also receiving more than one mln trading account approval requests per month, at least.

That is, if the approval process of accounts take around 10 minutes per account, 166,666 hours on a monthly basis that employees have to cover manually.

In the next few months, global cryptocurrency exchanges will make drastic changes to their systems. Until then, users, especially newcomers, will find it difficult to open approved trading accounts.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/exponential-growth-cryptocurrency-exchanges-are-adding-100000-users-per-day

President Maduro: Venezuela to Issue First 100 Million Petros



Venezuelan President Maduro has ordered the issuance of the first 100 mln Petros, an oil-backed national cryptocurrency. He also indicated that each Petro would have the value of a single barrel of oil. He said:

    “I’ve ordered the issue of 100 million Petros, based on national wealth. Each Petro will have the value of a barrel of Venezuela’s oil.”

The first national meeting of Petro miners will occur on January 14, along with the publication of the whitepaper. The announcement is in line with the previous statements from Maduro that the country would issue an oil-backed cryptocurrency.

The country’s massive hyperinflation problems have led to widespread lack of trust in the national currency, the Bolivar. This has caused much of the population with access to appropriate technology to pursue Bitcoin as a means of stable transactions - called ‘Bitcoinization’ by some economists.

Other countries including Zimbabwe have also seen widespread Bitcoin adoption in the face of financial instability.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/president-maduro-venezuela-to-issue-first-100-million-petros

Well, bitcoin was selling at $20,000 in December 2017 and you were talking of only $7,000 that is why i always say waiting for bitcoin price to drop before investing is a very bad thing because there is no guarantee when exactly that is going to happen. Bitcoin price might grow even higher instead of coming down. So, that is what exactly happen in your case.

Yes, I think there is a chance for bitcoin reaching up to $20,000 in this month of January, if not then I don't think it will exceed the February. There is still huge demand for bitcoin, but the only problem with the bitcoin transaction problem which lead to paying high transaction fee and experiencing very slow transactions.   

Yeah everybody does that, I think every bitcoiner go to the coinmarketcap or coingecko to check the latest bitcoin and altcoins prices. Coinmarketcap has become the bible for bitcoiners from everywhere all over the world. Therefore, you are not the only one checking the bitcoin price daily we are many. 

LOL Using blockchain technology with Facebook that doesn't mean it will help the bitcoin price. Blockchain technology is different from bitcoin, and so does the bitcoin. They are two different things sitting on their own independently. In fact, all cryptocurrencies are using blockchain technology as their network. Therefore, if facebook using blockchain then they have no different with Ethereum, Dash, or Ripple.

Bitcoin domination is never over! there are some few problems with bitcoin transactions that caused people to pay high transactions fees and also experiencing slow transactions. Once the lightning network is implemented over bitcoin netwoek it would speed up the bitcoin transaction speed with zero fees. Once the updated is completed bitcoin will be faster and smoother than ever and that time bitcoin will recover the lost market domination of about 31% with the 66% of cyrptocurrency market dominance.   

Yes, the bitcoin price will break the $20,000 again but no one knows exactly when that is going to happen. Surely, there must be some ups and downs before the price can reach $20k but it's all about time. Bitcoin will definitely break that level and continue it journey from where it stopped and heading back to the moon.